knowingness knowingless & knowing-ish

In an unusual attempt at bipartisanship, politicians perform a group moonwalk

2010-03-18T11:04:00.004-04:00

They kind of look like the Four Tops a little out of practice.

All this talk of gays in the military has got Sec. Gates and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs feeling romantic!!

2010-02-03T12:11:00.003-05:00

The two lovebirds break into song during the testimony yesterday: "You say tomato! I say tom-ah-to! Let's call the whole thing oooofffff!"

MJ (1958-2009)

2009-06-25T19:19:00.002-04:00

Quincy Jones told MSNBC, “I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”

Phelps Caught Inhaling!!

2009-02-01T21:49:00.005-05:00

Breaking news in the swimming world--never thought I'd write that phrase--but olympian Michael Phelps has publicly apologized for smoking weed! A British tabloid published a photo of him getting pretty intimate with a bong, and he then released a remarkably contrite, if not totally straightforward, statement for all the wrong that he's done to us. His statement, probably written by a public relations firm that wants desperately for their client not to lose his megamillions of endorsement deals:

"I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again.''

What have his fans come to expect from him? I for one have not come to expect a damn thing from Mr. Six-pack Abs. Nothing personal, Michael. But you didn't promise me a rose garden. What's with the phrasing though? In the same sentence that he puts a date on his youth he apologizes for acting youthful, and says that he did so DESPITE successes in the pool. Since when did we come to expect swimming back and forth really fast to enhance someone's maturity??

Besides, one of our great American traditions is athletes behaving badly. From date rape to dog fighting, career-long steroid use and fraudulent checks to assault and battery, we love to love and then come to loathe our athletes! We practically live to undeservingly call them heroes and then fetishize their transgressions. Who doesn't wax nostalgic about O.J.'s spectacular joy ride in the white Bronco tailed by the entire Los Angeles police force? Like it was yesterday! Plaxico shooting himself in the leg? Priceless!

Sure, it's understandable to idolize and envy and feel a concocted bond to celebrities whose triumphs we celebrate vicariously. And equally understandable despite being totally unreasonable to feel betrayed or disappointed by some of the destructive and asinine behaviors of these folks. Homicide, reckless endangerment, domestic violence, grand theft auto (although that last one is a little cool, admit it). But smoking dope? Really?! How is that "inappropriate" for a 23 year old? It's HIGHLY appropriate. I can think of few things as appropriate for a young strapping fellow who spent thousands of hours in a speedo training for some nanosecond gold medal victories. Go ahead, Michael, chill out and get high. Seriously, dude. And next time say cheese.

One Million

2008-10-24T23:05:00.002-04:00

The death toll of Iraqis since the invasion has reached one million. According to Project Censored the studies that have led to this estimate have not been covered in mainstream media. Since I get such high traffic on my blog (my mom, a stalker and the random person who has mistyped search terms) I figured I'd post the link to it.

Road trip to Nova Scotia

2008-06-28T23:53:00.017-04:00

It seemed like we'd never get out of the tri-state area. Everyone seemed to be going...well, everywhere. But once we got out of Connecticut the states started flying by. At around 10pm we called it quits and stayed in a cute, quaint, and surprisingly cheap hotel in Portland, Maine, the Inn at St. John. The next day we crossed the Canadian border around 2pm and stopped at the visitor center that is about a block from the border police station. The building had a beautiful lawn of green grass on its flat roof. One of the visitor center workers glommed onto us and was giddy with brochures when she found out we didn't really have any specific events planned for our week in Canada, plus we didn't entirely know how to get where we were going. A steady stream of maps, magazines, flyers, and a coupon book came at us like bullets. She even got out a highlighter to show us the best route to take to Nova Scotia and where the best hiking and kayaking was. Where we could go whale-watching. Where we could see artisans and historic re-enactments (I mentally crossed this off the list as it was still coming out of her mouth due to my having lived in the midst of one big colonial re-enactment for the last two years). Here's a national park her kids really like. Here's where we could repel off a cliff. These Canadians are too friendly for my taste I thought while smiling and nodding.

We then drove a short way to a little lakeside town called Woodstock in New Brunswick and had beer and fish and chips before getting on the road for about 6 more hours. They're not really into highway patrol up there according to Matt and indeed speed limits seemed mostly arbitrary. Even though it's listed in kilometers and not miles it's still exciting to see a speed limit sign that says "100"! It might as well say "Speed limit: Sky."

Once we got to Nova Scotia the scenery got more hilly and green and as we drove closer to the coast, very very foggy. We rented a house/studio that's owned by a German sculptor who rents it out when she's in Germany. Her husband lives in their Nova Scotia residence, a ferry ride away from the studio, year round. I had spoken to Meinhard on the phone and he basically said he was lonely and would like to hang out with us during our stay. Weird, I thought. The concept of renting a house sight-unseen except for a photo from a total stranger always feels a little sketchy at first. Anything could happen. But we'd had really good experiences doing it before and I guess the surprise of it is a little of the fun. He had emailed me with directions to a house down the road from the studio, a neighbor of his named Morley. He also said to meet him there at 9 because he was taking the ferry over and wanted to get home before sundown at 9:30 (one hour east of Eastern Standard Time and late on the sundown). We really hadn't planned it too well or timed it precisely--we had a rough estimate of how long the drive was and how many miles each googlemaps step was--but we ended up arriving at Morley's almost exactly at 9, really within 90 seconds of it. As we got out of the car Meinhard rushed to greet us and said "Right on time like in Germany!"

Morley, an 87 year old former carpenter and lobster weigher, invited us into his tiny turquoise house where we sat on a couch about as old as he is. As the nearest neighbor to the studio, Morley was our designated 'host' of sorts who had the spare key to the place, but really he served as our companion every day for about 5 minutes. A really sweet and extremely hard of hearing old man, Morley grew up in the house he still lived in and had never traveled beyond Nova Scotia. Like Meinhard, he was pretty straightforward about the isolation and loneliness of living in what was possibly the least populated place I'd ever been. You could drive for miles and miles and miles and not see any sign of life or another car. We went to a restaurant one night at about 8:15 and it was closed but they said they would make us dinner since there was nothing else open for about an hour in each direction. To be sure, it's a great place for peace and quiet and solitude but it occurred to me that someone like Morley was simply born there and might not even be someone who particularly likes quiet and solitude. Maybe Morley would be a social butterfly if he had grown up in a town that had, say, a few more than 7-10 residents. Meinhard said Morley had been dating one of the 7-10 residents for a while, an elderly British woman, but she broke it off in the past year or so. Made me kind of sad. The only other fish in the sea, I imagine, are the actual fish in the sea.

Helga(the sculptor)'s studio was stark and minimalist, beautifully crafted, homey and had a spectacular view. The bedroom was upstairs behind the main room and didn't have a wall so from everywhere in the studio you could see the ocean. Most of the time we were there it was overcast and misty and rained briefly a few times, but the skyline and the scenery took on such a rich and moody cast that we didn't really lament the absence of the sun. We went to a sandy beach one day in the rain and it was actually pretty great to see the waves crashing and the rain coming down on it. And of course it almost goes without saying, there was not a soul anywhere. Not because it was raining probably but because there just aren't that many people to go around...

We explored a town an hour away, Guysborough, the first full day we were there. It was cute and tiny. There was no stop light in the whole town. We bought some amazing 9-grain bread at the bakery and some vegetables and fruit. We brought back a bag of apples for Morley. Later he brought us some delicious rhubarb that grows in his yard. Either he would stop by or we would stop in his place each day and we'd talk about the weather or we'd ask things about the area or his life. He asked Matt his name and how to spell his last name, to which he replied, "That's a little different." From what I don't know.

Most days we woke up and had tea and coffee, stared at the ocean and read, walked out on the rocky shore (it was really cold most of the time), made dinner, drank, entertained ourselves and the like. One night we played trivia pursuit and as Matt had predicted he won bigtime. That bastard.

Helga had hand-made an oven outside solely with large stones from the beach. Meinhard and his friend Berndt who we met the first night indicated how easy it was to cook with it and that Helga baked bread in it. It mostly looked like a pile of stones to me but we did cook some things in it. Matt went all prehistoric and got really excited about building the fire. I mostly stayed inside enjoying the view and drinking subpar Nova Scotian wine. I like trying out local beers and wines (you might not guess it but Long Island has some great wines and Maine too had delicious dry blueberry wines). But I tried several Nova Scotian wines and it was all not-so-great.

Each day the lobster boats would swing by the orange buoy right in front of our house and pull up the cage with lobsters to take back to the dock and sell. They would throw some of them back in the water, I think dead ones or something, because the seagulls would follow the boats and dive down to get what they left behind.

The few times that we ate out we were either the only of one of 2 or 3 other people in the restaurant. We went to a crab-shack type place not too far from where we were staying and had really yummy scallop burgers. The guy who ran the place lived next door to the "cafe" which really was a tiny little place where he was the only employee. "I don't make any money, I just annoy customers," was a line I got the feeling he said a lot. He was a retired car mechanic who had owned three car shops. He indicated that he ran the restaurant because his wife was too grumpy to be around. Two 20-something couples drove up on ATV/four wheelers. The two guys had on one piece worker uniforms and the girls had on lots of makeup and sullen looks. From the conversation with the owner I heard one of the guys say he worked in the goldmine. The town which was right next to Seal Harbor was Goldboro, "The City Built on Gold" as the sign says as you enter town. Apparently the old goldmines had been somewhat recently reopened. At some point the owner guy said something to one of the younger guys about him not being a hard worker and then the guy told the owner to fuck off and that his ice-cream was a ripoff. But he and his buddies left with ice-cream cones.

The owner guy said he was out of lobster burgers which Matt had originally asked for but he added that his brother worked on the lobster boats and he could get some later that week, Buddy. He called us and the ingrate and his friends "Buddy" at least 4 or 5 times each.

Lobster season was coming to a close so on Thursday we went to the dock to buy some. I hated the idea of getting live lobsters and cooking them and yet I've eaten them in restaurants knowing that that's how they're cooked. I definitely wouldn't have done it myself, but Matt loves lobster and seemed to know how to cook them so I kind of stayed out of it until they were done and on a plate before me. Really delicious too. We were a little uncertain how to buy them and we just walked onto the dock where the lobstermen were taking the cages off the boats and putting them in trucks. We inquired and were readily sold 3 lobsters for $32. They were surprised we paid with American dollars but were fine with it. It's even with the Canadian dollar these days instead of worth a lot more like in the past. Ah, the sinking dollar. It's great if you're European. Speaking of dollars, the gas up there was crazy expensive. You'd think with gas prices as they are we'd take a vacation that didn't involve driving 16 hours each way. We must really hate the environment.

The lobstermen sell us their wares:

...making Matt an uncharacteristically happy camper. (The happiest I'd seen him thus far in the Atlantic time zone.)

The seagulls, grotesquely huge, witness the whole exchange with great interest...

The poor lobsters proved to be a tasty dinner. We resorted to using one of the sculptor's tools to dismantle them.

Matt makes an odd gesture at the end of our meal indicating his gustatory satisfaction:

In the news this week, but not in the news this week

2008-04-19T00:44:00.012-04:00

In all the critiques this week about the Democratic Presidential debate in Pennsylvania (and there have been many), no one seems to be addressing the fact that one of the two moderators was a former top aide in the Clinton White House. George Stephanopoulos was one of the masterminds of the Clinton/Gore campaign (remember The War Room?) and then served as press secretary briefly and then as a senior policy advisor for his whole first term. Sure he now works for ABC as a political commentator and ABC was hosting the debate, but shouldn't he have been passed over for the role of moderator? There was no disclosure about it. (Below, Stephanopoulos and Clinton on the cover of Time in '93.)

Most of the critiques of the debate are about Obama being slammed with a barrage of "character" questions, so it's especially relevent I'd say. Obama also criticized the moderators for not addressing issues of substance for 45 minutes. Also innapropriate--Charles Gibson, the other moderator, took a sharp detour from moderator neutrality and basically argued with Obama about the detriment to the economy that the raising of the estate tax has--a debatable concept at best, but stated as if fact. And the question about why Obama doesn't wear the flag pin...I can't even dignify that with a comment except WTF??

Secondly, what's up the Pope's red shoes?

Are they the official pope shoes? Do they get passed down from pope to pope? Or is the Holy See just a shoe enthusiast? Can't really blame him. But on another note, the Pope met privately with survivors of priest sexual abuse and also gave a speech apologizing and expressing shame over the scandals. It's good that he's addressing it, more than a lot of other Catholic leaders, like a lot of Cardinals who kept quiet for years. Yet, I also just have a hard time believing that almost any priest, cardinal, or pope could have been ignorant of child sex abuse in the priesthood decades ago. When the Pope was Cardinal Ratzinger, what was he doing about the abuse? Apparently after it came to light through the excellent and fearless reporting of the Boston Globe, which broke the story that became the impetus to the huge spiraling of sex abuse stories that have come to light over the last several years, Ratzinger was very angry about the abuse. But could he possibly have never heard about it? Lots of people knew this was going on, perhaps not to the enormous extent that it was, but regular Catholics new about it and it had gotten press from time to time over the last twenty years or maybe more. Even I knew about it years and years ago. I remember reading about it, in GQ I think, when I was a teenager. There was also a big trial in Dallas about 15 years ago of several former altar boys suing the Catholic church (and winning) over abuse. So, did a Cardinal who was not only in charge of dozens of priests below him and in touch with Cardinals around the world know nothing about these scandals that even I had heard of? It was bigger that most of knew, but I can't imagine that leaders in the clergy didn't know or didn't investigate further on the at least handful of incidents that they must have known about. Lots of Cardinals knew, famously Boston's Cardinal Law who kept it quiet and transfered offending priests to different diocese where they committed further abuse, so didn't Ratzinger also know of some of this? I guess my point is, it's good that he's meeting with survivors and addressing it publicly, but I think he's getting too much credit for it when he also should be acknowledging, as the Watergate question goes, what he knew and when he knew it. He can't just distract us with his shiny red shoes, dapper though they are.

