happy birthday molly

Posted on August 31, 2013 by greg

Today is the birthday of the late, great Molly Ivins. ‘Late’ on account of she’s been dead since 2007, which is far too long. ‘Great’ on account of she was the smartest and wittiest and sharpest political writer since the invention of political writering.

Laughing Molly Ivins

I don’t recall the first time I came across Molly’s writing, but I’d been a fan for quite a long time before I ever saw her speak. I only saw her speak the one time. I was a grad student at the American University back in 1990 or 91, and I heard she was going to be interviewed at some local event. So I put on a sport coat and a tie and took myself to some grand Washingtonian venue and joined the other couple hundred folks who’d come to hear Molly speak.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t the tall (in her cowboy boots she had to be over six feet tall), awkward-looking woman with the unfortunate haircut (it looked like she’d cut her own hair…with pinking sheers) who walked onto the stage. Then she sort of dropped herself into a wing-backed chair and grinned — and there was so much joy and delight and orneriness in that grin that I completely fell in love with her. She grinned like a pirate.

I couldn’t tell you what she talked about. I just don’t recall. What I do recall is that she was charming and clever and thoughtful and uproariously funny. I don’t know if she was exaggerating her drawl or if she was moderating it, but there was no doubt Molly Ivins was from Texas. And laugh…lawdy, that woman could bring a laugh. Nothing demure about it; she laughed all the way down to her boots.

Young Molly Ivins

It was the breast cancer that killed her. One more reason to hate cancer and donate money to kick its ass.

“Having breast cancer is massive amounts of no fun. First they mutilate you; then they poison you; then they burn you. I have been on blind dates better than that.”

That was Molly Ivins. She’d bring you the Truth in all its ugliness. And she’d make you laugh about it. She didn’t make light of it, she didn’t want you to ignore the ugliness; she wanted you to feel the sting of the ugly. But she didn’t want you to forget to laugh. She didn’t want you to forget that having fun isn’t just how we tolerate the ugly. It’s how we defeat it.

A few of my favorite lines from our Molly:

[W]e’ve bounced back from this same mistake before—the mistake of thinking that we can make ourselves safer if we just make ourselves less free. We get so scared of something—scared of communism or crime or drugs or illegal aliens—that we think we can make ourselves safer by sacrificing freedom. Never works. It’s still true: the only thing to fear is fear itself.

I don’t have an agenda, I don’t have a program. I’m not a communist or a socialist. I guess I’m a left-libertarian and a populist, and I believe in the Bill of Rights the way some folks believe in the Bible.

A populist is someone who is for the people and against the powerful, and so a populist is generally the same as a liberal—except we tend to have more fun.

In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [Governor’s] office; it’s mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose.

I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults.

I have been attacked by Rush Limbaugh on the air, an experience somewhat akin to being gummed by a newt. It doesn’t actually hurt, but it leaves you with slimy stuff on your ankle.

So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

Aw lawdy, that was a woman. They say the good die young. I don’t know about that. What I do know is this: the great die too soon.

The late, great, beautiful Molly Ivins

Happy birthday, Molly Ivins. We miss you.

coffee, guns, & sensitivity

Posted on August 12, 2013 by greg

“Starbucks? You get coffee at Starbucks?” I get asked that question periodically. Sometimes by people who dislike the cost or taste of Starbucks coffee, sometimes by folks who dislike the way Starbucks treats its employees, sometimes by people who dislike the music at Starbucks, or the customers who frequent Starbucks, or the name Starbucks. And lately I’ve been asked that question by folks who are appalled by the refusal of Starbucks to ban firearms from their coffee shops.

That’s right, Starbucks allows its overly-caffeinated customers to be armed. Not every Starbucks; only those Starbucks in states that have ‘open carry’ laws**. According to Zack Hutson, a spokesman for Starbucks,

“We comply with local laws and statutes in the communities we serve, abiding by laws that permit open carry. Where these laws don’t exist, openly carrying weapons in our stores is prohibited.”

So if your state or city allows folks to openly tote a firearm, then Starbucks says you’re welcome to take that firearm into their coffee shops. They don’t advertise this, but there it is.

Gun safety advocates think this stance is massively stupid. Gun rights advocates are basically divided into three camps. There are those who think anybody who’d enter a Starbucks is a communist who’s only about five minutes away from gay-marrying a sheep. There are those who dislike Starbucks because they’re only ‘gun-neutral’ instead of ‘pro-gun.’ And there are those folks who think Starbucks deserves a round of applause for their bold hey-we-didn’t-write-the-law stance on firearms.

