Ur-Texts: The Dharma Bums

A great cover: funny & poignant, like the book.

We are about to embark on a party of epic proportions, a multi-day gathering that actively resists the usual party descriptors of "extravaganza," "orgy," and "debauch." It promises to be a low-key affair, populated with friends past and present arriving from near and (not too) far in time to celebrate the New Year, but arriving early enough (tomorrow afternoon) and leaving late enough (Saturday afternoon? or later?) and in great enough numbers (edging towards 30) that it invites comparison to the Kerouacian debauches of "The Dharma Bums."

I make this comparison, perhaps, because I am re-reading "The Dharma Bums." It is the first in my re-readings of my ur-texts. I plan on reading all the books on this list (as well as a few more, depending), and commenting on their place in my personal mythology. Thus far (I haven't finished my re-read), I love "The Dharma Bums" all over again. It reminds me of all the flaws and beauties inherent in the Beat/Zen/Hippie/Stoner outlook on life, and it reminds me of those things in ways that no self-consciously Beat/Zen/Hippie/Stoner writings can. Kerouac was writing early enough in his era that he was not yet a cliche, and the earnestness that comes from that position shines through in his writing. Consider:

"See the whole thing is a world full of rucksack wanderers, Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that crap they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume, I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures."

...which has great rhythm and pacing as well as great content; alongside a brief, hilarious gem like this:


"let's see, 'Lake below . . . the black holes the wells make,' no that's not a haiku goddammit, you can never be too careful about haiku."

It's that assured spirituality of the counterculture combined with that flippant and reverent need for beauty that really speak to me in this book.

Perhaps more to come as I finish this book, as well as a meditation on Wendell Berry's "Jayber Crow," the book with which I finished out my new reading before embarking on this ur-text project.

Whoa

check it out.

Shelter

Nathan and I spent last night at the homeless shelter, volunteering on behalf of one of the churches in our Presbytery. This morning was rainy. Most of the men there were stoics, pulling up their hoods, putting trash bags onto their bedrolls, and walking out the door.

Two men remained just after 7AM. The older of the two had eyes rimmed with red and yellow. He swept the empty room -- officially our job as volunteers, but he'd taken the broom as his province, and we left it to him. "Yeah, thirty years ago, I never thought I'd'a been homeless," he said. "I raised a family -- three daughters, I raised. I worked. I worked hard. I worked Three Mile Island, during that time; that time, with the -- you know. I worked there. And now -- Well, my feet hit the ground this morning, and I was alive, so I thank God."

He swept up and handed over the broom. The other guy, the one who had slicked back his hair and shaved his face, picked up the Bible from the coffee table. "I like to do this in the morning," he said. "I'm not a religious guy, but I seen some spiritual stuff that most people wouldn't believe." He opened the Bible to a random page.

"What's the date today?"
"The twelfth."
"The twelfth..." he paged down to the first superscript twelve he could find, and read aloud: "And as for the rest of the beasts, their dominion was taken away: yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time."

We gathered up the trash with these two, and they peered out the door. "It's not raining anymore."

They tightened up their coats. "That verse," said the shaved one, to his friend, "That sounds like some'a what you were saying this morning."

Thing People Ask For At The Store

In decreasing order of likelihood that we stock them.

1)
"I know you have books, but do you have any magazines?"
"No, sorry."

2)
"Can I get some tobacco?"
"I don't smoke."
"Do y'all sell any here?"
"Try down the street."

3)
"Hey, uh, do you have belts?"
"Excuse me?"
"Belts." [hikes up pants]
"Sir, this is a bookstore."

Link

Those Mennonites; always trying to take their clothes off. (SFW)

Ur-Text

As is the privilege  of the under-employed in winter, I've been reading a lot lately. Nathan and Frank and myself have had a conversation or two about reading -- how we do it, what we get out of it, etc.

I myself am more of a drive-by reader. I read fast, noting important passages for later review, but ultimately feeling the need to move on to other books. This strategy has its ups and downs, but one of the ups is that I always feel welcome to return to a book, feeling that I may have missed something in an earlier read-through.

So, while reading the Wendell Berry chapter in Bill Inchausti's Subversive Orthodoxy, I realized a desire to revisit The Mad Farmer Liberation Front, The Wild Geese, etc. This quickly blossomed into a desire to re-read all of my favorite, formative books; my Ur-texts, to use the German (and if you want to know more about the prefix "ur," just let me know -- it's one of my favorite German prefixes). A quick perusal of my bookshelf, my earlier post on my favorite books, and my memory yielded these results:

The Dharma Bums (Kerouac)
East of Eden (Steinbeck)
Cannery Row (Steinbeck)
For Whom The Bell Tolls (Hemingway)
Moby Dick (Melville)
Lord of the Rings (Tolkien)
One Man's Meat (White)
The Practice of the Presence of God (Brother Lawrence)
The Prophet (Gibran)

and of course, the poems of Wendell Berry.

Bear in mind, the notion of the ur-text is not just "books I like a lot," but rather "books that are the basis of my founding mythology as a person." If it was the former and not the latter, the list would be much longer.

So, dear readers, I leave you with the question, to be answered in the comments or in your own blogs, facebooks, etc. :

"What are your ur-texts?"

People Confuse Me With Famous Fictional People: Part II

The street to and from Allison Hill starts in downtown as Fourth Street, becomes Mulberry Street on the bridge over the train yard, and, at the top of the hill, merges with Derry Street.

[NOTE: I like embedding the GoogleMaps viewer of the places to which I refer, but I realize it might slow down loading of the blog, so I'll just link to it.]

Coming down the bridge on a bike subjects the rider to cross breezes coming perpendicular to the direction of travel. The negative effect of a strong cross breeze on the cyclist's speed is greater than might initially be expected. The bridge slopes down into town, continuing a general trend of roads leading off of the Hill (as one might expect, per the name of the neighborhood). Achieving top speed approaching the downhill, and continuing to travel fast (approx. 15-20 mph) while coming downhill, then, is the preferred way to combat cross breezes. It does, however, endanger any pedestrians on the bridge's sidewalk.

Since my bike does not have a bell, my preferred strategy is to shout "Passing on your left!" as I approach pedestrians. They turn, look shocked, and step to the right, letting me by. Recently, there were two pedestrians on the bridge, separated by a good deal of distance. The first pass went normally. On the second one, the guy turned around, arms spread wide for a bear hug.

"Whooooa! Heyyyy! Whoooooa! It's Spider-Man! Hey Spider-Man!" he shouted.

I waved, and was gone before I realized what he had said.

No Last Call: Holiday Edition

This past weekend, I played the Harrisburg Holiday Parade1 with the one and only No Last Call2.

As a part of the band's "uniform," I was wearing a red shirt, red bandana, and a fake white beard, more suited to a desert castaway than to Santa Claus.

NTRS playing with NLC in the HHP in HBG

After our traditional band breakfast and traditional too-long-of-a-wait-before-playing, we marched across the City Island Bridge 3 .

People were cheering, kids were catching candy, vendors selling cheap toys meandered up and down the street -- very typical, as far as parades are concerned. I was surprised, however, to see two little girls glaring at me. One was giving me the thumbs down.

I was appalled. The band, I thought, sounded good 4 . We hadn't taken any of their candy. What could be wrong?

Then, as I marched by them, they shouted, in unison, over the sounds of the trombones next to me, the drums behind me, and the tuba in front of me, "YOU'RE NOT THE REAL SANTA!"5

I almost fell over laughing.

