There are four kinds of people in American politics today, and they can't be easily pigeonholed as either 'conservative' or 'liberal' or 'radical' or 'nut-case'. That by itself could automatically make the following distinctions far too complex for most people who claim an interest in matters of public policy, for whom heroes and villains, good guys and bad guys, Us and Them make it so much easier to assign credit and blame.
I haven't figured out what to call the four types yet, but surely some pundit is on the case. Sadly, because it frames a multitude of issues as a trade-off between foreign and domestic spending, this argument reinforces the notion that Barack Obama is a latter-day Lyndon Johnson figure. With LBJ the prevailing issues were 'Guns and Butter' - large federal expenditures on the war in Vietnam and/or the Great Society social programs. With BHO it could come down to 'Insurgents and Insurance' - whether to spend megabucks to bring a semblance of humane order to Afghanistan and/or to the health care industry.
To be more specific, the four types of people are really segments of the small percentage of folks who have actually given some thought to what they want to pay for with their taxes, not just what they want someone else to do something about. So we might be talking about five percent of registered voters. Which would make an interesting statistical sample in itself: How many poll respondents consider the cost/benefit of a program or policy when asked to support or oppose it, rather than scoring political points for the Good Guys (us) against the Bad Guys (them)?
Expanding the war in Afghanistan is one expensive policy that Americans can either support or oppose. It's binary; you're either fer it or agin' it, and it's gonna cost ya either way. National health insurance - whether you call it a "public option" or "nonprofit coops" or "Medicare buy-in" or some other euphemism - is another. It's big, it's expensive, you either support it or oppose it. Many boatloads of money will likely be spent on one or both of these large-scale projects, and the money has to come from somewhere. The rumor is that you and I will foot the bill.
Citizens, if you want the government to provide more services, you have to pay more taxes. The binary nature of yea or nay questions means the four groups in question would: a) spend the money needed to win the war in Central Asia but NOT to provide national health insurance; b) spend the money needed to provide national health insurance but NOT to win the war in Central Asia; c) spend the money BOTH to win the war AND provide insurance; d) do neither, save the money, and see what other consequences ensue.
There are some obvious problems. Options (a) and (c) beg the question of whether two years or ten years and many lost lives CAN win a war in Central Asia. Options (b) and (c) offer no guarantee that Congress can "fix" health insurance. Are you kidding? While this admittedly leaves out many complexities of policy making and its limitations, it also has the advantage of cutting through much of the nonsense spouted by those who want to have it both ways, waging endless wars, saving investment bankers from themselves, underwriting entire industries, deregulating other, all while cutting taxes.
End of rant. I have a friend who is fond of saying there are two kinds of people - those who believe there are two kinds of people and those who don't. That pretty much discredits everything I've said above. Or not.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Silvio e Sylvia
Sometimes the news is all the literature, theater, and plain old down-and-dirty comedy that one could ever want. When the news events in question occur in Italy, and in this case in Milan, the feeling of high drama is only intensified, as if the seat of government were transplanted onto the stage of La Scala and the curtain was raised on another scene in the grand opera of politics.
When the larger-than-life figure at the center of all the attention is the megalomaniacal head of state Silvio Berlusconi, owner of a media empire as well as the unchallenged plutocrat at the controls of Italy's government, and the reporter's voice on the radio belongs to NPR's inimitable Sylvia Poggioli, well, what can I say, it's journalistic heaven.
Take this terse summary (from an overcautious Slate):
Spare us the timid account, Slate. Burlusconi runs the most influential news outlets in his country and arguably determines what information makes it onto front pages and TV screens from Torino to Palermo. One part Rupert Murdoch and one part Benito Mussolini, I'm guessing his people make sure the national news in Rome isn't too critical of the ruling party. And I mean party. Old Silvio has earned a reputation for romancing young women that American pro golfers might envy, except he unapologetically gets away with it.
Part of the NPR story that Slate omitted was the alleged Mafia connections that helped Signor Ministerio Primo get his start in real estate, from which entrepreneurial foundations he went on to dominate the tone and substance of the right wing in Italian politics. In the tradition of Mussolini, an arrogant kind of masculinity and swagger are expected in a leader. Il Duce liked women, weapons, and fast cars too, and he wasn't a fan of dissent.
His spiritual descendant Berlusconi has recently been accused of having ties to the Mafia, which he dismisses as a figment of the American movie-going imagination. What I loved in the news account was his denial of any connections with organized crime accompanied by a promise that if he got his hands on his accusers, he would personally strangle them. Then his nose is broken by a half-crazy man in a crowd throwing a stone model of a cathedral. You can't make this stuff up.
My people are from another European peninsular nation, also bold seafaring stock who ventured far from their ports, as did the Renaissance Italians, but this kind of thing doesn't happen in Oslo. On the other hand, I haven't heard a Norsk news correspondent with a smoking hot voice like Poggioli, who can write a factual straight-news piece for the radio and deliver it on the air like poetry, like a torch singer, like the muse of the news.
When the larger-than-life figure at the center of all the attention is the megalomaniacal head of state Silvio Berlusconi, owner of a media empire as well as the unchallenged plutocrat at the controls of Italy's government, and the reporter's voice on the radio belongs to NPR's inimitable Sylvia Poggioli, well, what can I say, it's journalistic heaven.
Take this terse summary (from an overcautious Slate):
At a rally in Milan yesterday, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was met by demonstrators who shouted insults while he gave a speech. Later, when he was signing autographs, a 42-year-old with a history of mental illness hit Berlusconi on the face with a model of the Duomo cathedral. The attack left Berlusconi bloodied with two broken teeth, a fractured nose, and cuts on his nose and cheeks. Berlusconi spent the night in the hospital with a severe headache, but doctors say he's doing well.
Spare us the timid account, Slate. Burlusconi runs the most influential news outlets in his country and arguably determines what information makes it onto front pages and TV screens from Torino to Palermo. One part Rupert Murdoch and one part Benito Mussolini, I'm guessing his people make sure the national news in Rome isn't too critical of the ruling party. And I mean party. Old Silvio has earned a reputation for romancing young women that American pro golfers might envy, except he unapologetically gets away with it.
Part of the NPR story that Slate omitted was the alleged Mafia connections that helped Signor Ministerio Primo get his start in real estate, from which entrepreneurial foundations he went on to dominate the tone and substance of the right wing in Italian politics. In the tradition of Mussolini, an arrogant kind of masculinity and swagger are expected in a leader. Il Duce liked women, weapons, and fast cars too, and he wasn't a fan of dissent.
His spiritual descendant Berlusconi has recently been accused of having ties to the Mafia, which he dismisses as a figment of the American movie-going imagination. What I loved in the news account was his denial of any connections with organized crime accompanied by a promise that if he got his hands on his accusers, he would personally strangle them. Then his nose is broken by a half-crazy man in a crowd throwing a stone model of a cathedral. You can't make this stuff up.
My people are from another European peninsular nation, also bold seafaring stock who ventured far from their ports, as did the Renaissance Italians, but this kind of thing doesn't happen in Oslo. On the other hand, I haven't heard a Norsk news correspondent with a smoking hot voice like Poggioli, who can write a factual straight-news piece for the radio and deliver it on the air like poetry, like a torch singer, like the muse of the news.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
In the details
The time was Friday night, and she left her knitting at work and had to go back to the studio, it should only take ten minutes, do you want anything, okay a bottle of tonic, during which time the fire in the stove gradually grew, probably due to the green sticks I'm reduced to using for kindling, finally combusting a handful of wood chips, which consumed a miniature log cabin of thin split logs, which engulfed three or four full-sized pear branches that fill the house with a fruity aroma.
It all adds up, and then it all reduces down to almost nothing, you can see in a clean well-lighted room that it's not absolutely nada, as he nudges the air intake closed a half-inch to slow down the conflagration, a small adjustment that over the course of the next four hours affects the whole house.
The guacamole has been tightly sealed so it's still good after a few days in a ceramic bowl in the fridge, and smeared on half a slice of bagel, eaten between bites of brown rice and adzuki beans, heavy on the salsa which is heavy on the onions, and you've got a sweet, sour, salty, savory sense of the moment. The Chardonnay, the fine conundrum, make tonight a wonderful day.
It all adds up, and then it all reduces down to almost nothing, you can see in a clean well-lighted room that it's not absolutely nada, as he nudges the air intake closed a half-inch to slow down the conflagration, a small adjustment that over the course of the next four hours affects the whole house.
The guacamole has been tightly sealed so it's still good after a few days in a ceramic bowl in the fridge, and smeared on half a slice of bagel, eaten between bites of brown rice and adzuki beans, heavy on the salsa which is heavy on the onions, and you've got a sweet, sour, salty, savory sense of the moment. The Chardonnay, the fine conundrum, make tonight a wonderful day.
Sunday, December 06, 2009
It's about time
I took my time getting up, taking a shower, eating scrambled eggs and toast, and reading the paper on Saturday morning. By the time I had drunk a second cup of coffee and swept the floor, it was time for my appointment to go give blood. Oh, I also sewed on a couple of buttons in the meantime. A stitch in time, you know.
The Red Cross trailer was parked in front of Lowe's on Silver Drive just like it usually is. The little booth in back felt even more claustrophobic than usual, but the attendant was very professional and polished in the procedure. She had perfect skin. I don't think she smiled or frowned once during the entire 45 minutes. My blood pressure was 120/80. The otherwise too-loud radio played "Baba O'Reilly" too softly while they hooked me up and I squeezed and released the little rubber ball every five seconds.
I ate the entire bag of Cheez-Its while sitting in the parking lot before going to my next errand, saving the trail mix for later. Must maintain energy. The rec. center was not as close as I'd imagined when I made the appointment, thinking that Lowe's would be on the way, when in fact it was a few miles out of the way at the opposite end of Clintonville, an easy mistake to make if coming from Methodistville. The drive up High Street was not unpleasant if you like that kind of thing.
In the rec. center parking lot the midafternoon sun was slanting across the field as it does in winter, and it drew me to the three pine trees beside the softball diamond. I've always liked those three pine trees. Even facing into the wind it was a good time to do a little qigong, having just given blood, and when is it not a good time for some internal healing practice? I just hope the recipient of my pint appreciates the high-quality rum remaining in my system from a bit of Friday night celebrating.
The Red Cross trailer was parked in front of Lowe's on Silver Drive just like it usually is. The little booth in back felt even more claustrophobic than usual, but the attendant was very professional and polished in the procedure. She had perfect skin. I don't think she smiled or frowned once during the entire 45 minutes. My blood pressure was 120/80. The otherwise too-loud radio played "Baba O'Reilly" too softly while they hooked me up and I squeezed and released the little rubber ball every five seconds.
I ate the entire bag of Cheez-Its while sitting in the parking lot before going to my next errand, saving the trail mix for later. Must maintain energy. The rec. center was not as close as I'd imagined when I made the appointment, thinking that Lowe's would be on the way, when in fact it was a few miles out of the way at the opposite end of Clintonville, an easy mistake to make if coming from Methodistville. The drive up High Street was not unpleasant if you like that kind of thing.
In the rec. center parking lot the midafternoon sun was slanting across the field as it does in winter, and it drew me to the three pine trees beside the softball diamond. I've always liked those three pine trees. Even facing into the wind it was a good time to do a little qigong, having just given blood, and when is it not a good time for some internal healing practice? I just hope the recipient of my pint appreciates the high-quality rum remaining in my system from a bit of Friday night celebrating.
A few drummers were already banging away when I entered the room, and a collective shout went up welcoming me back, because I hadn't been there in a few months, kind of like Norm walking into Cheers. It was great to see some familiar faces and another great source of healing to join in the rhythm-building, shape-shifting, bass and treble-making crescendo and diminuendo of the drum circle. After one particularly awesome jam, Mark remarked, "Was that specifically fun?" You had to be there.
I got home just before dark, so I put the new lights on my bike and went for a very short, very cold ride. I think my mistake was removing my gloves to fiddle around with the straps that attach the lights to the handlebars, thus starting out with cold hands, so my fleece gloves had no chance. After quickly turning back, I ran warm water over my frozen fingers, started a fire, and poured a glass of red wine to watch the Crimson Tide dominate the Gators.
The next day, right on schedule, I began to descend into my annual preholiday funk. Call it stress, call it seasonal affective disorder, call it uncertainty and change at work, or feel free to make up an interesting new name for it, whatever you call it, I am not making the transition into winter smoothly. Consequently, 'tis the season to humbug. At least that I know how to do. Some time around noon on December 24, I fully intend to become a nice person again, at least long enough to enjoy some lutefisk and lefse.
Like everyone else in this krazy krismas kulture, I have many preparations to make, and compared to most my preparations are minimal. Some of them involve ripping out a doorway, cutting through lath and plaster, and pulling nails, which can be satisfying in a cathartic sort of way. Then the hard part comes - putting the slightly enlarged doorway back together with a semblance of stability. Like any task worth doing right, it will take more time than it seems at first.
The good news is the weather was slightly warmer on Sunday, and while bread dough was rising I took the time to get out on le Trek Vert for a nice long ride down Alum Creek Trail. It was a successful test of helmet, tires, gloves, and matching le windbreaker vert, all of which handled the weather just fine. Best of all, I was not as exhausted and unfit as I feared, having neglected any aerobic training for far too long. At least one positive sign heading into the season of darkness, I won't need a pacemaker quite yet.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
How many Gollys does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Seven.
One to arrive by Greyhound from New York Freaking City and regale us with tales from the cranberry bog in Buzzard's Bay; go to Lowe's and pick out the right kind of junction boxes, plugs, wire caps, and outdoor cable to reconnect the power between the house and the garage, suspend the far end from a pine branch with a ceramic insulator and a bicycle tube, and connect the near end to a new outdoor receptacle mounted on a corner post of the pergola; cut holes in the plaster wall and ceiling upstairs to remove, repair, and re-install the stairway light fixture, snake new wires between the rafters to connect the hanging lamp with two new three-way switches, and run wires down through the wall to the new switches at the top and bottom of stairs; go out with his sister and her friends to their favorite watering hole du jour; bring the grandparents up to date on his latest adventures in trade school and prospects for gainful employment.
One to hand him tools, flip circuit breakers while he tests all the outlets and fixtures in the house, and label what outlet is on which circuit; climb the white pine to hang the cable, fetch a stepladder, caulk the boxes; tear out an upstairs closet wall to get to the switch box; start a cozy fire in the den; pour the libations appropriate to the season (rum, coffee, pale ale, white wine); bring the patriarch up to date on his latest adventures in the reorganized church of latter-day educational publishing and prospects for continued gainful employment.
One to consult on the proper placement of screws, staples, and wire; compliment the hostess, inquire about the garlands of cayenne peppers hanging over all seven windows in the den, drying for future use in bean soup as well as adorning the holiday festivities, and settle into a comfortable chair to work on the crossword puzzle, and finish his biography of Oliver Wendell Holmes; carve the turkey, say grace, compliment the cook; tell stories about life on the farm in Minnesota, his five brothers and sisters, his parents and grandparents, and being stationed out west during World War II; take everyone out for breakfast the morning of their return home.
One to bring a blueberry pie and consult on the roasting of the turkey, stuffing, etc.; inquire about the yoga studio, the bookstore, the cranberry farm, and the textbook business; knit a few rows, read a few pages of her biography of Mark Twain, express her condolences on the loss of our cat and dog, inquire whether we going to get another pet any time soon; compliment her grandchildren on their most recent accomplishments, insist on helping clean up after every meal, and utter not a single complaint about her own faltering hearing, eyesight, or mobility.
One to drive from Atlanta, GA, to Cumberland County, TN, to central Swingstate (and back again) and accompany her parents to the home of her brother and sister-in-law (and in spirit); generously augment the supply of seasonal libations with top-shelf stuff; find time for one-to-one conversation with each person in attendance, bring her brother up to date on administrative downsizing at her university, a death and a birth in her own immediate family; enliven dinner-table conversation with an account of her recent work-related trip to Spain; wash dishes after every meal, and be all-around good company.
One to pop in after a long, exhausting day at work to have a piece of pie with her extended family, after working all morning making not one but two outrageously delicious apple-cranberry pies before work; reprise her acclaimed role in the last ten Thanksgiving feasts by making awesome garlic mashed potatoes; spend quality time with her aunt, grandmother, grandfather, doting mother, adoring father, and spirit her brother away to hang with people their own age when it gets late and the old folks are tired.
One to clean the house and cook for her own family plus her husband's parents and sister: turkey, sausage stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes au gratin, brussels sprouts with caramelized onions, fresh organic cranberries shipped directly from Mann's family farm in Massachusetts, rolls, spinach salad, white wine, and arguably the best pumpkin pie on the planet - with your choice or real or nondairy whipped topping - working around unplanned interruptions due to thrown circuit breakers for the benefit of Jessi Electric and his intrepid team of electricians.
We're not high-culture, just high-calorie, high-voltage, and high-maintenance.
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
unentitled autumnal screed
Watch out for the Mad Men.
They say Milarepa, the Tibetan poet, was a wild and crazy guy in his day (eleventh and twelfth centuries). They say he killed some people, then went through a deep remorse for his actions and worked even harder than others to get outside his self-inflicted predicament to find peace of mind. They say he had an ear for music and he made up songs to help him remember the things he was taught. He was one of the Mad Men of his day.
So, short of poisoning 30 people at a party and redeeming yourself by meditating for the rest of your life, what is 'madness' anyway?
This week I had the pleasure of becoming better acquainted with the songs of Bertholt Brecht, who was perhaps a little bit mad himself, but in the modern sense sometimes romanticized as the archetypal politically Angry Young Man. Germany between the wars was not a pretty sight, I'm told, and people with their eyes open, like Brecht, had a bone to pick with the emerging political economy, so they wrote songs with titles like "There's Nothing Quite Like Money," "German Miserere," and "Ballad of Why Human Effort Is Always Futile." Happy stuff.