The latter group organized Starbucks Appreciation Day. Which was last Friday, in case you didn’t notice (and you probably didn’t). Starbucks Appreciation Day was sort of like Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day, only that was for hating gay folks and this was for loving firearms. Given that there’s some serious overlap among the gun-loving and gay-hating subsets, it’s not surprising that Starbucks Appreciation Day received some blowback (hah, blowback…see what I did there?) from the triple-shot testosterone black coffee crowd.

The CEO OF fAGbucks told the rest of us that if we dont support ass munchers getting married, we should not buy fagbucks, so I now go to the Coffee Bean

I’m aware of [Starbucks] recent backing of homosexual “partnerships”. My point was that they have not changed their open-carry policy and that behavior deserves acknowledgement. As long as the homosexuals don’t “invade my space”, I’ll let them suffer the consequences of their lifestyle.

Yeah. Fagbucks. One argument for getting coffee at Starbucks is you’re not likely to meet the guy who refers to it as ‘Fagbucks.’

In any event, I was pleased by Starbucks Appreciation Day. Not because I support the notion of openly carrying firearms — I definitely do not. I like Starbucks Appreciation Day because 1) it brings attention to Starbucks’ policy (which, in my opinion, really needs to change), and 2) I’m a very firm believer in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees “the right of the people peaceably to assemble.” So it makes me perversely proud to see people with whom I actively disagree making a public stand and exercising their constitutional rights. I’m more willing to support people who openly stand up for causes I dislike than I am to support a corporation that quietly refuses to adopt a policy that’s in the best interest of its customers.

Here’s the thing about freedom of speech and freedom of assembly: if it’s to have any meaning at all, it can’t be limited for reasons of sensitivity. These rights cannot be restricted simply because they might upset somebody.

It would, for example, be incredibly insensitive and deliberately offensive for gun rights advocates to hold Starbucks Appreciation Day at a Starbucks in Newtown, where more than two dozen children and teachers were murdered eight months ago. Only a group of world class jackasses would schedule a pro-gun rally in Newtown.

And so, of course, that’s exactly what the Connecticut Citizens Defense League decided to do. Not surprisingly, gun safety advocates objected. Equally unsurprising, pro-gun folks mocked them.

Interesting comments by the “victim class” from Newtown.

They need to suck it up. We don’t all stop driving our cars when there is a big car crash. We don’t ban flights over a town where a plane crashed. to heck with all that. If we want to be sensitive of the kids fears then let them stay home from public school for a year. My rights are not negotiable on someone elses fears.

As if we should be ashamed at insisting on rights in such an insensitive way. Screw that! Sensitivity is why they band open carry and concealed carry in most states ages ago. It took us DECADES of tragedies before people started insisting on overturning those laws. We will NOT crawl back in our holes because someone whines and cries.

I guess civil rights stop after a killing.

Seriously, these guys were actually offended–offended–by the notion that they should be sensitive to the pain and suffering of parents whose six-year-old children were recently murdered. In fact, they seemed to see this as some sort of challenge. “You don’t want me to bring a gun to your Starbucks in Newtown? Fuck you in the neck, you whining babies. I’m going to drive an extra ninety minutes just so I can bring a gun to Newtown. In fact, fuck you so much I’m bringing TWO guns now. Sensitivity is for pussies. Suck my puny white dick.”

The whole Starbucks Appreciation Day idea put the corporation in an uncomfortable public relations situation (which, let’s face it, is exactly where they belong for having such a passive policy). They had to choose between 1) maintaining their policies and showing themselves to be heartless corporate fuckwads or 2) being decent members of the community. They tried to choose both.

Starbucks issued a statement on the decision of pro-gun advocates to hold Appreciation Day:

These events are not endorsed by Starbucks. That said, our stores are gathering places for the communities we serve and we respect the diverse views of our customers. We recognize that there is significant and genuine passion surrounding open carry weapon laws. Our long-standing approach to this topic remains unchanged.

Oh Starbucks, you had me at ‘that said.’ Except, of course, this is NOT an issue of ‘diverse views’ as the Starbucks statement suggests. It’s an issue of health and safety. While it’s true that occasionally somebody carrying a concealed weapon will prevent a crime from taking place, it’s a lot more likely somebody carrying a weapon will fire it in anger (and I don’t know about you, but every time I’m behind somebody who orders a “Venti iced skinny hazelnut macchiato, sugar-free syrup, extra shot, light ice, no whip” I want to kneecap them). It’s even more likely somebody will discharge their weapon accidentally (and if we’re lucky, they’ll only wound themselves).