-------------------------------------------------

1 HHP, to this acronym-happy city, also home to HHA, HAA, HYP, and the city's eponymous if not acronymic HBG.

2 NLC

3 CIB

4 See videos here if you're on The Facebook.

5 NTRS

Club IR

Up in Allison Hill, where Naed lives, where the farm is, is the Club Diner.


View Larger Map

It sits across the parking lot from a Mexican/Dominican restaurant and the offices of Industrial Building Maintenance. The "Club Diner" sign has lost its D, N, and E, leaving "Club  i   r"

Josh (the assistant manager at the farm) and John-Michael and I have breakfast there sometimes. When we walk in this particular morning, the waitress greets Josh by name.
"Agh, she always knows my name," he says--quietly; Club IR is a small place.
"So?" says John-Michael.
"I can never remember hers!"
We all laugh, and the waitress brings the menus.
"What's so funny, boys?"
"Aw, nothin'" says Josh. "This is our friend Greg.'
"Hey," I say.
"Hey," she says. "What can I get you to drink?"

"Darn," says Josh, once she's gone, "I was hoping she'd introduce herself."

We sip the thin coffee (Josh sips tea) and chat, when pop music intrudes over the loudspeaker. The other waitress is just leaving the jukebox, and we flag her down. Under the cover of "Sweet Home Alabama," Josh asks, "Hey, what's the other waitress's name?" This is a dangerous tactic; the counter is only a few feet away, and our waitress could appear from the kitchen at any moment.

"You mean my mom?" she says, shooting him a look refined by having spent at least five years as a teenager. It tends towards a glare, but is not so malevolent as to imply that she is in any way deserving of a smaller tip than one might otherwise be inclined to give.
"Yeah," says Josh. Our waitress emerges, coming rapidly into earshot. Josh covers himself with "And what's your name?"
"I'm Jordan," she says.
"Cool," says Josh. "I'm Josh."
"Yeah, I know." She gives him another look and goes back to her own tables. Josh clenches his fist in defeat. Our waitress tops up our coffee and brings us our omelets. We continue to chat, but soon John-Michael gets up. "That music is too loud," he says.

He walks over to the jukebox. Everyone in the place -- Josh, me, the waitresses, the cook, the old guys in ball caps, the young guys in hoodies -- all watch as he fumbles with the interface.

"What are you doing?" asks Jordan from the counter.
"Trying to turn the music down," says John Michael. A few of the old guys nod in appreciation.
Jordan sighs, glares at John Michael, and whips out a remote control.

Being the only one in our party having not felt the wrath of the staff of the Club Diner, it is decided that I need to get the watiress's name when we pay our bill. I step up to the register.

"I didn't catch your name earlier," I said, handing over my money. The waitress punches the buttons.
"What? Josh didn't tell you?" she turns to Josh, "Josh?"
"Well -- I -- uh. I don't remember."
"Every time!" she says. "It's Leslie." She looks at me and John Michael. "Remind him next time, will ya?"

We nod, tip, and get out of there. Now we meet up there every other week or so, convening in the parking lot to review the staff's names before we enter.

Nathan Says

"...So I can't tell if it's worse that they're morons or that I'm judgmental about them being morons."

"...Which is why I'm going to make seven dragons before I die."

(about being encouraged to start a blog)
"I'm gonna put that on my list of things that I should be doing but am not doing right now. It'll be number 437. Number 1 is 'Make that list.'"

Save Us From Our Phones

The New York Times, web edition, front page, 11/16/10

I recently found (apologies if/when they've changed their ad content) an ad for for the new Windows Phone. It says "It's time for a phone to save us from our phones." The video that precedes the text involves a phone-obsessed woman blocking foot traffic at the base of an escalator, leading the other pedestrians to glare at her, and spill out of the ad box onto the page (see screenshot below). It's a clever little bit, despite my long-held reservations about ads that interrupt the content of web sites.

The key line of the ad -- needing a phone to save us from our phones -- is throwaway copy. Neither the voiceover (cued by clicking on the ad) nor the product page reference being save from phones.

Which is to be expected. The situation shown could be caused (but not solved, at least in any way the ad describes) by the Windows Phone. It in no way distinguishes the Windows Phone from any of its competitors (the phones it is ostensibly saving us from). 

Nonetheless, the video portion of the ad sets up an interesting little drama: how will the pedestrians respond to the woman's abuse of her phone? How will they use a phone (the Windows Phone, perhaps?) to save themselves (or even her) from her phone? In the end, they just push past her.

The New York Times, web edition, front page, 11/16/10

It is bad advertising, but it is good social commentary: people feel the need to be saved from their own and others' phone use habits, so much so that a line like "It's time for a phone to save us from our phones" can be tossed out as an immediately-understood complaint that has very little to do with the product/concept being marketed.

So, dear readers, since the marketers have failed to answer their question, I leave it to you to find a better lead-in:

"It's time for __________ to save us from our phones."

Scott Pilgrim

The other night, I saw "Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" (Wright, 2010) for the first time. I know I'm behind the curve in saying this, but it was awesome. In addition to it being awesome, I would like to posit it as a kind of zeitgeist movie of the hipster culture; it encapsulates the spirit of the zeit (time), even as it suggests new direction for the geist (spirit) of that time.



I. Comic Book Disclaimer

"Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World" is based on a comic book. I have not read the comic book (though I plan to) so all uses of "Scott Pilgrim" refer to the film.

II. Sincerity

One of the things I like most about this movie is its sincerity. Though its mise-en-scene and cultural touchstones (post/punk, indie rock, '80s videogames) are unabashedly hipster, its plot can be read as a repudiation of the core hipster values of cynicism and apathy. A spoiler-laden example follows:

[SPOILER ALERT] When Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is leaving at the movie's end, Scott (Michael Cera) says "Ok, well, bye and stuff." Then he goes after her. There is real potential (in terms of the narrative, and in terms of extant footage available to the editors, according to friends who watched the deleted scenes) that Scott will let her go. But he doesn't! Thus, Scott's movie-long sincere desire for Ramona is validated. [END SPOILER]

Sorry, readers who don't want to be spoiled, but that's the only example I've got. When I saw the end, I was shocked -- for the movie to end this way works, narratively, but seems so out of fashion for our times, that, in addition to my love of sincerity, I was impressed by its creative vision.


III. Form

From the get-go, it is clear that this movie is not screwing around, formally speaking. And by that I mean, it's screwing with us all the time, and doing it damn well. Titles flash onscreen, comic-book style words accompany sound effects, cuts are non-continuous, the screen splits regularly; I could go on and on about the cold open and credits sequence alone.

This movie, perhaps more so than any movie I've seen or heard about, exemplifies many of things that are popular in filmmaking today, and often get described as postmodern filmmaking. What makes "Scott Pilgrim" stand out is how it unifies form and content. Tarantino is a good name to check (and he apparently spent time on set), but this is not a Tarantino movie. "Scott Pilgrim" explicitly refers and alludes to video games, but not in the sense that it is a "video game movie." It uses these elements, but refuses to play any of their particularly limiting genre games.

Without providing the kind of close readings that I would love to do on particular formal elements, it will suffice to say that "Scott Pilgrim" is episodic, ironic, playful, referential, and diegetically shifty (in the best way possible). It is, formally, the quintessential postmodern movie.

IV. (Dis)unity

I know I've extolled "Scott Pilgrim" as a movie whose form and content are unified. I stand by that analysis; the story, born in comics, retains its comic book sensibility in a beautifully film-specific way.

