Hoopaholic

My name is Sven and I'm a hoopaholic.

As I carpe diem, one day at a time, in my 12-step program of recovery from demon basketball, I am obliged to acknowledge that yes, I have a problem, and yes, I am powerless to control the problem on my own, and yes, some entity larger than myself is needed to begin the healing.

I recently had a setback in my struggle to live hoop-free. With invaluable support and encouragement from taiji and qigong practitioners, I was able to find alternative sources of muscle stimulation and healing energy. I was doing fine, and my knees were relatively pain-free most of the time.

Then I walked past the empty gym at Whetstone during a break in the rec center schedule, when no basketball leagues or open volleyball games were going on, and an uncontrollable urge came over me. There was a rack full of basketball sitting there with no one around. Just one shot, I thought, then I'll go home and no harm will be done.

You can imagine the rest of the story. One shot led to another, and pretty soon I was banking in turn-around jumpers, right-hand hooks, left-hand hooks, jump-hooks, layups. Only the gross physical limitations of this mortal coil prevented me from making shots from beyond the three-point arc, and before long fatigue made me stop and rest. Oxygen debt is unforgiving.

The rec center staff were getting ready to close up and go home. Did I pack it in like a rational person? Of course not! I shot another round from both sides of the paint, getting into a rhythm, warming up a bit, and even elevated enough to noticeably leave the floor momentarily. And they say white men can't jump.

I'm here to say even white guys born in the year of the metal tiger, at the very dawn on the second half of the twentieth century, if they have temporarily lost their marbles, can extend their qi and the magical orange orb more than they realized and almost touch the rim. Almost.

And when they happily hobble home in the snow, their knees ache just like they did in high school. But now the knees still ache a week later, and when doing a certain taiji movement, weight shifting right to left, one of the quadriceps gives out for just an instant right where it attaches on the medial side of the knee, and that's no fun. But I think I can work around it if I put my weight in the heel instead of the ball of the foot, there, much better.

My logical left brain says: this is nonsense, you're done, hang it up, and do what heals you, not what hurts. Makes sense to me. That's what I tell my students. Then my spatial right brain says: it's worth it, what I need is more basketball, not less, and those fast-twitch muscle fibers that have atrophied will come to life again.

Sure they will. Which Sven will win this argument? Maybe I'll make it my patriotic duty to play once in a while, out of respect for our new hoop-loving president. In fact, it would be disrespectful not to. Then when the health care system is fixed, I'll get some new knees.

inaugural mashup

Humbled, grateful, and mindful of
rising tides and still waters,
gathering clouds and raging storms,
faithful to the ideals and true to our founding documents.

The indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics,
a sapping of confidence, decline is inevitable;
an end to petty grievances and false promises,
the time has come to set aside childish things.

Greatness is never a given; the makers of things,
obscure in their labor, begin the work of remaking America,
to restore science to its rightful place,
to harness the sun and the wind and the soil.

When imagination is joined to common purpose and necessity to courage,
those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account;
the market can spin out of control,
but it is the surest route to our common good.

Power grows through its prudent use,
our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness;
shaped by every language and culture,
our common humanity shall reveal itself.

People will judge you on what you can build, not what you destroy,
nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect;
the world has changed, and we must change with it,
a willingness to find meaning in something greater than themselves.

Let it be said by our children's children
that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end;
we carried forth that great gift of freedom
and delivered it safely to future generations.

Beanhead: My Life and Coffee

This is your brain.



This is your brain on coffee.

Any questions?

Actually, yes. Where can I get some more?

My earliest memories of coffee center around a large stainless-steel pot that my parents used when we lived in Wisconsin during the 1950s. It was a magical, mystical, ritual object, not to be trifled with and not for children. There was a right way and a wrong way to dispense Folger's into the huge, shining hemisphere that sat atop the shining pot, a correct method of stirring the grounds as the water did its alchemical work, yielding the special substance that only adults could drink. Mom drank it black, Dad took half-and-half.

I don’t think I paid that much attention to coffee for the next 12 years or so. It stunts your growth, you know. When I went away to college and started staying up late because nobody could tell me not to, I learned the rejuvenating, drug-like qualities of the dark elixir.