In the end, Starbucks is a corporation and the only thing corporations really care about is maximizing profit. Starbucks isn’t about coffee; it’s about selling coffee. At least whoever owns the Newtown Starbucks franchise had the decency to close the coffee shop five hours early, so there was no Starbucks Loves Guns event there.

Oh, and if Starbucks is so wicked, why do I buy their coffee on occasion? Simple. There’s a Starbucks about seventy paces from the entrance to the main branch of the public library. I can stop there, buy a big white chocolate mocha, take it into the library with me, and sip on it for an hour or two while I work.

I’m apparently willing to periodically sacrifice my principles in the interest of convenience.

** There are only seven states and the District of Columbia (in red) that prohibit the open carrying of handguns (California permits citizens to openly carry rifles and shotguns in rural areas). Fourteen states (in green) require some form of permit to openly carry a handgun in public. Seventeen states (in gold) allow open carry of handguns, though there are general restrictions (for example, it may be prohibited to openly carry a handgun into a church or an establishment that serves alcohol). The remaining twelve states allow full open carry (though individual businesses and establishments can forbid weapons on the premises).

gazania in a monkey’s head

Posted on August 1, 2013 by greg

So, back in May, right? I’m noodling around in the Sally (yes, I know the Salvation Army opposes marriage equality, but they still provide services to poor folks and since I live nearby, I like to stop in now and then and slip them a few bucks; I’m vocal about my support for marriage quality, but I’m not going to ace out poor folks just to get back at the Sally, and anyway same-sex marriage has been legal in Iowa for a few years now, so let’s not get sidetracked from oh lawdy it’s too late). And what do I see? A ceramic boxlike thing with a monkey’s head on it.

And I snatch it off the shelf. I know immediately, right then, I’m buying it.

“You’re buying a tissue holder with a chimpanzee’s head on it?” my friend asked. And I realize I’m not holding a boxlike thing with a monkey’s head; I’m holding a tissue holder with a chimpanzee’s head. Easy mistake to make.

“It’s not a tissue holder,” I tell her. “It’s a planter. Or it’s going to be.” She gives me that patient no-point-in-discussing-it look, which I get so often. At the checkout counter, a short woman wearing a sweater with a teddy bear holding some balloons on the front says, “Oh, I’ve always liked that tissue holder. That’ll be four dollars.”

Four bucks for a planter with a chimpanzee’s head. That’s a bargain. In fact, there are four chimpanzee faces on it. See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, and a fourth face which I believe is Contemplating a Little Evil.

So since I now own a planter, I need a plant. We head off to the nearest garden center, where I wander around aimlessly, looking at a staggering array of plants, all of which are labeled with detailed information about the amount of water required, the amount of light necessary, the proper pH level, appropriate moon cycle for planting, the expected growth size of the plant, the size and color and dimension of its blooms, the Latin name of the plant, whether or not its edible and how best to prepare it, the etymology of its common name, which chapter the plant appears in Professor Snape’s Potions textbook.

I see a plant called a Gazania. It has odd, primitive-looking leaves and a name that sounds like a fictional nation in a Marx Brothers movie. I snatch it off the shelf. I know immediately, right then, I’m buying it.

It turns out you can’t actually plant a Gazania (or anything else, for that matter, in a tissue holder on account of a tissue holder doesn’t have a bottom. You need a bottom in a planter, else the plant just falls out. I figured that out my ownself. So you have to plant the Gazania in a small planter, then somehow weasel the leaves through the tissue opening. If you take your time and are careful, it can be done. It can also be done if you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing and just try shit until it works.

My friend’s friend said, “It’ll die. It needs a bigger pot. It’s got to have muttermutter sunlight. It’s supposed to be planted muttermutter.” “It’s a Gazania,” I said. “In a monkey’s head. If it lasts a week, I’ll be happy. Anything beyond that is gravy. And besides, I piss on the nation of your birth.”

I cannot abide a naysayer.

Anyway, I was happy. Stupidly and completely happy. I had a Gazania in a monkey’s head. How many folks can say that? If it died, so what? Four bucks for the monkey’s head, four bucks for the Gazania — hell, you pay more than that for a movie (I saw The Heat with Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock last week — it’s hilarious, y’all should go see it; it won’t bring you as much joy as a Gazania in a monkey’s head, but very few things will, you know?).