The disunity is a cause for hope: while the formal elements are textbook postmodern filmmaking, the story validates sincerity -- one of the things that postmodern/hipster culture has, to my dismay, left in the dust.

"Scott Pilgrim" gives me hope that my favorite things about postmodernity and its attendant irony (Gideon's wardrobe; the vegan jokes; the indie music scene) can coexist with that same heartwarming sincerity that drives the entire movie and is [SPOILER ALERT] validated by the film's conclusion.

Link

Real writings will follow, but first:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/books/review/Greif-t.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Captain Ahab, Zombie Hunter

Nathan and Matt, at the apartment, dressed up in Zombie regalia: sickly green facepaint, wounds, torn clothes, etc. They opened the door at the bottom of the stairs. The second floor door creaked as it opened. From within emerged... Zombie Larry The Cable Guy!

"Oh hey Jon," said Nathan. "Where are you going?"
"Appalchian Brewing Company's zombie party. You?"
"The bookstore's zombie party."
"Cool."

Thus allied, the 3-man zombie horde marched down, through the vestibule, and parted ways on the front porch, moaning "BRAAAAAINS..."

---

From behind the coffee bar, I pulled espresso shots and gave basic explanations of nineteenth century whaling practices.

"See, Greg," said Ryan, "The problem is that no one can tell that you're Ahab without your harpoon. You're just wearing what you usually wear."
"Look at my hands," I said. I had drawn a whale on one and the anchor on the other. "Sea tattoos."
"It needs more," said Ryan. "Gimme that sharpie."

Five minutes later, I was sporting a full rigged ship and a forearm anchor.

"From Hell's heart, I stab at thee!"

---

The zombies started arriving around six. Soon, the store was overrun, and I, Captain Ahab, Zombie Hunter, had to fend them off with my harpoon. Defeated, the zombies departed the store. Minutes later, Nathan and Matt, still in full zombie regalia, arrived.


"Where are the zombies?" said Nathan.
"Not sure how to tell you this," I said. "They're gone."

Score one for the humans.

Vote

I just got in from voting at the local community center (only a block away, just past Thomson's barber shop), and the chill in the air and the smell of pancakes frying at the bake sale just inside reminded me of election days gone by.

Every election day, from who-knows-when until I was 15 or 16, my dad and I would get up early and go vote together. I remember getting my school stuff together and setting it by the door while dad went out to warm up the car. We drove up the hill to the Athletic Association building, snake through its wood-paneled staircases and corridors, and confront the blue-curtained machine. As a child, I went inside the curtains with my dad. It was my job to pull the red level, closing the curtains and sounding a bell.

The secrets of the electoral booth are not to be shared, but I feel comfortable saying that dad rarely ever pulled the "party" button, which triggered the whole booth for one party or the other. Whether for my benefit or because of his political conscience, dad went down position by position and told me which arrow to flip down. Then, my favorite part of the whole process, I would pull the red level again, and the curtains would fly back, the arrows we had painstakingly chosen would flip to their unselected defaults, and our ability to participate in government came down to an issue of trust in our local election judges.

McDonald's hotcakes topped off the morning, and then dad would drive me to school, because, unlike in his day, we did not have the day off for election day.

P.S. Don't worry -- the aforementioned zombie anecdotes are still in the works.

Zombies

A more substantial post featuring a few amusing zombie anecdotes to follow. First, though, to whet your appetite (for BRAINS!):

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26304166@N07/sets/72157625279720064/

Stories

"Greg," said Nathan, "I've figured out how you tell stories."

I looked at him quizzically.

"Four sentences, seemingly unrelated, simple conclusion."

This assessment came in reaction to this story:

"I got hit by a car crossing Front Street. I pulled out from behind the Fed Ex truck, so the BMW didn't see me coming. I got thrown from the bike. I'm fine."

"They're like haiku," Nate said, "They rely on the listener to fill in the gaps."

Fi'ty Cent

The other day at the store, I was straightening up books on the carts. The carts sit outside the doors. They feature our clearance books. Just outside the door is a bus stop on the third street line, so there's often a crowd out by the carts, browsing and reading. The books are $0.50 for paperback and $1.00 for hardcover, so management (that is, Eric Papenfuse, owner of the store) is not that upset if some of them end up on the third street bus without us having seen any money. But Eric still likes us to keep the carts looking presentable, so I was out there when I heard a bike roll up behind me.

"Fi'ty cent, fi'ty cent, book for my girlfrien', fi'ty cent."

The guy on the bike laid down that little vocal line in a tone of voice that was so soft as to be menacing. I knew he was asking for money, and I knew I wasn't going to give him any. He hadn't directly addressed me, so I kept straightening, my back to him. His song trailed off into muttering, and then he said, "'scuse me sir, you got fifty cents?"

"Sorry," I said, "I'm working, and I don't have any cash."

The first part was true. The second part was not.

"Oh, you work here," he said, "Cool."

He biked on by. I see him out by the carts and biking up and down third street a lot now. I'm glad I didn't give him cash. I feel like if I had given him fifty cents then, I'd be unable to look him in the eye and have a conversation now. Sometimes he comes into the store to buy a soda, and I give him the nod that is standard parlance for "hello" around here. I still have his surprisingly catchy little ditty stuck in my head.

"Fi'ty cent, fi'ty cent /  book for my girlfrien' / fi'ty cent."

(Call Me?) Ishmael

Even in these post-shoulder-length-hair days of mine, haircuts are not a common occurrence. But yesterday, I walked around the corner to Thomson's Barber Shop (no website or Googlemaps listing; it's at Penn and Kelker streets, if you're curious). I pass by Thomson's often: it is at the corner where I turn right to go to work, or left to go to Alvaro's for cheap pizza and delicious homemade bread.

Thomson's features a beautiful little stoop and, on the glass doors, the legend "No Hanging Out."

Yet every time I walk or bike past Thomson's, there are folks hanging out on the stoop. This encouraged me -- people sticking it to the man in the smallest and most meaningful of ways: by co-opting His space for personal connections. So it surprised me to learn that one of the regulars on Thomson's stoop is Terry Thomson himself.

It was my first time in, so I didn't ask about his paradoxical signage. I mostly just sat, listening to him banter with the other barber in the shop. He took a small, thin trimmer to the edges of my hairline, giving me a "lineup." As he moved down to lineup my sideburns, he said "You wanna keep that Ishmael?"

I wasn't sure what he meant. And had he said "You wanna keep that Ishmael?" or "You wanna keep that, Ishmael?"

Then I realized he was talking about my beard, and I told him that yes, I would be keeping it. But the mystery remains: was Ishmael a colloquialism for "beard," or had he given me an impromptu nickname?

Needless to say, I would be pleased and honored to be nicknamed after Melville's enigmatic, unreliable narrator, but I would also be pleased to refer to my beard as an ishmael. 

Copy-Editing The Culture

Grammar nerds, unite.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/browbeat/archive/2010/10/14/copy-editing-the-culture-the-rise-and-fall-of-woody-allen-as-experienced-through-his-punctuation.aspx

P.S. 

Thanks to Jeff Weaver for sharing this link:


http://voices.washingtonpost.com/college-inc/2010/10/barefoot_professor_preaches_sh.html?hpid=sec-education

Awwww, Shit

Yesterday morning, I woke up tired. Todd, Rachel, Nathan, and our neighbor Devin (flatmate of Jon and Sylvia) and I had spent the evening at a free concert. The sun woke me at 7:30, as it usually does on sunny days, and I thought, as I think every morning, "I don't want to go to that farm today."