It became almost as hip and cool to drag oneself over to the cafeteria in McSweeney Hall next door to my dorm, Apple Hall (invoke biblical coming-of-age allusions, fall from grace, partaking of the Tree of Knowledge, etc., here) for an early morning cup of java as it was to stay up unreasonably and unproductively late reading or writing a paper in order to undergo the ritual cleansing of the mind, soul, and urinary tract that naturally goes with caffeine dependency.

Needless to say, I was quickly hooked, but it wasn’t entirely my fault. My Scandinavian ancestry made me genetically and culturally predisposed to drinking coffee, loving coffee, needing coffee. They call it a Norwegian blood transfusion, dontchaknow. Don't feel so good? Have some coffee.

It was only after I transferred to Michigan, however, and starting working at the Belltower Hotel that I became a full-fledged coffee addict. Park of my job as “porter” at the little campus-area flophouse across the street from Hill Auditorium was to vacuum the lobby every morning before the cheapskate guests came downstairs to complain about the TV not working and enjoy their complimentary coffee and chocolate donuts. Maureen, the English desk clerk, and I would help ourselves to a styrofoam cuff of Maxwell House and a chocolate donut or two, being careful to make sure the hotel guests, who could have paid twice as much to stay at the Campus Inn, got first dibs. I was well on my way to a life of dissipation on the mean streets of Ann Arbor.

Living in the Upper Peninsula, drinking coffee is a requirement. Even people who don't like coffee drink it because it's what people do in the UP. "Come on in, have a cup o' kah-fee." Most social interaction occurs either over coffee or over beer. Tea drinkers and wine snobs beware: to eschew coffee or beer is to marginalize yourself. Prepare to be called a sugarbeeter.

When I moved to Georgia in the mid-seventies, we milked our Jersey cow, Ms. Red, every morning and skimmed the cream for coffee and oatmeal. Ooh-la-la! If you want to know what good is, it's fresh cream in your coffee, just hours from the cow.

It wasn't until we moved to Chicago and Gven worked at the Heartland Cafe that I discovered exotic coffees. The Heartland served a Mexican coffee called Bustelo that was dark and strong and more complex than regular coffee. I had tasted Cuban coffee in Miami and Turkish coffee in Detroit, but I had no idea: so many coffees, so little time.

At Oberlin at that time, coffee was something to wash down a brownie at the student union snack bar. Since then a coffee renaissance has taken place, and lots of cafes have opened, so the next generation of students has more choices.

When we moved to North Carolina, coffee was usually the beverage after a movie at the Janus Theater. Our friend Richard, in the midst of already animated conversation, would ask for "just half a cup" every time the waitress came around, even after half a dozen refills of half a cup and an increasingly wired talk-fest. I think coffee was Richard's liquor, and he handled it well.

Moving back to Atlanta and becoming parents, coffee took on additional meaning and survival value. I used to order coffee and cocoa at the downtown Howard Johnson's near the old Atlanta Stadium and do some editing work in one of the bright orange booths. Once I saw Hank Aaron come in quietly and sit down. He eyed me warily as I identified myself as a fan going back to his years in Milwaukee, but he said nothing and went back to his meal.

Coffee was in vogue when we moved to Columbus in the mid-eighties, and hipster cafes were opening up all over town. During graduate school I became a denizen first of King Avenue, then Arabica, then Insomnia, then Stauff's. Each had its own distinctive vibe, subculture, and dress code - smoking, nonsmoking, bohemian, punk, or self-consciously intellectual. I got a lot of reading done on those nights, a little valuable ethnographic observation, and maybe a bit of posturing too.

During grad school, coffee took on a communal dimension. The Physical Club was founded on coffee and Buckeye Donuts across High Street from Ramseyer Hall after Dr. Rosen's philosophy class. That's another story entirely, except to recount that Coach Estes, Swami Bob, and I did what we could to emulate C.S. Peirce, William James, Justice Holmes, and Chauncy Wright's Metaphysical Club, and the coffee helped. Later on, Bob and I would deconstruct and reconstruct line by line several drafts of his dissertation under the influence of plenty of French roast and Heavy Cream (Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, circa 1969).

Our coffee place in Fairhope, Alabama, was the snow cone shack across the road from the beach with like a hundred flavors of ice to choose from - and the world's best chicory coffee in tiny paper cups. I guess that year was not entirely wasted.