And hey, it didn’t die. In fact, in a couple of weeks, it blossomed. Which was pretty much a shock on account of I didn’t even know it was a flower. I had a flowering Gazania in a monkey’s head. Crazy-ass, wild yellow flowers. Gaudy bastards, with a red blaze down the center of each petal.

I was over the moon.

Look at those flowers. They look like something a child would draw. A child who’s seen too much Speed Racer.

And it hasn’t stopped. It just keeps on continuing to blossom. One flower withers and dies, and another takes its place. Sometimes two takes its place. I trim off the dying flowers and this thing just keeps pushing out new flowers, like Octomom.

I swear, no power in the ‘verse can stop it.

Well, okay. I know that’s not true. I know it’ll die in the fall. Maybe. Actually, I don’t have a clue what it’ll do in the fall. But probably it’ll die, right? And that’s okay. On account of it’s been the best eight bucks I’ve ever…well, no. That’s almost certainly not true either. I’m sure I’ve spent eight bucks in lots of better ways, though I can’t think of any at the moment. Still, it was a really great eight bucks, no mistake.

Also? I may start a website MonkeyHeadGazaniasforMarriageEquality.com. And I’ll be sure to thank the Sally for giving me the idea.

the elves all burst into song

Posted on June 12, 2013 by greg

A few days ago, on a whim, I decided to re-read The Lord of the Rings this summer. It’s been a long while since I’ve read the books. I first read them when I was eighteen years old and in Basic Training. We weren’t allowed to have any books during Basic (or any other personal belongings, for that matter), but somebody had smuggled in the paperback version of LoTR — and we’d chopped them up into something like chapter-sized chunks, easily hideable. About half of my unit, desperate to read anything, passed around the various chapters, sometimes out of order, and we’d discuss the story over chow or when we were out in the field.

I’ve re-read the books a couple of times since then, and I’ve seen the movies, of course. I’m not quite sure what sparked the decision to re-read them again. Maybe the current enthusiasm for HBO’s version of Game of Thrones (which I haven’t seen, though, again, I’ve read the books). But like I said, it was a whim — and I am weak to the whim.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

I was surprised and delighted to discover LoTR was available as an e-book, and only for something like ten dollars. So I downloaded it (unlike the print versions, all three volumes and all six books are in one large file, which makes it easy.

The first thing I noticed was the deliberate pace of the writing. I don’t think you could accurately describe it as slowly-paced, but the pacing is very deliberately moderated. Tolkien clearly wanted his readers to settle into the story, to get nestled down into his Middle Earth. That sort of pacing would, I suspect, be a hard sell for a publisher these day. I’ve no doubt an awful lot of modern readers would find the pacing off-putting, but I think it suits the story.

I was reading comfortably along, enjoying the gradual increase in tension — the discovery that Bilbo’s ring was the One Ring, the unexplained tardiness of Gandalf, the sale of Bag End to the dreadful Sackville-Bagginses, the arrival of the wonderfully spooky Black Riders. Then Frodo and Sam and Pippin, making their way through the woods, stumble upon a troupe of wandering Elves.

I’d always remembered this scene with particular fondness. In part, that’s because it’s Sam Gamgee’s very first experience with Elves, and so much is made of his desire to see them. But I suspect I’ve liked this scene in part because when I first read it I was living in a barracks with forty other troops. The tranquility of the scene and the ethereal quality of the encounter was so utterly unlike barracks life. So I was prepared to be charmed. Then I read this:

The Elves all burst into song. Suddenly under the trees a fire sprang up with a red light.

“Come!” the Elves called to the hobbits. “Come! Now is the time for speech and merriment!”

Several things occurred to me at that point. First, Elves can be pretty fucking annoying. I suppose you can excuse the fact that they just start singing en masse, without any warning because…well, Elves. But the tendency to speak in exclamation points is a tad over the top. Actually, when it’s a single Elf speaking it’s not so bad, but as a group they’re awfully exclamatory.

Second, speech and merriment? Okay, they’re Elves — you can’t expect them to say “Let’s hang out, talk, drink a bit, have some fun, whaddaya say?” I get that. But there’s something about the need to announce that it’s time to talk and have fun that sort of mutes the fun of talking. They announce everything, the Elves. “Earlier was the time for walking in green woods! Then came the time for impromptu acapella singing! Now is the time for speech and merriment!”

But as you continue to read the scene, you realize there’s a great deal of speech, but not much merriment at all. What did Frodo and the Elves speak about?

The tidings were mostly sad and ominous: of gathering darkness, the wars of Men, and the flight of the Elves.