Maybe madness is nothing but excess. Excessive anger or giddiness, talkativeness or silence, eating and drinking or abstinence, work or rest, acceptance or criticism, lethargy or activity, deliberation or decisiveness, mobility or stillness, discipline or laziness, patience or impulsiveness, questioning or answering, complication or simplicity, attraction or repulsion, contact or separation. Excessive use of commas. Excessive cheese consumption. Excessive list making.
Like an imbalance of the humors, it's being a little off-center to the point where other people think you have a problem.
Madness itself is a rather old-fashioned term. The psychological profession has come a long way, and the vocabulary for labeling the continuum from 'sanity' (mental cleanliness) to 'insanity' has grown with it. Thanks for Dr. Freud and others, we have an abundant and varied menu of conditions such as neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and many more to choose from. May you live in interesting times.
What do you call the sudden awareness of your own condition, when it hits you that you have no escape hatch, no way out of a predicament of your own making, and all of your best-laid plans for turning things around have no chance of realization? When you see once and for all that your adversaries are correct, and you are, after all, completely inadequate for the task you are attempting. There must be a word for finally facing the fact that one is guilty of all the shortcomings others have found in you. In short, you are doomed.
I call it optimism. In spite of being unfit for everything now on the horizon, the closing of one path could be the perfect opportunity to re-invent oneself in a different environment, under a new regime, with a brand-new title, an altered persona, and a different attitude. At least outwardly. A chance to make connections with a new set of people, to hear what is on their minds, and to reconnect with other people whose situations have also changed.
Sometimes people do re-invent themselves, like Don Draper did when he came back from Korea wearing another (dead) man's dog tags and made a decisive break with his unenviable past. Others just lower their standards when they find out that they've been trying to land a fish rated 10 when they only have the bait and tackle to catch a 7 fish. Maybe 'lower their standards' is too harsh; maybe 'refocus' is more accurate.
If I always wanted to be editor of the New York Times AND teach journalism at Columbia, while raising goats on the roof of my coop in Central Park West, maybe it's appropriate to use my current midlife crisis (my third) to adjust my game plan and aim a little, uh, differently. When I grow up, I wanna be a production coordinator and teach a class at the rec center, and grow cayenne peppers in the backyard in Methodistville!
They say Milarepa, the Tibetan poet, was a wild and crazy guy in his day (eleventh and twelfth centuries). They say he killed some people, then went through a deep remorse for his actions and worked even harder than others to get outside his self-inflicted predicament to find peace of mind. They say he had an ear for music and he made up songs to help him remember the things he was taught. He was one of the Mad Men of his day.
So, short of poisoning 30 people at a party and redeeming yourself by meditating for the rest of your life, what is 'madness' anyway?
This week I had the pleasure of becoming better acquainted with the songs of Bertholt Brecht, who was perhaps a little bit mad himself, but in the modern sense sometimes romanticized as the archetypal politically Angry Young Man. Germany between the wars was not a pretty sight, I'm told, and people with their eyes open, like Brecht, had a bone to pick with the emerging political economy, so they wrote songs with titles like "There's Nothing Quite Like Money," "German Miserere," and "Ballad of Why Human Effort Is Always Futile." Happy stuff.
Maybe madness is nothing but excess. Excessive anger or giddiness, talkativeness or silence, eating and drinking or abstinence, work or rest, acceptance or criticism, lethargy or activity, deliberation or decisiveness, mobility or stillness, discipline or laziness, patience or impulsiveness, questioning or answering, complication or simplicity, attraction or repulsion, contact or separation. Excessive use of commas. Excessive cheese consumption. Excessive list making.
Like an imbalance of the humors, it's being a little off-center to the point where other people think you have a problem.
Madness itself is a rather old-fashioned term. The psychological profession has come a long way, and the vocabulary for labeling the continuum from 'sanity' (mental cleanliness) to 'insanity' has grown with it. Thanks for Dr. Freud and others, we have an abundant and varied menu of conditions such as neurosis, psychosis, paranoia, schizophrenia, depression, bipolar disorder, and many more to choose from. May you live in interesting times.
What do you call the sudden awareness of your own condition, when it hits you that you have no escape hatch, no way out of a predicament of your own making, and all of your best-laid plans for turning things around have no chance of realization? When you see once and for all that your adversaries are correct, and you are, after all, completely inadequate for the task you are attempting. There must be a word for finally facing the fact that one is guilty of all the shortcomings others have found in you. In short, you are doomed.
I call it optimism. In spite of being unfit for everything now on the horizon, the closing of one path could be the perfect opportunity to re-invent oneself in a different environment, under a new regime, with a brand-new title, an altered persona, and a different attitude. At least outwardly. A chance to make connections with a new set of people, to hear what is on their minds, and to reconnect with other people whose situations have also changed.
Sometimes people do re-invent themselves, like Don Draper did when he came back from Korea wearing another (dead) man's dog tags and made a decisive break with his unenviable past. Others just lower their standards when they find out that they've been trying to land a fish rated 10 when they only have the bait and tackle to catch a 7 fish. Maybe 'lower their standards' is too harsh; maybe 'refocus' is more accurate.
If I always wanted to be editor of the New York Times AND teach journalism at Columbia, while raising goats on the roof of my coop in Central Park West, maybe it's appropriate to use my current midlife crisis (my third) to adjust my game plan and aim a little, uh, differently. When I grow up, I wanna be a production coordinator and teach a class at the rec center, and grow cayenne peppers in the backyard in Methodistville!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Dicycling
I'm thinking of getting some accessories for my bike. A light for visibility, a helmet for safety, and maybe some fuzzy dice for that statement to the world that establishes a unique identity, a distinctive persona, a brand if you will. Then all the world will see what a ramblin' gamblin' man I am.
Yeah, no. I do need a light on occasion, and I'm pushing my luck if I go much longer without wearing a helmet, even though most of my riding is done on bike trails and less-traveled roads. But there are always factors that one doesn't control - along with a few that one does control - that bring an element of risk and unpredictability to the otherwise safe, serene, and self-reliant activity of cycling. Riding is a game of chance.
It's a roll of the dice, for example, whether the wind out in the country turns out like it seemed when I started out in town. I always check wind speed and direction before I decide whether to go north, south, east, or west. In spite of MacKenzie's First Law (go out with a headwind, come back with a tailwind), there have been times when I rode for an hour, turned around, and inexplicably found myself coming home riding, like the venerable Motor City rocker Bob Seger, against the wind.
At other times my level of conditioning betrayed me, and the ride back from halfway across Licking County was a long, slow grind. In those cases, I have no excuse. You have to train if you want to go farther. Where there are hills involved, the oxygen debt of biting off more than my cardiovascular system can chew makes mountains out of central Swingstate molehills, and the muscles won't do what the mind tells them to do. Then I struggle up even the mildest hills in first gear and use the next downhill to recover. That's pushing your luck.
In moderation, of course, pushing one's limits can have beneficial effects. If I did that three or four times a week, I would get stronger and chug up those same hills in sixth gear. But I don't train consistently, so when I hit the wall it can get dicey coming back. And that's the slippery slope a casual cyclist rides on, letting days go by between rides, losing the aerobic edge, and making every extended ride a gamble.
Yeah, no. I do need a light on occasion, and I'm pushing my luck if I go much longer without wearing a helmet, even though most of my riding is done on bike trails and less-traveled roads. But there are always factors that one doesn't control - along with a few that one does control - that bring an element of risk and unpredictability to the otherwise safe, serene, and self-reliant activity of cycling. Riding is a game of chance.
It's a roll of the dice, for example, whether the wind out in the country turns out like it seemed when I started out in town. I always check wind speed and direction before I decide whether to go north, south, east, or west. In spite of MacKenzie's First Law (go out with a headwind, come back with a tailwind), there have been times when I rode for an hour, turned around, and inexplicably found myself coming home riding, like the venerable Motor City rocker Bob Seger, against the wind.
At other times my level of conditioning betrayed me, and the ride back from halfway across Licking County was a long, slow grind. In those cases, I have no excuse. You have to train if you want to go farther. Where there are hills involved, the oxygen debt of biting off more than my cardiovascular system can chew makes mountains out of central Swingstate molehills, and the muscles won't do what the mind tells them to do. Then I struggle up even the mildest hills in first gear and use the next downhill to recover. That's pushing your luck.
In moderation, of course, pushing one's limits can have beneficial effects. If I did that three or four times a week, I would get stronger and chug up those same hills in sixth gear. But I don't train consistently, so when I hit the wall it can get dicey coming back. And that's the slippery slope a casual cyclist rides on, letting days go by between rides, losing the aerobic edge, and making every extended ride a gamble.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Gatsby in Ohio
There is a beautiful spot in the middle of a cluster of office buildings across the road called Easton Oval. My building is on Easton Commons. I was looking for a place to take a walk and decompress and discovered a little park in the center of the elliptical street that connects the buildings bearing the logos of Huntington Bank, State Auto, Elmer's Glue, and other regionally based companies that have bought or rented space in the complex within a complex just inside the interstate perimeter highway around our fair city.
The captains of industry who made the decision to locate at Easton Oval were wise to move their money-making operations to such a verdant place. It's a humane way to arrange multi-story office building full of workers sitting in cubicles looking at monitors, because they can go outside on their lunch hour and take a walk along the gravel paths meandering through the oak, beech, and hickory trees. This time of year leaves cover the ground, and you can barely make out the path, and lots of sunlight filters through the branches. I'm looking forward to seeing how it changes in the next few months.
As nice as the weather is this week, I'm surprised there aren't more people out enjoying it. In the half hour I was there, I saw half a dozen pairs of walkers and one maintenance guy checking the sprinkler system. One end of the oval is designed more geometrically, like a downtown park, with benches arranged around a circular walkway. The rest is just a patch of woods that has been there for a while, preserved by smart architects. The breeze would be chilly if you stopped moving and sat in the shade, but the sun is out and it's perfect weather for walking.
I'm just glad to have a place to go in the middle of the workday and breathe. All those mature hardwoods are more than willing to absorb the carbon dioxide coming in from cars on I-270 and connecting streets. I'm happy to join them for twenty minutes hanging out between earth and sky. The egg-like name and shape of this oasis in the midst of commercial sprawl just adds to my appreciation. I'll have to re-read Scott Fitzgerald to get a better sense of what it was about East Egg and West Egg that drove Jay Gatsby crazy. Then I'll try not to do that.
The captains of industry who made the decision to locate at Easton Oval were wise to move their money-making operations to such a verdant place. It's a humane way to arrange multi-story office building full of workers sitting in cubicles looking at monitors, because they can go outside on their lunch hour and take a walk along the gravel paths meandering through the oak, beech, and hickory trees. This time of year leaves cover the ground, and you can barely make out the path, and lots of sunlight filters through the branches. I'm looking forward to seeing how it changes in the next few months.
As nice as the weather is this week, I'm surprised there aren't more people out enjoying it. In the half hour I was there, I saw half a dozen pairs of walkers and one maintenance guy checking the sprinkler system. One end of the oval is designed more geometrically, like a downtown park, with benches arranged around a circular walkway. The rest is just a patch of woods that has been there for a while, preserved by smart architects. The breeze would be chilly if you stopped moving and sat in the shade, but the sun is out and it's perfect weather for walking.
I'm just glad to have a place to go in the middle of the workday and breathe. All those mature hardwoods are more than willing to absorb the carbon dioxide coming in from cars on I-270 and connecting streets. I'm happy to join them for twenty minutes hanging out between earth and sky. The egg-like name and shape of this oasis in the midst of commercial sprawl just adds to my appreciation. I'll have to re-read Scott Fitzgerald to get a better sense of what it was about East Egg and West Egg that drove Jay Gatsby crazy. Then I'll try not to do that.
Monday, November 09, 2009
The elusive flaming pear
I brought a pear in for lunch today because we were out of bananas. It's yellow, rather than the usual light green, with a slight pinkish blush, so it stands in well for my daily banana. I also have a woodblock print of a pear by my desk that I like having around, along with family photos, a jovial little wooden troll from Minnesota, and other visual artifacts that help make a cube a habitable space.
Not everything has found its place in my new cubicle environment, and that, like the relocation to a new office itself, will take time. The pear theme, however, stands a good chance of continuing, even when I get back to the daily banana.
My wife Gven Golly is the pear person in our household. She can be counted on to buy pears in season at the grocery store, and they're always in season somewhere, aren't they? Pears from California, pears from Argentina, pears from New Zealand, maybe even the occasional pear from - gasp - Ohio. Does anyone grow pears commercially in central Swingstate? If so, do they look as pretty under the lights in the produce aisle as the cosmetically enhanced, genetically engineered variety that's shipped as containerized cargo from some far-off trading partner? Probably not.
Today's pear is d'Anjou, and the bar-coded sticker on it says "USA/E-U" (estados unidos), which tells me it might have come from some temperate place in latinoamerica. The sticker has an image of a mountain next to a giant ladybug next to the word 'Stemitt', all of which is code for some hemispheric operation that I can only wonder about and guess at. Okay, Ladybird Johnson's family owns a division of United Fruit that grows pears on a plantation in Uruguay, and their marketing people had fun with the play on the words 'stem' and 'summit'. No?
Week 2 in the new location has now come and gone with remarkably little turbulence. The usual comparisons with the old location are inevitable, usually saying more about the speaker than the place itself. And my own cubicle microcosm has not radically altered either, with only a few images tacked on the cube walls: a randomly found poster of Bookwus Mask by Beau Dick [1992. Red cedar, paint, feathers, horsehair. 43.2 x 38 x 51 cm (17 x 15 x 20"). Northern Heritage Art Co., Ltd., Tucson, Arizona], a calendar, a department phone list, photos of my family c. 1956, 1973, 1985, and 2007, and the pear print.
When Gven and I were courting, one of our early dates was a trip to the High Museum in midtown Atlanta, where there was an Asian art exhibit that quickly got our attention. The most memorable work was a painting titled The Elusive Flaming Pear that was both beautiful and hilarious. Something about it spoke to both of us - quest for enlightenment, mystical transformation, chance encounters with the unexpected, fresh fruit - and the phrase stuck.
The one on my desk, while just a bit overripe and not exactly flaming, is still delicious with a bit of baby Swiss cheese. Bon apetit!
Not everything has found its place in my new cubicle environment, and that, like the relocation to a new office itself, will take time. The pear theme, however, stands a good chance of continuing, even when I get back to the daily banana.
My wife Gven Golly is the pear person in our household. She can be counted on to buy pears in season at the grocery store, and they're always in season somewhere, aren't they? Pears from California, pears from Argentina, pears from New Zealand, maybe even the occasional pear from - gasp - Ohio. Does anyone grow pears commercially in central Swingstate? If so, do they look as pretty under the lights in the produce aisle as the cosmetically enhanced, genetically engineered variety that's shipped as containerized cargo from some far-off trading partner? Probably not.
Today's pear is d'Anjou, and the bar-coded sticker on it says "USA/E-U" (estados unidos), which tells me it might have come from some temperate place in latinoamerica. The sticker has an image of a mountain next to a giant ladybug next to the word 'Stemitt', all of which is code for some hemispheric operation that I can only wonder about and guess at. Okay, Ladybird Johnson's family owns a division of United Fruit that grows pears on a plantation in Uruguay, and their marketing people had fun with the play on the words 'stem' and 'summit'. No?
Week 2 in the new location has now come and gone with remarkably little turbulence. The usual comparisons with the old location are inevitable, usually saying more about the speaker than the place itself. And my own cubicle microcosm has not radically altered either, with only a few images tacked on the cube walls: a randomly found poster of Bookwus Mask by Beau Dick [1992. Red cedar, paint, feathers, horsehair. 43.2 x 38 x 51 cm (17 x 15 x 20"). Northern Heritage Art Co., Ltd., Tucson, Arizona], a calendar, a department phone list, photos of my family c. 1956, 1973, 1985, and 2007, and the pear print.
When Gven and I were courting, one of our early dates was a trip to the High Museum in midtown Atlanta, where there was an Asian art exhibit that quickly got our attention. The most memorable work was a painting titled The Elusive Flaming Pear that was both beautiful and hilarious. Something about it spoke to both of us - quest for enlightenment, mystical transformation, chance encounters with the unexpected, fresh fruit - and the phrase stuck.
The one on my desk, while just a bit overripe and not exactly flaming, is still delicious with a bit of baby Swiss cheese. Bon apetit!
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
RE cycling
I took the plunge this morning and rode le Trek to work at the new office. It wasn't much of a leap of faith, since I had ridden the eight or nine miles down the Alum Creek trail many times on weekends, so I knew more or less what to expect. This was just the first time doing it in work mode, so now I know empirically that it can be done.
Although there was almost no wind, the morning air was, shall we say, brisk. Hat and gloves were necessary, not optional. Ten degrees colder would have made it a tough ride; ten degrees warmer and I would have had to change into the spare T-shirt I brought just in case.
The creek was very high, so the trail was flooded where it dips under Schrock Road coming out of Methodistville. Once I had dodged traffic to cross Schrock, it was clear sailing south, except for the oblivious grandmother in the minivan turning right onto Cooper Road, who breezed right through the red light without looking. Close calls with idiot drivers like that show me that I really should wear a helmet.
The other close encounter occurred a couple of miles down the trail where it winds through woods and parks. As I careened down the leaf-covered path, I startled a couple of deer having breakfast on the creek side of the trail. The buck was pretty big and sported a rack of antlers with maybe eight points. Other than birds and squirrels, the only other wildlife in evidence was a tall young woman running with her dog in Casto Park just north of highway 161.