The (paltry few) Senators who voted against the war

2008-04-08T20:23:00.002-04:00

* Daniel Akaka (D-HI)
* Jeff Bingaman (D-NM)
* Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
* Robert Byrd (D-WV)
* Lincoln Chafee (R-RI)
* Kent Conrad (D-ND)
* Jon Corzine (D-NJ)
* Mark Dayton (D-MN)
* Richard Durbin (D-IL)
* Russell Feingold (D-WI)
* Robert Graham (D-FL)
* Daniel Inouye (D-HI)
* James Jeffords (I-VT)
* Edward Kennedy (D-MA)
* Patrick Leahy (D-VT)
* Carl Levin (D-MI)
* Barbara Mikulski (D-MD)
* Patty Murray (D-WA)
* Jack Reed (D-RI)
* Paul Sarbanes (D-MD)
* Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)
* Paul Wellstone (D-MN)
* Ron Wyden (D-OR)

Winter Soldier

2008-04-07T14:20:00.003-04:00

If you haven't yet read or seen or heard the Winter Soldier testimony of returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets you should. Why hasn't this gotten more media attention?

http://www.ivaw.org/wintersoldier

NEWSFLASH: Pot Calls Kettle Black

2008-02-20T13:19:00.003-05:00

"Eventually, this transition ought to lead to free and fair elections — and I mean free, and I mean fair — not these kind of staged elections that the Castro brothers try to foist off as true democracy."

William and Mary Professors on Strike To Protest Firing of President Nichol

2008-02-13T19:45:00.010-05:00

On the evening of the Potomac primary, Tuesday February 12th, I spent 10 hours in a car in the northeast ice-storm (what I shall henceforward call the "the storm of '08"). I went from Dover, Delaware to somewhere around DC in that time, normally a distance that could be traversed in less than two hours, and which was less than half of the distance I needed to go to get home to my precious cats and under-insulated abode full of small to mid-sized spiders. Several times beginning around 4 pm traffic came to a standstill for long enough that people shut off their engines and began taking naps. Not to mention peeing in cups. But I said I wouldn't mention that.

Around midnight when things seemed to be slowing down rather than speeding up and the ramp onto I-95 south was closed down by police who were directing stranded semi's to back up off the icy-ramp, I followed a salting truck to a hotel full of disgruntled commuters. I didn't consult my fellow man and woman there before checking into my room and accepting the complimentary toothpaste offered me, but I for one was pretty pissed about not getting to vote because of The Storm of '08 (what I can only assume was a vast right-wing conspiracy).

When I opened my school email, I was surprised to discover that while I was conducting research in the Dover archives that morning, sitting in traffic sucking up exhaust fumes the rest of the day, and fuming over my thwarted attempt to get to the polls, William and Mary was falling apart. The president sent an email that morning announcing that he quit "effective immediately" because his contract had not been renewed by the conservative board, who had in fact attempted to bribe him not to reveal the ideological underpinnings of their decision, i.e. that they didn't approve of his "controversial" decisions to adhere to the principles of freedom of speech and separation of church and state and the promotion of diversity. Below is his email, as well as the email that followed it in my inbox by the Rector, the head of the board that made the decision. Also, I have included the reaction by the student body president, and an email from one of my professors announcing that class would be cancelled since the faculty were going on strike to protest the board's decision! The Potomac primary be damned. College politics was the order of the day.

********

Date: Tue 12 Feb 09:42:36 EST 2008
From: "Gene R. Nichol"
Subject: [students] A Statement from President Nichol
To:

Dear Members of the William & Mary Community:

I was informed by the Rector on Sunday, after our Charter Day celebrations, that my contract will not be renewed in July. Appropriately, serving the College in the wake of such a decision is beyond my imagining. Accordingly, I have advised the Rector, and announce today, effective immediately, my resignation as president of the College of William & Mary. I return to the faculty of the school of law to resume teaching and writing.

I have made four decisions, or sets of decisions, during my tenure that have stirred ample controversy.

First, as is widely known, I altered the way a Christian cross was displayed in a public facility, on a public university campus, in a chapel used regularly for secular College events -- both voluntary and mandatory -- in order to help Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and other religious minorities feel more meaningfully included as members of our broad community. The decision was likely required by any effective notion of separation of church and state. And it was certainly motivated by the desire to extend the College’s welcome more generously to all. We are charged, as state actors, to respect and accommodate all religions, and to endorse none. The decision did no more.

Second, I have refused, now on two occasions, to ban from the campus a program funded by our student-fee-based, and student-governed, speaker series. To stop the production because I found it offensive, or unappealing, would have violated both the First Amendment and the traditions of openness and inquiry that sustain great universities. It would have been a knowing, intentional denial of the constitutional rights of our students. It is perhaps worth recalling that my very first act as president of the College was to swear on oath not to do so.

Third, in my early months here, recognizing that we likely had fewer poor, or Pell eligible, students than any public university in America, and that our record was getting worse, I introduced an aggressive Gateway scholarship program for Virginians demonstrating the strongest financial need. Under its terms, resident students from families earning $40,000 a year or less have 100% of their need met, without loans. Gateway has increased our Pell eligible students by 20% in the past two years.

Fourth, from the outset of my presidency, I have made it clear that if the College is to reach its aspirations of leadership, it is essential that it become a more diverse, less homogeneous institution. In the past two and half years we have proceeded, with surprising success, to assure that is so. Our last two entering classes have been, by good measure, the most diverse in the College’s history. We have, in the past two and a half years, more than doubled our number of faculty members of color. And we have more effectively integrated the administrative leadership of William & Mary. It is no longer the case, as it was when I arrived, that we could host a leadership retreat inviting the 35 senior administrators of the College and see, around the table, no persons of color.

As the result of these decisions, the last sixteen months have been challenging ones for me and my family. A committed, relentless, frequently untruthful and vicious campaign -- on the internet and in the press -- has been waged against me, my wife and my daughters. It has been joined, occasionally, by members of the Virginia House of Delegates -- including last week’s steps by the Privileges and Elections Committee to effectively threaten Board appointees if I were not fired over decisions concerning the Wren Cross and the Sex Workers’ Art Show. That campaign has now been rendered successful. And those same voices will no doubt claim victory today.

It is fair to say that, over the course of the past year, I have, more than once, considered either resigning my post or abandoning the positions I have taken on these matters -- which I believe crucial to the College’s future. But as I did so, I thought of other persons as well.

I thought of those students, staff, faculty, and alumni, not of the religious majority, who have told me of the power of even small steps, like the decision over display of the Wren Cross, to recognize that they, too, are full members of this inspiring community.

I have thought of those students, faculty, and staff who, in the past three years, have joined us with explicit hopes and assurances that the College could become more effectively opened to those of different races, backgrounds, and economic circumstances -- and I have thought of my own unwillingness to voluntarily abandon their efforts, and their prospects, in mid-stream.

I have thought of faculty and staff members here who have, for decades, believed that the College has, unlike many of its competitors, failed to place the challenge of becoming an effectively diverse institution center stage -- and who, as a result, have been strongly encouraged by the progress of the last two years.

I have thought of the students who define and personify the College’s belief in community, in service, in openness, in idealism -- those who make William & Mary a unique repository of the American promise. And I have believed it unworthy, regardless of burden, to break our bonds of partnership.

And I have thought, perhaps most acutely, of my wife and three remarkable daughters. I’ve believed it vital to understand, with them, that though defeat may at times come, it is crucial not to surrender to the loud and the vitriolic and the angry -- just because they are loud and vitriolic and angry. Recalling the old Methodist hymn that commands us “not to be afraid to defend the weak because of the anger of the strong,” nor “afraid to defend the poor because of the anger of the rich.” So I have sought not to yield. The Board’s decision, of course, changes that.

To my faculty colleagues, who have here created a distinctive culture of engaged, student-centered teaching and research, I will remember your strong and steadfast support until the end of my days.

To those staff members and alumni of this accomplished and heartening community, who have struggled to make the William & Mary of the future worthy of its distinctive past, I regret that I will no longer be part of that uplifting cause. But I have little doubt where the course of history lies.

And, finally, to the life-changing and soul-inspiring students of the College, the largest surprise of my professional life, those who have created in me a surpassing faith not only in an institution, but in a generation, I have not words to touch my affections. My belief in your promise has been the central and defining focus of my presidency. The too-quick ending of our work together is among the most profound and wrenching disappointments in my life. Your support, particularly of the past few weeks and days, will remain the strongest balm I’ve known. I am confident of the triumphs and contributions the future holds for women and men of such power and commitment.

I add only that, on Sunday, the Board of Visitors offered both my wife and me substantial economic incentives if we would agree “not to characterize [the non-renewal decision] as based on ideological grounds” or make any other statement about my departure without their approval. Some members may have intended this as a gesture of generosity to ease my transition. But the stipulation of censorship made it seem like something else entirely. We, of course, rejected the offer. It would have required that I make statements I believe to be untrue and that I believe most would find non-credible. I’ve said before that the values of the College are not for sale. Neither are ours.

Mine, to be sure, has not been a perfect presidency. I have sometimes moved too swiftly, and perhaps paid insufficient attention to the processes and practices of a strong and complex university. A wiser leader would likely have done otherwise. But I have believed, and attempted to explain, from even before my arrival on the campus, that an emboldened future for the College of William & Mary requires wider horizons, more fully opened doors, a broader membership, and a more engaging clash of perspectives than the sometimes narrowed gauges of the past have allowed. I step down today believing it still.

I have also hoped that this noble College might one day claim not only Thomas Jefferson’s pedigree, but his political philosophy as well. It was Jefferson who argued for a “wall of separation between church and state” -- putting all religious sects “on an equal footing.” He expressly rejected the claim that speech should be suppressed because “it might influence others to do evil,” insisting instead that “we have nothing to fear from the demoralizing reasonings of some if others are left free to demonstrate their errors.” And he averred powerfully that “worth and genius” should “be sought from every condition” of society.

The College of William & Mary is a singular place of invention, rigor, commitment, character, and heart. I have been proud that even in a short term we have engaged a marvelous new Chancellor, successfully concluded a hugely-promising capital campaign, secured surprising support for a cutting-edge school of education and other essential physical facilities, seen the most vibrant applicant pools in our history, fostered path-breaking achievements in undergraduate research, more potently internationalized our programs and opportunities, led the nation in an explosion of civic engagement, invigorated the fruitful marriage of athletics and academics, lifted the salaries of our lowest-paid employees, and even hosted a queen. None of this compares, though, to the magic and the inspiration of the people -- young and older -- who Glenn and I have come to know here. You will remain always and forever at the center of our hearts.

Go Tribe. And hark upon the gale.

Gene Nichol

******

Date: Tue 12 Feb 11:20:46 EST 2008
From: "Michael K. Powell"
Subject: [students] Statement by Rector Michael K. Powell
To: , , wm.edu

February 12, 2008

Dear Members of the College of William and Mary Community,

President Nichol has announced he will not serve the remainder of his term. We had hoped that he would and regret his decision. The Board of Visitors decision not to renew his contract after his current agreement expires on June 30th was extremely difficult. President Nichol achieved some outstanding things during his tenure. His energy and passion is legendary. He is a truly inspirational figure who has enjoyed the affection of many. After an exhaustive review, however, the Board believed there were a number of problems that were keeping the College from reaching its full potential and concluded that those issues could not be effectively remedied without a change of leadership.

It is critical to explain that this decision was not in any way based on ideology or any single public controversy. To suggest such a motivation for the Board is flatly wrong. Indeed, the Board has been repulsed by the personal attacks on the President and his family. The uncharitable personal assaults are unworthy of anyone who professes to care about the College and there should be no joy when things do not work out between good people.

Many policies championed by President Nichol are fully embraced by the Board. We agree unflinchingly with the President’s efforts to make William and Mary a more diverse educational environment. His achievements in this area will be the most enduring part of his legacy. We will continue the pursuit with vigor and will insist that all future presidents of the College do as well. We strongly support the Gateway program and will work to put it on sound financial footing by building an endowment that will allow it to blossom. Equally, we continue to see the enormous value that attends to the efforts of internationalization and civic engagement. And, so there is no doubt, the Board will not allow any change in the compromise reached on the placement of the Wren Cross.

The Board is cognizant that its decision will be deeply disappointing to many, especially members of our faculty and student body. Our sacred stewardship and full insight into the affairs of the College convinced us change was necessary to advance the best interests of the College. We understand the sense of loss and will work hard to heal all wounds.

But it is important to remember that William and Mary is stronger and more enduring than any one person or any one board. It will continue to rise and thrive through the ages. She is the Alma Matter of a Nation and the vibrancy of our students coupled with the wisdom and dedication of our masterful faculty will keep the College shining more brightly than any star in the constellation of higher education.

The College will begin a search for a new president immediately. In the interim, the Board will appoint Dean W. Taylor Reveley effective immediately to serve as President until a permanent leader is found.

Michael K. Powell ‘85

Rector, Board of Visitors

******

Date: Tue 12 Feb 14:17:52 EST 2008
From: "Zach Pilchen"
Subject: [students] A sad and frustrating day for the College
To: students-wm.edu

We learn this morning that President Nichol has resigned as President of the College. For many of us, he will always be our President, and the closed-door, unrecorded vote of the Board of Visitors has inspired everything from outrage to devastation to disillusionment. We will always be grateful to President Nichol for showing us what the College can be, and attempting to bring this "great and public" institution into the 21st century.