That’s awfully merriment-deficient. I’m sure orcs would think that was a hoot, but we’re talking about High Elves here. Maybe they should stick to bursting into song.

Gildor

The third thing that occurred to me was this: Tolkien, as a writer, gets away with a lot of shit we wouldn’t tolerate in a modern writer. He gets away with it because he’s Tolkien. He didn’t invent epic fantasy fiction, but he’s the guy who single-handedly revived the genre, and that makes him an unalloyed literary badass. Only a literary badass could write this and get away with it:

The merry voice of Pippin came to him. He was running on the green turf and singing.

If a student of mine wrote that, I’d bitch-slap him ’til Tuesday. The image of a small, furry-footed being larking about on the lawn and singing like Julie Andrews on an alp is singularly ridiculous. Dude, singing and running at the same time? Really?

But because it’s Tolkien, I not only tolerate it, I embrace it. Yes, his writing is creaky and his style is outmoded and archaic. I don’t care. Yes, his dialog is sometimes (well, often) embarrassing. I really don’t care. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien provides me with speech and merriment, so he gets a pass.

“Courage is found in unlikely places,” said Gildor. “Be of good hope! Sleep now!”

I’m almost certainly going to read other books as well this summer. I’ll take occasional short breaks from reading The Lord of the Rings and dip into something without Elves. But LoTR will be the book I read last before turning out the light. I am of good hope! I may burst into song!

But probably not.

done for the season

Posted on May 30, 2013 by greg

Okay, that’s it. Morel season is over. Done, finished, kaput. Oh, there are probably still some ‘shrooms out there, but I won’t find them because I won’t be looking. At this point, the undergrowth is so thick that searching for morels would be almost like work. Where’s the fun in that?

It was weird Spring — weird in a lot of ways; weird weather, weird things happening in the world — and I didn’t get to hunt nearly as often as I’d have liked. Four times. That was it. Four times between May 1st and May 19th. The video above was shot on the first hunt of the season. Last year I’d been hunting three or four times by May 1st. Two days after the video was shot, it snowed. Snowed. Like I said, weird.

Mostly I went morel hunting with my cousin Scott, who’s like a brother to me. He’s an ideal ‘shroom hunting partner because he doesn’t fret. I’ve been hunting with other folks who are uncomfortable in the woods. They always want to be near you — in sight of you, in shouting distance. They call out to you periodically. Not Scott. He assumes you know what you’re doing. He says stuff like “I’m gonna walk along this hill line, see where it leads. You try another direction, I’ll meet you somewhere in about an hour.” He trusts that in around sixty minutes he’ll find you or you’ll find him. Somewhere in the woods.

This second video was shot ‘somewhere’ in the woods — in the same general vicinity of the first video. In fact, all the videos here were shot in the same general vicinity (we hunted other spots, but we always included this area because we knew we’d find morels there). Here’s the thing about the woods. ‘Somewhere’ looks a lot like ‘everywhere else.’ Once you get far enough into the woods, everything around you looks pretty much the same.

It’s not uncommon for me to be searching for ‘shrooms, then look around to get my bearings, and realize I have no fucking clue where I am. I have to stop and think about the terrain I hiked — or any unusual features I noticed on the way — and figure out how to get back to where I started. Or how to locate the ‘somewhere’ I was supposed to meet Scott. Yes, a compass would help resolve that, but my compass is in a box in Ohio and I never seem to remember to buy a new one. But I’m comfortable enough in the woods to assume I’m not actually lost. I may not know where I am — but that’s not lost. I’ve always managed to find my way back, or to find Scott ‘somewhere’ in the woods. So far.

What I like most about hunting morels (aside from the morels) is this: it’s tranquil. It’s not exactly quiet because there are always birds, and wind in the trees, and the occasional critter moving through the underbrush, and sometimes the chuckling of a brook. But those are peaceful sounds. The tranquility allows your brain to do double duty. On one level your brain is monitoring the search for that particular shape and pattern that indicates morel. The little bastards can be hard to spot, but once spotted are easily identifiable. So there’s always a part of your consciousness that’s scanning the earth, engaged in primary pattern recognition. But another part is placidly turning over other thoughts. Nothing too intense, of course, or it overrides the pattern recognition process.