I haven't become a regular at any particular cafe in recent years, unless you count the cafeteria downstairs, where I look forward to a short chat with Lynda as much as the Starbuck's in the company mug. Clintonville, like Oberlin before it, sprouted a dozen coffee shops about the time we moved out. Come to think of it, one of them stands on the ruins of our front yard, but the coffee doesn't taste so good where they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

Most of my coffee is drunk at home nowadays, which is why the holiday gift of a French-press coffee pot from Jessi Golly was so timely. It came with two pounds of neighborhood-roasted beans from a couple of spots I'd like to visit someday in Brooklyn, New York, and I've been enjoying it a lot.

My current favorite in Methodistville is Java Central on State Street, where the people are nonideological, the brew is tasty, and I've gotten some serious editing done on the brick sidewalk outside. And it will have to do until our ship comes in (fantasy) and Gven and I open Earthies' Bookstore/Cafe. But where? I say Halifax or Traverse City; she says Taos or Savannah. Let's have a cup of coffee and discuss it.

prolegomenon to a critique of snow shoveling

A friend at work asked me today if I like the cold weather. I didn't know what to say at first, so I pulled out the old chestnut, "It builds character." We proceeded to compare our weather in Central Swingstate with winters in Madison, winters in LaCrosse, Marquette, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and moved on to other topics.

Yes, there are other topics, even when it's four above zero outside. When you're tired of talking about the shitty weather, you can talk about the shitty economy.

Anyway, it got me to thinking, and when I got home I swept the den floor, which gets very dusty, what with cat hair, woodstove, humans wearing shoes and all. It made no sense to sweep without cleaning out the stove, so I shoveled the ashes into a bucket and dumped them in a low spot outside under the snow and mulch. If you're going to sweep, you might as well water the plants, dust the table, and move things around a little. The fire will require kindling and more wood, so I shoveled the walkway back to the woodshed and brought in some firewood.

Shoveling was the least of the afternoon's chores and probably the most immediately gratifying. Path blocked by six inches of dry snow...wide-bladed shovel...bend legs, bend back, rest, repeat. Now the path is righteously clear under slanting late-afternoon rays. It took five minutes. Everything is in order, and I feel so darn virtuous I could give myself the Dudley Doright good citizen medal.

There's something about discomfort that focuses the mind. Not that I want to be uncomfortable all the time in order to keep my focus, but once in a blue moon it can be a good thing. Cold weather is like that. I don't want to be out there in subzero wind for long periods of time without recourse. I'll go out again tonight to bring in more wood, clear a path for the mail carrier, or take out the recycling, and before any body parts freeze, I'll come back in. Small doses are just fine; no need to do anything stupid.

I'll lace up my boots, put a hat and gloves on, of course, but probably not a coat for just a few minutes' foray in the frigid night. There is no heat like self-generated heat. Like night and day: the difference between being externally warmed by the space you're in and using the old internal furnace, preferably with a shovel in your hands.

exit bushism

In his poignant, humble, tough-guy farewell address, Dubya did what only the most gifted performers are able to do - leave 'em laughing. In bowing out from the world stage, our soon-to-be-former president gave his successor some sage words of warning:

"I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack America, Americans, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best."

What can be said about this act of truth telling, or truthiness, or inadvertent candor? Good-bye, George, you have done your part.

Wind and Water

Pretty soon T. Boone Pickens will own the rights to all of it. If water is the new oil, and if wind is the alternative energy source of the future, then T. Boone, having bought large expanses in the Great Plains, is well positioned to take advantage of the increasing demand for both.

This fact came up in conversation the other night, and it didn't hit me until today that those words, wind and water, are the English translation of feng-shui (in Wade-Giles) or fung-xue (in pinyin), the traditional Chinese art of placement, or locating things with respect to natural forces, sometimes misleadingly called 'geomancy'. The ancients knew that wind and water are important forces in the life of the planet, and apparently so does T. Boone Pickens, though probably for different reasons.

Or not. Their reasons may not be entirely different. Traditional feng-shui involves choosing the best site and situation for a house, business, bed, or graveyard so that the qi (ch'i, or energy in its many forms) of the place will favor the humans who frequent it. Bad feng-shui tends to drain away health, vitality, fertility, good luck, and money. The wealthy Cowboy entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens is interested in, among other things, money, Oklahoma State football and more money.

So there is considerable common ground: wind power, water rights, and gaining more money. I see a great cross-cultural wedding of strange bedfellows in or around Stillwater. You heard it here first.

Agent of C.H.A.N.G.E.