We are particularly ashamed of the way the BOV chose to handle this situation.

Michael Powell's statement on the BOV's decision rings empty. He lauds President Nichol and claims that the decision was, "not in any way based on ideology." If that was true, why would the BOV feel the necessity to bribe President Nichol and his wife into silence? Attempted bribery is about as un-William and Mary as you can get. President Nichol took the principled decision in rejecting their offer. We have come to expect nothing less from him.

The fact that he was informed of the decision by Michael Powell on Sunday, after President Nichol had spent the entirety of Charter Day performing for the BOV in blissful ignorance of their decision, comes across as equally slimy. This was a decision made in a closed room with no recorded vote. We have yet to hear anything but evasive, cheap rhetoric from the Rector. Who voted which way? Why was the decision made? The BOV has a responsibility to the College community to not hide behind closed doors, and to act with behavior befitting William and Mary. Sadly, they have failed in that duty.

Although we are not proud of the Board's decision, and are ashamed by their attempted bribery, the entire College community is proud of the students of the College who have been catalyzed in support of President Nichol. Students who understand that a love for the College is a love unmoved by one decision, or one year, in the life of our ancient institution. Students who gracefully rose above the epithets and personal attacks being hurled at their President to show the world, time and time again, how much they care for their College and their President. Students who now must come together to mourn our collective loss.

In appreciation and gratitude, we invite you to gather at President Nichol's home at 10PM TONIGHT. Those in attendance will sing the alma mater and present letters of support to the President--noting with Tribe Pride his incredible tenure and encouraging him in the wake of recent events. This is a show of support and unity among the student body, and we ask you to come with utmost respect to thank President Nichol for all he has done so selflessly for us.

Although the BOV has undercut our President, we must not allow them to undercut the inquisitive spirit to embrace diversity, and the unwavering love for the College and community that he has instilled in us during his short tenure.

As we said before: Gene Ray Nichol will always be our President.

Zach and Valerie

******

Date: Tue 12 Feb 20:00:23 EST 2008
From: Maureen A Fitzgerald
Subject: Strike: no class tomorrow: AMST570-02-S08
To: "AMST570-02-S08"

Dear Folks,

I am complying with, and very supportive of, the faculty strike of the next two days. We will consequently not have class tomorrow, although you are welcome to show up and discuss the strike, the college, or anything else you want. We will continue with Fessenden next week.

Maureen

*******

Links:

Washington Post, "William And Mary President Resigns"

The Pitt News, "Nichol resignation reveals disregard for Constitution"

Dailypress, "Nichol is not the one who is hurting William and Mary"

James' Blog, "Bullshit Firing of W&M President Gene Nichol"

Inside Higher Ed, "Presidential Ouster at William & Mary"

Building Our Power Toward a Collective Society

I should really be working...

2007-10-08T21:27:00.000-04:00

But there's no procrastination like the present. And another thing, autos. And still more. Six months ago I stopped parking in my carport because it was apparently also a pretty hospitable abode for a bumble bee contingent. I would often get out of the car and have to jettison to the front door, always looking over my shoulder, usually uttering a cry of terror. Those things may not produce honey but they liked chasing me around, not to mention making me look like an ass. They especially liked that part. Running around in circuitous paths all over the yard, holding my keys and screaming as if chased by an invisible assailant, now that's humiliation for the neighbors' pleasure. That's what I'm here for, neighbor. And I also pay taxes.

Bees don't have insurance. The yellow thing that backed up into my car parked on the street--where it wouldn't have been if the swarmies weren't swarming around me--was not a bee but a taxi and it did have insurance, though like the bees, its bigwig seems to be running me around in circles. Whatever, the car works. But on principle I'd like them to fix the massive dent, if for no other reason so that I don't have to look at the sizable damage to my car due to bees every time I drive. Lesson: yellow things may be closer than they appear.

They are not the only insect out to get me. Taxis that is. But back to bees, they are inexplicably gone from the carport after having been there semi-steadily for a year. Not surprisingly, I miss them. They're so furry and persistent. I love that in a bee.

Enter the stinkbugs. They move so slowly it seems clear they must be calculating something very, very terrible. They have taken to my porch. Previously I had taken to my porch. No more. In researching online how to get rid of the sceeziest bugs in the world, everyone on blogs and chatrooms--or wherever it is that people talking about stinkbugs online commingle--seems to describe them as "disgusting" or "the most disgusting bug I've ever seen" or "these disgusting things." Apparently they are extremely hard to get rid of and tend towards infestations. This fills me with an abiding terror. Bigtime abiding. I've only got a few of them at a time, but they are more than I can emotionally handle. My writers block and facial tick I attribute to the slow-walking stinkers.

I surmised that the stinkbugs seem to fly to my windows perhaps from one of the bushes on the other side of my "driveway" (i.e. path of dirt leading from the street to the carport). Thus the bee-free carport once again remains empty as I have started parking on the street for fear I will have a run-in with the traveling Von Trapp stinkbugs. Also if one of the disgustos were to get into my car and I were to notice it while driving, I would definitely start a seven-car pile up. Make that five-car, the speed limit is so low around here. Horse-drawn carriages not included.

As a result, although not a really clear cause and effect here, my recycling was not picked up last Wednesday. Every single other person on the block got their weekly recycling picked up as usual by the friendly and efficient gentlemen on the green truck. I can only conclude that because my car was on the street where it usually isn't, they failed to see the recycling, even though the car wasn't blocking it but just near it. I see no other plausible conclusion but to blame my inconvenient amount of recyclables on the stinker-doodles. And boy are they disgusting.

Democratic Debate Turns Into Contest of Index Fingers

2007-04-27T01:41:00.000-04:00

April 26, 2007, Orangeburg, South Carolina

WHAT IS EVERYBODY POINTING AT?!!!

Silence is Golden

2007-04-20T15:11:00.000-04:00

Swiss Accidentally Invade Liechtenstein!!!

2007-03-03T17:11:00.000-05:00

"ZURICH, Switzerland (AP) -- What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein.

According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers wandered just over a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

A spokesman for the Swiss army confirmed the story but said that there were unlikely to be any serious repercussions for the mistaken invasion.

''We've spoken to the authorities in Liechtenstein and it's not a problem,'' Daniel Reist told The Associated Press.

Officials in Liechtenstein also played down the incident.

Interior ministry spokesman Markus Amman said nobody in Liechtenstein had even noticed the soldiers, who were carrying assault rifles but no ammunition. ''It's not like they stormed over here with attack helicopters or something,'' he said.

Liechtenstein, which has about 34,000 inhabitants and is slightly smaller than Washington DC, doesn't have an army."

One Dictator Down

2007-02-03T00:57:00.000-05:00

Saparmurad Niyazov, dictator of Turkmenistan who nicknamed himself "Serdar Turkmenbashi" meaning "Great Leader of all Turkmen", died unexpectedly this week. He leaves a legacy of having renamed the months and days of the week in narcissistic fashion. January was named Turkmenbashi after himself. April was renamed Gurbansoltan after his mother. September was renamed Ruhnama, the title of a book he wrote. After giving up smoking in 1997 he made it illegal to smoke in public and required all of his fellow smoking ministers to give up the butt. He also, more inexplicably, outlawed beards.

2007-01-31T02:16:00.000-05:00

Binkle and The Chairman.

And so...

2006-10-01T02:31:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I'm in Virginia. Thomas Jefferson statues freakin everywhere. I'm dangerously close to colonial costumed re-enactors. Hundreds of them that I drive by everyday. Recently I had to stop my car to let a stagecoach cross the street. The two gentlemen at the helm donned in silky white tights and three-pointed hats stood and bowed to me as if to say, "Much obliged." I'm not sure what's more bizarre, just being here or being used to being here. Well I don't know that I'll ever be quite so, but I'm inching towards it. It does seem appropriate to be enrolled in an American Studies Phd program here I suppose. Sit your ass down in the seat of it all, Klimchock!

The number you have reached is out of service...

2006-09-03T20:49:00.000-04:00

Friends, family, internet pervs: I have moved. That is, moved my belongings, my cats and my pallid complexion to somewhere in the sunlit south. Only god (and, by the way, damn him) knows where. My cell phone service seems not to know where and that is really my only connection to reality. More later...

Bush--Back on the Bottle?

2006-07-19T22:59:00.000-04:00

Click above for a mordant analysis of the toxicology of the leader of the so-called "free" world.

British news anchor aghast over Bush at G8

2006-06-28T12:31:00.000-04:00

Click above for clip.

Lost and Found

2005-07-17T22:46:00.000-04:00

A year ago I decided to go out West in search of the lone resident of Lost Springs, Wyoming. Two connecting flights and about 1000 highway miles later, I did indeed have the pleasure. He works in the city's only store, which doubles as the post office. Nevermind why one man needs a store and a post office--actually there is a glitch in the population count. There are in reality a whopping five residents in Lost Springs! When the census came a knockin', four of the five residents were out of town, according to my man, the shopkeeper. I failed to ask why the surveyed resident didn't mention the other 80% of the population to said census taker. Some people just want all the glory for themselves, I guess. Rounding out the leisure-time locales of Lost Springs are a park and a bar. All of the city structures face each other on a tiny, dusty, dead-end block that juts off a two-lane highway about an hour and a half East of Casper.

The resident I spoke with, who shall remain nameless (but if you look in the Lost Springs phone book, you've got a very good chance of figuring it out) told me about the history of the town. It did in fact have only one resident once: his mother, who still lives in town. Among the other residents are his brother and the woman who runs the bar. Looking back on it, there are so many questions I failed to ask, such as Does the town have a mayor? I had been driving for a while in the blistering heat and 48 hours previously had had an out of body experience and then gone camping at high elevation, so cut me some slack.

What I greatly appreciated about Lost Springs, besides everything, was that it had a healthy sense of self-irony. In the store were buttons and postcards reading, "Where the Hell is Lost Springs?" I was certainly not the only out-of-towner to come sniffing for the quirk and singularity. After I paid for the rusty 1959 Wyoming license plate now hanging in my kitchen, I bid him farewell and headed towards my car, at which point he followed me outside and said, "Hey can I ask you a question?" Pleonasm aside, I nodded. "Will you give me a kiss?" It was far from what I expected, although it really shouldn't have come as a surprise considering the limited amorous options in town.

As I drove away I was kicking myself for declining. I had broken my own golden rule: Do the thing that will make the best story later. Well, I do have a story and it's mine even if it doesn't end up with finding love in Lost Springs or some such. Normally I'm not one to quote Jesus, I mean I'm REALLY, really not, but I'm also not one to pass up an apposite aphorism: "Blessed are the solitary and elect."

"Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are." -Spanish saying

2005-06-21T21:51:00.000-04:00

The tinier the streets, the better the restaurants. That’s what I quickly discovered in Madrid. The narrower the sidewalk, and some of them were barely pushing 12 inches, and the tighter the one way street that it hugged, the more quaint the atmosphere, and often, the better food as well. It only took about 24 hours in Spain for me to finally appreciate what I haven’t ever appreciated in 29 years in the U.S.: beer in the afternoon. Sitting in a tiny outdoor café on a carless, brick street with my boss as we took in the view of the Plaza Mayor a short distance ahead of us, I savored the chill and the foam of a glass of beer under a mercilessly bright sun. So this is what millions of frat boys and football fans have always known, I thought…

I forced myself to struggle through ungrammatically correct, artless Spanish sentences whenever I ordered food and bought museum tickets, asked for directions, the bathroom, metro directions, checking into the hotel, despite the fact that seemingly everyone speaks English. But the exercise was worth it; In six days my Spanish did indeed go from worse to bad. A definite triumph.

I took a short day trip to Segovia, a small town absolutely plucked out of a fairytale. The pointy-towered castle had room after room of exquisite furnishings and armor and paintings. From the castle balcony you could see an aerial view of the town. An American expatriot I met had told me about the temple in Segovia which was home to a masons-type order way before the masons. He said there was some kind of legend that if you stand in the dead center of the place you will get a splitting headache. So obviously, I wanted to try out that theory. There’s two paths from the castle on the hill to the temple below. I took this one:

This picture is a very small piece of the path which is about 20 of these steep-ass, dirt staircases hugging the hill and canvassed with trees. Slipping on the unkempt dirt stairs and clutching the railing lent a create-your-own-adventure kind of feeling to it. A short distance through part of the town, past a tiny, old-school bar of locals trying to fend off the Mediterranean heat, the temple appeared like a monolith as I rounded the corner and walked up the dusty incline toward it. Altars, eerie pictures, a tiny claustrophobia-inducing room lined with pictures of old men and a round loft-alter reachable by a staircase less even and hospitable than the dirt one from the castle, the temple kind of freaked me out. Standing in the middle, I didn’t get a splitting headache but as I walked around the place I began to feel dizzy and had a strong urge to bolt outta there. To be fair, I was probably on the verge of heat exhaustion and dehydration, so that could explain the dizziness, but the place did have a weird vibe. I read the Spanish-only brochure about the history of the place, and mostly understood it at the time, but can’t remember any of the details about when it was built or how the original sect started.

Back in Madrid I visited the posh studio of one of the photographers in the exhibit for which I was flown over to Spain in the first place for work. The opening had been fun and lively and was followed by a characteristically late 10:30 dinner at a Spanish food restaurant perplexingly called Edelweiss. At the photographer’s studio I was greeted by his two dogs, one of which took my entire hand into his mouth between his slobbery and sharp dog-teeth. Although discombobulating, it was fairly painless, like a toothy handshake. A handshake doubling as shock-therapy. The Spanish photographer and his French film editor and I had a lot of laughs. Whether or not we were laughing at the same thing, no one seemed to really know or care. I spoke broken Spanish and the French guy translated it into French for the Spaniard. A wonderful confusion was this meeting of the minds.