What I love about this trail is its avoidance of roads and traffic. After winding a few blocks through residential streets, I'm by myself without cars and stoplights, save for crossing route 3 at Cooper Rd. and then Sunbury Rd. at Easton, then a few blocks coming up Easton Way to the office. The middle seven miles is glorious solitude, except for grandma and deer. Which begs the question, what will the weather be like on the way home? As George Carlin, the hippy-dippy weatherman would say, "The forecast for tonight - dark."
Although there was almost no wind, the morning air was, shall we say, brisk. Hat and gloves were necessary, not optional. Ten degrees colder would have made it a tough ride; ten degrees warmer and I would have had to change into the spare T-shirt I brought just in case.
The creek was very high, so the trail was flooded where it dips under Schrock Road coming out of Methodistville. Once I had dodged traffic to cross Schrock, it was clear sailing south, except for the oblivious grandmother in the minivan turning right onto Cooper Road, who breezed right through the red light without looking. Close calls with idiot drivers like that show me that I really should wear a helmet.
The other close encounter occurred a couple of miles down the trail where it winds through woods and parks. As I careened down the leaf-covered path, I startled a couple of deer having breakfast on the creek side of the trail. The buck was pretty big and sported a rack of antlers with maybe eight points. Other than birds and squirrels, the only other wildlife in evidence was a tall young woman running with her dog in Casto Park just north of highway 161.
What I love about this trail is its avoidance of roads and traffic. After winding a few blocks through residential streets, I'm by myself without cars and stoplights, save for crossing route 3 at Cooper Rd. and then Sunbury Rd. at Easton, then a few blocks coming up Easton Way to the office. The middle seven miles is glorious solitude, except for grandma and deer. Which begs the question, what will the weather be like on the way home? As George Carlin, the hippy-dippy weatherman would say, "The forecast for tonight - dark."
Sunday, November 01, 2009
untitled seasonal stream of consciousness
Let's connect some dots and see if anything hangs together. It's moving day at the office, Halloween in the suburbs, Samhain in the forest, All Saints Day in the Church, el Dia de los Muertos en Mexico, and the end of Daylight Saving Time in the U.S. of A.
So what?
It is time to turn a corner. Take a look back and move resolutely forward. Put the nonhardy plants like spider lilies in the cellar for the winter, because we will have a hard freeze before you know it. The patio looks naked without them, but I want them to live and bloom again next year.
It's also an ideal time to get up on the garage roof and sweep off the leaves and pine needles, scoop the wet gunky debris out of the gutters, and liberate it all to the flower beds below. All of which was a tangent to the original task of replacing a sheet of metal roofing that blew off the shed more than a year ago in Hurricane Ike. Now it is nailed down nice and tight.
It was clear and cool today, so the wet sticks I stacked yesterday had a chance to dry, but you know that clear sky will make it colder tonight, so the dry kindling will come in handy starting the first fire of the season in the stove tonight.
The moon is full and very bright.
Gven and I ended a satisfactory Saturday of mowing, weeding, and breaking of sticks for kindling with a hearty meal of brots and a salad, with pauses to give out candy to dressed-up Methodistville street urchins on All Hallows Eve, one of the few times we have both been home to enjoy that neighborhood ritual. Tonight she made eggplant parmesan, which was perfect with bread and red wine.
The Yankees are beating up on the Phillies in game 4 of the World Series. I did catch one electric moment when Pedro Feliz took Joba Chamberlain deep, but I think the Yanks have too many horses.
Instead of going to church or open meditation this morning, I ended up at Jersey Universalist Church in rural Licking County, a tiny congregation I visited infrequently several years ago. I love the setting, for one thing, just off the old highway 161 at the edge of the village of Jersey, Ohio, east of New Albany, nestled in a grove of pine trees surrounding an old cemetery in front of a cornfield. About 12 people showed up for a service consisting of readings and open-ended commentary from the Book of Daniel. The imagery of Nebuchadnezzar's dream was fascinating: head of gold, chest of silver, belly of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of clay mixed with iron. I might have to visit again to discern its mystical meaning(s).
Afterward I drove up Mink Road to Jug Street and east to Alexandria through some of the prettiest rolling countryside in central Swingstate, then west toward Methodistville on Central College Road, confirming my desire to bike that way some time. But when will the stars align, giving me three hours on a weekend with good weather?
Tomorrow I'll drive Hank the Ranger southeast instead of northwest and park myself in a different cube in a different building among a mostly different cast of charcters. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
So what?
It is time to turn a corner. Take a look back and move resolutely forward. Put the nonhardy plants like spider lilies in the cellar for the winter, because we will have a hard freeze before you know it. The patio looks naked without them, but I want them to live and bloom again next year.
It's also an ideal time to get up on the garage roof and sweep off the leaves and pine needles, scoop the wet gunky debris out of the gutters, and liberate it all to the flower beds below. All of which was a tangent to the original task of replacing a sheet of metal roofing that blew off the shed more than a year ago in Hurricane Ike. Now it is nailed down nice and tight.
It was clear and cool today, so the wet sticks I stacked yesterday had a chance to dry, but you know that clear sky will make it colder tonight, so the dry kindling will come in handy starting the first fire of the season in the stove tonight.
The moon is full and very bright.
Gven and I ended a satisfactory Saturday of mowing, weeding, and breaking of sticks for kindling with a hearty meal of brots and a salad, with pauses to give out candy to dressed-up Methodistville street urchins on All Hallows Eve, one of the few times we have both been home to enjoy that neighborhood ritual. Tonight she made eggplant parmesan, which was perfect with bread and red wine.
The Yankees are beating up on the Phillies in game 4 of the World Series. I did catch one electric moment when Pedro Feliz took Joba Chamberlain deep, but I think the Yanks have too many horses.
Instead of going to church or open meditation this morning, I ended up at Jersey Universalist Church in rural Licking County, a tiny congregation I visited infrequently several years ago. I love the setting, for one thing, just off the old highway 161 at the edge of the village of Jersey, Ohio, east of New Albany, nestled in a grove of pine trees surrounding an old cemetery in front of a cornfield. About 12 people showed up for a service consisting of readings and open-ended commentary from the Book of Daniel. The imagery of Nebuchadnezzar's dream was fascinating: head of gold, chest of silver, belly of bronze, legs of iron, and feet of clay mixed with iron. I might have to visit again to discern its mystical meaning(s).
Afterward I drove up Mink Road to Jug Street and east to Alexandria through some of the prettiest rolling countryside in central Swingstate, then west toward Methodistville on Central College Road, confirming my desire to bike that way some time. But when will the stars align, giving me three hours on a weekend with good weather?
Tomorrow I'll drive Hank the Ranger southeast instead of northwest and park myself in a different cube in a different building among a mostly different cast of charcters. Should be interesting to see how it plays out.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Apex Update
My son and I communicate pretty well if only sporadically. I'm a spore and he's a radical. Our conversations don't always follow a conventional template, and that might be a good thing. We have a lot of history, some difficult but most of it very positive. The lines are open. This post attempts to make up some recent lost time.
Last month Jessi finished his construction skills course at Apex Academy, a trade school in New York City. The final phase, Electrical II, was his favorite part of the program, and the teacher, Mr. Neese, was the best of the lot. Mr. Neese also taught one of the plumbing courses, which Jessi also liked. He did well in the theory classes and in the shop. He has always been a good student and a good test taker, and he thrived on the combination of theory and practice with tools and materials.
They learned pipe bending and wired circuits and electrical panels using different kinds of cable, such as Romex (two- and three-wire cable in plastic sheathing) and armored (also called metal-clad, or BX because it was invented in the Bronx). They installed switches, outlets, and lights according to code.
In the week or two between the end of school and the start of cranberry season, his band, Hey Baby, was extremely busy. They began sharing a new practice space in Brooklyn with two other bands, and that required assembling amps, speakers, a PA, and drums. The space is more readily available than their previous space, and it looks like a good arrangement. They played shows at DIA Beacon in Beacon, NY, at Don Pedro's, and at Tommy's Tavern in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The first week of October, Jessi and friends went up to Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, to start work on the cranberry harvest at Mann's Farm. Once again this year, the seasonal workers have a house to live in right on the farm, and the living situation seems to agree with him. They put in long days picking, cleaning, sorting, packaging, and shipping berries to customers. Some of it is in the bog, and some of it is in the shed. I gather that they work hard and play hard too.
Gven and I have big plans for the prodigal son when he comes home for Thanksgiving - bearing a box of berries, we hope. We have a couple of house-renovation projects - including wiring, flooring, and a bathroom - that are currently on-hold awaiting someone with his skills and creative problem-solving ability. This is not a test, but we are eager to see what he can do.
Last month Jessi finished his construction skills course at Apex Academy, a trade school in New York City. The final phase, Electrical II, was his favorite part of the program, and the teacher, Mr. Neese, was the best of the lot. Mr. Neese also taught one of the plumbing courses, which Jessi also liked. He did well in the theory classes and in the shop. He has always been a good student and a good test taker, and he thrived on the combination of theory and practice with tools and materials.
They learned pipe bending and wired circuits and electrical panels using different kinds of cable, such as Romex (two- and three-wire cable in plastic sheathing) and armored (also called metal-clad, or BX because it was invented in the Bronx). They installed switches, outlets, and lights according to code.
In the week or two between the end of school and the start of cranberry season, his band, Hey Baby, was extremely busy. They began sharing a new practice space in Brooklyn with two other bands, and that required assembling amps, speakers, a PA, and drums. The space is more readily available than their previous space, and it looks like a good arrangement. They played shows at DIA Beacon in Beacon, NY, at Don Pedro's, and at Tommy's Tavern in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.
The first week of October, Jessi and friends went up to Buzzard's Bay, Massachusetts, to start work on the cranberry harvest at Mann's Farm. Once again this year, the seasonal workers have a house to live in right on the farm, and the living situation seems to agree with him. They put in long days picking, cleaning, sorting, packaging, and shipping berries to customers. Some of it is in the bog, and some of it is in the shed. I gather that they work hard and play hard too.
Gven and I have big plans for the prodigal son when he comes home for Thanksgiving - bearing a box of berries, we hope. We have a couple of house-renovation projects - including wiring, flooring, and a bathroom - that are currently on-hold awaiting someone with his skills and creative problem-solving ability. This is not a test, but we are eager to see what he can do.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Retreat
A few examples of an imperative sentence:
Go into the forest for a couple of days, even if it costs a little money, and sleep in a sleeping bag on an unfamiliar bunk in a dormitory full of relative strangers. Live by an altered, imposed, and accepted set of boundaries. Wake up at 5:00 to the sound of a bell, followed by chanting, drumming, and another bell. Be silent until breakfast at 7:30. Sit as much as you want. Take a break, then sit some more.
When you're not sitting, go outside in the crisp October air and walk down the trail to visit the bald eagle, the red-tailed hawk, kestrels, barn owls, barred owls, and turkey vultures that are sheltered at the Raptor Center. Do a taiji form on the brick fire circle just outside the kitchen with your morning coffee, then do another one after dark while the stars come out.
Go for a serious hike down into the glen, across the bridge, past Helen's Rock and Pompey's Pillar, and take a drink from the yellow spring that gives the town its name. Walk along the top of the ridge, down some steep steps, and closer to the creek. Mind your own business, just like the other hikers - young, old, and in between - mind theirs. Get a little bit lost, and find out by accident that the trail loops back to where you came from. Take off a layer or two and cool off.
Help with lunch, then help clean up. Collect enough kindling to get a fire started after dinner, and sit around talking with four or five other people while the fire burns down to coals.
When it's time to go, pack up your stuff, help clear the rooms of furniture, and mop the floor. Take a detour into town, and since it's such a nice day, take a bike ride up the paved trail, stopping to fix a flat tire on the way back, thankful that you brought a spare tube and a hand-pump. Recover from that little adventure with a sandwich and coffee at a little place on Xenia Ave.
Drive home and do a couple of chores because the back yard looks so welcoming.
Go into the forest for a couple of days, even if it costs a little money, and sleep in a sleeping bag on an unfamiliar bunk in a dormitory full of relative strangers. Live by an altered, imposed, and accepted set of boundaries. Wake up at 5:00 to the sound of a bell, followed by chanting, drumming, and another bell. Be silent until breakfast at 7:30. Sit as much as you want. Take a break, then sit some more.
When you're not sitting, go outside in the crisp October air and walk down the trail to visit the bald eagle, the red-tailed hawk, kestrels, barn owls, barred owls, and turkey vultures that are sheltered at the Raptor Center. Do a taiji form on the brick fire circle just outside the kitchen with your morning coffee, then do another one after dark while the stars come out.
Go for a serious hike down into the glen, across the bridge, past Helen's Rock and Pompey's Pillar, and take a drink from the yellow spring that gives the town its name. Walk along the top of the ridge, down some steep steps, and closer to the creek. Mind your own business, just like the other hikers - young, old, and in between - mind theirs. Get a little bit lost, and find out by accident that the trail loops back to where you came from. Take off a layer or two and cool off.
Help with lunch, then help clean up. Collect enough kindling to get a fire started after dinner, and sit around talking with four or five other people while the fire burns down to coals.
When it's time to go, pack up your stuff, help clear the rooms of furniture, and mop the floor. Take a detour into town, and since it's such a nice day, take a bike ride up the paved trail, stopping to fix a flat tire on the way back, thankful that you brought a spare tube and a hand-pump. Recover from that little adventure with a sandwich and coffee at a little place on Xenia Ave.
Drive home and do a couple of chores because the back yard looks so welcoming.
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Isabelle
This one won't be easy.
That was the start of a blog entry dated almost three weeks ago, then sat unfinished and barely begun. The sweetest cat in the known universe died at the foot of our bed some time during the night. It was painful to watch, though we knew it was coming, and it is painful to recall now. So I will not dwell unnecessarily on her long, slow decline or the strange sight of her blank open eyes near the end as she labored to breathe.
Izzy and her brother Gus joined our family on my daughter Zelda's seventh birthday in 1991. We lived in Grandview, and our previous cat, Big Louie, had been hit by a car while crossing Northwest Boulevard. We buried Louie in the tiny back yard of our double and started looking for another cat. My running partner MacKenzie's tabby had kittens soon after, and he and his family were generous enough to let us have not one but two longhaired picks of the litter, the orange male and the black and orange tortoise-shell female.
Gus and Isabelle moved with us to south Alabama that summer and helped make our little house on Brook Lane a home. A year later they moved back to Columbus with us. Zoe bonded with Gus, sometimes wearing him draped across the back of her neck like a fur collar. My favorite thing was to lie on the floor after a run and cool down while Isabelle took a nap on my chest. Good times those.
The prime years were the ones we lived in a big brick house set back from High Street surrounded by an acre of pine, spruce, poplar, and maple trees with lots of wildlife. It was cat heaven and not too bad for humans. We acquired a dog during that time, and it took awhile for Gus and Izzy to accept Dali into the club, but eventually they came to terms.
Our move to Methodistville was relatively smooth for the animals, and each of them claimed their favorite places in the smaller house and yard. Now all three are buried in the back corner, just inside the fence on high ground under the cedar trees. Gus went first, and Isabelle was a wreck for maybe a year, crying day and night for her brother. Already losing weight and strength, she became much more needy and feeble but lasted another couple of years on sheer pride and stubbornness.
The question of another cat or dog has come up naturally. I think we will take our time with that and just let the house be empty of animals for awhile.
That was the start of a blog entry dated almost three weeks ago, then sat unfinished and barely begun. The sweetest cat in the known universe died at the foot of our bed some time during the night. It was painful to watch, though we knew it was coming, and it is painful to recall now. So I will not dwell unnecessarily on her long, slow decline or the strange sight of her blank open eyes near the end as she labored to breathe.
Izzy and her brother Gus joined our family on my daughter Zelda's seventh birthday in 1991. We lived in Grandview, and our previous cat, Big Louie, had been hit by a car while crossing Northwest Boulevard. We buried Louie in the tiny back yard of our double and started looking for another cat. My running partner MacKenzie's tabby had kittens soon after, and he and his family were generous enough to let us have not one but two longhaired picks of the litter, the orange male and the black and orange tortoise-shell female.
Gus and Isabelle moved with us to south Alabama that summer and helped make our little house on Brook Lane a home. A year later they moved back to Columbus with us. Zoe bonded with Gus, sometimes wearing him draped across the back of her neck like a fur collar. My favorite thing was to lie on the floor after a run and cool down while Isabelle took a nap on my chest. Good times those.
The prime years were the ones we lived in a big brick house set back from High Street surrounded by an acre of pine, spruce, poplar, and maple trees with lots of wildlife. It was cat heaven and not too bad for humans. We acquired a dog during that time, and it took awhile for Gus and Izzy to accept Dali into the club, but eventually they came to terms.
Our move to Methodistville was relatively smooth for the animals, and each of them claimed their favorite places in the smaller house and yard. Now all three are buried in the back corner, just inside the fence on high ground under the cedar trees. Gus went first, and Isabelle was a wreck for maybe a year, crying day and night for her brother. Already losing weight and strength, she became much more needy and feeble but lasted another couple of years on sheer pride and stubbornness.
The question of another cat or dog has come up naturally. I think we will take our time with that and just let the house be empty of animals for awhile.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Turn the page
New job, new cast of co-worker characters, new set of acronyms and idioms to go with the new subculture of production. New kinds of problems to try to solve, new chaotic situations out of which to bring order. I've been an editor for so long, it had become burned into my identity, and officially at least, I'm not an editor anymore. We shall see how readily I shed that skin.
It seems like a lot of changes are happening all at once, because they are. The star wheel is turning from summer to fall, and just today the pine trees were shedding their golden needles like crazy. It's a downer in a sense, gravity and the receding sun's rays doing their thing, but I love the look of fresh pine straw on the ground.