Keep it under your hat, but I'm working undercover as a fifth columnist (the fourth columnist got fired for bad spelling) in a secret organization known variously as Cooperative Hands Attempting Naturally Good Efforts (C.H.A.N.G.E.), or else Connecting Hopefully About Newly Generated Energy (C.H.A.N.G.E.), or maybe Coherent Harangues Against Never Getting Even (C.H.A.N.G.E.), or a name to be played later.

One of the rituals conducted by this clandestine organization is starting the year with a hush-hush reaffirmation of what everybody already knows in an effort to do what nobody every does, that is, turn over a new leaf. In our attempt to set a clear intention and start the year on the right foot, we ritually make commonsense statements as if they were big discoveries. This time, our annual new year's oracular consultation yielded the following amazing predictions:

1. It's a good year to use one's power to serve, to make a sacrifice to benefit someone else's development, and to imitate the good we observe in others. (I Ching)

2. It's a good year to be humble, to gain by giving, to use one's gifts to help others and thus indirectly to gain materially, and to let the consequences be what they may. (Tarot)

3. Society has some of the same afflictions outwardly as individuals do inwardly, and individuals can make a dent in many social problems by addressing their own ethical baggage, chips on shoulders, and knee-jerk nastiness.

Who knew? So as a result of these startling revelations, I am going to make an attempt to do things a little differently. While other people are making "resolutions" - pause for convulsive laughter - to lose ten pounds, get in shape (what shape, I ask, a triangle? a tetrahedron? a pretzel?), quit smoking, change jobs, or some other meaningful but self-serving goal, I hereby pledge my intention to do something useful.

It could be argued that by trying to be useful, I am also making a self-serving attempt to benefit personally through appearing to be altruistic, kind, and clever. Look at me, I'm so very humble and selfless and helpful, you should really admire me, double my salary, or speak well of me to potential disciples. Point taken.

I admit that those things would be cool, too, but it doesn't count if you're looking in the mirror all the time and listing your good deeds in your resume. Nor does it expiate those self-centered desires if you do the old self-deprecating schtick, thus allowing the ego to do an end-around - self-aggrandisement through self-abnegation - otherwise known as "do-gooder." Given the tendency for good intentions to pave the road to someplace bad, maybe it's better to stay put, stand pat, and play the hand you're dealt.

Habits are stronger than anything, and the smart money is usually on things not changing significantly any time soon. All things being equal, you and I both will continue to do the same things we've been doing in pretty much the same way we've been doing them. And that's the good news. Any real change will occur incrementally if at all, and a good bit of it will involve backsliding, resistance, and reaction. Have a nice day.

Here's the rub: it's incomparably more entertaining to push against inertia than to succumb to it. Aside from the uncontrolable question of whether anyone actually benefits, I guess it's the effort itself - to lose ten pounds, to reorganize the automotive industry, to correct that misplaced comma - that's worthwhile.

Since we're talking about small actions taken one at a time by individuals, at best what happens is that people change themselves, not other people or the institutions that entrap them. My efforts to change the corporation or the country won't change the corporation or the country, but they might change my habits, and that will have to do this time around.

30/30

If this were a movie, Harry Dean Stanton (or Donald Sutherland) would be a slightly off-beat, middle-class editor planning a 30th anniversary trip to Chicago with his artsy-craftsy wife, Sissy Spacek (or Mary McDonough), who wants it to be really special.

Just for fun, let's say they met in Chicago some time during the previous century, and to mark the occasion they plan to revisit some of their old haunts after all these years of tying the knot, going back to school, finding jobs, having babies, moving, going back to school again, moving again, putting kids through school, changing jobs, buying a house in the suburbs, blah blah blah.

In this totally fictional movie, the somewhat happy couple is still in the process of making their big romantic anniversary plans during the winter holidays, as they put up a tree, decorate, shop, and cook in their stylishly funky old brick house in Peninsula, Ohio. There they spend Christmas/Solstice with their urbane and bookish adult daughter, Catherine Heigl (or Drew Barrymore), while their punk cartoonist son, Heath Ledger (or Edward Norton), spends the holidays with his anarchist housemates in New York. Anyone see a plausible plot in this?

In the foreground of the unfolding narrative is a hard-working and supportive, if oddball, family who observes the traditional holiday rituals of sitting down to dinner with ethnic foods - lutefisk, lefse, rum and OJ - lighting candles, offering ecumenical blessings to light and darkness, children and families, and opening gifts beside a fresh-cut Noble fir tree, the whole nine yards.