The highlight of my trip was probably the mellifluous classical guitar duo concert I went to in the National Archeological Museum. It was in a small reading room full of exquisite antiques, specimens, 15-foot tall bookcases, statues, tapestries and a huge rectangular wood carving attached to the ceiling. And the music was incredible and eclectic, ranging from traditional Spanish music to Debussy and contemporary pieces influenced by rock, flamenco and apparently John Cage. The two young guitarists played with a percussive physicality like athletes.

Later I ate in the world’s oldest restaurant. It opened in 1725 and Goya worked as a dishwasher there. When I walked in the maitre d’ asked if I wanted to sit upstairs or downstairs and as he did so he pointed to a handsome dark wood carved staircase leading up to a room filled with lively chatter and the clink of dishes and a narrow concrete hole near the dishwasher leading down into what appeared to be a pit of darkness. It seemed like a Hobson’s choice to me, but later I wondered what it looked like downstairs and if anyone ever chose that route.

On my way into town from the airport my cabdriver had been very pissy and exacting. He didn’t like my stunted Spanish and would yell impatiently for me to stammer out where the hotel was, what I was doing here, where I was from, what did I know of Madrid. I had basically deplaned into a Gestapo on wheels.

But on the way out of town-different story entirely. A forty-ish, shaved-head, edgy guy with a raspy rock-singer voice who chatted patiently and asked where I was returning to, “Paris?” Ah, mistaken for a Parisian instead of the vulgar, ignorant American that I am. I liked this guy immediately. We commiserated about the heat, something no conversation in Madrid seems to be complete without. He held up his whiskey bottle for me to see when we were at a stop light and he took a swig. We giggled together. I didn’t find it disturbing at all, but actually delightful. I was high on my adventures. He drove fast and turned the Led Zeppelin way up and offered me lemon candy. We both sucked on the sweet bitterness and nodded our heads to Whole Lotta Love. He glanced back at me and said I was guapa. Flattery, my friends will get you nowhere with me. Unless of course you are a very sexy, Spanish alcoholic.

At the terminal I gave him a 50% tip and he wished me happy travels as he made a gesture with his hand of an airplane lifting off. Damn shame I had to leave that city.

My pics from Spain

2005-06-05T21:41:00.000-04:00

Palacial gardens, Madrid

A mere few hours ago, I was looking through the lens of this camera....

Segovia, Spain

The streets of Segovia are truly resplendent.

Aqueduct, Segovia

The view out my hotel window.

Plaza de Cibeles, Madrid

San Millán, Segovia

Graffiti against the European Constitution

From the boat...

2005-05-23T08:21:00.000-04:00

The view from Susan and Kevin's tugboat Friday night on the Hudson.

Exit the Secular

2005-04-28T23:01:00.000-04:00

Sitting on a bench in front of the Hendy Creek Market blanketed by a cinematic light rain in the rustic town of Elmira, NY, I looked up when I heard my name. Before me was Brother James: petite, bald, maybe about 75 and walking with a bit of a limp. Dressed in dark pants and shirt, he offered his outstretched palm and chortled slightly as we shook hands, as if we shared an unspoken joke or something. I laughed with him. It indeed genuinely amused me to be waiting for a lift from a Benedictine monk in the middle of, in my estimation anyway, absolutely nowhere, but what was it that HE found so amusing? Perhaps picking up a young, seemly woman at the market was just wacky enough to crack an old monk up. Brother James is the guest liaison for the Mt. Saviour Monastery and I had emailed with him a little in arranging my visit. Yep, even monks email.

It took him a good minute and a half fumbling around to hit the unlock button for me to open the passenger door. On the drive up to the monastery he asked me a little about myself and why I came to visit and in turn I asked him what makes a monk a monk. He gave me an abbreviated history of the monastic tradition as we drove along Monastery Road towards the chapel and barn. Does he hate answering questions about monks I wondered. I also wondered if he noticed that I was physically leaning toward him in order to hear him. He asked if I had been to a monastery before and upon hearing my answer he practically exclaimed, “First time at a monastery! Well, this will be a new experience!” I wasn’t sure if his enthusiasm was a good sign or an indication that I should jump out of the moving vehicle and sprint back to the bus station post-haste.

Upon passing a bloody Jesus on the cross statue I also worried that maybe this was going to be a little more than I’d bargained for--perhaps I’d been a little rash. The previous weeks had been too busy for me to do the research I had intended about what exactly goes on at a monastery, what monks do, what it's like to visit, etc. Little did I know then that the highlight of my stay would be 45 minutes of chanting with nine monks deep inside a crypt well before sunrise.

I had taken the 6 1/2 hour Greyhound in search of a brief respite from the overstimulation of the city and a meditative few days in a rustic, sparsely populated place. When I had stumbled upon Mt. Saviour online in my initial research, monks and sheep were not at all what I had originally envisioned for my trip, but that's often, I think, when you know you've found exactly what you're looking for--when it is, in fact, markedly unlike what you imagined you were looking for.

When he parked, I immediately hit the unlock button and he seemed positively ecstatic at my technical know-how. He was gentle and visibly peaceful, warm and remarkably fragile, and for all of those reasons I wanted to wrap him in an afghan and serve him tea.

I was put up in a tiny, religiously decorated room named after St. Theresa in a very quaint, impeccably clean house for female guests (St. Gertrude’s House). For my whole stay I was the only visitor in the 8-person, two-story guesthouse. Maureen, a British ex-banker, who lives on the first floor maintains the house and cooks for guests. Flush with flowering plants, the dining room’s three walls of windows open up to a meditative view of gently rolling farmland and the hazy hills of Pennsylvania pulsating in the distance.

The monks run a sheep farm from which the meat and wool provide income. One monk, Brother Pierre, even knits mittens which you can buy there. They also keep bees and sell honey and beeswax candles (actually you can buy all their stuff online too—these are 21st century monks!). Some of their sustenance comes from the guests who pay a $45 a day sliding donation for their room and meals but spend their time as they please. The seven traditional Benedictine religious services the monks observe each day are open to guests but they don't proselytize at all. Also people from the community come to many of the services. I figured I’d go to one or two just to see what they were like. I ended up going to ten.

I went to the 6:30 Vespers my first night. The chapel is octagonal and elegantly stark. A few minutes after the bell on top of the chapel is rung, all of the monks emerge from the crypt and the service begins. Vespers was mostly singing and ended after about 15 minutes. The five or ten non-monks sang along from hymnals which I found way too befuddling to follow. We sat on one half of the octagon and the monks sat together on the other side facing us. They wore long dark robes and often sat with their eyes closed in deep concentration. Even my buddy Brother James looked like stone over there. The singing had a beautiful and hypnotic lilt. Fresh flowers adorned the circular altar in the center of the chapel. Large, simple chandeliers of dark metal and white candles looked authentically handmade and, oddly, also like something that might show up in next season’s Pottery Barn catalogue.

The storybook grounds of the monastery are hilly and sprinkled with trees and flowers, statues, an orchard and vegetable garden, loads of sheep, a few donkeys, a couple of barns, a friendly black cat, a small cemetery, numerous wild deer and bunnies and a bazillion bees.

Over the three days I was there I probably spent several hours total just staring at the sheep and listening with amusement at their communication which sounded like junior-high kids attempting to burp the alphabet. Fluffy little lambs scurried around adorably, making urgent “baaah” noises to which the older sheep usually responded by sluggishly maintaining their regularly scheduled munching-on-grass routine.

I also took walks for several hours each day and jogged some in the town and on the monastery grounds. One day I worked in the garden with Maureen, raking and trimming.

The median age of the monks is about 70. There are a couple younger guys. One of them, in his early 40s perhaps, stood out to me right away as having not only a different look but also an inexplicably different air about him than the others. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I later found out he’s the newest convert and entered the monastery six months ago when he left his job as a NYC firefighter. The rest of my time there I constructed a story for him in my head which became increasingly elaborate. I wanted to know how that frisson of radical change happened for him and in lieu of details, I invented them.

Because the only music I heard for those three days was the singing of the monks, their songs rang through my head and continued even after I got back to Brooklyn. At two of the services Brother James, quite smashing in his robe by the way, came over to me beforehand and tried to explain how to follow along in the books, there’s a different one for each service, and apparently some kind of complicated logarithmic calculation for the page numbers cuz I absolutely never figured it all out. But he would smile as he explained it to me and we’d sort of do our fake inside joke laughing routine and then he’d hobble back to the monks’ seating.

The mid-day ceremonies, Sext at noon and None at 3pm are interesting because the monks show up without their robes (and no they’re not naked underneath, you perv) wearing regular clothes, jeans and sneakers and such. The services are named after the Latin word for the hours of the day as they existed in the fifth century when St. Benedict lived.

The second day there I decided to drag my atheist-ass out of bed at 4am to see what the 4:45 Vigils were all about. St. Gertrude’s House is located a half a mile up a VERY steep hill from the chapel and I couldn’t find a flashlight anywhere—and folks, out in the country nighttime is actually pitch black which I was quickly reminded of—so I utilized my only illuminated resource: my cell phone. I stumbled down the hill with the faintest light possible letting me see precious few inches of road at a time. Imagine being blindfolded and hiking into the Grand Canyon. When I got in the chapel and no one was there I realized that the services seemed to be commencing in the crypt. After seriously having to buck up my courage to stroll down into that sacred subterranean territory I turned the corner and saw past the Mary statue down to a dark room where the monks were seated on benches against three walls. My mind said no but my legs just kept walking and in the tiny room underscored with a blood red carpet I took a seat on a little bench with books that said “Abbreviated book for guests.” I was at least relieved that guests were allowed but I was disconcerted that I was in fact the only guest present and thus the only woman and the only person not wearing a dark, flowing robe and the only person not dedicating my life to Christ and sheep herding. So I was, like, out of my element.

We opened our books and let the chanting begin. In between texts there were several-minute pauses, presumably for prayer and reflection, but in those silent minutes in that tiny, dark room with nine intensely intense men being really intense, the air was thick and viscous. I relished in it. How rare it is for people to just sit together in silence and yet how rich. The chanting was mostly done sitting down, but some standing and some standing and bowing at the waist. There were readings by individuals as well. One was by the former NYC fireman, and his Brooklyn accent, though delightful, was certainly un-monk-like.

A couple of times I suddenly realized the oddity I was in and I had to remind myself I wasn’t on a movie set or in a dream. I mean seriously, it sounds like such a dream plot right? So I’m in this crypt, and there are a bunch of monks chanting around me… It easily qualifies as the first or second most bizarre thing I’ve ever participated in (the other being the Shoshone sun dance).

In the chants the monks’ voices maintained a monotony and a steady, even rhythm. Chanting with them, speaking together, whatever the words, had a great effect. I felt a strong sense of distance in our togetherness. We sat close and spoke with concinnity, but each of us was deep inside our own heads, connecting with a god or a belief or a train of thought or an inner expanse of some kind. I felt a privilege too in being allowed entrée to this sacred tradition. Although at times I felt like a sore thumb, I also was moved by their hospitality and silent welcome, opening their doors daily to any sore thumb who wants to stroll in. After about forty minutes the monks stood up and filed out and I followed behind them by several paces. They gathered in front of the Mary statue and sang and prayed. This is how they begin each day.

When I got outside the birds were chirping and the black night was lifting to blue. With nowhere particular to be I sat on the steps of the chapel, with a still mind and dew on my ankles, staring into the violet sky.

................................................................................

Mt. Saviour grounds

friendly donkey

monastery sheep

Sheep from the Mt. Saviour Monastery

2005-04-27T21:18:00.000-04:00

Sheep deserve to be heard, too.

i heart pop culture

2005-04-18T04:51:00.000-04:00

The piece that was here before is now on the Magazine Americana site in the Politics section.

Me being funny can be found here among other places, of course...

Mystikal on My Mind

2005-03-06T20:50:00.000-05:00

In 2001 I had the pleasure of interviewing an artist whose work I really liked and whose previous multi-platinum album Let’s Get Ready had several incredibly infectious tracks (I don’t need to remind you of “Shake ya ass!” do I?) that oozed out of car stereos for-freakin-ever. At the time of my interview with Mystikal (born Michael Tyler) he was promoting the album Tarantula which garnered him several Grammy nods. Known for his Southern bounce, vocal theatrics and party songs, Mystikal had also come to hip hop by an unusual route, via the military. After his tour in the first Gulf War he returned to his native New Orleans and began the group Boot Camp Click on Master P’s No Limit label.

On each of his first three albums he has songs about his sister who was murdered by her boyfriend (a grandson of one of the Neville Brothers oddly enough). Off his debut album Mind of Mystikal “Dedicated to Michelle Tyler” begins:

Miss Michelle Tyler: Sweet, beautiful,
intelligent, talented, creative, and
crazy as hell. And missed more than
anything in the world.

And the song ends with:

You were already a angel, so
I guess you’re just goin' home.
And, I know that heavenly
choir sound good up there, now.
They one more strong.
So, you keep singin' baby,
and I'm gonna keep you in my heart
and my thoughts.
I love you.

He has several songs written directly to her killer. They all have a raw immediacy about them. From “Murderer III”:

Muthafuckin' murderer
Bitch you killed my sister
Bitch I'm bout to get my pistol
…
Six years, still tears
I know it's gonna be that way
Until the day that your grave is filled up
…
Bitch that was my only sister, you can't just kill her
Don't that fuck with you? Can't you feel her?
That's what the fuck she get for givin' you her real love?
…
I just wish I would've knew then what I know now,
I just wish I could've woke up before it went down
Now I'm sayin' "Damn!"
Wake up hollerin' "Damn!"
Wait until I get that muthafucka, AND I AM

***

The weird part about doing phone interviews is waiting for the person to call. Sitting there in my livingroom I remember thinking, I can’t believe I’m waiting for a call from Mystikal. I mean it’s trippy to pick up the phone (“Hello?”) and hear a voice you’ve heard coming from your stereo A LOT (“Hey, this is Mystikal”).