Of course, pretty much every morning, I wake up and go to that farm, and so it was this morning, in part because it was beautiful and sunny, and in part because it was manure spreading day.

"I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it if I took today off," I said to Kirsten and Jonathan when I arrived at the farm.
"Right. I'm gonna go inside and do some odds and ends," said Kirsten. "Have fun!"

Jonathan and I took pitchforks and wheelbarrows to the ton and a half of manure that was slowly draining its liquid components onto the upper field. I'll spare you to gritty details, except to say that we spent the two and half hours of spreading work doing two things: 1) a discussion of anti-consumerism and sustainability and 2) shit puns:

"Shit happens."
"That buckwheat [the cover crop giving its life for the field] is in some deep shit now."
"It's a shit job, but somebody's gotta do it."
"Now we're gettin' shit done."
"Bullshit." [it was mostly from cows]
"That's a load of shit."
"It's like shitting a brick." [on extracting a half brick from the manure]
"You're shitting me."

Josh joined us part way through, and since it was sunny, and (as Jonathan put it) we were "working so old-fashioned," we took our shirts off and pitched the shit. Despite the smell, and because of the puns and the company, it was one of the more fun things I've done at the farm.


P.S. In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that I came within a few inches of stabbing Josh in the chest with a fecal pitchfork. It didn't really fit in the rest of the post, but it happened, and I suspect that I will not hear the end of it, so I just want to own up to it now.

The Thousand Dollar Painting

Nathan, as of recently, is a member at the Harrisburg Art Association. He knows some people there, so the other day (the same day as the previous post, in fact) we went down to their gallery so he could show them some of what he's been working on.

We arrived; Todd and Rachel and I went wandering around the gallery, and when we returned, Nathan was filling out a display card and a price tag.

"3rd and Verbeke. Nathan Van Patter. $1000.00"

"I thought you didn't want to sell your work," I said.
"One thousand dollars? I don't think that'll sell," said Todd.
"Exactly," said Nathan, addressing both of our concerns.
"And if you do sell it..." said Rachel.
"Then I'll have one THOUSAND dollars!"
"Seems like a win-win to me," said Todd.
"Actually," said Brian, the curator on duty, "in the New York scene, that would be pretty reasonable."
"See?" said Nathan, "I'm reasonable."

Jon's Solution

Todd and his fiancée (and my friend and former co-worker) Rachel have been visiting, and, not to place blame, but when we left the apartment to jump Nathan's dead battery at Starbucks, one of them locked the door to the apartment.

This seems to be a reasonable and hospitable thing to do when you're staying at someone's place, but I had forgotten to warn them that neither I nor Nathan had been given keys to that door. We secure our apartment with the deadbolt, and leave the knob unlocked.

Until today, when we returned from Starbucks to find the apartment locked. Us being summer camp folks, our first instinct was to find a way to climb in, probably from our second floor neighbors' porch.

"Sylvia?" said Nathan, "Can we come in."
"I'm in the shower," she said, "Gimme a few minutes."

We started out, then, with lock jimmying -- credit card into the door frame, bobby pins into the lock -- but none of us had much experience with that kind of thing. I called the landlord, who said she or her husband could be there in an hour and a half.

"Well," I said, "We could get dinner."

Sylvia opened the door, and we scouted her porches, front and back. Too high for a boost, too much overhang for a climb, unsafe slate on the front roof; the porches were out. We adjourned to the landing in front of the door.

"We could pull the hinges," I said. We started on that one, too. The pins came out fine, but the door was too well-made to shift in its setting, and so we couldn't take it off. Jon, Sylvia's boyfriend came home.

"What's up guys?" he said.
"We're locked out," I said.
"Well, you know what I would do in this situation?"
We were interested. Jon has had a lot of interesting life experience, and probably knew more about forced entry than we did.
"What?" I said.
"I'd probably have a beer."

So we went back in to Jon and Sylvia's place and had some beers, and soon, the landlord's husband arrived, and we were back inside.

A Few Links Again

Fall (Thanks Joel).

Pirates.

Coffee (not my place of employment; my place of rest).

Music (Thanks Heather).

Narrative Truth

It was Nathan's birthday on Saturday, and yesterday his family came to visit. Todd, Nathan's older brother, gave him a can opener.

"I've been telling people that you guys have a working turntable but no can opener as a way to describe your lives."
"I like that," I said. "I'm gonna use that one from now on."
"But now you can't," said Nathan. "We have a can opener."
"No," I said, "I'm gonna say it anyway."
"But it's not true," said Todd.
"It's not categorically true."
"Categorically?" said Todd, "You can't just put words in to make it sound like you're not lying."
"Well," I said, "It's narratively true. It tells a true story about our life here."



Life Update:
We have a working turntable but no can opener.

Let The Great Summer Go

I. So We Can Have Work To Do

I know I've already talked Levi's "Go Forth" ad campaign into the ground, but it's just so good. This video, the kickoff for Levi's series on Braddock, PA, includes some inspiring lines, this one in particular:

"Maybe the world breaks on purpose, so we can have work to do."

This has inspired some theological musings about humanity, purpose, work, brokenness, etc. Please feel free to spin your own webs of meaning in the comments section, as my thoughts are incomplete. Read some Wendell Berry on the nature of good work if you need some reading.

II. Herbsttag

Speaking of reading, I'd like to share this poem. It is my favorite fall poem, and as I've been spending my time "reading, writing long letters, and wandering restlessly in the alleys while the leaves dance," it rings particularly true this fall. Here is the German text and a number of well-known translations. Here is a site that uses the poem as an exercise in translating poetry and ends up with some interesting translations in the process (don't worry--the lesson still makes sense if you don't know German). 

P.S. the wonderful Levi's Walt Whitman commercial seems to have disappeared from most of the places it was posted on youtube, but I found this one, for your re-viewing pleasure.

Erasmo

Erasmo came into the store carrying a bag of "Spicy Beef Stick Bits & Ends" and wearing army-style dog tags.

"Hey," he said, "can you guys help me out?"
"We can try," said Liz, "Whattya need?"
"I need someone who speaks French. Or Arabic."

We looked around the store. It was Saturday night, so it was fairly crowded. None of my friends there spoke French or Arabic. Nathan was also sitting at the counter.

"Why do you need that?" he said.
"Well..." Erasmo took a deep breath and ate another beef stick, "There's this pretty Moroccan chick who moved in next door to me."

"Ahhhh," we all said.
"Yeah," he said, "And playing charades hasn't been working out so well. I mean, how do you say 'you're pretty' in charades?"
"Point at something pretty?" said Liz.
"Then I'd point at myself," he said.
"And that would just confuse her," said Nathan.

We shrugged. Erasmo offered us some bits & ends (only Nathan took him up on that), and left the store for his cross-linguistic rendezvous.

The Low Anthem

The Low Anthem is coming to Harrisburg on Monday, November 8th, at 7PM. Tickets are $10. If you ever needed an excuse to come visit me, here it is. Floor space will be provided for those wanting to stay the night.

An Open Letter to Ira Glass

Dear Sir,

Though it has no bearing on how you will conduct your radio program in the future, I would like to share a few ways in which This American Life has affected my particular American life.

Our letter today has three acts, detailing my particular interactions with This American Life.