The cooler temperatures are not harsh just yet, so the cold is not a problem either. Wear long pants, put on a sweater. It gets dark pretty early, so there will be no more eight o'clock bike rides deep into Delaware County with plenty of time to loop back home while the cars can still see the green flash of light that is me on le Trek.
I'm starting a new job in a different department of the same company, although the "same" company is morphing into a whole new starship publishing enterprise, so the department I was in for almost ten years will not be the same old department much longer. Even if I wasn't the new/old kid on the second floor, it would not be business as usual. Good news or bad news, you tell me.
I chose to disappear from the fourth floor quickly rather than make it a long, drawn-out leave-taking. It's not like I'm leaving the company or the big small town that is Central Swingstate. I just need to be here now rather than dwell on where I am not.
The plus side of not making many close connections with people at work is that when it's time to move on and call it a day, there are fewer attachments to break. I know that sounds harsh, or a lame rationalization, or fair-weather friendly, but it's not intended that way. I'm not the jilted boyfriend who says, after the fact, that he never really like her anyway. I'm more like the survivor of a shipwreck who washed up on a desert island and lived a good, long time on the nearest beach, in no small part because of help from the other inhabitants of that island. Now another tempest has washed me out to sea, and I'm learning to live on the fruits and nuts that grow on the next island.
Since I did not choose to make this particular move at this particular time, I have less at stake in its being the absolutely best thing ever to happen. Even an intentional change of situation has only an even chance of success: either it will or it won't work out to my advantage, however that is measured. As it says in the middle school math book, just relax and do the best you can. When the next challenge, opportunity, or long strange trip comes about unexpectedly, it's not all that different: I don't know where this story is going, but I will do what I can to make it go somewhere good.
That's just the thing. Being ejected from my comfortable seat in Editorial Land after all these years might just be the best thing that ever happened to me. Yeah, like it "happened to me" and I had nothing to do with it. I probably sowed the seeds of this departure/exile/deportation/ostracism many times over. Paraphrasing that most revered and respected of elder statesmen, Trickie Dick Nixon, they won't have Sven Golly to kick around anymore.
If anything, I'm anticipating a whole new professional adventure, and in the Joseph Campbell sense, you don't pick your adventures, they pick you. So I'm game. Let's see what kinds of trials and tests, temptations and traps, hidden helpers and hoodwinking hindrances lie in wait.
It seems like a lot of changes are happening all at once, because they are. The star wheel is turning from summer to fall, and just today the pine trees were shedding their golden needles like crazy. It's a downer in a sense, gravity and the receding sun's rays doing their thing, but I love the look of fresh pine straw on the ground.
The cooler temperatures are not harsh just yet, so the cold is not a problem either. Wear long pants, put on a sweater. It gets dark pretty early, so there will be no more eight o'clock bike rides deep into Delaware County with plenty of time to loop back home while the cars can still see the green flash of light that is me on le Trek.
I'm starting a new job in a different department of the same company, although the "same" company is morphing into a whole new starship publishing enterprise, so the department I was in for almost ten years will not be the same old department much longer. Even if I wasn't the new/old kid on the second floor, it would not be business as usual. Good news or bad news, you tell me.
I chose to disappear from the fourth floor quickly rather than make it a long, drawn-out leave-taking. It's not like I'm leaving the company or the big small town that is Central Swingstate. I just need to be here now rather than dwell on where I am not.
The plus side of not making many close connections with people at work is that when it's time to move on and call it a day, there are fewer attachments to break. I know that sounds harsh, or a lame rationalization, or fair-weather friendly, but it's not intended that way. I'm not the jilted boyfriend who says, after the fact, that he never really like her anyway. I'm more like the survivor of a shipwreck who washed up on a desert island and lived a good, long time on the nearest beach, in no small part because of help from the other inhabitants of that island. Now another tempest has washed me out to sea, and I'm learning to live on the fruits and nuts that grow on the next island.
Since I did not choose to make this particular move at this particular time, I have less at stake in its being the absolutely best thing ever to happen. Even an intentional change of situation has only an even chance of success: either it will or it won't work out to my advantage, however that is measured. As it says in the middle school math book, just relax and do the best you can. When the next challenge, opportunity, or long strange trip comes about unexpectedly, it's not all that different: I don't know where this story is going, but I will do what I can to make it go somewhere good.
That's just the thing. Being ejected from my comfortable seat in Editorial Land after all these years might just be the best thing that ever happened to me. Yeah, like it "happened to me" and I had nothing to do with it. I probably sowed the seeds of this departure/exile/deportation/ostracism many times over. Paraphrasing that most revered and respected of elder statesmen, Trickie Dick Nixon, they won't have Sven Golly to kick around anymore.
If anything, I'm anticipating a whole new professional adventure, and in the Joseph Campbell sense, you don't pick your adventures, they pick you. So I'm game. Let's see what kinds of trials and tests, temptations and traps, hidden helpers and hoodwinking hindrances lie in wait.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Peregrination
Let's say you're out for a nice bike ride on a gorgeous Sunday evening in Methodistville, and the wind is a mild sou'wester. MacKenzie's First Law says that you would start out going southwest, against the wind, to get the tailwind on your way back. It's an ideal late-summer time to unwind, in the immortal words of Chuck Berry, with no particular place to go.
If you go west on Walnut and hang a left at the cemetery, then head down Knox and cut through the service department past the skateboard park, you get to Alum Creek bike trail and go south, under Schrock Road and I-270, past a row of condos to a little unofficial eroded pedestrian trail up the bank to Cooper Road.
Here it gets tricky for a minute, as you ride uphill a short distance north, looking out for traffic on the curving two-lane road, before turning left on Corporate Exchange, a wide connector through an sort of office park campus that wends its way up to Cleveland Ave. and comes out, lo and behold, at the Home Depot. This was my objective: to find a route to that corner. Success!
There's no bike rack at O'Charley's, which is not a surprise, only a mild disappointment, since I was secretly hoping to bicycle there to meet my posse later this week. However, at the back of the parking lot I notice an inconspicuous, heretofore unnotice driveway, like a call to adventure leading around a bend and over a small rise to the Xenos campus, which looks busy, well-organized, and wholesomely friendly, like a cross between the Hallmark Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel. Just past the well-marked Cafe in the rear of the the back building I spot a gap in the fence, squeeze through a narrow gate at the back corner, an almost hidden portal onto an out-of-the-way dead-end street that leads to the mainstream normalcy of Sharon Woods Blvd.
I love to discover these obscure connections between the public geography that's printed on the map and the places that the locals know only because they happen to live there. Sharon Woods winds south from Schrock about a mile through a suburban residential neighborhood not unlike my own, past Underfunded Public High School, and comes out on state highway 161, one of the ubiquitous commercial strips from hell so common in central Swingstate.
Crossing 161, the neighborhood changes, as they say, and for an old white guy it doesn't feel so familiar anymore. Since I'm macho in my backward Buckeye cap and cruising along in high gear on le Trek, I have no fear, but through the roundabout of Tamarack Circle I know I'm not in Kansas anymore. I get as far south as Morse Road and things get really strange.
I haven't been to what's left of Northland lately, and apparently no one else has either, because it's deserted save for the surrealistic movie fascade of a building labeled State of Ohio Department of Taxation. This is either some extreme irony or people actually work here, but it's Sunday so I can't really tell, and the sun is going down, and I don't want to turn into a pumpkin, so I definitely need to head back from whence I came.
With no buildings blocking the view it's easy to find my way through the uninhabited expanse of pavement to Karl Road and head north past familiar landmarks like Woodward Park Rec Center, Epworth Methodist Church, the Northside YMCA, and the Karl Road branch of Columbus Public Library, all of which are, in my insular world, bastions of civilization.
Karl turns residential again north of highway 161 revisited, and it would be a stretch to say that I'm on my own with no connection home like a complete unknown, though I was enjoying the indirect route I was riding not quite like a rolling stone. After turning right on Schrock, I happened to notice a gate left open at the very back corner of Sharon Woods Metropark where it ends at I-270, so I doubled back and snuck through the gate into the park and found the unexpected treat of a perfect curving path through protected woods and picnic tables back toward Methodistville.
Directly across from the park entrance is St. Ann's Hospital, which reveals itself as a kind of campus, too, as I coast downhill through a succession of parking lots leading back to Cooper Road, which takes me back to Alum Creek trail and up the hill to Otterbein, which really is a campus, back to Walnut Street and Om Shanty, where there is a cold Great Lakes Eliot Ness Amber Lager waiting for me. Pointless but satisfying nonetheless.
If you go west on Walnut and hang a left at the cemetery, then head down Knox and cut through the service department past the skateboard park, you get to Alum Creek bike trail and go south, under Schrock Road and I-270, past a row of condos to a little unofficial eroded pedestrian trail up the bank to Cooper Road.
Here it gets tricky for a minute, as you ride uphill a short distance north, looking out for traffic on the curving two-lane road, before turning left on Corporate Exchange, a wide connector through an sort of office park campus that wends its way up to Cleveland Ave. and comes out, lo and behold, at the Home Depot. This was my objective: to find a route to that corner. Success!
There's no bike rack at O'Charley's, which is not a surprise, only a mild disappointment, since I was secretly hoping to bicycle there to meet my posse later this week. However, at the back of the parking lot I notice an inconspicuous, heretofore unnotice driveway, like a call to adventure leading around a bend and over a small rise to the Xenos campus, which looks busy, well-organized, and wholesomely friendly, like a cross between the Hallmark Channel and the Sci-Fi Channel. Just past the well-marked Cafe in the rear of the the back building I spot a gap in the fence, squeeze through a narrow gate at the back corner, an almost hidden portal onto an out-of-the-way dead-end street that leads to the mainstream normalcy of Sharon Woods Blvd.
I love to discover these obscure connections between the public geography that's printed on the map and the places that the locals know only because they happen to live there. Sharon Woods winds south from Schrock about a mile through a suburban residential neighborhood not unlike my own, past Underfunded Public High School, and comes out on state highway 161, one of the ubiquitous commercial strips from hell so common in central Swingstate.
Crossing 161, the neighborhood changes, as they say, and for an old white guy it doesn't feel so familiar anymore. Since I'm macho in my backward Buckeye cap and cruising along in high gear on le Trek, I have no fear, but through the roundabout of Tamarack Circle I know I'm not in Kansas anymore. I get as far south as Morse Road and things get really strange.
I haven't been to what's left of Northland lately, and apparently no one else has either, because it's deserted save for the surrealistic movie fascade of a building labeled State of Ohio Department of Taxation. This is either some extreme irony or people actually work here, but it's Sunday so I can't really tell, and the sun is going down, and I don't want to turn into a pumpkin, so I definitely need to head back from whence I came.
With no buildings blocking the view it's easy to find my way through the uninhabited expanse of pavement to Karl Road and head north past familiar landmarks like Woodward Park Rec Center, Epworth Methodist Church, the Northside YMCA, and the Karl Road branch of Columbus Public Library, all of which are, in my insular world, bastions of civilization.
Karl turns residential again north of highway 161 revisited, and it would be a stretch to say that I'm on my own with no connection home like a complete unknown, though I was enjoying the indirect route I was riding not quite like a rolling stone. After turning right on Schrock, I happened to notice a gate left open at the very back corner of Sharon Woods Metropark where it ends at I-270, so I doubled back and snuck through the gate into the park and found the unexpected treat of a perfect curving path through protected woods and picnic tables back toward Methodistville.
Directly across from the park entrance is St. Ann's Hospital, which reveals itself as a kind of campus, too, as I coast downhill through a succession of parking lots leading back to Cooper Road, which takes me back to Alum Creek trail and up the hill to Otterbein, which really is a campus, back to Walnut Street and Om Shanty, where there is a cold Great Lakes Eliot Ness Amber Lager waiting for me. Pointless but satisfying nonetheless.
Monday, September 14, 2009
Yo Ho Ho
You can feel the change of seasons in the air. The maple tree outside the office window already shows a distinct splash of orange. We pull up the down comforter sometime during the night. Football season is underway across this great pigskin nation. That must mean it's time to switch from gin to rum.
Gin and tonic is a summer drink, and on a warm summer evening, there's nothing quite like it, wedge of lime, thank you. Spring is for tequila, por supuesto. In a margarita, or with grenadine and OJ in a tequila sunrise, or all by itself, what the je. Viva agave! In winter it's vodka. Russian, Polish, Swedish, whatever. And from around Labor Day to New Year's Day, here roughly defined as 'fall', rum is the liquor of choice in my house. It's versatile, as refreshing in OJ as in tonic or, as a Christmas treat, egg nog.
Let's be clear. I am not advocating that anyone overindulge. Have one drink to take the edge off. If it's a seasonal libation, it becomes a little more celebratory, a little more connected to the four directions, the solstice and the equinox, the turning of the big wheel, with the cultural observance of winter, spring, summer, and fall. When I figure out the eight trigrams, the five elements, and the five flavors, you'll be the first to know.
Gin and tonic is a summer drink, and on a warm summer evening, there's nothing quite like it, wedge of lime, thank you. Spring is for tequila, por supuesto. In a margarita, or with grenadine and OJ in a tequila sunrise, or all by itself, what the je. Viva agave! In winter it's vodka. Russian, Polish, Swedish, whatever. And from around Labor Day to New Year's Day, here roughly defined as 'fall', rum is the liquor of choice in my house. It's versatile, as refreshing in OJ as in tonic or, as a Christmas treat, egg nog.
Let's be clear. I am not advocating that anyone overindulge. Have one drink to take the edge off. If it's a seasonal libation, it becomes a little more celebratory, a little more connected to the four directions, the solstice and the equinox, the turning of the big wheel, with the cultural observance of winter, spring, summer, and fall. When I figure out the eight trigrams, the five elements, and the five flavors, you'll be the first to know.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Nine, nine, oh nine
My son Jessi was born 27 years ago today. Over the years, the numbers 9/9/82 have been kind of special for me, as well as an easy-to-remember PIN or lock combination.
The online Merriam Webster dictionary gave me this additional factoid this morning.
So there you go. Nine not just another number. Nine is out there. Dressed to the nines. The whole nine yards.
Everyone knows that 9 is super cool numerologically. If you add 9 to any digit (let's say 2 + 9 = 11), and then add the digits of the sum (1 + 1), you get the original digit (1 + 1 = 2). Oh wow!
Nine is very heavy in the Book of Changes (I Ching) too, indicating a strong yang element in any changing situation. Nine is all about creativity, mobility, and dragon-like power. Three in a row has to be auspicious.
So by the quirks of the base-10 numbering system and the Western calendar that has September (literally "seventh month") falling on the ninth month, September ninth in the ninth years of the current century kind of stands out. Three nines in a row, 9/9/09, makes 27.
Happy birthday, Jessi. You are a nine nine oh nine!
The online Merriam Webster dictionary gave me this additional factoid this morning.
Did you know?
Since ancient times, various groups of people have considered nine to be a very special and sacred number. Legends and literature have long characterized groups of nine as having a special, in some cases magical, significance. Ancient Egyptians organized their gods into groups of nine; even today, their principal group of gods (headed by sun god Re-Atum) is called the "Great Ennead of Heliopolis." The "Ennead" English speakers use in that name traces to "ennea," the Greek word for "nine." "Ennead" is also used generally to refer to other groups of ancient gods. Furthermore, it is the name given to six sets of nine treatises by Greek philosopher Plotinus that were collected and organized by his 3rd-century disciple, Porphyry.
So there you go. Nine not just another number. Nine is out there. Dressed to the nines. The whole nine yards.
Everyone knows that 9 is super cool numerologically. If you add 9 to any digit (let's say 2 + 9 = 11), and then add the digits of the sum (1 + 1), you get the original digit (1 + 1 = 2). Oh wow!
Nine is very heavy in the Book of Changes (I Ching) too, indicating a strong yang element in any changing situation. Nine is all about creativity, mobility, and dragon-like power. Three in a row has to be auspicious.
So by the quirks of the base-10 numbering system and the Western calendar that has September (literally "seventh month") falling on the ninth month, September ninth in the ninth years of the current century kind of stands out. Three nines in a row, 9/9/09, makes 27.
Happy birthday, Jessi. You are a nine nine oh nine!
Thursday, September 03, 2009
It's a Bean!
If you've been following the continuing story of our search for a car, the search is finally over. Thank goodness. It's been almost six weeks since the deer leaped into the path of Gven's Honda somewhere in western Pennsylvania, totalling both the car and the deer. The car made it home safely; the deer didn't.
In the meantime, we've been getting by on one vehicle, plus the Lincoln Town Car on loan from Gven's friend Kate. As Commander Cody said, "My pappy said son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that hot rod Lincoln." Now Kate can have her Town Car back, because Gven has bought a Toyota Echo named Bean. It's a cute little, dark red, kidney-shaped car, hence the name.
We test-drove Accords, CRVs, and Civics; Volvo S40s and XCs; a Subaru, a Land Rover, and a Sportage. Some came close, but none filled the bill. It's a good way to meet interesting people from the Middle East, Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, and Grove City. Long story short, car culture is vast and varied. Our research was less exhaustive than exhausting, and it seems to have worked out fine.
The Bean doesn't have power windows, a sunroof, all-wheel drive, or turbo. It isn't an SUV, station wagon, hybrid, or amphibious armored urban assault vehicle. It does have four wheels, an engine, air, and a CD player. It runs. It handles well, and it's great on gas. I think it will do, even without bells and whistles.
We'll have to see how Gven bonds with her car. It's doing well bopping around town, and soon we will take it on a road trip to see the parents. It's just good to have the car issue resolved for now.