But the conversation flowed naturally and the deep, cavernous voice from his albums was much more disarming and Southern than I’d expected. He laughed a lot and was extremely sweet and almost childlike. He had the very Southern trait of calling me Darling, Honey and Sweetie in just about every sentence.

Interviews by their very design of course are highly artificial encounters wherein topics are covered quickly, summarily and expediently. So while I wouldn’t normally ask someone about their murdered sister ten minutes into meeting them, that’s how it had to go if I wanted to bring it up at all.

When he spoke about her his voice was calm and steady in a way that sounded effortful. He talked about her involvement in his music. He described her continued presence in his life. And in the long pause that followed, I debated whether or not to address his own history of domestic violence. I mostly was afraid of spoiling the heavy moment lingering between us on the line, the moment that felt rare in its genuineness under very artificial circumstances. I expected to get what many interviewers get when confronting someone about their alleged crimes: defensiveness, unwillingness to talk about it at all, denial, curtness.

When I did broach it, the heavy silence protracted. And then he acknowledged it frankly. He spoke about his struggle with violence, referring to it as a dark period in his life, a darkness in his past. There was a distinct change in his demeanor. He was no longer “on” at all. He was no longer Mystikal. He just sounded like a guy. Just some guy talking about something that he’s thought a lot about, something that’s hard to talk about. The quiet steadiness of his voice sounded less steady and even more clearly sad than when he spoke of his sister.

I’d never talked openly with an abuser about his abuse before. It was strange, in part because of how normal it seemed and also because of how melancholy I felt to hear him speak of it. I was touched by him and I felt something for him, sadness, maybe even sympathy, and that left me feeling uneasy.

I had other questions to ask but none of them seemed very important anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to transition into talking about videos or his tour schedule. So I thanked him and we soberly said our goodbyes.

I was anxious to listen to the tape and share with my editor what was sure to be a rich and moving transcript.

But. The. Tape. Was. Blank.

I had checked like I always do throughout the interview to make sure the tape was turning, but apparently some weak batteries caused it to turn so slowly that nothing was recorded.

***

I had cause to think of that conversation with Mystikal this week when I read an article about how he’s doing in Elayn Hunt Correctional Facility in Louisiana and what his plans are when he becomes eligible for parole in December. He’s apparently written 20 songs during the first year of his six year sentence for sexual battery. The original charge, aggravated rape, which carries a mandatory life sentence in Louisiana, was negotiated down to sexual battery for a guilty plea. Apparently there is a video of Mystikal and his bodyguards threatening and sexually assaulting his former hairstylist who they claimed had extorted money from the artist.

I was deeply disheartened when I originally heard about his arrest a year or so ago. I felt sad to know that the remorseful and thoughtful former abuser I had been so moved by was very possibly no longer a former abuser (or never had been). I didn’t doubt his sincerity in the conversation with me; he was convincing because he didn’t sound like he was trying to be.

From “Murderer II”:

What possesed that nigga that hurt her
100% black queen self?
…
Sister was your victim
Fuck, he said he did it
What the fuck you mean you’re being a victim
…
There will be no reasonable excuse for what you've done
Even ignored him when he started stealin' from me
Cause them was crumbs
A raindrop to a river
Huh, a sinner to a Christian
A holler to a whisper
She was the sole reason that I got along wichya
But I'ma never heal from the scars of what you did to my sister

When I read the article about him planning his comeback for when he gets out in December, I just wondered, really wondered--what does he think about on a daily basis and how does he frame this latest bout with violence against a woman? Does he think about it in relationship to his sister or somehow separate the two in his mind? I don’t know Michael Tyler, I don’t know how accurate my brief glimpse of him was, but reading about him this week reminded me of how involute the cycle of violence is and how its perpetrators are not necessarily so easily categorized as unequivocally nefarious. It would be easier of course to think of them that way. It would be easier to think that he was not genuine with me in his remorse and is just overall vicious and wack. It would be easier to think that someone prone to violence couldn't possibly also be sweet and thoughtful and loving. Easier, but most likely specious.

From his song “Michelle Elizabeth Tyler”:

I'ma miss you forever, forget you never
…
So if you can see me from Heaven, over the cloud
You could be proud of your little brother, so look down and smile

Hegel says

2005-02-16T21:05:00.000-05:00

"Human beings are by nature not what they ought to be; they arrive at truth only by a process of transformation."
-Hegel

2005-02-13T20:47:00.000-05:00

Originally uploaded by carolee.

Herrrotica

2005-01-23T21:12:00.000-05:00

I didn’t know what I’d been missing all my life until I saw it, and now I can die happy.

What I’m referring to is Women’s Turkish Oil Wrestling.

Wading through the snowstorm and the two hour train delay Saturday night was completely worth it for the feast-for-the-eyes--and really all the senses--that I was blessed with upon entering the Dumba arts center in Brooklyn. In fact, I would have trudged through an arctic blizzard dressed in only a sock for two days to see what was to be seen there.

Scantily clad women went at it in pairs on the square air-matt in tightly contested bouts of total, unabashed, lubricious, homoerotic splendor. My ringside seat had the obvious benefits (you’ll have to use your imagination because no cameras were allowed) and some drawbacks including being splashed with oil when the wrestling got especially animated.

No pesky rules or regulations hindered the melee. The referee, such as she was, wore a teddy and blood red lipstick and basically served only to provide color commentary, such as“What the FUCK is that?” and, “Oooh, I see titties!”

The first pair of wrestlers ended their contest with the winner hand-cuffing her opponent (pretty much a win-win situation if you ask me). Another memorable and clever play included one wrestler pulling the other’s head inside her tank top, in a twist on the old tried-and-true headlock. Oh yeah, and then there was the biting of the ass, but that move left the bitee entirely unfazed.

Before each round, three hottie “fluffers” would thoroughly and seductively oil each wrestler. Dressed in tight, matching, red, velour jogging suits, the fluffers had “video-ho” written all over them (and I say this with the utmost regard). My favorite of the three pranced around in sparkley, silver, spiked heels; I felt she did some rather high quality fluff-work. The trio also generously found time to grind a bit with some of the contestants. They were perhaps inspired by the potential of the wrestler in question or a favorite song being spun by the live dj, or maybe they just needed a break from their oil-rub-downs. Fluffing is hard work, people.

The small room where the wrestling took place had bleacher-like platforms crowded with 20-somethings (ladies only, no men were allowed) dressed in that highly sought-after, but equally elusive hip-without-trying-too-hard-to-be-hip look, cheering, oogling and basically going buck-fucking-wild. Those in the back rows probably threw their backs out of alignment trying to catch all the action.

Unfortunately I was in line for the bathroom and out of sight of the match when I heard the referee yell, “Are you guys wrestling or having sex?! I DON’T KNOW!”

In a much-anticipated bout between the wrestlers North Korea and South Korea, the athletics were interrupted with the toss of a white reunification flag into the ring. Another match, between Mr. Charismatic and Shy Guy ended up with Shy Guy on top. (Isn’t that always the way?) Unfortunately, rivals East Coast and West Coast went a.w.o.l. and their match was cancelled. I was hoping to wager a cash bet with my friend on that one. Then I suggested to her that we fill in for the missing wrestlers but she didn’t go for it. One pair of jocks spontaneously ended their round by seducing the referee, which she gleefully welcomed.

After each match the ladies were, as you can imagine—and I assume that you are probably doing a lot of imagining at this point—shiny and dripping from head to toe in the titular Turkish Oil. The voyeurism only increased after each match, however, when they made their way to the showers where all of their activities (there was a little more than showering going on at times) were sent via live-feed video to a screen behind the ring.

When I finally left the action and trudged through the snow to the York Street F train, I didn’t even need to wear my coat. The Greatest Show on Earth had warmed me quite thoroughly, inside and out.

Blog Returns, Well Rested and Rejuvenated

2005-01-23T16:20:00.000-05:00

This just in:

After a three-month respite, The Blog has woken up from its tacit slumber. The Blog has missed the feel of a good upload, a re-publish, a hearty increase of girth (i.e. words). The Blog doesn’t know where the time went. “Tempis fugit,” The Blog offers with a yawn. There goes that crazy Blog, blogging in Latin again. Other blogs, busy with their daily updates and multiple links, tease The Blog about its hiatus. “Oh, go blog yourself,” retorts The Blog dryly.

And so we shall see what The Blog has to say…

мне двадцать девять лет

2004-10-04T22:08:00.000-04:00

Twenty-nine years have been done to me. That’s how the Russians would say it, anyway. Mnye dvadtsat dyevyat lyet. It has always seemed appropriate to me that my wintry ancestors would have a pessimistic spin on even something as banal as stating one’s age. But perhaps living one more year in a permafrost landscape is about like having years done to you, having the years pile on top, weighing you down like a slab of cured beef.

The Russians are known for their literary and cultural gloom. And it was not just a case of over-exaggeration for Dostoevsky anyway. An epileptic of very poor health, with a pernicious gambling addiction, Dostoevsky spent most of his life in dire poverty, illness and depression. He pawned his overcoat several times each winter to pay off his debtors and feed his destructive roulette habit, all the while penning some of the culture’s greatest novels grappling with the meaning of life and the existence of god. His religious awakening came to its peak when he stood before the firing squad after years in a Siberian prison, only to be acquitted just as the guns were loaded.

It’s a life no less stark and dramatic than most of his novels. But what of the notion of a more general Russian personality of melancholy? Is it a case of literary over-generalization, a brutal climate, serial dictatorships, widespread poverty? Is there a uniquely Russian pathos, a cultural malaise, a national depression? And if so, is it biological, circumstantial? What if this cultural atrabiliousness has taken hold on a genetic level, could I have inherited it through a watered down Russian gene-pool, thrice removed from its landscape? Could my time on the therapist’s couch be rooted in my Slavic ancestry? It’s a stretch, to be sure. But what better day to ask winding philosophical queries (a very Russian fixation) than this, my birthday, after these twenty-nine years have been done to me?

It was a thought spawned by that gloomy linguistic expression of age that I am always reminded of on October 4th. Actually, I’m twenty-nine today and I’ve never been better, really. I feel solid, thick, sage and skeptical. I’m young enough to hope that life doesn’t kill me and old enough to know that it won’t. It’s the first birthday that I can say that I have found happiness. It’s not that everything is perfect or that there is nothing I am striving for (because there is much), but I can say that I have found where happiness is, I have located its X and Y axis, I’ve tracked down its slippery tail. And it is here, holy shit, it’s me, inside me, in this house I was given at birth, this body, this shell. Here is the beginning and end of everything in my life.

Which brings me, in a roundabout fashion, to a story I read in the news a month ago. I kept the article. A car salesman named Javier Fuentes in Weslaco, Texas saw the Virgin Mary on a balloon. It was among a bouquet of promotional balloons in the parking lot where he worked. He was “shaking and nervous” when he saw the apparition which he said contained a message from god for him to be a better person. Word spread and others came to see it.

I relish this story because it is a (slightly weird) story of redemption and change. Javier’s life changed that day. It doesn’t matter whether there was anything on the balloon or not. When you’re looking for change, when you’re looking for a message, you can find it anywhere. And if you’re lucky enough to realize that you can find it anywhere you realize that you can decide to find it, now and here, whenever, wherever.

And that’s what I realized sometime in the interval between 28 and 29. Very simple, very extraordinary. экстраординарный! It's been quite a year, this year that was done to me.

Gathering Around the Creme Can

2004-08-31T21:42:00.000-04:00

“So you’ve never milked cows or anything?” Jay had asked me.

Kind of seems like a million years ago, but it was only a month.

I remember it well because I wasn’t sure exactly how laced with sarcasm it was. I was the lone citykid in the crowd, and as the lone citykid in the Rocky Mountains of Dubois, Wyoming with my overnight new friends, I was the butt of not a little humor. On our various mountain adventures, they had all been able to smell my fear from a mile away, and not surprisingly, it amused them.

And it amused me that it amused them. They had a wry sense of fun and I was glad to be brought into the center of it.

I’ve been asked the question several times since I've been back, what did I learn on this trip, what did I get out of it, did I find what I was looking for?

I’ve been not writing this entry because I’ve been wrestling with the answers to those questions. Wrestling with the problem of over-summarizing vs. not answering at all. Hesitating. Attempting to translate the experience into words too hastily, before it’s sunk in enough.

Reaching for a summary phrase to convey my sense of the trip, I often say to people something to the effect of I turned a corner.

Ten days is not a long time. Have you ever been really underslept and taken an hourlong nap and had the most vivid dreams? Sometimes you can pack a lot in when time is limited and especially, perhaps, when there has been a shortage of something. And for a while there was a shortage for me of—well-- the turning of corners…

I emailed a picture of my Wyoming friends to my New York friends and (only half) jokingly referred to it as a “picture of me w/ my new best friends.”

But let me say a few words about them first.

Leane was thin, frisky and opinionated with cropped blond hair. Big laughter bellowed out of her small frame. I shoveled in probably more than my fair share of her secret-recipe salsa. I think she and Brad met in college in Minnesota. I was a little surprised to find out they had kids my age and older; they seemed younger than that and had a certain abandon about them that seems to leave most people probably around the time their kids become teenagers.

Brad had a sweet, easygoing nature and a quiet, introspective depth. He wore a cowboy hat at all times. He was not talkative, but seemed to have a gift for analysis and observation that he shared discriminately. I was a fan of his wit. He’s the type of person you can meet for the first time and have an inside joke with after twenty minutes.