Act One: Depression

No, not the clincal/chemical mental health diagnosis, just a general malaise that arises just about every time I listen to an episode of This American Life. An example: your show of March 27, 2007, in which you profiled New York City's prank/guerilla theater troupe Improv Everywhere. I love Improv Everywhere, and have participated in copycat and inspired-by groups. So it was with great pleasure when I heard you announce that you were profiling Improv Everywhere. This pleasure turned to a growing sense of dread when I realized that you were profiling Improv Everywhere's failures.

You yourself, Mr. Glass, have suggested that many of your shows deal with the "crypto-theme" of wrongness. Perhaps this is why I find listening to your show to be an existentially painful experience. I do not enjoy wrongness in myself, or hearing about how others are wrong. This is not only the case with Improv Everywhere, to whom I have some emotional connection. I am even depressed by episodes whose subjects have no connection to me whatsoever. It is the fact of the wrongness and failure inherent in so many of your shows that depresses me.

It took much listening to your show to realize that this was the case, but even once I realized that This American Life was not having a positive impact on my emotional state, I did not stop listening. Depressed is not necessarily a negative review, coming from me. Some of my favorite music (The Low Anthem), movies (Aguirre, The Wrath of God), and books (Hemingway in general) leave me with a feeling of hopelessness about the world in general, and, contradictory as it may sound, this feeling is not always unpleasant. Knowing this about myself, I kept listening to your show.

Act Two: Redemption

Until I stopped, and swore off This American Life for lighter radio fare (Car Talk; All Songs Considered).  But then a friend sent me a link to your show of August 28, 1998. Entitled "Notes On Camp," it chronicled various summer camp experiences. Both this friend and I had been co-workers at a summer camp. 

I listened through the entire episode, cringing as each act ended and a new one began, waiting for the revelation that would turn the whole experience sour.

It never came. I listened through the stories of color days, of camp crushes, of bloody mary and comic hijinks in Israeli army camp. None of it aroused that creeping unhappiness that accompanies most every other episode of This American Life.

I was shocked. I listened to the whole piece again, and again, no malaise. Only minor annoyance at the girls' repetitive "D-A-V-E-Y DAVEY!" song. The piece evoked some pleasant nostalgia for my own summer camp days, and gave cause to meditate on summer camp's deeper meaning: "[camp] is using all the stagecraft that all the world's religions have always used... but for an entirely secular purpose: to thrill children."

This American Life was, perhaps, redeemed.

Act Three: Prequel

Now, however, we must go back to the beginning. I had heard snippets on the radio, and heard my college friends dropping your name, Mr. Glass, with great reverence. But this world is saturated with so much media, and there are fewer hours in the days than there are hours of quality recorded entertainment, so I passed This American Life on by.

My formative experiences with your show occurred on a road trip. It was a situation that would perhaps make a worthwhile setup for a future episode of your show: a friend set up the trip, then found herself delayed, leaving me to ride south from Pennsylvania to Louisiana with a minivan of people I had never met. She met up with us in New Orleans, but on the southbound trip and then again on the homeward trip, we listened to This American Life.
We clocked more than 30 hours of driving, not all (but a significant portion) of it accompanied by the sound of your voice, Mr. Glass. It was on this trip that the seeds of doubt were planted in my mind: would every episode leave me feeling like the world was a place of glum failure?

Regardless, we listened to many, many episodes, so it wasn't so unexpected when, at a later stage in the same journey, sans minivan full of friends, I walked into a New York City bakery and heard your voice from the loudspeakers.

It was early January--the cold, cold January of 2009--temperatures hovering around zero. I wore a huge old army surplus backpack, stuffed with two weeks of clothes. New Orleans clothes, not New York clothes. I was wearing my only two long-sleeved shirts, with multiple t-shirts layered underneath. I was cold and hungry, without a warm place to stay for another eight hours, and without spare cash. I looked and felt like one of New York's many unfortunate homeless. Later that day, in fact, I would stand in a subway station and ask passersby to swipe their Metrocard to get me into the subway (to no avail). When I stepped into that bakery, all I wanted was one of the cookies on the full, hot cookie sheets they were drawing out of the oven. Just one, to put some warmth inside of me.

I don't know why, but I didn't suppose that engaging the baker in conversation about This American Life -- the episode playing over the speakers, the same episode I had recently heard in the van on the way through Washington D.C. -- would get me a free cookie. Of course (as you, the consummate storyteller, must have guessed) it did. As we discussed the story of the baby-doll salesgirl and the unfortunate ramifications of the colors of the dolls' skins, she pulled a new sheet of chocolate chip walnut cookies out of the oven, and handed one across the counter.

Epilogue

So, Mr. Glass, despite the emotional turmoil that your show has, and continues to put me through, I owe you a debt of gratitude. In my moment of great need, a passing familiarity with your program got me exactly what I needed, when nothing else could have.

Since listening to that fateful summer camp episode, I have not listened to your show. My hesitation is too great--I have reached a place where I am at peace with This American Life, and if I were to pursue your show any further, that delicate equilibrium might be upset.

As someone who also appreciates and aspires to the art of storytelling, I respect your work, but have come to understand that it is not for me.

Best of luck with the program,
G. S. Albright

Get Low & Winter's Bone

On Saturday, I went to Harrisburg's Midtown Cinema to see "Get Low." You may remember my being very excited about this movie based on the trailer(s) a few months ago. I've also recently attended the Midtown Cinema to see "Winter's Bone." The two movies bear a comparison.

"No Damn Trespassing."

Let me start by recommending "Get Low." Robert Duvall and Bill Murray turn in amazing performances. The movie itself is nothing special; a period piece based on a true story featuring a few outstanding shots and mediocre pacing. It is, in some ways, a mystery movie. Duvall's character (Felix Bush)'s intentions are never clear, and the all events that follow might, or perhaps might not, be his doing. Bill Murray is the money-loving undertaker who is willing to go the extra mile for... Felix's sake? for his own sake? That mystery also unfolds, though is resolved much less satisfactorily than the story's central mystery: What lies in Felix Bush's past? The reveal (don't worry, I won't spoil it) is a masterpiece of acting. Duvall stands onstage and tells a story and the camera shows admirable restraint. We see him telling his story. We see the reactions of the important characters. We see no flashbacks or cutaways. This movie knows its strengths, and uses them well.

"Winter's Bone" has some similarities: a story set in rural America that unfolds into a suspenseful mystery. The difference is that Winter's Bone is set in the contemporary Ozarks in the midst of a meth-cooking extended family. When her father posts her family's house as bail, Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) sets out to find him in order to save the family.

The guy on the left is not Viggo Mortensen, but he could be.

Unlike "Get Low," the mystery here is simple: where is he? Unlike "Get Low" this movie's strength is in its atmosphere. The acting is believable, the suspense works, at time achieving Hitchcockian proportions (e.g. The scene when the cops pull over the pickup truck. That's all I'll say).  The movie's greatest success, though, is in selling this slice of rural America. At times feeling like a mob movie, at times like a noir, at times like a coming-of-age story, it maintains its cold blue gaze on Ree and her extended family, and 

the minutiae that define their lives (sharing recently-killed vension, teaching a five-year-old to hunt squirrel, first-name familiarity with the bail-bondsman). It is this atmosphere that makes "Winter's Bone" a memorable movie, and (I hesitate to say this, considering how much I hyped "Get Low") the better of the two.

But go see them both, and let me know what you think.

P.S. I really wanted to title this post "Got Low," but then I decided to incorporate "Winter's Bone" as well. Just wanted to let y'all know.