In the meantime, we've been getting by on one vehicle, plus the Lincoln Town Car on loan from Gven's friend Kate. As Commander Cody said, "My pappy said son, you're gonna drive me to drinkin' if you don't stop drivin' that hot rod Lincoln." Now Kate can have her Town Car back, because Gven has bought a Toyota Echo named Bean. It's a cute little, dark red, kidney-shaped car, hence the name.
We test-drove Accords, CRVs, and Civics; Volvo S40s and XCs; a Subaru, a Land Rover, and a Sportage. Some came close, but none filled the bill. It's a good way to meet interesting people from the Middle East, Africa, Mexico, Ukraine, and Grove City. Long story short, car culture is vast and varied. Our research was less exhaustive than exhausting, and it seems to have worked out fine.
The Bean doesn't have power windows, a sunroof, all-wheel drive, or turbo. It isn't an SUV, station wagon, hybrid, or amphibious armored urban assault vehicle. It does have four wheels, an engine, air, and a CD player. It runs. It handles well, and it's great on gas. I think it will do, even without bells and whistles.
We'll have to see how Gven bonds with her car. It's doing well bopping around town, and soon we will take it on a road trip to see the parents. It's just good to have the car issue resolved for now.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
It's a pergola!
After a prolonged gestation period, a new addition to our family has seen the light of day. This baby was first conceived about four years ago, and finally has been delivered unto us, a joyful addition indeed.
It's a big one, about 20 feet long, 12 feet wide, and 9 feet high. Roughly speaking, since all measurements are just a bit off. It has been an interesting project, you might say, from a vague idea to a vivid daydream, through some initial sketches and multiple design changes, pacing off the length at least a hundred times, right down to what I'm tentatively calling "completion."
If I was a carpenter, and you were a lady, would you marry me anyway, would have my pergola?
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Burn or frostbite, take your pick
"There's more than one way to skin a cat," said the dermatologist.
No kidding, he really said that. Dr. Quillin, as in quills, plucked feathers, porcupines, sharp pointed instruments, dipped in ink and scratching on paper. Maybe he does tattoos on his day off. At least his name isn't Hyde, as in Jekyl.
This was toward the end of the appointment, after he perfunctorily apologized for making me wait all day, then went about the business of checking my epidermal surface from head to toe. Turn to the left, turn to the right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight.
The Enderson side of the Golly family has a proclivity toward spots, and my Mom periodically reminds me to have them checked out. My last dermatological checkup was four years ago, so I was due. So far, so good, nothing malignant, just a minor annoyance on the neck or back that can either be ignored or removed with the right tools. Enter Dr. Quills.
Rather than scheduling another appointment, Dr. Quills obligingly went ahead and applied the tools of his trade to a few "irregular growths." That's the generic term, irregular growths, which includes spots, moles, lesions, and skin tags.
He can burn them off with a shiny stainless steel electrical pointer thingy, or he can freeze them off, with a cotton swab dipped in liquid nitrogen, a safe way of getting frostbitten. Either way, extreme heat or extreme cold will kill those pesky irregular cells. Or he can cut them off with a thin blade and send them to the lab for biopsy, and the report comes back saying it's benign.
No kidding, he really said that. Dr. Quillin, as in quills, plucked feathers, porcupines, sharp pointed instruments, dipped in ink and scratching on paper. Maybe he does tattoos on his day off. At least his name isn't Hyde, as in Jekyl.
This was toward the end of the appointment, after he perfunctorily apologized for making me wait all day, then went about the business of checking my epidermal surface from head to toe. Turn to the left, turn to the right, stand up, sit down, fight fight fight.
The Enderson side of the Golly family has a proclivity toward spots, and my Mom periodically reminds me to have them checked out. My last dermatological checkup was four years ago, so I was due. So far, so good, nothing malignant, just a minor annoyance on the neck or back that can either be ignored or removed with the right tools. Enter Dr. Quills.
Rather than scheduling another appointment, Dr. Quills obligingly went ahead and applied the tools of his trade to a few "irregular growths." That's the generic term, irregular growths, which includes spots, moles, lesions, and skin tags.
He can burn them off with a shiny stainless steel electrical pointer thingy, or he can freeze them off, with a cotton swab dipped in liquid nitrogen, a safe way of getting frostbitten. Either way, extreme heat or extreme cold will kill those pesky irregular cells. Or he can cut them off with a thin blade and send them to the lab for biopsy, and the report comes back saying it's benign.
Saturday, August 08, 2009
Dali / Dolly / Dalai
She was our family dog. We spotted her at the shelter in a cage with several other puppies, and she was the cutest and calmest, so we chose her and took her home. It was February, right around Valentine's Day. It turned out that she was sick, not calm, and when she was healthy she had all the typical puppy energy and behavior issues. But she was still the cutest of the litter.
The shelter people (no, not Leon Russell and his friends, the other shelter people) said she was a Dalmatian-Lab mix. Someone throught she might have been part beagle. One self-appointed expert said no, definitely a German shorthaired pointer. Whatever.
Gven and the kids, who were 11 and 13 at the time, bonded with Dali right away. I somehow acquired the naming rights, but it took me a little longer to bond, being the alpha dog in our pack and slightly less enamored of the whole having-a-dog experience, but I came around eventually. I think when I started walking her regularly, getting used to the leash and plastic bag routine, and seeing Dali respond so well to that time together, I started to get with the program.
She was trained. I was trained. You are your own dog.
When I attempted a comeback as a runner several years ago, Dali became my running buddy. Every night we would hit the streets of Methodistville, and both of us got a workout, since her short-legged gait matched my shortened 50-something stride. She was happy as a clam as we got to know the neighborhood. My athletic comeback was short-lived, so our nightly run eventually became a nightly walk. She was okay with that.
Jessi and Zelda grew up, went off to college, came back, got their own places, came back some more, and Dali/Dolly/Dalai was always - ALWAYS - tickled to see them. Of course. She was their dog. They were her humans. They raised her from a pup, and she faithfully protected their home.
In her last years, Dali still eagerly went for walks with Gven, usually with Gven's friend Kate and her dog Sadie. Dali and Sadie enjoyed many play-dates and became close friends and confidantes. Sadie's pack dog-sat for Dali when we were out of town, and we dog-sat for Sadie when her pack was out of town. It's good to have neighbors you like and trust.
Dali developed a hip problem and slowed down quite a bit. She had always run slightly sideways, and at age 14 that odd gait became a pronounced limp. Going up stairs has been difficult for the last year or so, and toward the end she had trouble getting up on the couch. She recently lost the use of her larynx so she couldn't bark. Her energy waned, and she rarely went out in the yard by herself. Toward the end she didn't wag her tail very often and lost the gleam in her eye.
On Friday morning, Gven let her out and Dali lay down in her favorite spot under the redbud tree near the back door. When Gven returned a few minutes later, Dali wasn't breathing. I know she wasn't happy, and I'd like to think she went peacefully, knowing she was loved. We buried Dali that night in the back corner of the yard, next to her buddy Gus, the cat.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Unnatural habitat
The backyard of Om Shanty on Summit Street in Methodistville was abuzz with biotic activity on an unquiet evening in late July. Not only was amplified music blaring from the Fourth Friday Uptown Commercefest, but birds, bees, squirrels, insects, flowers, vegetables, and other carbon-based lifeforms are out force. I blame it on the weather.
I can't begin to name the species of birds that make this quarter-acre their home and/or feeding ground. Some are flying solo, some with a partner nearby, some in competition with a rival for a partner, and some in a collective wave of mass movement from one tree to another. A squirrel was attacked by a nest of yellowjackets, the unintended consequences of foraging for its own nesting material, and you should have seen him jump sideways when he got stung by those aggressive little beasts. None of your beeswax!
I wouldn't call it a feeding frenzy exactly, but it is the dinner hour after all, the end of a workweek, and the din was frenetic. I did my part, inadvertently helping the houseflies reproduce by watering indoor plants from the rainbarrel, so lots of tiny wiggling larvae were given a sheltered place to incubate and hatch. Now the tolerable outdoor insect population has colonized the back room of the house, where they have become intolerable. I spent hours on Saturday swatting and disposing of the gross little piles of fly carcasses, depositing them in the compost where they could at last fulfill their destiny and do some good.
The flies were especially thick around the night-blooming cereus on the corner table in the den, where the long, curving stem drapes over a lampshade, keeping the leathery leaves from hanging down to the floor. Just this week little tassels began to appear on the tips of three or four leaves as the cereus began to bloom. I was careful not to swat flies too close and ruin everything.
While I stayed home alone for the weekend, Gven and her sister Nyet went to a small family reunion near the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. There had been some years of estrangement in their youth between the sisters and their father, and it has taken the better part of a lifetime to make up for lost time. Some things are still unresolved, unsaid, and unacknowledged. He made some life choices as a relatively young father, and it seems as though others have suffered the consequences. The small, casual weekend gathering with their half-siblings seems to have gone well. With no aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozens to make it into a Big Event, they achieved a comfort level where they could speak and be heard more openly.
Sunday was a long, emotionally exhausting day for Gven. I am grateful that Nyet was there to keep her big sister company, bear witness, and provide support. They got a late start coming home, so it was dark by the time they got to western Pennsylvania and collided with a deer that leaped across two lanes of I-70 in front of the white Honda, bounced off the hood and right-front fender, and fell into the ditch. Gven slowed down and pulled over to the shoulder while other cars steered around the flying deer. A witness stopped and called the police, who did not issue a report because it was an Act of Nature.
No humans were injured, but Gven was pretty upset. The car was drivable, so Nyet drove the rest of the way home to central Swingstate. I was in touch by phone but largely uninvolved. I came home from work the next day and pulled weeds in the side bed along Plum Street that get neglected until it begins to look like nobody lives there. Gven and Nyet spent more quality time together processing their weekend with their half-family, discussing the deer incident and how close they had come to a much worse ending.
What to do about the car would ultimately rest with the insurance claims department, and it was taking State Farm and their friends at Collision One several days to come up with an estimate of the damage, repair costs, and the fate of the Honda. Nyet caught her flight home to Atlanta on Wednesday. Gven returned to her regular work schedule while we traded off the use of one vehicle. Good bicycling weather made that easier.
I took a vacation day on Friday, so I was out in the yard holding a shovel when Gven gave me the news that the Honda was totalled. Okay, if that's what the number crunchers say, then that's what it is. It had been a good, reliable car for a little over five years, and Gven was somewhat attached to it, even more so after it warded off a big deer from crashing through the windshield, punctured a radiator and battery, and still made it home in one piece.
While we pondered our options regarding a new car, I was busy transplanting lamb's ear from a crowded border in back to a bare strip in front, pulled a few weeds, and mowed the little trapezoid of grass. When I bumped a railroad tie between the lawn and the bed with the mower, I disturbed the nest of yellowjackets, and they were on me within seconds. I backed away swatting, but they kept coming, persistent little buggers.
Is it because of the dog days of summer? Later that afternoon I was weeding a bed of daylilies near the house and disturbed another nest of yellowjackets. This time one of them got me good, a direct hit in the meaty part of the base of the thumb, and within minutes my hand was swelling halfway up the wrist in a perfect rectangle of puffy flesh. I wrapped it in a cold pack, took some ibuprofen, and sat down in the rocker for a nap. Weeds or no weeds, it was clearly time to retreat on that front.
I can't begin to name the species of birds that make this quarter-acre their home and/or feeding ground. Some are flying solo, some with a partner nearby, some in competition with a rival for a partner, and some in a collective wave of mass movement from one tree to another. A squirrel was attacked by a nest of yellowjackets, the unintended consequences of foraging for its own nesting material, and you should have seen him jump sideways when he got stung by those aggressive little beasts. None of your beeswax!
I wouldn't call it a feeding frenzy exactly, but it is the dinner hour after all, the end of a workweek, and the din was frenetic. I did my part, inadvertently helping the houseflies reproduce by watering indoor plants from the rainbarrel, so lots of tiny wiggling larvae were given a sheltered place to incubate and hatch. Now the tolerable outdoor insect population has colonized the back room of the house, where they have become intolerable. I spent hours on Saturday swatting and disposing of the gross little piles of fly carcasses, depositing them in the compost where they could at last fulfill their destiny and do some good.
The flies were especially thick around the night-blooming cereus on the corner table in the den, where the long, curving stem drapes over a lampshade, keeping the leathery leaves from hanging down to the floor. Just this week little tassels began to appear on the tips of three or four leaves as the cereus began to bloom. I was careful not to swat flies too close and ruin everything.
While I stayed home alone for the weekend, Gven and her sister Nyet went to a small family reunion near the Antietam battlefield in Maryland. There had been some years of estrangement in their youth between the sisters and their father, and it has taken the better part of a lifetime to make up for lost time. Some things are still unresolved, unsaid, and unacknowledged. He made some life choices as a relatively young father, and it seems as though others have suffered the consequences. The small, casual weekend gathering with their half-siblings seems to have gone well. With no aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozens to make it into a Big Event, they achieved a comfort level where they could speak and be heard more openly.
Sunday was a long, emotionally exhausting day for Gven. I am grateful that Nyet was there to keep her big sister company, bear witness, and provide support. They got a late start coming home, so it was dark by the time they got to western Pennsylvania and collided with a deer that leaped across two lanes of I-70 in front of the white Honda, bounced off the hood and right-front fender, and fell into the ditch. Gven slowed down and pulled over to the shoulder while other cars steered around the flying deer. A witness stopped and called the police, who did not issue a report because it was an Act of Nature.
No humans were injured, but Gven was pretty upset. The car was drivable, so Nyet drove the rest of the way home to central Swingstate. I was in touch by phone but largely uninvolved. I came home from work the next day and pulled weeds in the side bed along Plum Street that get neglected until it begins to look like nobody lives there. Gven and Nyet spent more quality time together processing their weekend with their half-family, discussing the deer incident and how close they had come to a much worse ending.
What to do about the car would ultimately rest with the insurance claims department, and it was taking State Farm and their friends at Collision One several days to come up with an estimate of the damage, repair costs, and the fate of the Honda. Nyet caught her flight home to Atlanta on Wednesday. Gven returned to her regular work schedule while we traded off the use of one vehicle. Good bicycling weather made that easier.
I took a vacation day on Friday, so I was out in the yard holding a shovel when Gven gave me the news that the Honda was totalled. Okay, if that's what the number crunchers say, then that's what it is. It had been a good, reliable car for a little over five years, and Gven was somewhat attached to it, even more so after it warded off a big deer from crashing through the windshield, punctured a radiator and battery, and still made it home in one piece.
While we pondered our options regarding a new car, I was busy transplanting lamb's ear from a crowded border in back to a bare strip in front, pulled a few weeds, and mowed the little trapezoid of grass. When I bumped a railroad tie between the lawn and the bed with the mower, I disturbed the nest of yellowjackets, and they were on me within seconds. I backed away swatting, but they kept coming, persistent little buggers.
Is it because of the dog days of summer? Later that afternoon I was weeding a bed of daylilies near the house and disturbed another nest of yellowjackets. This time one of them got me good, a direct hit in the meaty part of the base of the thumb, and within minutes my hand was swelling halfway up the wrist in a perfect rectangle of puffy flesh. I wrapped it in a cold pack, took some ibuprofen, and sat down in the rocker for a nap. Weeds or no weeds, it was clearly time to retreat on that front.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
campin'
Gven Golly and I have been camping before, so it was a minor challenge to set up the tent after dark in a light rain. We're not "serious" outdoor people, and we haven't done any hard-core wilderness survival training, but in most settings we kind of know what to do. Many factors contributed to our getting a late start on our journey from Methodistville, Ohio, to Mancelona, Michigan. We chose to stop for supper at the little restaurant at the Waters exit off I-75 just as it was getting dark. The hot pork sandwich with mashed potatoes and gravy was worth the short delay.
We had breakfast at the nearby golf course restaurant/pro shop/bar by special arrangement, since we had slept late and missed the 11:00 cutoff time. They were happy to waive the restriction when we made it clear we were hoping for a real breakfast, and the ham and cheese omelet hit the spot. The lunchtime clientele was a study in Michigan contrasts: Republican retirees at their laptops complaining about how Obama wants to tax their capital gains and give it to the illegal immigrants; middle-aged biker chicks in leather leggings and plunging necklines blaring music on their iPhones; wholesome young families from Ludington on vacation up north in their school sweatshirts; and us, a couple of immigrants from Ohio figuring out what to do instead of bicycling and canoing when it's 55 and rainy.
The drizzle continued most of the day, so we checked on the property that Grandma and Grandpa Golly gave us, just to see what it looks like in July, and collected a little semi-dry firewood while we were there. We drove over to Lake Lapiz, one of our favorite spots, but it was too cold and damp to swim or canoe, so we bought a few supplies at the little store in Alba and looked for tie-downs at the hardware store in Mancelona to try to upgrade our roped-down canoe-carrying setup, but without success. If ropes is what we've got, then ropes will have to do. They turned out to be perfectly adequate, even though tying and untying repeatedly was a bit of a task - grumble grumble #&@%$!*.
Perhaps the best decision of the day was to go ahead and put the canoe in the water, rain or no rain. As soon as we started to float out the cove past the lily pads onto the lake, I knew it was the right thing to do, even as we paddled against a brisk wind across the lake - why? - to get to the other side, of course. It was instructive to see up close what people have tastefully done - and not done - with their lakefront property to keep it clean and unspoiled. The slow, steady paddling warmed us up and lifted our spirits; there's nothing like floating in a little boat to change your perspective on things.
Thus revived, it was time for dinner, so we got a fire going with a little help from self-starting charcoal - which is cheating, you know, but what the hell, it's raining - and in no time had pasta with pesto, sweet red peppers, cherry tomatoes, Jarlsberg cheese, and red wine. The cooking fire morphed into a long-lasting campfire, which gave us something to poke while listing all the places we have camped over the years.