Sharon oozed warmth and homeyness. She also drove the four-wheeler like a badass and fished with the zeal of the converted. For her “plum” works well as an adverb (e.g. “I’m plum exhausted.”) She had rosy cheeks and seemingly limitless generosity. When I met her, I felt glad that I had come.

Sharon's husband Jay was a man of often few words, but those few words were really good. And when, sitting around the fire, he became a man of many, many words, those words too were really, really good. He was a teller of tales, and if there’s one thing I appreciate, indeed, it is a teller of tales. With a bone dry wit and talent for evocative imagery, he kept us all enrapt. One story he told involved a cowboying job he was on (in case you’re wondering, ‘cowboy’ is a much-used verb among those who do it) in which one of the front cattle of the herd, for reasons I forgot, came to a very high cliff that was in the distance from where he was. When the first one walked off the cliff accidentally and plunged to its death, numerous cattle behind it trudged along in their follow-the-leader style, one by one plunging to their deaths off the cliff while Jay watched aghast, too far away to stop them in time.

Sharon and Jay’s two grandsons mostly stuck to themselves. But the nine-year-old granddaughter, Emily, absolutely won me over. She emanated a kind of aged sagacity. When I was making an utter fool of myself trying to fish (and more than once throwing the line into the bushes), she turned to me and said with much gravitas, “It’s hard when you’re first learning how to fish. I know how you feel. I’ve been there.” (The subtle art of “sneaking up on the fish” by the way is a conversation for another day. The fish actually see your shadow and then just float there, staring at the hooked worm you’ve tossed in as if to say, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding if you think I’m gonna fall for that old trick…” It’s very humbling to be outsmarted by something with gills.)

Back to Jay’s original query-- I in fact didn’t know my way around milking a cow and thus was not familiar with creme cans, tall stainless steel cans used for gathering the creme in the milking process. There was talk throughout the day about this “creme can” cooking our dinner for us, and although I didn’t entirely understand it, I trusted that they knew exactly what they were doing.

Their log cabin stood unobtrusively amidst a grassy, treeless lot. Square and simple and nicely built, it was straightforward, honest and accommodating, like its owners (Jay and Sharon) who built it several years before.

In the distance in all directions we were surrounded by hilly area packed with trees. Brad pointed out that the lodgepole pine trees grow tall and narrow so as to compete for sunlight in a crowded forest. Areas where the trees were less dense there stood shorter, fatter, bushier trees. They had plenty of sun and could spread out more.

I asked Brad if he had wanted his three kids, now grown and working in various non-agricultural fields, to become farmers or ranchers. “No,” he said, “it’s a lot of work, you don’t make a lot of money, and you have to really love it to do it.” I got a sense of passion for the job from all the cowboys I met in Wyoming. Later Brad told me that he prefers the term cattleman to cowboy, as the latter has a connotation of wild recklessness and perhaps a lack of intelligence.

Leane often pointed out to me the names of flowers and trees. She pointed out fire-scarred forest area, a beaver-built dam; she broke off some sage brush to let me ingest its potent aroma. “We don’t make a lot of money but we have this,” she said to me, motioning to the landscape.

Jay talked about how some of the neighboring cabins were owned by out of towners, like the retired Pennsylvania schoolteacher down the road, people not used to living close to the land. When the first snow comes, they panic about possibly being snowed in, he told us. “But it would only be for a few days,” he said, somewhat exasperated.

We stood, beer in hand, around the creme can cooking on the campfire, and watched it do its motionless magic.

I went to Wyoming, where cattle outnumber people three to one, to find something out, something that people know who live away from big cities, something that is absent from my purview but perhaps more readily apparent to those living amidst a sea of land. I had no idea what that thing was or if I could possibly find it or where exactly it was to be found.

I thought it might be lurking in the spirit of a long deserted ghost town. I thought it might be in sounds coming from musicians at a sun dance. I thought perhaps I’d capture it by making eye contact with an antelope breakfasting on dry grass a few feet away from me.

And those experiences did greatly move me and expand something in me, but it wasn’t the thing.

What I think I came looking for, elusive and unnamed as it was, especially when I first set out for it, I learned from Jay and Sharon and Leane and Brad. Well, I got a taste of it, anyway.

To describe it is already to oversimplify it, but it is something like a moving with rather than a moving against.

They each had such a depth and understanding of the natural landscape, and of nature in a broader sense, its movement, its subtlety, its purpose, its purposelessness, but even more significantly, they had a confidence and a resolve and a passion about being with it fully, being a part of a greater expanse.

And they seemed to intuitively share that part of themselves with me as if to say We know what you came here to find and we are happy to share with you what we know.

Something about the way those tall, proud pine trees adapt really stuck with me.

Outside the cabin we sat around the fire and played who-sees-the-first-star. I’d never heard of that game. If we had that game in New York, right now with the GOP convention in town, it would be, “Who sees the first security blimp or helicopter?”

Whole potatoes, cabbage, sausage, cauliflower, carrots had been tossed into the creme can haphazardly with some water and beer. An hour later all poured out of the can cooked perfectly. It’s how cowboys on a job used to cook at camp. Easy, like a tv-dinner.

No microwave, just a can used for milking cows. No tv, just stories and sky and stars… and stars… until sleep comes… and then more stars.

Not Every Day is Panama Day

2004-08-14T15:48:00.000-04:00

So I walk out of my apartment this morning and lo-and-be-fucking-hold there’s a parade passing in front of my building. I mean a full-on PARADE.

I was not made privy to the fact that today is Panama Day. Happy Panama Day everyone!!

The marching band repeatedly played a tune which I can only assume, and indeed hope, was the Panamanian National Anthem. It’s catchy. It could totally be a loop in a Jay Z song.

Miss Panama USA was in a convertible, looking sharp, her well-deserved crown atop her coif. She didn’t look very happy, but she had a big smile.

Horses, signs, hoopla, a spirited crowd, it was fabulous, and all right on my doorstep. What a great way to start the day. I’m so pumped right now I feel like I could pole vault or really take someone out in broomball.

What if every now and then there was just a random parade in front of my apartment just for me? It would be so lovely. Picture it, I just walk out of the apartment and maybe once a month there’s a marching band there holding signs or wearing t-shirts with my name on it, just to put a little extra pep in my step. They’d play fight songs and sway back and forth in rhythm, with some people slightly out of sync. I would be beaming. I’d even wave my hands in the air like I just don’t care as they worked up quite a sweat. And then I would be so grateful I would invite the marching band, all 38 of them, into my livingroom and I’d make them scrambled eggs. We’d chat and laugh. We’d jokingly punch each other in the shoulder and snort orange juice out our noses. The guys with the tubas wouldn’t fit so they’d have to sit alone in the bedroom with sad looks on their faces. I would use plastic forks for a swift clean up. The conversation would eventually wind down and after a few too many pregnant pauses people would mill around towards the door, pretending to look at the pictures hanging on my wall. Then we’d all give each other half-hugs and promise to email. I’d say “Thanks for the parade everyone!” And they’d say, “The eggs were good, not too runny!” and we’d all feel a little warmer inside.

Man, Panama Day has really got my wheels turning….

Panama Day band
Originally uploaded by carolee.

Up the Mountain with Rocks in My Head

2004-07-30T19:35:00.000-04:00

The line between spontaneity and stupidity can be a murky one.

Spending a weekend, mountain retreat with people I chatted with for 10 minutes in a bar is a first for me. But my gut said: Do this. I was on a journey and I was up for new adventures.

Plus they had promised me The Real Wyoming. Magic words.

As they had described, their grey house lay at the end of a long, gravel road, amidst farms and a few other scattered houses. It was brimming with landscaped flower beds. When I arrived, Brad greeted me with a hearty smile and handshake and tipped his hat.

He and Leane were charismatic and sweet. Their Minnesota accents only enhanced their charm.

We threw our bags in the back of their red pick-up and piled like three peas in a pod into the front.

We stopped by one of the ranches Brad works on for him to get something and Leane picked up a small hay cube to show me what they look like. Greenish and extremely dense, they are bite-size haystacks for cattle with busy lifestyles.

We drove a little over an hour on a gradual, steady incline to Dubois. Leane told me about their three kids. One son in the airforce had been stationed twice in Saudi Arabia and might be heading back to the Middle East shortly.

We talked about the landscape we were driving through. Each twist in the road seemed to bring a drastically different sight. Rocky hills millions of years old, with purple, brown, orange layers of mineral sediments. Then rugged cliffs of jutting crimson rocks with highway dynamited through the center. Subtle rolling hills, farms, dry miniature shrubs. “It looks different every time I drive it,” Brad observed.

My living in New York City perhaps peaked their curiosity the way their living on a Wyoming farm peaked mine. Their inquisitiveness though did not extend into any interest in actually setting foot in the Big Apple. Brad said it would scare the crap out of him and Leane said she didn’t like being around a lot of people.

More often than not the people I met in Wyoming reacted to New York City as if something sour and repulsive filled their mouths. “New York—oooooh, uhummm.” “From New York? Eehhhh, wouldn’t wanna go there, nosirrrr.” Some looked like they wanted to console me. Others went glassy eyed. Still others treated me like a winner on Fear Factor: “Ehgghh, How do you DO THAT?!”

It’s hard to view New York through any lens but home anymore. It’s dull somedays, beautiful, congested. Its energy feeds me, its people amuse me, or just take up too much space on the sidewalk. Overall it comforts me, entertains me and treats me very well, that is, when it’s not beating me up a little. I often feel about Brooklyn like a lot of people feel about their favorite sports team: My city could kick your city’s ass and I’ve got monogrammed sweatshirts to prove it.

In theory I understand that people may think of it as scary or intimidating. But I look around, at crowds, taxis, old men playing chess in the park, panhandlers, the ultra fashionable, dogwalkers with a web of leashes, teenagers saying loud, obnoxious stuff on the train, and I experience calm, I feel normal, I feel among family. An 8 million person, very loud, very diverse, sometimes crazy family, just like any other.

“Now we begin the ascent,” noted Brad. Begin the ascent? I queried. We entered a gravel/dirt road with sharp upward inclines, a steep drop off on the left and no guard rails. I breathed in.

I don’t think I breathed out for about 16 minutes.

Tall, skinny pine trees lined the road. At times the space between us and a several hundred foot drop off came terrifyingly close. On several turns we were confronted with a wide expanse of tree-covered hills with remarkably distant mountains appearing blue and hazy and barely-there. It seemed like we could see more landscape, more stuff, than the human eye should be able to take in at once. The mountains didn’t need big showy movie finale music. They sang it in their breathtaking silence.

When we reached the top, it was surprisingly flat, grassy and hospitable.

I met their friend Jay who was a tall, older man with a certain zesty edge about him. His baggy jeans weren’t meant as a fashion statement, but they gave him a slight hipster vibe that contrasted with his straightforward, old-fashioned appearance.

And then came the four-wheelers--

Before I talk about the four-wheelers, I want to interject a little context. In the last few years I’ve broken my collar bone while biking, broken my leg rollerblading and been hit by a school bus, so at this point, I’m trepidacious about anything with wheels.

I read a book recently called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway which had as its premise the notion that basically anything new, challenging, risky and worthwhile has an element of the unknown which causes apprehension and if we wait to feel safe and secure before we try something new, we’ll never try anything at all.

A four-wheeler is one of those small, recreational vehicles that -- “Oh,” interjects the omniscient narrator, “one of those wheeled-contraptions you’ve sworn off forever?” Uh, yeah, my point exactly.

I got on the four-wheeler behind Jay who was driving and Brad and Leane followed on a four-wheeler behind us, a short way to the creek where Jay’s wife and three grandkids were fishing. On the dusty slope down to the creek, mantras from Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway rushed through my head, to no avail.

The dirt road had mounds and crevices that slanted our vehicles sharply from left to right. Our greater group of four 4-wheelers and at least three generations drove over branches, large rocks, bridges made of small logs, and up and down several steep inclines.

Dense pine trees sometimes gave way to expansive views of peaks and valleys in the distance. Wild flowers waved in the breeze as we buzzed past: numerous shades of yellows, lavenders, blues, purples, oranges. Flower-covered hills looked more like an impressionist painting than an impressionist painting.

Not a soul in sight, no buildings, no trash, no manholes.

We drove along, a half hour, an hour passed, maybe more, I lost track. The tree-shaded incline brought us to cooler temperatures. We stopped and put on sweatshirts and jackets.

My muscles were so tense at times, in between absorbing the scenery I thought of a million reasons not to be doing this. The dangers, our increasingly remote location and distance from medical care. For a second it seemed like my fears turned to reality as my vehicle, being driven by Leane, went too far right up onto a log, paused and then teeter tottered as if considering whether to flip over or not. My high school physics skills failed me as I leaned gravitationally towards our impending doom and Leane instructed, “Lean the other way! Lean the other way!” We were back on (relatively) stable ground within seconds but my adrenaline had shot a dose of melodrama in me and I felt I’d narrowly escaped death.

At some point while fear and pleasure battled for space in my head, I asked myself, what would this be like if I could just be here, now, in this moment, in this most beautiful and natural place without the interruption of what-ifs, of tension in my shoulders and stomach?

Asking the question had a strange effect: I couldn’t find the fear (like when someone tells you to hiccup and suddenly the hiccup fails to come). I reached for it, that old friend, and all I felt was the embrace of the wind, the awe and newness of an unbuilt, overgrown environment, the glee of new friends (“Up ahead is the subway stop,” Jay wryly tossed my way.)

We descended into the seemingly impossible: a wide open rolling field. Where did this come from? Aren’t we on a mountain?

A tiny, half-hidden creek snaked across our path. We stopped and got out fishing poles and worms and bobbers.

I swatted flies. The sun pressed against my forehead like a warm cloth. The creek gurgled on its path to who-knows-where.

Brooklyn slipped away into my farthest recesses.