Traveling to Swarthmore

This coming Sunday, 9/26 I will be in Philadelphia, then at Swarthmore for pasta bar. If you read this blog and will be in the area, I hope to see you there.

Nighthawks

For those of you who have checked out pictures of the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, it may or may not be apparent that the place looks a lot like the dive portrayed in Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks." It might be just because a print of "Nighthawks" hangs in my living room, but once the sun goes down on Third Street, working the coffee bar at the Scholar has too many consonances with this image to be coincidence.

For one, the silver coffee machines. Not exactly like the giant copper-and-brass eagle that sits astride our espresso machine, but the shape is the same. Secondly, the customers: ensconced in their seats, making their drinks last longer than they probably should, just to stay inside and enjoy the light for a while. Just like our regulars. Thirdly, the windows: the Scholar's storefront is completely glass, the view blocked only by a few concert posters and bus schedules. Perhaps most uncannily, The street, with its abandoned-but-still-respectable buildings is a dead ringer for Third Street in Midtown. You'll have to come here and see it sometime.

Antonio

An important part of my training at Midtown Scholar has been learning to identify the regulars. When some particular someones walk in, my co-worker or co-workers will glance significantly at the new arrival and say to me, "Oh, that's Monica, she's--" usually at this point, the new arrival will have reached the bar, and my tutor will have to turn away: "Hi Monica, how are you doing today?" leaving me to ascertain this particular regular's foibles on my own.

But the other day, Liz was able to say to me "that's Antonio. He's a voodou priest. Hi Antonio, what can I get for you?"

Antonio is a short man who wears, without fail: 1) a pair of sturdy work pants that bunch up around the tops of his boots. 2) said boots. 3) a black Sikh-style turban. That day, and every time I've seen him since, he's carried an unlit cigar, which he uses to punctuate a chosen few of his already-sparse remarks.

The first time I met Antonio, he and Liz got to talking about our discount book trucks out in front of the store. "I saw this little kit out there Antonio, it made me think of you because it was a voodou kit, and they had spelled voodou the right way, with a 'u.'"

Antonio looked up from the soda fountain where he was filling his cup with ice.

"A voodou kit, you say?" he said. Liz nodded. Antonio came over to the bar and tapped his cigar against the edge of the rail. "Now Liz," he said "You know I am a deeply spiritual person, and I know you are a spiritual person as well. I think you should not be selling that thing here. That kind of thing is not good for a place." "Well," said Liz, "it's right out on the cart out front."

He paused, unsure whether to fill his soda or begin his mission. He set the empty cup on the bar and passed through the doors.

"Once," said Liz, "Antonio told me my fortune--"

But then another customer came in through the door. Later, Antonio picked up his soda cup with a shrug--the voodou box was nowhere to be found.

Two Farm Musings

I. Delicate Brutality: The Roto-Tiller

Machinery, in particular power tools of the farm and the woodshop, is both brutal and delicate; I challenge anyone to find other things that embody that unlikely pairing.

The roto-tiller's blades cut through the grass and soil, tearing them apart and turning them upside down with efficiency and brutality. The first garden snake to encounter the machine received a wound that did not prove immediately fatal, but gave me enough remorse to take the time to toss the second one into the brush pile, not trusting its instincts for dealing with the machine.

Despite this ability to so quickly destroy and overturn so much, the roto-tiller is also sensitive, like a poet or the fine-adjustment knob on a coffee grinder or a sextant. Roots, stones, and the fragments of brick and glass that remind me of the urban part of this urban farm can all cause it to cough and shudder, and sometimes jam the blades. Slight hummocks and valleys in the field drive the machine perceptibly off course, and the heavy spinning blades only reinforce the false directions. It seems incongruous: these are exactly the things that roto-tillers encounter in regular operation, yet these are the things that are its downfall.



II. Refinement: Espresso and Compost

Compost, I realized while sifting it into a wheelbarrow, is not unlike espresso. Before I continue, let me elaborate on compost sifting. After many other, longer-term processes, the compost is ready to be spread on a field. First, however, the larger pieces that have not decomposed (twigs, rinds, etc.) need to be removed. So I laid two boards parallel across the sides of the wheelbarrow and laid the sifter on it. The sifter is a square wooden frame with mesh nailed to the bottom. Once I've shoveled two shovelfuls of compost onto the mesh, I slide it back and forth along the boards. Any more than two, and it will jam; that is, there will not be enough space in the frame for the compost to shake about and settle the small pieces through the mesh. The wet hot compost rubs into the grain of the parallel boards and lubricates the frame's sliding. Once the wheelbarrow is full, it gets dumped into a compost hopper, stored in the heat of the day until it is needed.

All that to say that compost is like espresso, because both are a fine brown powder. On one hand they are different: compost is the lowest form; the beginnings, the primordial ooze from which plants, perhaps coffee plants, will emerge. Espresso is, on the other hand, the highest and most refined form: grown, dried, roasted, ground, and brewed, with any number of trans-continental shipments in between those steps. It comes served as a liquid in a tiny cup in a refined atmosphere in the artsy part of town, while compost fills wheelbarrows and is spread by sunburned men and women on an acre lot amidst Section 8 housing, across the street from an auto body shop.

But compost, too, is a refined form, its temperature is taken throughout the process. It is turned multiple times, mixed, and cared for. The sifting process and the process of pulling a shot have a similar number of steps. And the espresso grounds, the little puck that falls out of the filter between drinks, can, in the best of circumstances, make its way to compost pile, continuing the be refined.

Paraprosdokian

Thanks to Heather, who sent me an email featuring some paraprosdokians. To quote the wikipedia entry, a paraprosdokian is "a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax."

If you didn't click on that link to wikipedia above, click on it now, and read an amusing list of paraprosdokians from such luminaries as Mitch Hedberg and Jack Handey.

P.S. Writing Mitch Hedberg's name reminded me of this. Not necessarily a paraprosdokian, but definitely useful to remember while apartment hunting: "I bought a house. It's a two-bedroom house, but I think it's up to me how many bedrooms there are, don't you? Fuck you real estate lady, this bedroom has a oven in it. This bedroom has a lot of people sittin' around watchin' TV. This bedroom's over in that guy's house. Sir, you got one of my bedrooms, are you aware? Don't decorate it." 

P.P.S. The above is quoted from "Mitch All Together." Here is a clip of him doing the same bit, but the delivery is inferior to the CD. Start at 3:46.

Fruits of My (and others') Labor

The Joshua Farm, where I'm spending my mornings, is about 1 acre, 1/2 under cultivation. They run a twice-weekly farm stand, a CSA, and in the summers, they work with high school kids.

Mondays and Thursdays are farm stand days, and thus harvest days. I spent this morning cutting okra, peppers, and green beans. It turns out that 1) okra leaves make you itchy, and 2) that itching is relieved by rubbing dirt on the itchy areas. Who knew?


I got to bring home some green beans, garlic, and peppers home, and so I made some lunch, including green beans sauteed in garlic and butter. Chili, made with the peppers (sweet and chili) is next up...

The Scholar, my place of gainful employment

To the left, see the main floor at the Midtown Scholar bookstore. I'm shooting from the balcony, where the film studies, poetry, and music books are. Immediately below and the right of the bottom right corner of this picture is the coffee bar where I work.

There it is. Note my bosses, Kinsey and Beth conferring behind the counter. When it's slow in the coffee bar, we have espresso time trials and informal tea tastings. My caffeine tolerances have yet to catch up with the amounts I am consuming.