There was Hillsville, Virginia, 1976; Strawberry Mountain Farm, Georgia, 1977, in the tent that Gven sewed herself. There was Zion, Illinois, 1978; Door County, Wisconsin, and Marquette, Michigan, 1980; Cade's Cove, Tennessee, 1981; Uwharrie National Forest, North Carolina, 1982; Walker County, Georgia, 1983; and Newberry, South Carolina, 1984. Then not so much when the kids were little; Cade's Cove again with the preteens Jessi and Zelda, 1995; John Bryan State Park, Ohio, with Jessi, 1997; then Antrim County, Michigan, 2007, 2008, 2009, and counting.
You'd think we'd have it down by now. You'd think. But no, we're still improvising and experimenting in a long-term quest to find the most difficult way to do the simplest things with the least possible preparation and minimal equipment. Sleeping on cots this year, instead of on the ground, is a major concession to modernity.
The weather broke on Sunday, so after breakfast (campfire oatmeal, fruit, coffee) we decided to go to Traverse City and up the Leelanau Peninsula. I hadn't been there in many years, and Gven was oohing and aahing half the way there, and it's true, it is a picturesque drive up M-22 along the rim of Grand Traverse Bay. There were a few sailboats out on the water, but a lot of people were just lounging on their boats sitting in the harbor and enjoying the sunshine. It's been a cool year so far. We stopped for a picnic lunch in Northport and headed back by way of Sutton's Bay. Since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to find the winery that a couple of high school friends recently bought, but as luck would have it, closing time on Sunday is 5:00 and we got there at 5:02.
I knocked on the door anyway, and who should open it but my friend Heron Sherrick, who remarkably recognized me right away and invited us in to join a wine tasting party already in progress. We met the other workers and sampled a few of the sparkling wines that are their specialty. Heron called her husband Lou Stang, also a Groves Falcon, class of '69, and Lou showed us around the place while we caught up on the last 40 years while sipping their product. It was all an unexpected pleasure, and their hospitality at the end of a long workday was almost an embarrassment of riches.
Heron and Lou recommended Apache Trout Grill, so that was our next stop for dinner. We had a view of the water from our cocktail table by the bar, which beats an hour and a half wait, and the walleye with garlic mashed potatoes was excellent. It was also fun eavesdropping on the conversations of golfers and tourists from Green Bay sharing Packers lore and other lies. We had some time to kill and were in no hurry to get back to camp, so we walked up Front Street and found a decent bookstore with a cafe and, briefly, a piano player.
In spite of our new cots, sleeping was still a challenge, more due to the well-ventilated tent than anything else. It was chilly at night, so we had to wear layers and burrow down into our mummy bags, and this is July! We also had to get an early start Monday morning for the trip home, so we decamped at first light and hit the road - but not before a ritual dip in Lake Lapiz, which was completely refreshing and made the rest of the seven-hour drive bearable. We got home just in time for me to make it to my 6:00 class in the park. Although I looked a little the worse for wear, I felt renewed and invigorated after a couple of days away.
We had breakfast at the nearby golf course restaurant/pro shop/bar by special arrangement, since we had slept late and missed the 11:00 cutoff time. They were happy to waive the restriction when we made it clear we were hoping for a real breakfast, and the ham and cheese omelet hit the spot. The lunchtime clientele was a study in Michigan contrasts: Republican retirees at their laptops complaining about how Obama wants to tax their capital gains and give it to the illegal immigrants; middle-aged biker chicks in leather leggings and plunging necklines blaring music on their iPhones; wholesome young families from Ludington on vacation up north in their school sweatshirts; and us, a couple of immigrants from Ohio figuring out what to do instead of bicycling and canoing when it's 55 and rainy.
The drizzle continued most of the day, so we checked on the property that Grandma and Grandpa Golly gave us, just to see what it looks like in July, and collected a little semi-dry firewood while we were there. We drove over to Lake Lapiz, one of our favorite spots, but it was too cold and damp to swim or canoe, so we bought a few supplies at the little store in Alba and looked for tie-downs at the hardware store in Mancelona to try to upgrade our roped-down canoe-carrying setup, but without success. If ropes is what we've got, then ropes will have to do. They turned out to be perfectly adequate, even though tying and untying repeatedly was a bit of a task - grumble grumble #&@%$!*.
Perhaps the best decision of the day was to go ahead and put the canoe in the water, rain or no rain. As soon as we started to float out the cove past the lily pads onto the lake, I knew it was the right thing to do, even as we paddled against a brisk wind across the lake - why? - to get to the other side, of course. It was instructive to see up close what people have tastefully done - and not done - with their lakefront property to keep it clean and unspoiled. The slow, steady paddling warmed us up and lifted our spirits; there's nothing like floating in a little boat to change your perspective on things.
Thus revived, it was time for dinner, so we got a fire going with a little help from self-starting charcoal - which is cheating, you know, but what the hell, it's raining - and in no time had pasta with pesto, sweet red peppers, cherry tomatoes, Jarlsberg cheese, and red wine. The cooking fire morphed into a long-lasting campfire, which gave us something to poke while listing all the places we have camped over the years.
There was Hillsville, Virginia, 1976; Strawberry Mountain Farm, Georgia, 1977, in the tent that Gven sewed herself. There was Zion, Illinois, 1978; Door County, Wisconsin, and Marquette, Michigan, 1980; Cade's Cove, Tennessee, 1981; Uwharrie National Forest, North Carolina, 1982; Walker County, Georgia, 1983; and Newberry, South Carolina, 1984. Then not so much when the kids were little; Cade's Cove again with the preteens Jessi and Zelda, 1995; John Bryan State Park, Ohio, with Jessi, 1997; then Antrim County, Michigan, 2007, 2008, 2009, and counting.
You'd think we'd have it down by now. You'd think. But no, we're still improvising and experimenting in a long-term quest to find the most difficult way to do the simplest things with the least possible preparation and minimal equipment. Sleeping on cots this year, instead of on the ground, is a major concession to modernity.
The weather broke on Sunday, so after breakfast (campfire oatmeal, fruit, coffee) we decided to go to Traverse City and up the Leelanau Peninsula. I hadn't been there in many years, and Gven was oohing and aahing half the way there, and it's true, it is a picturesque drive up M-22 along the rim of Grand Traverse Bay. There were a few sailboats out on the water, but a lot of people were just lounging on their boats sitting in the harbor and enjoying the sunshine. It's been a cool year so far. We stopped for a picnic lunch in Northport and headed back by way of Sutton's Bay. Since we were in the neighborhood, we decided to find the winery that a couple of high school friends recently bought, but as luck would have it, closing time on Sunday is 5:00 and we got there at 5:02.
I knocked on the door anyway, and who should open it but my friend Heron Sherrick, who remarkably recognized me right away and invited us in to join a wine tasting party already in progress. We met the other workers and sampled a few of the sparkling wines that are their specialty. Heron called her husband Lou Stang, also a Groves Falcon, class of '69, and Lou showed us around the place while we caught up on the last 40 years while sipping their product. It was all an unexpected pleasure, and their hospitality at the end of a long workday was almost an embarrassment of riches.
Heron and Lou recommended Apache Trout Grill, so that was our next stop for dinner. We had a view of the water from our cocktail table by the bar, which beats an hour and a half wait, and the walleye with garlic mashed potatoes was excellent. It was also fun eavesdropping on the conversations of golfers and tourists from Green Bay sharing Packers lore and other lies. We had some time to kill and were in no hurry to get back to camp, so we walked up Front Street and found a decent bookstore with a cafe and, briefly, a piano player.
In spite of our new cots, sleeping was still a challenge, more due to the well-ventilated tent than anything else. It was chilly at night, so we had to wear layers and burrow down into our mummy bags, and this is July! We also had to get an early start Monday morning for the trip home, so we decamped at first light and hit the road - but not before a ritual dip in Lake Lapiz, which was completely refreshing and made the rest of the seven-hour drive bearable. We got home just in time for me to make it to my 6:00 class in the park. Although I looked a little the worse for wear, I felt renewed and invigorated after a couple of days away.
Thursday, July 09, 2009
Stuff
In my ongoing quest to amass more material possessions, I have made great strides of late, acquiring a used bike from a guy in Pickerington, a truck cap from a guy in Jersey, a new pair of shoes at a little store near the mall, new glasses from my new optometrist, and a new belt tensioner from Joe's Service in Methodistville. WOO HOO! This is exciting stuff.
Each of these purchases deserves its own unique story, and each narrative of happy economic exchange unfolded in a peculiar, unpredictable way that's beyond my storytelling ability. For a nonshopper like myself, it's a freaking revelation to observe the minute details of seeking and finding just the right item, and I can only begin to sense the adrenaline that must course through the veins of a serious consumer stalking the wild commodity in the great Amerikan marketplace.
There was one day last week when a Vonnegut-esque chronosynclastic infundibulum occurred right on State Street in uptown Methodistville. I had dropped off Hank, my truck, at Joe's Service to have the mechanic fix the annoying whine from the serpentine belt, which had been getting worse for months and I couldn't tolerate anymore, and he diagnosed the problem as a worn-out tensioner just below the nonfunctioning air conditioner. I had put my lovely new dark-green Trek in the back of the truck and rode it the rest of the way to work, already feeling a bit of the materialist magic.
When Joe called me at work and said the truck was ready, I rode le Trek back to the shop, paid the bill, and drove the quiet truck up the street in air-conditioned comfort wearing my brand new German-made, cork-insoled, not-yet-broken-in, Zirkon-encrusted size 45s, feeling like a pretty cool customer let me tell you. To top it all off, due to exquisite timing I had an appointment to pick up my new glasses from my new eye doctor at the corner of Maxtown and State. My new "progressive" lenses were waiting for me, and I picked up a new fake leather case to put them in, just for good measure, dark-green to match the handsome new/used bike.
I'm here today to bear witness to the power of the greatest recreational drug of all, consuming goods in the marketplace. Can I get an amen?
Each of these purchases deserves its own unique story, and each narrative of happy economic exchange unfolded in a peculiar, unpredictable way that's beyond my storytelling ability. For a nonshopper like myself, it's a freaking revelation to observe the minute details of seeking and finding just the right item, and I can only begin to sense the adrenaline that must course through the veins of a serious consumer stalking the wild commodity in the great Amerikan marketplace.
There was one day last week when a Vonnegut-esque chronosynclastic infundibulum occurred right on State Street in uptown Methodistville. I had dropped off Hank, my truck, at Joe's Service to have the mechanic fix the annoying whine from the serpentine belt, which had been getting worse for months and I couldn't tolerate anymore, and he diagnosed the problem as a worn-out tensioner just below the nonfunctioning air conditioner. I had put my lovely new dark-green Trek in the back of the truck and rode it the rest of the way to work, already feeling a bit of the materialist magic.
When Joe called me at work and said the truck was ready, I rode le Trek back to the shop, paid the bill, and drove the quiet truck up the street in air-conditioned comfort wearing my brand new German-made, cork-insoled, not-yet-broken-in, Zirkon-encrusted size 45s, feeling like a pretty cool customer let me tell you. To top it all off, due to exquisite timing I had an appointment to pick up my new glasses from my new eye doctor at the corner of Maxtown and State. My new "progressive" lenses were waiting for me, and I picked up a new fake leather case to put them in, just for good measure, dark-green to match the handsome new/used bike.
I'm here today to bear witness to the power of the greatest recreational drug of all, consuming goods in the marketplace. Can I get an amen?
Monday, July 06, 2009
Character development
One of the things I like about getting out once in a while - out of the house, out of the cubicle, out of the everyday rut - is the opportunity to run into characters like Ali. I talked to a guy named Ali - he pronounced it like Ollie - the other day while drinking green tea downtown. He quoted Milan Kundera as saying that the three most important things in life are eating, reproducing, and eliminating. You have to eat to live, so obviously it's worth paying attention to. Most people, for widely different reasons, would agree that maintaining the human species is a high priority; some are more actively engaged in that endeavor than others, while many are deeply involved in either increasing or decreasing the probability that they personally cause the birth rate to rise. What is easily ignored, forgotten, or denied is the excretory imperative, but it causes havoc when it ceases to function, shall we say, smoothly.
I don't recall what prompted this exchange or the ensuing conversation about politics and publishing and what not to believe, but it was an unexpected pleasure. Ali had seen me around, and I had seen him around, but we had never met or had occasion to talk. Now I know a little bit about his literary tastes, his politics, his sense of humor, and even his journalistic standards. He's about my age but has probably been many more places, and he strikes me as nobody's fool. My personal narrative has been increased and enriched by one additional flesh-and-blood character. Besides that, it gives me something to write about.
This in turn provides me with a means to practice what I think of as the Natalie Goldberg-David Martin School of Creative Writing, which can succinctly be summarized as follows: Write something every day. That's it. You don't have to show it to anyone, publish it, polish it, edit, hone, dress it up, or endlessly redraft your precious piece of art. You don't even have to read it yourself (lucky you) or ask your friends to read it (lucky them). It doesn't have to meet your own or anyone else's high critical standards, stylistic preconceptions, or baseless expectations of what constitutes "important" content. Consequently you don't need to have anything to say. You just have to know how to operate a pen, pencil, or keyboard.
What happens in the process - and I'm assuming that something happens - is that writing something - writing anything - changes the writer, regardless of what else happens to the ink stains on the page or pixels on the screen. Let's not even think about changing anyone else's mind, reaching out to our fellow Amerikans, or, pardon the expression, making a difference in the world. Writing as a practice, as opposed to writing strictly to produce a certain outcome, works on the mind of the writer. That's all it is, and that's enough, and that's what makes it a practice rather than a project. It's probably better if you don't know ahead of time what will come of it. Mostly likely nothing much.
I don't recall what prompted this exchange or the ensuing conversation about politics and publishing and what not to believe, but it was an unexpected pleasure. Ali had seen me around, and I had seen him around, but we had never met or had occasion to talk. Now I know a little bit about his literary tastes, his politics, his sense of humor, and even his journalistic standards. He's about my age but has probably been many more places, and he strikes me as nobody's fool. My personal narrative has been increased and enriched by one additional flesh-and-blood character. Besides that, it gives me something to write about.
This in turn provides me with a means to practice what I think of as the Natalie Goldberg-David Martin School of Creative Writing, which can succinctly be summarized as follows: Write something every day. That's it. You don't have to show it to anyone, publish it, polish it, edit, hone, dress it up, or endlessly redraft your precious piece of art. You don't even have to read it yourself (lucky you) or ask your friends to read it (lucky them). It doesn't have to meet your own or anyone else's high critical standards, stylistic preconceptions, or baseless expectations of what constitutes "important" content. Consequently you don't need to have anything to say. You just have to know how to operate a pen, pencil, or keyboard.
What happens in the process - and I'm assuming that something happens - is that writing something - writing anything - changes the writer, regardless of what else happens to the ink stains on the page or pixels on the screen. Let's not even think about changing anyone else's mind, reaching out to our fellow Amerikans, or, pardon the expression, making a difference in the world. Writing as a practice, as opposed to writing strictly to produce a certain outcome, works on the mind of the writer. That's all it is, and that's enough, and that's what makes it a practice rather than a project. It's probably better if you don't know ahead of time what will come of it. Mostly likely nothing much.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
fanfare for the common sweat beetle
In the great Amerikan tradition of making work out of play, this Independence Day weekend is an appropriate time to analyze the shit out of another great Amerikan tradition, the proper use of leisure time. And what better, mind-numbingly reductionistic way to weight one's everyday life choices than to make a balance sheet of what's right and what's wrong in my world?
RIGHT
1. The geraniums look glorious in their hanging baskets and window boxes.
2. The weather today is fabulous.
3. My knees don't hurt.
WRONG
1. This Gevalia mail-order coffee is the worst dreck I've ever tasted.
2. Messes in laundry room and kitchen refuse to clean themselves up.
RIGHT
4. My pocket knife got the old beach umbrella on the patio table unstuck, so it will both open and close.
5. Cardinals, chickadees, robins, bluejays, swallows, and crows coexist in this humble but verdant quarter acre. What's wrong with them, don't they have any ideology?
WRONG
3. The weeds I have tolerated, overlooked, or ignored are taking over the flowerbeds.
4. My Michigan vacation pipedream isn't going to happen this year or this lifetime.
RIGHT
6. Isabel the old cat takes a nap on the patio next to an old-fashioned steel lawn chair with spring-like tubular arms and legs.
7. Behold the daylilies of the back bed by the garage, trumpeting their existence in joyous yellow and orange.
8. Tendrils of bean plants have located the poles and know what to do.
9. I can choose which columnist to talk to at the cocktail party that is the Sunday New York Times.
WRONG
5. This peace will be broken tomorrow by well-intentioned crowds, parades, bad music, traffic, explosions, jingoistic rituals and self-congratulatory rhetoric.
6. I screwed up some early measurements of a project I'm working on, so nothing is truly square.
7. In the corners of my consciousness are shadows of problems that I will never solve.
RIGHT
10. I have the good sense to buy new lumber instead of making do with some scraps I had lying around, then I find some cheap little brackets at Home Depot that will secure a 2x6 firmly to a 2x8 at a right angle and save my bacon.
11. A simple flour tortilla, warmed on cast iron, with hummous and cherry tomatoes, with a cool Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald handcrafted porter tastes mighty good at the end of the day.
It's official: Right beats Wrong 11-7. I guess it was a good day.