The Sun Dance

2004-07-27T20:43:00.000-04:00

I read in my Wyoming travel guide that powwows were celebratory events open to the public but that the more ceremonial sun dances did not allow outsiders.

When I was visiting the Wind River Reservation, I asked if there were any public events that weekend. I got lukewarm responses about a sun dance I could attend. One man stressed that no cameras or recording devices of any kind were allowed. A woman told me that women who were pregnant or menstruating shouldn't come and that bringing food or drink would be frowned upon.

I asked my new Shoshone friend Sonny. He said he thought it was ok, that I should stand in the back, but that he would be singing at it and I should come. Would it be disrespectful to come as a "tourist", as an outsider, I asked. "We don't call them tourists," he insisted, "we consider them visitors."

He told me the sun dance would be in a random, unmarked location about 10 miles north of Fort Washakie. "You'll see cars turning in," he said, "just follow them." The sun dance would start at dusk.

Not that I needed any more reason to be hesitant about attending this religious ceremony of a culture I was not only not a part of but knew very little about, but the vague time and location threw me off even more.

Killing time before dusk fell, I drove north about a half hour or so to where highway 132 ends in a little farming town called Pavillion. I think I saw a dead horse amid some live ones. Its legs were straight up in the air anyway, and I assume that's not a good sign. Goats made goat sounds which sounded hilariously like people imitating goat sounds.

I stopped at a bar/restaurant called The Roost. There were a lot of cars out front and I considered not going in. I felt like being unseen and I feared heads turning at the rare entrance of an obvious out-of-towner, but I parked in the middle of a huge mud puddle and went in anyway, soggy left shoe and all.

After an uneventful meal with only about 5 to 10 stares my way, I went up to the bar to pay my check. I said hi to the couple sitting to my right. The overly sober bartender chatted lazily on the phone, so I asked the approachable-looking couple if they were from Pavillion. They live on a farm just outside of town they said. We got to chatting and I sort of came to life. They were funny and lively and I liked them immediately. Before too long they invited me to go fishing with them at their friends' cabin in the mountains the next day. We hadn't even exchanged names yet.

I got Brad and Leane's number and left for the sun dance.

From a distance I could see a few cars turning off the road and headlights creeping slowly down an unpaved path. I turned in and hoped for the best.

I worried that maybe it wasn't the sun dance I was driving into, but rather a ritualistic, inebriation-fest of some University of Wyoming frat boys.

My car wobbled and rattled over the rocky terrain. It took a good 10 minutes to get to the grassy area where I began to hear singing and drumming. Cars were parked haphazardly. There were at least a hundred. I parked in the pitch black and moved toward the sounds by the light of my emergency flashlight.

The singing was at a somewhat high register, jumping across complicated tonal patterns and blanketing the air with melancholy. Drums pounded a steady beat. Flutes played rhythms in many different notes, notes that in western music would be considered atonal. To me, the flutes sounded exceptionally eerie like a scary movie soundtrack. Walking towards the sun dance, the volume increased. Tall grass swept at my ankles and left prickly burrs. The undisclosed location felt...well, very undisclosed.

I didn't know anyone, but I wouldn't have been able to see them well enough to recognize them anyway. The ceremony took place under a huge canopy made of sticks and greenery. It was too dark and crowded for me to see the musicians or dancers. Sonny had told me the people who go inside the canopy have fasted for four days and are there to pray for ailing family members. Some people in the crowd were wrapped in patterned, Indian blankets. All seemed to be dressed casually. Some wore cowboy hats.

The longer I listened, the more the music and especially the deep, low drums made my chest vibrate. I closed my eyes and felt lifted up very, very high. I felt my chest lift up above my head. I pictured floating in the night among the stars.

It was cold and I squeezed my hands into my jean pockets. I was glad it was too dark for people to see me.

The music ended and someone said, "Bring the bed roles." People with plastic and bedding moved towards the performers. An old woman in a lawn chair yelled "Play!" but no one responded. Some in the crowd chatted and joked together.

I retraced my steps and panicked when I couldn't find the car. It took about 15 minutes stumbling in the dark to locate it.

I drove away feeling inexplicably but wholly different than when I arrived.

Visiting the Dead with Sonny

2004-07-27T17:35:00.001-04:00

The Wind River Indian Reservation wasn't what I expected, but expectations can be such a drag.

Mostly farms, pick-ups and small, non-descript buildings and tons of uninhabited land, the reservation is one of the country's largest with over 2 million acres. It hardly seems different from the surrounding towns and communities. "Downtown" Ethete (pronounced EE-thu-tee) is denoted with a stoplight and a gas station and nearby Fort Washakie is only slightly more metropolitan.   Government houses of identical shape and size, painted in different bright colors and trailers make up a significant portion of housing.

I poked around Ethete a little looking for a cultural or information center. The guys at the Tribal Fish and Game Office looked surprised to see me but courteously steered me down the road a ways and that's how I met Sonny.

"Sign in our visitor book and let me know if you have any questions, any questions at all," was the cheery greeting I got when I walked from the Washakie Community Library through the connecting door into the cultural center. I looked at the encased displays: beaded clothing, carved wooden saddles, photos, a treaty signed on hide.   Behind the desk was Sonny Shoyo, baby-faced and in his 20s, sporting baggy clothes and closely-cropped, black hair. He stands above 6 feet and is very full-bodied. After answering a few of my questions he offered to give me a tour of the Sacagawea grave site. I followed him in my rental car. His car had broken down and he was driving a black cop car as a loaner from the car place. "Everyone slows down when they see me," he chuckled.

The Wind River Reservation is home to 3500 Shoshone and 8000 Arapaho. Relations are good among the elders of the two tribes, Sonny told me, but gang violence among the youth underscores age-old tensions. Sonny is a twice-elected member of the Shoshone tribal council. His mother is Shoshone and his father is Cree.

White crosses and heaps and heaps of colored silk flowers make the Sacagawea cemetery the most visually striking one I've ever seen. It has an almost festive feel. We drove to the back and walked to the large monument of the famed Lewis and Clark guide and one-dollar coin representative, Sacagawea. Sonny eagerly told me what he considered to be the real history of her life, not the story that books or other tribes might tell of her. One of the points he wanted to emphasize was that she was not sold to the white Frenchman she married but rather was gambled away by her tribe who lost her in a bet. He also said some erroneously claim she is buried in North Dakota.

One thing that struck me about the cemetery was the number of fresh mounds of reddish-brown earth.   "Yes, we've lost quite a few recently," he confirmed.

Friendly and easygoing, Sonny was loquacious and tended to stare off in the distance when he spoke. We chatted easily and he smiled easily. His casual language and cursing jibed well with my own. He said he loved growing up on the reservation and plans to stay. He hopes to someday be one of the elder leaders.

He is a singer in a Shoshone group and travels the country performing at powwows. His group has a cd.

We drove down the road to visit Chief Washakie's grave and the Washakie Cemetery. He gave me a rich and animated history of the Shoshone chief who secured the land for the Wind River Reservation and received a full military burial in 1900 because of his unique assistance to the U.S. government.

Although baptized a Mormon, Sonny now practices in the Native American Church. I shared with him that my trip to Wyoming was part of a spiritual journey of sorts. He told me of his belief in prayer. "God knows everything that's going on in your life," he said, "but He wants to hear from you."

Gold Mining Ghost Town

2004-07-23T13:11:00.000-04:00

I think I've found the coolest place on earth.

I've spent the last two days in Atlantic City, Wyoming, a ghost town that saw several gold mining booms and busts dating back to the 1860s.

Wednesday I drove north from Rock Springs and decided I didn't want to drive much, which I had originally planned, so I thought I'd spend the sunny afternoon in some nearby town. I read about these two neighboring ghost towns that still have some residents and a bed and breakfast. The gravel road off the highway towards the town was rough and steep at times. I almost turned back more than once. Cows lazily glanced up at me as I drove by. When I descended into the actual town finally, I thought I'd found a slice of freaking heaven. This is the place, people.   I basically want to stay here forever.

Atlantic City (population: "about 57" according to the city sign) and South Pass City (population "about 7") look fairly close to what they looked like back when (I saw the historic photos, and not a whole lot has changed). Picture the Little House on the Prairie set, but surrounded by hills and a little rougher around the edges.

Everyone waves as they pass you in their pick-up trucks and conversations center around livestock, mulch and rodeos. People's dogs have the full roam of the town and run up to anyone and everyone for attention. Chipmunks scurry around in a spastic, paranoid fashion. Fat bunnies munch on grass and stare at each other. The small, plain wooden church built in 1913 is unlocked 24 hours. In the visitor sign-in book there someone from yesterday wrote "Thanks, I slept here last night." Although the sun is plentiful right now and temperatures are cool and mild, huge stockpiles of firewood behind every house are reminders of the long and brutal winter to come. Atantic City shrinks to about 20 during the winter months (October through April) and South Pass City loses all its residents. ("Snowbirds" is the slightly pejorative word for people who fly away when it starts snowing.)

Today I'll be missing the annual baseball game between the two cities. I'd like to see it if only to find out how a seven person town musters up a baseball team. (Well, they say they're very resourceful in Wyoming.)

Both cities are lined with 10 or so historic buildings, cabins and saloons, many with tall fronts just like you see in old western movies. In South Pass City many are in good condition and furnished for tourists to look in or walk through. In Atlanitc City most are crumbling and the wood is rotten, but it gives them a more authentic, ghostly feel. Atlantic City though has a great working restaurant/saloon, The Mercantile, or The Merc as it's called, which has been here since the first gold rush. Both cities were part of the Oregon trail. Brigham Young came through here on the way to finding his promised city, and Butch Cassidy slung back a few in the saloons.

There are also newer log cabins and ranch homes and a few trailers.

I stayed in a small cabin at the Miner's Delight bed and breakfast, which has about 6 cabins as well as rooms in the main house. The cabins are cheaper but you have to use the bathroom in the main house, which is all fine and good until you have to pee at 3am and it's dark and scary and the sound of animals scurrying around in the grass is freaky!! My cabin had a wood burning stove for winter, and last night it was so cold I wanted to fire it up.

The first night I was the only guest and it was a little weird to be cooked breakfast by the owners when it was just me. Their house is huge and beautifully decorated with antiques and red velvet wall-paper. It's been a hotel since the 1890s. They rang the "dinner bell" on the roof of the house at 7:30 am to alert me for breakfast.   During breakfast a cow strolled by the front window and glanced in at me, perhaps to see if I had any of her kin on my plate.

I had a fascinating conversation at the smaller saloon in town (two saloons for 57 people, fishy right?) with a pipeline worker who grew up in the area. He told me about the four years he worked in California in the Mojave Desert doing construction building solar panels. He said in order to handle the workload and intense heat, everyone took speed. In fact the superintendent of the job had a crank factory and the foremen distributed speed to the workers. "Imagine 900 guys in the desert all on speed," he said. He knew a lot of people who died out there and he, like most of them, became addicted and he spent the next 15 years a junkie. He said for two years solid he stayed up for all 5 working days without sleeping or eating and then he would sleep through the whole weekend and get up and do it again on Monday.   He said, "They say you can't live for more than about seven days without food, but I've gone 10 or 11 days several times without eating anything at all."

He's been clean for three years now but he said it took him a year to get off it and the cramps and withdrawal pains were excruciating. Thinking about his story later, I thought about what a class-action lawsuit that could be, considering this company condoned and encouraged and basically created all these addicts for the purpose of their solar panels. It's wild. He said many of his friends who went clean became Jesus freaks, "but that's the worst drug of all," he said and I agreed and we had a good laugh.  "Well, people need something to face the world," he reasoned. He had white, stringy, thin hair and the mannerisms of a very old man, but I don't think he was necessarily that old. He mostly talked facing the bar but occasionally he'd turn to look at me and I was struck with his piercing, light blue eyes that seemed younger than the rest of him. His skin had a grey, unwashed look.   His current job he says pays well, but they lay pipe all winter. When it's 20 below zero, it's ok, he said, but below that everything freezes immediately to your gloves and you can't really get any work done.

Further West

2004-07-21T13:54:00.000-04:00

No photograph could describe the enormity of the sky in Wyoming. Its force is great, it is awesome in the real sense of the word. You can see more sky than land and at times it overshadows even the most stunning of landscapes. The blue is crisp and solid and the huge, bleached clouds have a 3-d quality and cast distinct, biomorphic shadows over the ground.

Monday morning started out with morbidity. I ran over a prairie dog. The little critters are all over the place here and are constantly running across the highway. What exactly they urgently need on the OTHER side of the highway I'll never know. Anyway, I saw the thing run in front of me and I hit the breaks some and swerved a little but just as I did the indecisive little rodent paused as if he forgot his grocery list or something and I rolled right over it. Very sad. R.I.P p-dog.

Then I drove 13 miles to the hip and trendy town of Saratoga where supposedly the rich and famous sometimes vacation. I soaked in the hotter than hell natural hot springs there which are free and open 24 hours. I totally don't understand how that hot water comes out of the ground. I ran into a retired fireman/cowboy there that I had met at the Sunday breakfast. He loves relaxing in the hot springs which make him feel--and I'm quoting now-- "like a wrung out dish rag." Oooooh, I love to feel like a wrung out dish rag.

I swung back by Encampment and interviewed a couple employees at the Grand Encampment Museum there, took a tour of the historic cabins and houses and climbed the 6 story metal firewatch tower that has a fabulous view of the area.

I drove for an hour or so I think through Medicine Bow National forest which is mountains, tall pine trees and cool air. There's even patches of snow still there. I checked out what little there is left of the ghost town of Battle right off the highway. Past the forest, I stopped in a flat 25 person town called Savery. I also toured the cute and extensive Snake River Museum there and interviewed the director who tipped me off to the large outlaw population in nearby Baggs. I'll transcribe my interviews later and post some excerpts.