There's Grandma in the bookstore, reading an appropriate book.

Just Sayin'

"And even though dolphins curse their human-like intelligence when they hear us say it, this is NPR."

-Car Talk

No Last Call

In the course of poking around Craigslist, looking for (more) employment, I stumbled upon an ad for a street band. This ad, in particular. "Are you looking for a really fun, low-pressure outlet for your musical talents and are you 25 or older?"


Well, yes to all, except that age thing. So I sent them an email mentioning my tenure in Swarthmore's Balkan Brass Band, and detailing my love of street bands, in particular, Providence, RI's What Cheer? Brigade (recent sleeper hit at the Newport Folk Festival).

Turns out 1) this band is the band mentioned to me a few weeks ago by the pastor of Derry Presbyterian, and 2) they were inspired to form the band when they saw the What Cheer? Brigade play.

So, despite missing the only rehearsal between my acceptance into the band and their next gig, I was invited to play. I packed a tambourine, goat-hoof bracelet shaker, sticks, and snare drum into my backpack and  down rode Front Street, boom-ba protruding over the handlebars like a jouster's lance.

We played a pretty standard roster of pep band tunes, but the crowds in town for this weekend's Kipona Festival loved it. Now, to get my hands on the old charts from the Balkan Band...

Updates

We're in town. We have a place. We both (Nate and I) have jobs, though I need more hours to make more dollars.

But we're here, in the place that will be home for a year (or more...?), and now it's time for a report on the Burg.

I. Work
I work at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore, a hub of the arts and academic scene here in Midtown, and in Harrisburg in general. This makes it a wonderful place to work, though my hours are less than desirable--I work through dinner and right into the night. I remind myself that, although I won't be out in the community making the connections that Nate and I came here to make, I will be behind the counter when plenty of people are making their way through the store. I am learning to be a barista.

II. Farm
I've just begun volunteering my mornings at the Joshua Farm, in Allison Hill (a nearby neighborhood that has been identified as a food desert). They are a working CSA, and also support an after-school program for kids from the community. It's only my second day there, and they're already giving me vegetables. Today was harvest day, so that probably has something to do with it.

III. Music
I'm always looking for more ways to indulge my favorite hobby, and while having a record player and decent speakers in the apartment is great, I need to do more. So I've been playing my banjo on the riverfront, looking at the paddle-wheel "Pride of the Susquehanna." I've also sent around videos of the Balkan Band to convince people that I am part of an awesome band, and that they really need me to be in their band. That might be working out; more details to follow.

IV. Other (aka Media)
I've just finished reading Suzanne Collin's YA "Hunger Games" trilogy. I have my thoughts, but I don't want to spoil it for anyone, so if you've read it, let me know, and we can chat. I've been listening to NPR's coverage of the Newport Folk Festival, and the online preview of Ray LaMontagne's newest album, "God Willin' and the Creek Don't Rise." I recently watched Stanley Kubrick's noir/heist film "The Killing" and the recent release "Winter's Bone" (playing at the local arthouse which is showing "Get Low" next week!). Check any or all of them out if you get the chance.

V. Conclusion
As I ride my (awesome, fast, green) road bike (thanks mom!) between the urban farm/CSA, the coffeeshop/bookstore, and my apartment in the artsy neighborhood where my record player and banjo await, and I cannot help but worry that I have, officially, become a hipster. Those of you who are the praying type, please pray that my pants do not get tighter; that I continue to enjoy bands' second and third albums, and that I refuse to ever consume PBR.

Traveling Mercies

For his birthday, my mom got my dad a GPS. He drives a lot, and sometimes gets lost, so it was an appropriate gift. I (for reasons to be detailed in a later post) was against it, but it wasn't my gift to un-give.

So I was very happy when I came home from my travels in New England to learn that dad had gotten rid of the GPS.

"I couldn't understand it," he said, "It wouldn't let you see ahead about the choices it was making" (a complaint with which I wholly agree), "and it said this word, this word I didn't understand."

"Ahn-roft," he said the word was. I puzzled and puzzled, through English, through rudimentary German and Spanish, but got nothing. "On ramp?" "Off ramp?"

"I decided," he said, "before I returned it, that it was a word of blessing. A travel blessing for the road. Turn right. Ahn-roft."

So, in the spirit of the now-returned GPS:

Ahn-roft, to all you travelers in distant lands.

Parking Authority

On second street, the parking sign was very confusing: "Zone 1 Permit Parking. 8AM - 10AM and 3PM - 5PM, weekdays." Nate and I puzzled over it for a while. On one hand, this was the neighborhood where we were looking for housing and for jobs for connections in general. "On the other hand," Nate said, "I don't want to get a ticket." And it was his car.

We were about to risk it. Having received a parking ticket in every municipality in which I parked during my high school years (total of four, accumulated in a two-week stretch), I consider myself somewhat learned in the arcane meanings of ambiguously worded signs with white, red, and/or green writing.

An authority more venerable than I sat across the street. I had seen him, out of the corner of my eye, on our approach. Old guys sitting on stoops are no rarity around town. "Let's ask that guy," said Nate.

He had an eye patch, a Hawaiian shirt, and a white captain's hat. His hair was also white. He did not, expectations to the contrary, have a pipe.

"Excuse me, uh, sir, do you know about parking regulations around here?" Nate asked from across the street. He didn't respond, except, maybe, to smile slightly, so we crossed three lanes of fast-moving traffic. We were committed.

"Do you know, if we park here now, will we get a ticket?"
"I'm a little hard of hearing."
Nate stepped right up on the stoop and repeated his question.
"Ah," said the man. His remaining eye glinted. "You're fine now, but once the time comes, they'll getcha." He gestured to his watchless wrist. "Right on the dot." His words were hard to understand. Any dialogue transcribed is mostly based on guesswork, except for the following:  "They's a bitch."

We nodded, laughing along with him at the unfairness (or, perhaps, the all-too-fairness) of it all, and made sure that we were back before Zone 1 Permit Parking began at 3PM.

Jon Stewart is Wrong

This video, for me, shows why Jon Stewart is on the forefront not only of the "fake news" genre, but also of political punditry in general. Most of this clip is devoted to his index card stunt as he demonstrates the hilarious meaninglessness of a particular bit of Fox News. That bit is good TV in general, and part of Stewart's ongoing feud with the right-wing network.

But the outstanding part of this clip is later, when Stewart shows clips of Charlton Hesston's NRA post-Columbine damage control speech. His reading of those sentiments in the light of current events is canny, and during that reading he admits that he was wrong. Sure, it's a convenient moment for him to admit that, and sure, he distances his current self from his past-self via a silly photo, but still, he admits, on air, that he was wrong. That's more than many "serious" news commentators are willing to do today, and that is what has increased my respect for Stewart and his show.

After a Long Hiatus...

... I am back. Not back in any sort of permanent location (I'm in Allentown till Monday, when I move to temporary apartment-hunting base camp in Hershey). It's been too long. I was afraid that this blog might have hit that point that so many of my friends' post-college blogs hit, where they fall apart and never return. This is not the case with any of the blogs that I currently link to. Good work, y'all.

Jim Thorpe's iconic steeple, from the porch of the historic Harry Packer House.