Timely phone calls to and from the prodigal son in Brooklyn and an exchange of FedEx packages of presents - his carefully wrapped in cartoon paper - keep Heath/Edward included in the festivities. But it is Catherine/Drew who provides the glue in this conglomerate celebration of fragmentation and faith. She helps to cook dinner, says the right thing when stress mounts, holds her rapier tongue when Dad says something stupid, and gives amazing and creative gifts of art prints and books to her proud and grateful parents.

In the background, it is apparent that this family's issues have issues. Sissy/Mary is concerned about Heath, who in the recessionary economy has lost his retail bookstore job, which he didn't like much anyway, and is on his own for the holidays, eating take-out sushi on Christmas Eve with his housemates, Kevin Smith and Zoey Deschanel. He is fine, Catherine/Drew assures them, he just isn't sure what he wants to do next, although he's thinking about going to electrician school or raising goats.

To complicate matters further, Edward/Heath has chosen not to join his girlfriend, Parker Posey (or Jeneane Garafalo) in Connecticut for the holidays with her parents, Christopher Reeve and Isabella Rosselini. Donald is experiencing some anxiety at a distance about Parker and Edward's relationship, but Harry knows they'll do what they have to do.

No Capulets and Montegues, no Sharks and Jets, just a typical American family drama. Or comedy, I'm not sure yet. By the way, this is totally fictional, and any resemblance to real persons, past or present, is wholly coincidental.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, Mary/Sissy spends most of her time knitting and watching "House" while Harry/Donald is content to kill time stacking firewood and reading the New York Times, if he could only remember where he put his glasses. As Christmas passes peacefully, they count their blessings during visits with their old friends, English professor Kevin Kline and art teacher Emma Thompson, who come over for the evening with their college-age kids, summa cum laude GIS cartographer Cate Blanchett and sophomore environmental filmmaker Paul Dano.

Anticipation builds for their trip, and both Harry and Sissy have contradictory feelings, knowing neither they nor Chicago will be the same as they were December 30, 1978. Departure from Peninsula occurs more or less on schedule, but Harry is always uptight prior to a trip, so Sissy humors him. They quickly fall into their travel mode, talking about what a cool movie their trip would make and what actors could play which characters, depending on whether it is a comedy with dramatic moments or a drama with comedic moments, and whether they work with a slick Hollywood studio or an independent outfit - Woody Allen or John Sayles - and how confusing will it be to the audience if different actors play the same character in different scenes? They agree that if it's too fragmented, audiences will be confused as well as bored - too much like real life and not enough like a movie.

As soon as rural Indiana disappears in the rear-view mirror, their conversation turns to what it would be like to move back to Chicago after all these years, but for now, Mary and Donald are caught up in the details of getting where they are going. He is easily distracted, and she has no sense of direction, so navigating is a trip in itself. Somehow they find the Arlington International Hostel in Lincoln Park with no missed exits and no wrong turns.

The near north side close to the lake is an appealing neighborhood, but they doubt whether they could afford the cost of a condo. The hostel is plain but clean and welcoming. Most of the lodgers are younger, and about half speak English with an accent, but somehow they don't feel out of place. Harry Dean goes out to find a place to park the car and can't locate the street suggested by the desk clerk, finally finding a space on a street a few blocks away with ambiguous signage.

It's getting colder, must be the wind-chill, but it's not as late as it seems, must be the change to central time. Donald and Sissy get dressed and go out, looking good if I may say so. They buy two-day CTA passes and catch the El train north to their old neighborhood of Rogers Park. From the Morse station they follow their noses to the Heartland Cafe, still there after all these years.

In fact, Sissy immediately recognized one of the owners, Gary Busey, standing just inside the entrance. When they had found a table, she went to speak to him, and he alerted the other owner, Lily Tomlin, and the three of them had a small reunion remembering working together, creating a community-oriented business, running a marathon, and more recently helping to elect a president.

It took the waiter an eternity to bring the wine, and when Harry had finally taken a sip and toasted their anniversary, he said he had a question, got down on one knee, and asked Mary if she would spend another 30 years with him. She really liked the sparkly ring with tiny diamonds set in a gold six-peteled lotus on a silver band, and she said yes.