RIGHT
1. The geraniums look glorious in their hanging baskets and window boxes.
2. The weather today is fabulous.
3. My knees don't hurt.
WRONG
1. This Gevalia mail-order coffee is the worst dreck I've ever tasted.
2. Messes in laundry room and kitchen refuse to clean themselves up.
RIGHT
4. My pocket knife got the old beach umbrella on the patio table unstuck, so it will both open and close.
5. Cardinals, chickadees, robins, bluejays, swallows, and crows coexist in this humble but verdant quarter acre. What's wrong with them, don't they have any ideology?
WRONG
3. The weeds I have tolerated, overlooked, or ignored are taking over the flowerbeds.
4. My Michigan vacation pipedream isn't going to happen this year or this lifetime.
RIGHT
6. Isabel the old cat takes a nap on the patio next to an old-fashioned steel lawn chair with spring-like tubular arms and legs.
7. Behold the daylilies of the back bed by the garage, trumpeting their existence in joyous yellow and orange.
8. Tendrils of bean plants have located the poles and know what to do.
9. I can choose which columnist to talk to at the cocktail party that is the Sunday New York Times.
WRONG
5. This peace will be broken tomorrow by well-intentioned crowds, parades, bad music, traffic, explosions, jingoistic rituals and self-congratulatory rhetoric.
6. I screwed up some early measurements of a project I'm working on, so nothing is truly square.
7. In the corners of my consciousness are shadows of problems that I will never solve.
RIGHT
10. I have the good sense to buy new lumber instead of making do with some scraps I had lying around, then I find some cheap little brackets at Home Depot that will secure a 2x6 firmly to a 2x8 at a right angle and save my bacon.
11. A simple flour tortilla, warmed on cast iron, with hummous and cherry tomatoes, with a cool Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald handcrafted porter tastes mighty good at the end of the day.
It's official: Right beats Wrong 11-7. I guess it was a good day.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Poser!
I'm increasingly convinced that posturing works. In the words of a wise and experienced teacher, "Fake it till you make it." What I think she means by that is, roughly, practicing the outward form of the kind of life you admire, even in a superficial and flawed way, can bring about some significant changes.
If you don't achieve anything else, the act of posing as [insert desired character attributes here] aligns the body, outward appearance, and attitude in a certain way that gives the impression that you actually know what you're doing. Assume the posture. Do it again. Repeat until all the weight-bearing structures and all their supporting levers and pulleys adapt.
On one level, posturing is a practical way to replace one set of habits with another, hipper and more enlightened, set of habits, kind of like buying new clothes can make the same old dork feel like a new man for about an hour. Sometimes the shoe fits, and you can wear the new persona immediately. (This has happened maybe once that I can remember.) Other times the fu shits, you wash it off and try again.
Usually it takes a long time (gongfu) to take on the attributes of the form, the guru, or the role model, so there is a gap between the objective, fumbling 'me' and the ideal, integrated 'it'. My hips don't want to rotate wide enough, my head doesn't want to rest vertically on top of my spine, my mind won't focus with crystaline clarity. There's a reaction (oops) and a resumption (there), followed by a relapse (damn) and a reset (okay), and so on indefinitely. This chain of events can resemble a rote drill more than a peaceful meditation, and there might not be much difference, at least for a beginning poser.
I suppose I've been posturing on and off for forty-plus years, and my skill in posturing has improved markedly. As a little kid I was just Sven. My friends knew me and other people didn't. Then at some point, probably adolescence, I decided to be somebody, so it became necessary to act the part of an athlete, a cool guy, a writer, a responsible young man, a deep thinker, or whatever attracted girls. If you're paying attention, there are role models from whom to pick up moves, and if you're not paying attention, well, never mind.
A big part of it in my circumscribed world was body language. Standing, sitting, or walking a certain way, physically placing the muscles, bones, and joints in a certain relationship with gravity, conditions malleable soft tissues, brain, and nervous system with the know-how and disposition to act like the jocks, the hipsters, the guys chicks dig. We were all in training, and for those who persevere, the body takes on the shape of the aspiration. Practice, practice, practice, and hope it takes.
But you knew that. Did you also know that posturing is related to all these wonderful words in that fabulous lexical landscape we call the English language?
A. positive
B. impose
C. posit
D. expose
E. oppose
F. component
G. dispose
H. position
I. postpone
Now, use all of them in a sentence, you poser.
If you don't achieve anything else, the act of posing as [insert desired character attributes here] aligns the body, outward appearance, and attitude in a certain way that gives the impression that you actually know what you're doing. Assume the posture. Do it again. Repeat until all the weight-bearing structures and all their supporting levers and pulleys adapt.
On one level, posturing is a practical way to replace one set of habits with another, hipper and more enlightened, set of habits, kind of like buying new clothes can make the same old dork feel like a new man for about an hour. Sometimes the shoe fits, and you can wear the new persona immediately. (This has happened maybe once that I can remember.) Other times the fu shits, you wash it off and try again.
Usually it takes a long time (gongfu) to take on the attributes of the form, the guru, or the role model, so there is a gap between the objective, fumbling 'me' and the ideal, integrated 'it'. My hips don't want to rotate wide enough, my head doesn't want to rest vertically on top of my spine, my mind won't focus with crystaline clarity. There's a reaction (oops) and a resumption (there), followed by a relapse (damn) and a reset (okay), and so on indefinitely. This chain of events can resemble a rote drill more than a peaceful meditation, and there might not be much difference, at least for a beginning poser.
I suppose I've been posturing on and off for forty-plus years, and my skill in posturing has improved markedly. As a little kid I was just Sven. My friends knew me and other people didn't. Then at some point, probably adolescence, I decided to be somebody, so it became necessary to act the part of an athlete, a cool guy, a writer, a responsible young man, a deep thinker, or whatever attracted girls. If you're paying attention, there are role models from whom to pick up moves, and if you're not paying attention, well, never mind.
A big part of it in my circumscribed world was body language. Standing, sitting, or walking a certain way, physically placing the muscles, bones, and joints in a certain relationship with gravity, conditions malleable soft tissues, brain, and nervous system with the know-how and disposition to act like the jocks, the hipsters, the guys chicks dig. We were all in training, and for those who persevere, the body takes on the shape of the aspiration. Practice, practice, practice, and hope it takes.
But you knew that. Did you also know that posturing is related to all these wonderful words in that fabulous lexical landscape we call the English language?
A. positive
B. impose
C. posit
D. expose
E. oppose
F. component
G. dispose
H. position
I. postpone
Now, use all of them in a sentence, you poser.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Have fun, be good, take a nap
When we were kids, Mom would feed us breakfast and send us off to school in the morning with the admonition, "Have fun, be good, learn lots." Concise, to the point, and very Helen. I went to see Mom and Dad for a weekend recently, and now her mantra is "Have fun, be good, take a nap."
I'm beginning to learn how to take a break at the appropriate moment, step back from an issue, and just chill. There was one such moment, I think it was Day 3, when something random and unintentional got to me. Maybe I was tired, or I missed my own space, whatever. I stopped what I was doing, took my laptop out on the deck and listened to Simon and Garfunkel. It was restful and a source of stimulation at the same time, allowing me to step back from my reaction to Mom's reaction to Dad's reaction to some other dysfunctional faux pas in the peasant family dynamics. I'm not going to over-analyze it, just acknowledge it.
The whole visit went well, and I'm grateful that I can hang out with my aging parents at their house in their comfort zone and their daily rhythms, enjoy their company, and get a couple of chores done. Dad had a project or two underway, as usual, and he welcomed my participation as much as I welcomed having something tangible to do. That kind of reciprocity has not always been the case, so we seem to be making progress in that area.
The deck he built with the help of a friend has deteriorated over the course of 18 years of sun, wind, rain, and hickory trees, so Dad was replacing the spindles of the railing enclosing the north and west sides of the deck. My first job was to paint the new 1x1-inch 4-foot hardwood spindles--after first artfully arranging then on a dropcloth on the floor of the garage. This was nice solitary work that I could do in a deep squat taiji style like some Chinese-Norwegian Jackson Pollack.
My second job was to drill and screw the spindles onto the railing and deck. It's not rocket science, but as with any project, there are plenty of ways to get it wrong while measuring, spacing, and attaching stuff to other stuff, whether you're 12 feet up a ladder or bending over from above. This phase of the work required some communication, as well as trading off drill and screwdrivers, so Dad and I carried on a focused dialog as we worked through the process step by step.
Because Dad is 88 (and I'm not), I handled the ladder climbing, securing the bottom of the spindles to the deck frame while he attached the tops to the railing. Because he has degrees in industrial arts and a lifetime of experience in building and fixing things, he had a pretty clear idea of how to go about the task safely and effectively. Because I'm not 12 (or 18, or 24, or 30) anymore and have been to school and work awhile myself, I was able to offer a few suggestions on how we could organize and execute the work, though I usually deferred to his judgment. Because he recognized my contributions and valued my efforts, he listened to my ideas with an open mind and heart and mostly let me do my part my way.
By the end of the day, we had one side of the deck done and were ready for a vodka and Squirt. Mom had cooked a fine dinner of country ribs and scalloped potatoes, and I think I ate enough for three people. The deck railing was only one job in a to-do list compiled by a local construction expert, and I spent a little time reading through the other repairs that would bring their house up to marketable condition. Not that anyone is in a big hurry to sell the house and move to a condo up the road. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The roof figures prominently in about half of the list, and a quick look from the back deck provided a clue to the problem. I had some downtime the next day, so I climbed up on the roof with a broom intending to spend half an hour sweeping off debris from the trees that tower over The Little House on the Fairway. You guessed it, half an hour turned into half a day, and a quick sweep turned into a sparring match with a ton of damp hickory droppings, gravity, the pitch of the roof, and the hot Tennessee sun. Luckily I kept my maize and blue Michigan baseball cap on, so I maintained a cool head and didn't succomb to heat exhaustion, vertigo, or delerium. My legs got a workout, and the accumulation of debris in low spots showed me how a minor design flaw led to the need for some of the repairs on the list. I'm looking forward to the next project.
I'm beginning to learn how to take a break at the appropriate moment, step back from an issue, and just chill. There was one such moment, I think it was Day 3, when something random and unintentional got to me. Maybe I was tired, or I missed my own space, whatever. I stopped what I was doing, took my laptop out on the deck and listened to Simon and Garfunkel. It was restful and a source of stimulation at the same time, allowing me to step back from my reaction to Mom's reaction to Dad's reaction to some other dysfunctional faux pas in the peasant family dynamics. I'm not going to over-analyze it, just acknowledge it.
The whole visit went well, and I'm grateful that I can hang out with my aging parents at their house in their comfort zone and their daily rhythms, enjoy their company, and get a couple of chores done. Dad had a project or two underway, as usual, and he welcomed my participation as much as I welcomed having something tangible to do. That kind of reciprocity has not always been the case, so we seem to be making progress in that area.
The deck he built with the help of a friend has deteriorated over the course of 18 years of sun, wind, rain, and hickory trees, so Dad was replacing the spindles of the railing enclosing the north and west sides of the deck. My first job was to paint the new 1x1-inch 4-foot hardwood spindles--after first artfully arranging then on a dropcloth on the floor of the garage. This was nice solitary work that I could do in a deep squat taiji style like some Chinese-Norwegian Jackson Pollack.
My second job was to drill and screw the spindles onto the railing and deck. It's not rocket science, but as with any project, there are plenty of ways to get it wrong while measuring, spacing, and attaching stuff to other stuff, whether you're 12 feet up a ladder or bending over from above. This phase of the work required some communication, as well as trading off drill and screwdrivers, so Dad and I carried on a focused dialog as we worked through the process step by step.
Because Dad is 88 (and I'm not), I handled the ladder climbing, securing the bottom of the spindles to the deck frame while he attached the tops to the railing. Because he has degrees in industrial arts and a lifetime of experience in building and fixing things, he had a pretty clear idea of how to go about the task safely and effectively. Because I'm not 12 (or 18, or 24, or 30) anymore and have been to school and work awhile myself, I was able to offer a few suggestions on how we could organize and execute the work, though I usually deferred to his judgment. Because he recognized my contributions and valued my efforts, he listened to my ideas with an open mind and heart and mostly let me do my part my way.
By the end of the day, we had one side of the deck done and were ready for a vodka and Squirt. Mom had cooked a fine dinner of country ribs and scalloped potatoes, and I think I ate enough for three people. The deck railing was only one job in a to-do list compiled by a local construction expert, and I spent a little time reading through the other repairs that would bring their house up to marketable condition. Not that anyone is in a big hurry to sell the house and move to a condo up the road. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
The roof figures prominently in about half of the list, and a quick look from the back deck provided a clue to the problem. I had some downtime the next day, so I climbed up on the roof with a broom intending to spend half an hour sweeping off debris from the trees that tower over The Little House on the Fairway. You guessed it, half an hour turned into half a day, and a quick sweep turned into a sparring match with a ton of damp hickory droppings, gravity, the pitch of the roof, and the hot Tennessee sun. Luckily I kept my maize and blue Michigan baseball cap on, so I maintained a cool head and didn't succomb to heat exhaustion, vertigo, or delerium. My legs got a workout, and the accumulation of debris in low spots showed me how a minor design flaw led to the need for some of the repairs on the list. I'm looking forward to the next project.
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Oxygen debt
Leonard Cercone was old school. Win all your intervals, go all-out on every down, beat the other guy, even if he's your best friend. Especially if he's your best friend. Leonard Cercone was the track coach at Wylie E. Groves High School, also assistant football coach and world history teacher, in that order.
I went out for track my sophomore year, and after failing miserably in the hurdles, I tried the quarter mile because Coach had been a quarter-miler and his default setting was to run the quarter. But I didn't have the speed, so I tried the half mile. I passed people on the second lap, and Coach Cercone said, "Dunc, you're a half miler because you get stronger as you go along."
I remembered that phrase, stronger as you go along. It would help me in a lot of things that didn't come easily. I wasn't much of a half miler either, at least not on a team like ours that was loaded with talent, not to mention that I had no idea what training was all about. So I ended up a high jumper my senior year and did alright once I switched to the Fosbury flop.
Yet I still didn't know what a workout was, and it was years later, after high jumping was all over and I needed something else to do, that the concept of aerobic conditioning entered my world. Like many aspects of physical nature, it is a harsh and beautiful thing. You can strengthen your existing muscle fibers by overloading them with progressively increasing resistance. You can cause your heart and lungs to get stronger by demanding that they do more than they are prepared to do. Push the instrument and the instrument responds.
The opposite is also the case. If you decrease the resistance, muscle fibers get weaker, and if you stop using them, they atrophy. Go a week or two without asking the cardiovascular system to rise to the occasion, and the system loses the capacity to do it. Like trying to run a marathon when you've trained for 10K, at some point there's an oxygen debt, and it ain't gonna happen. If there's insufficient oxygen delivered, there's no ATP and no go.
Back in March when the weather got nice, I was riding the old Schvinn and feeling pretty confident about putting some miles on it. In my endorphin-fueled excitement, I actually thought I could bike three times a week, with one long ride on the weekend, and keep increasing the distance week by week. If I add just half an hour a week to my long ride, I'll be up to a hundred miles by summer.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Not that I seriously believed I would do that. I just saw that it was possible and briefly entertained the notion that, in the abstract, it could be done. So what happened? It rained. It got cool and windy. It wasn't 65 degrees and clear every day during April. It rained again. Note the whiny tone. I thought about riding, but I had other things to do.
Consequently, when perfect weather returned the second week of May, I saddled up old Schvinn and moseyed on up the trail, and guess what. No gas in the tank, no wind in the sails, no ATP in the muscles to climb the long, gradual, half-assed central Ohio hill on County Line Road. Use it or lose it, and in a couple of weeks I lost it.
The first day was bad, and the second day was horrible. Where I come from - and Coach Cercone would certainly endorse this - being fit has moral weight. If you let the body go all slack, this demonstrates your failure as a person and reveals an undeniable character flaw. He would give you that glare.
The third day was better, much better, as if my sins had been redeemed and I was a good person again. The fourth day I was unstoppable. Cars ate my dust, and I climbed hills in high gear. Westerville to the Park of Roses? No problemo! Legs, heart, and lungs hitting on all cylinders. Mind and body humming on all chakras. Oxygen delivered on demand, and the endorphin bar is open.
Let's see how long this lasts.
I went out for track my sophomore year, and after failing miserably in the hurdles, I tried the quarter mile because Coach had been a quarter-miler and his default setting was to run the quarter. But I didn't have the speed, so I tried the half mile. I passed people on the second lap, and Coach Cercone said, "Dunc, you're a half miler because you get stronger as you go along."
I remembered that phrase, stronger as you go along. It would help me in a lot of things that didn't come easily. I wasn't much of a half miler either, at least not on a team like ours that was loaded with talent, not to mention that I had no idea what training was all about. So I ended up a high jumper my senior year and did alright once I switched to the Fosbury flop.
Yet I still didn't know what a workout was, and it was years later, after high jumping was all over and I needed something else to do, that the concept of aerobic conditioning entered my world. Like many aspects of physical nature, it is a harsh and beautiful thing. You can strengthen your existing muscle fibers by overloading them with progressively increasing resistance. You can cause your heart and lungs to get stronger by demanding that they do more than they are prepared to do. Push the instrument and the instrument responds.
The opposite is also the case. If you decrease the resistance, muscle fibers get weaker, and if you stop using them, they atrophy. Go a week or two without asking the cardiovascular system to rise to the occasion, and the system loses the capacity to do it. Like trying to run a marathon when you've trained for 10K, at some point there's an oxygen debt, and it ain't gonna happen. If there's insufficient oxygen delivered, there's no ATP and no go.