But I don't want to be too blog-aware, so let me use the rest of this post to recommend the greater Jim Thorpe area as a lovely vacation destination. The family reunited (the four of us hadn't been in the same place at the same time for ages) at "the camp" outside of Jim Thorpe. It's a nice little place, although I feel bad about my family being rich landowning types. It used to be a motorcycle garage, and the small pond is too glutted with tame sunnies to make swimming at all enjoyable. They nibble at your skin in what they believe to be a completely non-threatening way that ends up coming off as far too piranha-esque to be comfortable. So I guess I feel a little okay about the place. We went kayaking. We took a plane ride. We visited an art gallery. We went out for dinner. We toured an old historic home. Note how I used "old" to avoid having to deal with the tricky question of which article precedes "historic" (I prefer "an," but it sounds so snooty).

So go to Jim Thorpe. And Moya.

This writing was curtailed because, right in the middle of typing it, I got a call from Harrisburg's Midtown Scholar Bookstore. They gave me a job! I'll be manning the coffee bar and helping out around the bookstore, not to mention putting in extra hours at the various art and music events that they host after hours. So if you're ever in Harrisburg, stop in.

On The Road Again

Remember that thing I said at the top of the last post about being in a place with regular internet access again? Well, it was kind of a lie. I'm leaving to do a stint at Spruce Lake, my old summer camp, for a week or so. I will have internet, but no time to write, so I leave you with some media:

Pictures from my time in NYC.

and

a video from previous years at Spruce Lake.

A Few Links

...now that I'm back in a place with regular internet access, and my computer is not buried deep within my backpack.

I.
I was talking (with somebody who cares about such things) about how testicles became synonymous with courage, as in the contradictory "she's got balls." Here is an answer.

II.
A fun article about a family bonding experience. My favorite part: He goes into Wal-Mart and needs a nap afterwards.

III.
And I just watched this movie. SPOILER ALERT: the shot at 0:38 ruins what was, for me, the biggest surprise of the film, namely, what are those orange things for. It sounds like I am being sarcastic about the (lack of) suspense in the movie. Be assured, I am not.

Tales from the Road: Schooner vs. Train

It's hard to even know what to write after coming home from a trip like the one I was just on. I want to distill it, to sum it up; to state what I learned. Maybe I will get to that at some point. Maybe I learned something that can be summed up (not so sure about that). For now, I'm going to devote the next few posts to sharing highlights from the trip. Not that these moments are better than the other moments, but they are self-contained, brief, and narratively satisfying. If we define better as "makes good blog reading" then they are, in fact, better. That is why they are being shared here.

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The Mystic Whaler's crew is, in some ways, a bunch of pirates. Young, fit folks with a devil-may-care attitude. They cut sail theory class short in order to go to the dock for Fitness Club--not a club per se as much as Frances donning a ninja headband and carrying an armload of push-up handles, weights, etc. up from below. "We have a lot of clubs on the boat" said Nicole. "Laura started the Starboard Cuddle Club. She's the only member." "Though others have tried to join," said Miranda.

After dinner, Chris and Frances informed the crew that they were heading out to O'Neill's. "The gay bar?" asked Miranda. "That's just where we go," said Frances. "They have good bartenders there. And $1 drinks till 9."

So at quarter of, Chris came rushing back to the boat with his mandolin. "Come on you guys!" he said. We stragglers (Nicole had been on galley duty, I was helping with dishes, and Laura had just returned from shore leave) leapt onto the dock and started walking towards State St. I struck up a conversation with Chris about his mandolin: "So, the fretted part of the neck extends over the body of it here" "Most mandolin players get that cut off--it's in the best place to strum and it gets in your way..." when life got exciting.

In New London, the train tracks divide the waterfront from the town proper. The very-active train station is within eye and earshot of the Whaler's dock. As we started downtown, the crossing gates started down, red lights and bells between us and O'Neill's.

In that instant, I resigned myself to missing $1 well drinks; to missing any drinks at all. More expensive drinks were, by this point in the trip, beyond my budget. My comrades, the piratical crew of the Whaler, were more committed to the bargain. Before I knew what was happening, Chris and Laura were sprinting for the crossing gates, Nicole in hot pursuit. I tucked the mandolin under my arm like a football, said a brief prayer, and hit the pavement. Ducking under the closing gates, I saw the headlights of the train rounding the corner, its horn blaring, not only in deference to regulations mandating horn use when approaching level crossings, but also because it would be unable to stop in time if any of us ended up in front of it.

We made it (barely) to State St., the passengers on the station shaking their heads at us. Exhilarated, Chris took back his mandolin and struck up a sea tune. We all sang along as we jogged to O'Neill's: "I'm a'goin' downtown, wa-a-a-a-y downtown, I'm a'goin' down to Lynchburg town, to carry my tobacco down..."

We walked into the bar, Frances sitting alone at the bar with his ukulele. He joined us for the verse, and the bartender and the crowd at the table outside looked at us. We sat at the bar and Chris announced, in the centuries-old tradition of sailors around the world "We're from that big ship down at the dock."

Home I'll (Never?) Be

It's been a while. Sorry. I was traveling with limited internet access. Lots of great stuff, maybe some of it will be shared here, maybe not.

But I'm home in Allentown, at least for the week.

Oh, and the title:

Keeping Time

Every half-hour, between eleven and four, the whistle of the steamboat Sabino sounds. The one-hundred-plus-year-old boat carries tourists from the Mystic Seaport Museum on a short tour of the Mystic Estuary. The timing of her departure is dictated by another, more important, Mystic timekeeper: The bascule bridge. The span lifts at forty minutes past the hour, every hour, from April until November. At other times, boats must contact the bridge an hour in advance of their approach. The Sabino begins her steam downriver at the half hour in order to make the bridge at the forty. The raising of the bridge is preceded by the long sounding of a fire-alarm bell. The gates lower, and the the pedestrians, lulled into a false sense of security by the end of the bell, all jump when the steam whistle sounds. The procedure is reversed as the bridge lowers, all taking about ten minutes, depending on the amount of boat traffic on the estuary.

Main Street changes from East Main Street to West Main Street on crossing the bridge, and the town's (tourist-supported) business district follows along it. At the upper end of West Main, just after the bank, just before downtown ends, sits Mystic Pizza, Mystic's other landmark. Unlike the regimented sounds of the Sabino and the bascule bridge, Mystic Pizza's sound is constant; the speakers under the awning send rock and roll into the street as long as the restaurant is open.

Up West Main; UBC and Mystic Pizza.

Open since 1973, and famous since 1988, Mystic Pizza slavishly broadcasts nostalgia for a time not so long past. A scrubbed-clean version of Mystic Pizza (Petrie, 1988) plays non-stop within the restaurant.

At noon and six, this piped-in nostalgia provides counterpoint to another of Mystic's auditory landmarks: The bells of Union Baptist Church. One of the two conjoined buildings that form the aptly-named Union Baptist Church was the non-denominational Mariners' Free Church, built on the same location in 1825 by "the sea-faring men of the village." That building was connected, at a ninety-degree angle, with the Second Baptist Church in 1861, creating the structure that now sits just uphill of Mystic Pizza, and just downhill of the Mystic-Noank Public Library.

On walk up West  Main, it is possible to stand between Mystic Pizza and Union Baptist, and take in the hymns and the oldies simultaneously. Half an hour later, in the same place, you'll hear the whistle, then the bell, then second whistle. The town clock and the steeple were both blown down from Union Baptist in the hurricane of 1938, and not replaced until 1969. The aforementioned carillon was installed in the new steeple, but in downtown Mystic, the clock is superfluous.