Mary and Harry reminisced at length while eating Mexican food and drinking red wine, enjoying espresso with dessert, and paying the bill. On the way out they perused the little general store next door for memorabilia, like T-shirts that said HELP WANTED: REVOLUTIONARIES or Athletes United for Peace. They walked back to the El and the hostel leaning into a fierce north wind.



Next morning there was snow on the ground. Donald and Mary found a great breakfast place, Frances' Deli, around the corner on Clark Street. Excellent challah French toast, decent veggie omelet, superb home fries, and bottomless cups of coffee. A couple of family groups, also eating breakfast, provided a start to an outstanding day of people watching, and they speculated about other people's stories while enacting their own.

After breakfast, walking down the block with the wind, they stopped at a bike shop just as a young guy rode up to unlock the front door. Harry and Mary looked at bikes, and the guy answered their questions about the comparable quality of Trek and Specialized (not much different). Lincoln Park is growing on me. It's like the East Village but 20 pounds heavier. We walked to the Fullerton station to catch the red line to the Loop.

Almost like we knew what we were doing, we got to the Art Institute just in time for a noon talk about Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" in the second-floor gallery it shares with more "modern" paintings. I think the questions raised by the guide - are these characters trapped, complicit, alienated, touching, or just a composition in complementary colors - got our minds and eyes aroused for the next two hours of looking at twentieth-century American painting. I didn't bring a pen or a camera, so I don't recall much except seeing a lot of Columbus's own George Bellows, which was captivating, and learning a little bit about what I like and don't like about Georgia O'Keefe's landscapes (the amazing fluid movement) and figures (bones and flowers, love and death).

We needed a break, so we grabbed our coats and found a Starbuck's at Wabash and Adams to refuel on coffee and cake. Two strangers sitting at the angular counter reminded me of "Nighthawks," so I took a picture, but guess what, it just wasn't the same. Back inside the museum, Donald and Mary headed for the Asian art wing, which seemed to go on and on. If you go straight back from the lobby, you can walk through several thousand years of Indian and Southeast Asian sculpture with mostly Hindu and Buddhist themes. Off to the right is room after room with Chinese, Japanese, and Korean ceramics, bronzes, ink paintings, and woodblock prints. Time passes. At the far end is another modern American gallery with a hilarious David Hockney painting of California collectors. It's closing time.

Harry and Mary stopped for a quick swing through the gift shop. Every El station on the way back evoked memories of people and places they once knew like the back of their hands. Heath called while they were getting ready to go out to dinner, and he sounded great. He and Parker were dressing up as dinosaurs in preparation for the New Year's Eve party at his house in Brooklyn. Nine bands were going to play, one of them dressed as cavement, and the grand finale at midnight would be a papier mache volcano erupting in confetti.

Our New Year's Eve would be a little more sedate: a nice dinner followed by a band at the Heartland. Without a dinner reservation, Donald didn't know whether they could get a table at the Basil Leaf, up the street at Clark and Arlington, but they were in luck. There was only a short wait, just enough time for a drink at the bar, and from the bread and wine to the smoked salmon over fettucini, the food was spectacular. By the time they had taken their boxed leftovers back to the hostel, Harry and Sissy were a little too tired and tipsy to get back on the train and head north for music and dancing, so they called it a night.

New Year's morning was an absolutely clear blue sky as we walked to Starbuck's on Clark Street with a front-row seat to watch Lincoln Park runners, cyclists, workers, and dog-walkers take on 2009. Speaking for myself, Harry Dean Stanton felt right at home among the young, old, rich, poor, loud, studious, rough, and sophisticated Chicagoans starting their engines with a hot cup of joe.

Harry and Sissy had no plans except brunch in the suburbs with their friends Tim Robbins and Kyra Sedgwick, who recently moved to Chicago from Cleveland. It's a quick drive out I-90 past O'Hare to Mt. Prospect, the tidy, tree-lined community where Tim is the new minister at the American Baptist Church.

Kyra chopped garlic and cooked fritata while we caught up on their move, the history and challenges of their new congregation, and the many things they love about their new place. They caught up on our Chicago adventure and the ongoing adventures of Edward/Heath and Drew/Catherine, whom Kyra has known since they were in preschool. They showed us around their house, then took us across the street to the beautiful little Greek-revival church.