Back in March when the weather got nice, I was riding the old Schvinn and feeling pretty confident about putting some miles on it. In my endorphin-fueled excitement, I actually thought I could bike three times a week, with one long ride on the weekend, and keep increasing the distance week by week. If I add just half an hour a week to my long ride, I'll be up to a hundred miles by summer.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Not that I seriously believed I would do that. I just saw that it was possible and briefly entertained the notion that, in the abstract, it could be done. So what happened? It rained. It got cool and windy. It wasn't 65 degrees and clear every day during April. It rained again. Note the whiny tone. I thought about riding, but I had other things to do.
Consequently, when perfect weather returned the second week of May, I saddled up old Schvinn and moseyed on up the trail, and guess what. No gas in the tank, no wind in the sails, no ATP in the muscles to climb the long, gradual, half-assed central Ohio hill on County Line Road. Use it or lose it, and in a couple of weeks I lost it.
The first day was bad, and the second day was horrible. Where I come from - and Coach Cercone would certainly endorse this - being fit has moral weight. If you let the body go all slack, this demonstrates your failure as a person and reveals an undeniable character flaw. He would give you that glare.
The third day was better, much better, as if my sins had been redeemed and I was a good person again. The fourth day I was unstoppable. Cars ate my dust, and I climbed hills in high gear. Westerville to the Park of Roses? No problemo! Legs, heart, and lungs hitting on all cylinders. Mind and body humming on all chakras. Oxygen delivered on demand, and the endorphin bar is open.
Let's see how long this lasts.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Generaniums
Just another weekend of epochal proportions. Clean the house, weed the garden, play a drum, bake bread, plant geraniums, celebrate the non-Hallmark Mother's Day holiday and the daughter's twenty-fifth birthday. Another week, another quarter-century of life as we know it. This season within a season could be named Offspring.
Every time I get the urge to be somewhere else, I am reminded how many attachments I have in central Swingstate. After topping off the compost pile with weeds in the morning, I went to the biweekly drum circle at the rec center, and I knew about half of the people there. I guess I'm not the new guy anymore. Two of three of the regulars I've seen at other events in other places, so there is more of a community-like context, which adds texture, and we'll see where, if anywhere, that goes.
Because I was in the neighborhood (and out of flour), I went to the coop, where I saw two more familiar faces. The nursery was on my way home, so I stopped to buy geraniums, and wouldn't you know it, I ran into a former co-worker who is an avid gardener. We chatted awhile - our gardens, other co-workers, my kids, her kids - and she returned to her reverie in the perennials while I picked out two flats of annuals.
After pulling more weeds - there are always more weeds - Gven and I went to Zelda's house for a birthday party. Her housemate David also had a birthday this week, so they cleaned the house and had a lot of people over. We arrived early and left early, had one drink, nibbled on Cheez-its, mixed with a few of their friends, and met a couple new ones. One, coincidentally, I had seen last weekend at a rest stop on I-80 in the middle of Pennsylvania. She was coming back from a film festival in New York, and I was on my way to New York to visit Zelda's brother Jessi. What are the odds? I figure it's the red hair.
Church on Sunday was focused on the theme of imperfection and the value of failure, in stark contrast to the safe, suburban liberalism that I see around me, which should be no surprise, since I undoubtedly project that same risk-averse attitude among that same congregation, whom I chose to hang out with, so pardon the digression. [Note to self: pick up Bruno Bettelheim's A Good Enough Parent.]
Since it was Mother's Day, after all, it was imperative that I go home and get busy potting geraniums in window boxes, the ritual that began some time in the 1980s and has become a sacred seasonal rite. The process is getting a little easier too. This time I used a square-bladed shovel to mix old potting soil in a wheel barrow, then filled several pots with soil and little plants from 4-packs, watered them in, and there you go. Just like Dad used to do back in Michigan.
I had to get it done quickly and efficiently because Gven and I had plans to go out to dinner with Zelda at the Tip-Top downtown, her choice of restaurant. The two of them decided to celebrate her birthday and Mother's Day together, and I had no objection. It felt entirely appropriate, as they have entered a new phase in the mother-daughter relationship, which, for lack of another term I will call friendship. It is quite a sight to behold.
Every time I get the urge to be somewhere else, I am reminded how many attachments I have in central Swingstate. After topping off the compost pile with weeds in the morning, I went to the biweekly drum circle at the rec center, and I knew about half of the people there. I guess I'm not the new guy anymore. Two of three of the regulars I've seen at other events in other places, so there is more of a community-like context, which adds texture, and we'll see where, if anywhere, that goes.
Because I was in the neighborhood (and out of flour), I went to the coop, where I saw two more familiar faces. The nursery was on my way home, so I stopped to buy geraniums, and wouldn't you know it, I ran into a former co-worker who is an avid gardener. We chatted awhile - our gardens, other co-workers, my kids, her kids - and she returned to her reverie in the perennials while I picked out two flats of annuals.
After pulling more weeds - there are always more weeds - Gven and I went to Zelda's house for a birthday party. Her housemate David also had a birthday this week, so they cleaned the house and had a lot of people over. We arrived early and left early, had one drink, nibbled on Cheez-its, mixed with a few of their friends, and met a couple new ones. One, coincidentally, I had seen last weekend at a rest stop on I-80 in the middle of Pennsylvania. She was coming back from a film festival in New York, and I was on my way to New York to visit Zelda's brother Jessi. What are the odds? I figure it's the red hair.
Church on Sunday was focused on the theme of imperfection and the value of failure, in stark contrast to the safe, suburban liberalism that I see around me, which should be no surprise, since I undoubtedly project that same risk-averse attitude among that same congregation, whom I chose to hang out with, so pardon the digression. [Note to self: pick up Bruno Bettelheim's A Good Enough Parent.]
Since it was Mother's Day, after all, it was imperative that I go home and get busy potting geraniums in window boxes, the ritual that began some time in the 1980s and has become a sacred seasonal rite. The process is getting a little easier too. This time I used a square-bladed shovel to mix old potting soil in a wheel barrow, then filled several pots with soil and little plants from 4-packs, watered them in, and there you go. Just like Dad used to do back in Michigan.
I had to get it done quickly and efficiently because Gven and I had plans to go out to dinner with Zelda at the Tip-Top downtown, her choice of restaurant. The two of them decided to celebrate her birthday and Mother's Day together, and I had no objection. It felt entirely appropriate, as they have entered a new phase in the mother-daughter relationship, which, for lack of another term I will call friendship. It is quite a sight to behold.
Monday, May 04, 2009
Whether Report
Should I stay or should I go? The eternal dilemma nailed by the Clash was alive for me last week, on the horns of deciding whether to go to New York to see Jessi. Or not. I had an itinerary and the vacation days, but I also had a ton of things to do at home. You know how it is. You have to just go. Or not.
Gven couldn't find substitute teachers on short notice, so I would go by myself. Or not. The first weekend of May is garden planting season and comes but once a year, yet the forecast called for rain in central Swingstate, so I wouldn't get much done in the yard, and I might as well get out of town. It's good to know all those courses in the Department of Rationalization at The Swingstate University went to good use.
By the time I had baked a loaf of bread to take along, consulted Mapquest, made a list, checked it twice, read the paper, checked Facebook, done a taiji form and sat for 20 minutes, it was getting late. Gven says I have too many disciplines, and she is right, of course. So many must-do practices add up to one bad habit of keeping late hours.
So I slept a little later than usual, packed a bag, brewed a thermos of coffee, stopped at the bank, and headed up the road. A few miles up the interstate, I realized I had forgotten my sleeping bag and water bottle. Call me easily distracted. I was leaving an hour later than planned; the fan belt whined, I needed air, I needed water, and it rained in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. Then it cleared and the countryside was beautiful. Central Pennsylvania looks a lot like central Michigan, except older; maybe it's all the pine and poplar trees.
A random barrage of music came through the air to Ranger Hank Ford from a succession of NPR stations. From WOSU to WKSU to WPSU to WVIA to WBGO, I heard the same news all day along with a Beethoven violin concerto, Pink Floyd's "Money," the Chiffons' "One Fine Day," and Booker T's nearly perfect "Time Is Tight" (from 1969) during an interview with Teri Gross. I didn't mind having to switch stations and take what they gave me.
Crossing New Jersey, it started raining again as it was getting dark, and I had trouble reading my directions on the bumpy surface of I-280, but roadsigns made it self-evident how to get to the Holland Tunnel. Coming out the other end in Manhattan, everything suddenly seemed more peaceful and orderly. Canal Street swept me along southward toward the Manhattan Bridge, and by this time I had to pee like a racehorse, but there was nowhere to stop with five lanes of one-way traffic jockeying for position on a Friday night in Chinatown.
After crossing the bridge into Brooklyn, stopped at a red light on Flatbush Avenue, a parking space miraculously appeared at the curb to my right. At the next corner I walked into a watering hole called Junior's Bar, and in my black jeans, boots, and T-shirt brazenly strode past tables with white tablecloths, up the stairs to the restroom, and found relief. I even tipped the attendant who handed me a paper towel.
It was a short drive down Flatbush, out Eastern Parkway, and around the block to Jessi's house. It's not as good as a bicycle, but driving through neighborhoods is a good way to get the lay of the land. Jessi and his housemates were grilling chicken, pork chops, and vegetables in their little back yard, and I got a nice reception and a Guinness. Besides Johnny, Chuck, Corey, Gabi, and Caroline, there were the cats, Lewis and Opie. Inside, the house was littered with musical instruments, bicycles and bicycle parts, books, and vinyl records. I found it remarkably livable.
It started raining again, so we ate a delicious meal inside. Jessi and I took the subway to Grand Army Plaza and walked up and down 5th and 6th Avenues in Park Slope, half looking for a place to stop but primarily walking and talking while getting a good look at a nice lively neighborhood. Jessi let me have his room, so I crashed early and slept like a rock.
It was cool but clear Saturday morning in beautiful Brooklyn. We went for a walk along a different route and saw another side of Park Slope, ending up at the Donut Diner for breakfast. It was early afternoon by the time we got to the MoMA and met up with Alex, who was working at the information desk in the lobby. She kindly got us complimentary tickets and took a break to go upstairs to "Compass in Hand" with geographical themes: spaces, directions, grids.
Jessi and I went up a couple of flights to "Tangled Alphabets," the exhibit I ostensibly came for, and it exceeded my expectations. Leon Ferrari and Mira Schendel have produced a lot of work with text, diagrams, equations, hieroglyphics, mobiles, floorplans, codes, scribbles. The web site doesn't do it justice, and I can't describe it either, so if you're interested in the graphic/spatial/visual qualities of language and symbols, you will have to go see it yourself. I was somewhat enthralled.
And somewhat exhausted, so at closing time a little walk in the park was just what the doctor ordered. Jessi and Alex indulged my need to take half an hour to do a taiji form in a perfect little grove of pine trees in Central Park, and I felt much better. I young man played a flute nearby. You can't plan these things; they just happen sometimes.
We found a bar in the East Village that looked inviting and watched a replay of the Kentucky derby. Jessi had a mint julep in honor of the occasion; I opted for a margarita, and Alex had red wine. Veselka was half a block away, so we enjoyed a hearty Ukranian dinner: beef stroganoff for her, cabbage rolls for him, bigos (hunter's stew) for me.
A quiet evening at home in Crown Heights included part of a Martin Scorcese documentary on Bob Dylan; I think they were indulging me again, but that's okay, it was worth seeing. I slept like a rock again. It was raining Sunday morning, but Jessi had a really big umbrella, so we walked to a bagel shop on Troy Ave. for breakfast. I am such a tourist; every street, every restaurant, every subway, every bookstore is another little pocket of New York culture in my midwestern mind, and it's all kind of welcoming. I had a good time. Thank you.
Even in the rain, the trip back up Flatbush, across the bridge, and Canal Street was smooth. Traffic? What traffic? Crossing Pennsylvania from the Delaware Water Gap into the Chesapeake watershed and across the broad Susquahanna River, I'm getting a different perspective on this big, wide, peculiar state.
The rain stops by the time I re-enter Ohio, and I meet my freshman roommate for our annual vigil at Northeast Swingstate University. Even after the fieldhand omelette at Mike's Place on Water Street, my expenses for the weekend are under $200. Hey, I could do this every few weeks. Or not.
Gven couldn't find substitute teachers on short notice, so I would go by myself. Or not. The first weekend of May is garden planting season and comes but once a year, yet the forecast called for rain in central Swingstate, so I wouldn't get much done in the yard, and I might as well get out of town. It's good to know all those courses in the Department of Rationalization at The Swingstate University went to good use.
I get all the news I need on the weather report.
I can gather all the news I need on the weather report.
Hey, I've got nothing to do today but smile...
The only living boy in New York. (Paul Simon, 1970)
By the time I had baked a loaf of bread to take along, consulted Mapquest, made a list, checked it twice, read the paper, checked Facebook, done a taiji form and sat for 20 minutes, it was getting late. Gven says I have too many disciplines, and she is right, of course. So many must-do practices add up to one bad habit of keeping late hours.
So I slept a little later than usual, packed a bag, brewed a thermos of coffee, stopped at the bank, and headed up the road. A few miles up the interstate, I realized I had forgotten my sleeping bag and water bottle. Call me easily distracted. I was leaving an hour later than planned; the fan belt whined, I needed air, I needed water, and it rained in northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. Then it cleared and the countryside was beautiful. Central Pennsylvania looks a lot like central Michigan, except older; maybe it's all the pine and poplar trees.
A random barrage of music came through the air to Ranger Hank Ford from a succession of NPR stations. From WOSU to WKSU to WPSU to WVIA to WBGO, I heard the same news all day along with a Beethoven violin concerto, Pink Floyd's "Money," the Chiffons' "One Fine Day," and Booker T's nearly perfect "Time Is Tight" (from 1969) during an interview with Teri Gross. I didn't mind having to switch stations and take what they gave me.
Crossing New Jersey, it started raining again as it was getting dark, and I had trouble reading my directions on the bumpy surface of I-280, but roadsigns made it self-evident how to get to the Holland Tunnel. Coming out the other end in Manhattan, everything suddenly seemed more peaceful and orderly. Canal Street swept me along southward toward the Manhattan Bridge, and by this time I had to pee like a racehorse, but there was nowhere to stop with five lanes of one-way traffic jockeying for position on a Friday night in Chinatown.
After crossing the bridge into Brooklyn, stopped at a red light on Flatbush Avenue, a parking space miraculously appeared at the curb to my right. At the next corner I walked into a watering hole called Junior's Bar, and in my black jeans, boots, and T-shirt brazenly strode past tables with white tablecloths, up the stairs to the restroom, and found relief. I even tipped the attendant who handed me a paper towel.
It was a short drive down Flatbush, out Eastern Parkway, and around the block to Jessi's house. It's not as good as a bicycle, but driving through neighborhoods is a good way to get the lay of the land. Jessi and his housemates were grilling chicken, pork chops, and vegetables in their little back yard, and I got a nice reception and a Guinness. Besides Johnny, Chuck, Corey, Gabi, and Caroline, there were the cats, Lewis and Opie. Inside, the house was littered with musical instruments, bicycles and bicycle parts, books, and vinyl records. I found it remarkably livable.
It started raining again, so we ate a delicious meal inside. Jessi and I took the subway to Grand Army Plaza and walked up and down 5th and 6th Avenues in Park Slope, half looking for a place to stop but primarily walking and talking while getting a good look at a nice lively neighborhood. Jessi let me have his room, so I crashed early and slept like a rock.
It was cool but clear Saturday morning in beautiful Brooklyn. We went for a walk along a different route and saw another side of Park Slope, ending up at the Donut Diner for breakfast. It was early afternoon by the time we got to the MoMA and met up with Alex, who was working at the information desk in the lobby. She kindly got us complimentary tickets and took a break to go upstairs to "Compass in Hand" with geographical themes: spaces, directions, grids.
Jessi and I went up a couple of flights to "Tangled Alphabets," the exhibit I ostensibly came for, and it exceeded my expectations. Leon Ferrari and Mira Schendel have produced a lot of work with text, diagrams, equations, hieroglyphics, mobiles, floorplans, codes, scribbles. The web site doesn't do it justice, and I can't describe it either, so if you're interested in the graphic/spatial/visual qualities of language and symbols, you will have to go see it yourself. I was somewhat enthralled.
And somewhat exhausted, so at closing time a little walk in the park was just what the doctor ordered. Jessi and Alex indulged my need to take half an hour to do a taiji form in a perfect little grove of pine trees in Central Park, and I felt much better. I young man played a flute nearby. You can't plan these things; they just happen sometimes.
We found a bar in the East Village that looked inviting and watched a replay of the Kentucky derby. Jessi had a mint julep in honor of the occasion; I opted for a margarita, and Alex had red wine. Veselka was half a block away, so we enjoyed a hearty Ukranian dinner: beef stroganoff for her, cabbage rolls for him, bigos (hunter's stew) for me.
A quiet evening at home in Crown Heights included part of a Martin Scorcese documentary on Bob Dylan; I think they were indulging me again, but that's okay, it was worth seeing. I slept like a rock again. It was raining Sunday morning, but Jessi had a really big umbrella, so we walked to a bagel shop on Troy Ave. for breakfast. I am such a tourist; every street, every restaurant, every subway, every bookstore is another little pocket of New York culture in my midwestern mind, and it's all kind of welcoming. I had a good time. Thank you.
Even in the rain, the trip back up Flatbush, across the bridge, and Canal Street was smooth. Traffic? What traffic? Crossing Pennsylvania from the Delaware Water Gap into the Chesapeake watershed and across the broad Susquahanna River, I'm getting a different perspective on this big, wide, peculiar state.
The rain stops by the time I re-enter Ohio, and I meet my freshman roommate for our annual vigil at Northeast Swingstate University. Even after the fieldhand omelette at Mike's Place on Water Street, my expenses for the weekend are under $200. Hey, I could do this every few weeks. Or not.
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