I then stopped in Dixon (population 79) a few miles away and walked into the local saloon, feeling hesitant but trying to appear confident, where I interviewed two friendly, gruff and slightly dirty-looking oil rig workers about their fine town, where everything is left unlocked year round, even when they go on vacation, because you never know, they told me, someone might need something.

I drove through Baggs which is slightly creepy-looking and an hour away stopped for diner food in the trailer house community of Wamsutter. The Broadway Cafe had no other patrons and my waiter who was the cook didn't hear me come in because he was in the back fixing the plumbing. The cafe has been open since 1928 and is about to shut down because of chains off the highway that are taking all the truck driving business. My waiter/cook/plumber was friendly and seemed to want to tell me all about his financial woes. He didn't have a lot of teeth. It's the type of place you'd walk in and run out of quickly, but I wanted the local flavor of Wamsutter, which I am glad I got but I don't really ever need to get it again.

Finally I reached my destination, Rock Springs and the desert which is where I am now and about to take off from. The red earth, towering mountainous rocks and dry landscape are both beautiful and disconcerting, almost frightening in their starkness. There's light green brush and little yellow and purple flowers that grow in the desert. It's very windy at times. I drove a 50 mile gravel road yesterday that the Bureau of Land Management has set up for driving through the primary area where wild horses live. I saw a few. They seemed shy and sweet. They were huddled together, curiously looking at me and other people watching them and rubbing their faces on each other's necks. They were brown with one white spot each on their noses.

I also drove north of the desert yesterday to where the landscape suddenly and boldly turns to green, flat farmland. I sat in a cute park in a town called Eden which seems to be all farms and a couple closed down stores.

From day to day I have little to nothing planned. I don't know where I'm sleeping each night, until I just show up somewhere. Right now when I sign off I'm gonna look at the map and I think I'll head towards the badlands. I didn't plan on having so little plans for this trip but it's been one of the best parts of it.

Out West: Part I

2004-07-21T12:25:00.000-04:00

I'm in a city surrounded by cliffs of rough, light-colored rocks in the middle of the Red Desert of Wyoming. Rock Springs is the first city I've been in in the last few days that actually has stop lights and paved roads.

Saturday after flying into Cheyenne in the Southeastern part of the state, I drove two and a half hours west to the city of Encampment (population 443) for the annual Carbon County Cowboy Poetry Festival. Highway 30 from Laramie to Encampment cut right through the Sierra Madre mountains and at times I literally gasped out loud at the incredible scenery that unfolded before me as I chugged along in my 2-cylinder, compact rental car that at times I wasn't sure would make it up the tortuous incline (but boy does it get good mileage...).

Several hundred people gathered in the Encampment K-12 school gym (lots of out of towners according to one local) for the poetry and music performances which could have rivaled any Nuyorican poetry slam.

After the event, which included a raffle and award ceremony for Rancher of the Year, a campfire was lit a few blocks away (there are only a few blocks in the whole town, really) at the local park. Twenty or thirty people sat around the crackling fire and listened as cowboys took turns singing songs, telling stories and reciting poems, some original, some traditional. The mountain air was chilly. Some people closed their eyes to concentrate on the stories or gazed overhead at the black sky jam-packed with stars. One man gave a disclaimer before singing a song called "I Ain't Got No Need for Women" with something like "These are not my personal views" and "Don't tell my wife I sang this." An older man commented after another song that he hadn't heard it sung in about 40 years. Often when one person sang and played guitar, several others would strum along.

As part of the poetry festival, the next morning several locals flipped pancakes on an outdoor grill and cooked a full breakfast in the same park. I sat down at a picnic table with several men in jeans and western wear. We chatted about the poetry and where we were from and what we did. One guy was an Iowa corn and soybean farmer and several others were out of town ranchers and farmers who were all in town for herding jobs. The Iowan told me how they get up at 3:30 am and have breakfast and begin the cattle drive. His would be a two day drive across 40 miles to move the cattle into the mountains for the summer. He said herding was "a lot of fun." He also told me how corporate farms had taken away a lot of business from local owners like him. Farms in his area have gone up from $100 an acre to $3000 an acre in ten years. "But that's probably like New York rents, right?" he astutely commented, apparently more cognizant of my world than I was of his.

After breakfast there was "cowboy church" under the trees, "like they used to do it." The discordant, ramshackle choir and preacher are almost too much to describe. Suffice it to say, there were tears, there was laughter, there was a LOT of out-of-tune guitar playing, public confessions, testimonials and finally, a rousing group sing-a-long of God Bless America.

Later that day, after dinner at the Bear Trap Cafe in nearby Riverside (population 59), where the specialty is what seems to be the state food: grease, I drove outside of town and sat on the car hood out in the middle of nothing with green valleys surrounding me and hills and mountains in every direction. There was a lightning storm many miles away and faint cow sounds in the distance. Either that or the voices in my head have stopped speaking and started mooing.

All That Glitters is Not Gold: The Meta-Rap of Kanye West

2004-06-08T00:39:00.000-04:00

At a time when anti-essentialism is paramount in cultural ideology, the notion of an “essence” is ever-increasingly sought after. It seems it is the only thing left sometimes, the only thing worth searching for or expressing. This essence can be defined perhaps as whatever quality makes something that something. The thing-ness of a thing. The essence of a box might be expediently called its “boxness.” Not the shape, not its characteristics, just its essence, whatever is left that makes it IT when the rest of the details are discarded. This essence is what people refer to when they are “keeping it real.” Keeping it real is keeping it as it is. Keeping it real is to not change or alter something (oneself usually), to not make something anything other than it is or any other way than the way it exists in its most natural (“realest”) state.

Kanye West is doing this thing at times—in fact, really, when he’s at his very best he’s doing this thing, where he talks offhandedly, off-the-cuffly, non-performatively. It’s hard to call it rap, exactly. If MCing comes from being a Master of Ceremonies, revving up crowds in sweaty summer jams in the Bronx in the late 70s, it has finally reached its least performative, least exuberant stage in Kanye West’s mumbling talkiness. No doubt he’s an artist, a gorgeous lyricist, deft humorist, and skilled producer. And in his most talkiness, he is certainly talking ABOUT being an MC, ABOUT rhyming, ABOUT writing raps, but is it rap per se if there is no discernible performance mode, nothing to distinguish it from speech? Is it rightfully a “rhyme” when there is no rhyming for miles around? What he’s doing is often (although not always) more meta-rap than rap.

Others do this. Jay Z has some especially tasty meta-raps, un-raps, we might even call them. Often these un-raps are not just non-performative stylistically, but are also rhythmically and substantively what might be called counter to the norm. [Or perhaps Kanye West and Jay Z happen to be two performers, mainstream as they are in success and in many respects, who dare to tread more frequently outside the normative topic areas. But this is really another discussion altogether.]

Linguist John McWhorter traces the increasingly informal nature of the English language in general to the anti-imperialism and anti-authoritarianism of the 60s. He also connects that same cultural trajectory to the de-emphasis in music on harmony and melody in favor of, basically a beat and a voice. “Just as we talk when we make speeches and write more and more like we talk, and just as our poetry imitates talking, we adore music that just talks.” McWhorter sums up what we look for in music today: “1. rhythm and 2. the vernacular authenticity of the singer’s vocal tone.”

This certainly describes hip hop in general (although McWhorter is not expressly talking about hip hop but more generally about pop music of the last 40 years) and Kanye West takes this to an even more bare bones level when he truly just talks:

“And right, the day, I’m talking about I planned out everything I was gonna do, man, I ha’ I had picked out clothes, I had already started booking studio sessions, I--I started arranging my album, thinking of marketing schemes, man I was ready to go, and they had Mel call me and, and said, ‘Yo capital pulled on the deal.’”

At times this story about West landing his record deal is so disjointed it sounds like we’re hearing one half of a phone conversation. It is even slightly unintelligible or inaudible here and there. With an, “Ok fast forward” and “He’s like, oh shit,” it really isn’t any different than hearing a story from a friend. One could argue, that these talky, meta-rap sections of an otherwise standard hip hop album are just another form of interludes, not meant to be the main thing (although this style is really woven throughout the entire album, even the more typically "performed" tracks). But, I think, friends, this IS the real thing. The uh’s and like’s, the unrhymed, unperformance are the exposed beams of a well-crafted album. They are the main dish and not just the trim. The rap about rap which is un-rap-like is not a side track, it is directly where hip hop is taking us. It is the essence: that elusive “real” that everyone is allegedly “keeping.” And, well, uh, I dig it.

Finding Lost Springs

2004-06-06T21:20:00.000-04:00

I’m on a mission: To meet with the population of Lost Springs, Wyoming. “THE WHOLE POPULATION of Lost Springs?” you ask. Yes, well, the population would happen to be one person.

In the 2000 census, Lost Springs was one of a handful of “incorporated towns” in the U.S. with a population of one.

What would I say to the population of one of Lost Springs? “So… I hear you’re THE MAN around here…uh huh, literally…” It certainly lends itself to a LOT of bad humor (which obviously, I am not above) and a high level of absurdity (which it would have to or I wouldn’t want to do it so much).

What if I go to Lost Springs and the population is on vacation that week? Or what if the population chokes on a donut hole before I get there and…no more population!

I live in a city of 8 million people. That’s why I’m traveling thousands of miles (I just bought my ticket, in case you think I’m in jest) to see a city of one. Many people say New York can be a very lonely city. I wonder what the population of Lost Springs would think about that.

Perhaps the Lost Springs population and I can play six degrees of separation and see if we know anyone in common.

I also have some practical questions when I get to Lost Springs. Like, what day is trash day? Do the deer and the antelope play around here? What’s there to do for fun in Lost Springs? What’s the crime rate here?

Lost Springs, Wyoming is located in Converse County which has a delightfully overzealous website with the following phrase: “Converse County has everything you desire anything from exciting adventures to a pleasant stay!” Hey, I ain’t gonna lie, I want both. There is one person per 2.83 square miles in Converse County. (Just for reference, there are 26,000 people per square mile in New York.)

I don’t really know what fascinates me exactly about meeting with a person who IS a town (there’s that word again…), but I sort of suspect such a person would have different synapses, different modes of perceiving than an urban dweller, I guess I almost have a delusional hope that such a person would be able to give me some kind of secret knowledge about life that comes with solitude, that comes with being surrounded by land for miles in every direction. A kind of faith or certitude that might come with being a whole town. It’s so easy to feel small in New York, what does it feel like in Lost Springs? In New York, you could disappear and no one would notice, in Lost Springs, the whole town would shut down without you.

I guess in a twisted kind of way I’m fantasizing about my trip to Lost Springs as an ersatz journey to Mecca, as ridiculous as that may sound... To see something and learn something that is entirely outside of my sphere of experience, to be challenged in ways I can’t predict, to expand my realm of understanding. Oddly, or perhaps not oddly at all, I am hoping to broaden my worldview by leaving my beloved hometown of 8 million and traveling to a lone city of one.

Towards a definition of IS

2004-05-31T17:00:00.000-04:00

Every now and then the following phrase randomly pops into my head: “It depends on what the definition of is is.” Spoken of course by Bill Clinton during his Monica Lewinsky deposition after being asked about whether the statement by Lewinsky (perhaps better known as THAT WOMAN) that there IS no sex between them was accurate. I’m not sure why exactly this phrase comes to mind periodically. It also occasionally seems to resurface in the cultural imagination, among TV journalist-types, which maybe speaks to its mysterious hold in the collective unconscious and not just my own unconscious. There’s something that’s hard to put a finger on, something deliciously appealing and perplexing about it, something that draws my attention to it, usually when I least expect it (I'll be walking down the street, and there the phrase will be, lurking from behind a mailbox!). And these are just the type of projects worth exploring I think, a project in which there is no foreseeable result or direct payoff, one in which the purpose is elusive or seemingly nonexistent and yet it compels you all the same.

Plus it's funny. It’s almost as if Clinton decided in the middle of this heated legal discourse about sexual misconduct to bring up a subtle linguistic conundrum. He’s like, “Hang on Mr. Federal Prosecutor, I know I took the cigar to this nubile intern and all, but check it out, what the heck’s the definition of the most used word in our language… seriously, na mean?!!”

Indulge the sex-hungry former president for a second, what IS the definition of IS? (Save yourself the trouble of looking it up in the dictionary which says “Third person singular present indicative of BE.” Yawn.) Or perhaps, even better than the substance of the query, is the particular phrasing he uses, the lyrical rhythm of the sentence. The first and last words sound the same, IT/IS, and also almost bookending the phrase is ON/OF. Really, let it roll off your tongue: IT DEPENDS ON WHAT THE DEFINITION OF IS IS. Beautiful. Crisp. Makes you wanna just cuddle up with that phrase on a breezy summer night, right?

But back to the semiotic conundrum introduced by Clinton’s tautology, can there be a definition of a word which has as its truest* definition itself? The very definition of IS is IS. A brilliant way out of the hole he’d dug for himself, or perhaps only digging himself further in? After all it backfired pretty intensely. Late night talk shows salivated over it. But what about the cultural theorists and semioticians?! It deserves some hearty semantic wrestling, some semantic, girl-on-girl, wet t-shirt, mud wrestling, me thinks…

Why does this matter, you ask? You’re thinking to yourself, “Why does this blogger dangle this tiny, insignificant participle in the blogee’s face? For what? How does she pass this off as substantive content? This is the stuff birdcages are lined with.” Fair enough, dear reader. This digression will continue its progression at a later date…. Be warned.

*(This blog could give a rat’s ass about True/False.)

in medias res

2004-05-24T12:45:00.000-04:00

This work in progress is, well, a work in progress. I'll be back soon with a little thing called "some content." Word.