We still had six hours to drive, so it was time to go. Sorry that we couldn't have touched base with more people in about 48 hours, we hit the road with a full head of steam and didn't really get tired until somewhere around Lafayette, Indiana, the site of another would-be movie, seemingly in another lifetime and involving other characters. Luckily my Starbuck's gift card still had some value on it, and a little more caffeine kept us driving and making up stories, like the completely imaginary one above, all the way home.

Received

Books: Roger-Pol Droit, Astonish Yourself! 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life (Penguin); Ammon Shea, Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages (Penguin); Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings (Taschen); Hans Christian Adam, Karl Blossfeldt: The Complete Published Work (Taschen); plus a gift card at Half-Price Books. I've read a bit into the the Bruegel book and the OED book, and it's pretty funny; my new favorite word is futilitarian.

CDs: Warren Zevon, The Love Songs (Artemis); Joan Osborne, Little Wild One (Plum); Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, Greatest Hits (Geffen); John Coltrane, Coltrane for Lovers (Verve). I'm becoming a Joan Osborne fan and expect to listen to this disc many times.

Baking pans: one ceramic and one flexible nonstick silicone. I tried them out, and they work great.

Weather X radio-flashlight with siren. Go ahead, envy me. Don't you wish you had a flashlight with a built-in siren?

Two shirts. They fit.

Bodum French-press coffee maker with instructions in English, Dansk, Espanol, Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Nederlander, Svensk, Portugues, Polska, Greco, Russe, Arabic, and Japanese; a pound of whole-bean Gorilla brand coffee (Ethiopian Harar) and D'Amico coffee (Red Hook Blend).

Hand-knitted, felted bag, purple and blue-green striped, heavy-weight and large enough for a laptop. It's dusty in the den, and this will protect my Toshiba beautifully.

Given

Smartwool socks, heavy-duty for work.

Smartwool slippers, ankle-high with flexible, cushy soles.

More Smartwool socks, calf-length for warmth.

BikeSource gift card - accessorize!

Stemless wine glasses, shee-shee, German-made.

Two skeins of nice wool yarn.

50 trees planted in your name by Oxfam.

free...firewood

Co-worker P came to my desk on Tuesday to ask if I would be interested in some free firewood. Now picture my eyes getting real big. My two favorite words in the English language are free and firewood.

Are you kidding, of course I'm interested in some free firewood. I mean, it's free...firewood!

P had hired professional tree workers to cut down a big old oak in his yard, and they charge a lot less if they don't have to haul away and dispose of the wood. Which is a sweet deal for me, since what I really like to do is dispose of free...firewood.

So on Friday, my day off, I drove Hank the Ranger over to his house and loaded up the 40 pieces I could carry, and in the process got a workout or two - or four. First there's carrying from the stack to the truck. Then there's unloading at the back gate at Om Shanty and stacking by the back fence to cure for a year so I can split it. Eat lunch, take a break, repeat. Then loosen your boots and enjoy a refreshing Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald porter.

For me that's half the fun. It allows suburban office worker types like me to put on work gloves, move heavy objects, put the pickup truck to good use, and indulge - if only for an afternoon - in the fiction that I'm directly engaged in the primal act of providing the means of someone's survival.

Yeah right. It's probably not as much fun for the billions of people for whom this is an everyday reality, not a game and not a form of entertainment. Some privileged suburbanites go deer hunting or bass fishing for sport. I do firewood.

It's been a bountiful week in the realm of free...firewood. On Sunday I stopped on the way home from church to ask the man standing in his driveway on Lewis Center Road about the logs lying in the ditch. He said take what you want, so I did - just the few pieces that I could lift - and left the one's I couldn't lift. I didn't want the next passerby to see me lying in the ditch, so I quit while I was ahead.

Then on Monday co-worker B offered me four humungous ash logs that he had in the back of his van. More free...firewood! Although observers from the nearby office building might have mistaken this innocent exchange in the parking lot for an illicit trade in black-market goods, I swear it was nothing of the sort. By day's end those babies were nestled by the back gate curing until their time comes, probably next fall.

By Sunday I was looking to extend my lucky streak by taking down a couple of dead or dying trees in the back yard of co-worker D, but alas the stars did not align. Patience, grasshopper. Don't be greedy. I know that out there, somewhere, there is more free...firewood.

farewell kiss, you dog

"This is a gift from the Iraqis. This is the farewell kiss, you dog!" Muntader al-Zaidi, a reporter with the al-Baghdadia television network, shouted as he threw the first shoe. "This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!" Zaidi said as he threw his other shoe.