I often think about writing. Sometimes it’s my own work — mulling over any issues I’m having with a story I’m working on. Sometimes I think about whatever I happen to be reading at the time. Sometimes I think about the work of my students. For example, I’m working with a former student who’s writing a wonderful story that revolves around the murder of a nun, but also delves into a such complex social issues as the sexual abuse of children by clergy, drug trafficking, and corruption in public housing. I’d be searching for morels and thinking of ways to simplify her story without sacrificing its scope and complexity. All those thoughts are periodically interrupted by the brain suddenly alerting you to the possible presence of a morel. It’s like a little alarm — morel alert morel alert, all brain functions report to duty stations.

My fourth — and last — hunt was less than three weeks after the first. As you can see in the video, the undergrowth had grown significantly thicker in those three weeks. The trees still weren’t fully leafed out. By now, they are.

That matters, because what you can’t tell from these videos is how increasingly difficult it becomes to move through the woods as Spring progresses. Early in the season you can pretty much wander at will. You have to wear a thick flannel shirt and jeans because of the thorny bushes, but so long as you carry a stick (and all serious morel hunters have a mushroom stick) you can usually work your way through them without much damage. But as the undergrowth gets thicker and the trees and shrubs and bushes get leafier, it not only makes movement more difficult, but you can’t see nearly as far. It becomes even harder to tell where you are and where you were. And, of course, mushrooms become much harder to spot.

On my last hunt, I spent much of my time bent like a dwarf, duck-walking along narrow deer tracks, struggling with thorns, looking less for morels and more for a small clearing where I could stand up and stretch out the kinks in my back. And even though it was fun and interesting, I’m in no hurry to do it again. That’s why I’m done for the season.

a very small, very welcome clearing

It was a good year for morels. An odd year, given the weather. Where morels grew, they grew in profusion. If people found them at all, they found them in staggering amounts. They collected bags full of morels. Pounds of morels. The shock absorbers on pick-up trucks were distressed under the weight of all the morels.

How many did I find? None. Not one. I found other mushrooms, but no morels.

I’m okay with that. Mostly. I love morels. Hunting them, finding them, cooking them, eating them. But so long as I get to do that first part — hunting them — I’m mostly satisfied. Mostly. But even though my ‘shroom bag remained empty all season, I enjoyed myself. Not just mostly, but always.

storm season

Posted on May 20, 2013 by greg

After yesterday, I think we can say storm season has arrived. Massive severe weather systems pushed their way through the American heartland yesterday, causing destruction all the way from northern Texas to Minnesota. There were twenty-four confirmed reports of tornados on the ground in five different states (one of them was spotted three or four miles northwest of where I live — though we only experienced high winds, torrential rain, and a few minutes of hail).

It was horrible. It was glorious. It made me miss my brother, Jesse Eugene.

Jesse Eugene and I didn’t have a great deal in common. We were always close and we always enjoyed each other, but I’m not sure we’d have been friends if we weren’t brothers. Still, we spent a lot of time together over the last couple years of his life. Hunting morels in the spring (I haven’t found a single mushroom this year, which would have made him laugh his ass off, the vicious bastard), playing games on the X-Box (he’d have been really curious about the new version being released tomorrow), playing golf (which reminds me, I need to set up a tee time with my remaining brother), and sitting on his porch, cooking and drinking beer (I did most of the cooking; he did most of the drinking — an unfair division of labor).

And storms. We had this in common: we both loved storms.

When a storm was approaching, we’d both stop what we were doing and pile into his truck, head out into the countryside, and find a spot where we could watch it.

It’s one of the best things about living in the American Midwest: you can actually watch weather systems develop. You can watch a storm grow and turn mean — or grow, then give in to entropy and dissipate. You can watch rain pissing down like mad a couple of miles away, while you’re standing placidly in sunshine. You can see tornados form — or try to form and fail — or form and just hang there in the sky like wasp tails, without ever touching down. And lawdy, the lightning. Beautiful and terrifying and mesmerizing.

There’s something elementally compelling about watching a storm grow in size and strength. It’s both scary and magnificent. Sometimes you realize the storm hasn’t actually gotten bigger — it’s just gotten closer. That can be unnerving.

I think what made Jesse Eugene such a good storm-watching companion was that neither of us was interested in the experience as an adventure. Some people like to get close to storms because they enjoy the thrill, the risk. My brother served as a Marine in Vietnam and was a career firefighter; I’ve been a medic in the military, I was a counselor in the Psychiatric/Security Unit of a prison for women, and a private investigator specializing in criminal defense — we’d both experienced very real risks and dangers, and neither of us felt any need to seek out new ones.

For us, watching storms was all about witnessing something primal, something wild and savage and entirely unrestrained. Something completely beyond anything resembling human control, but something that was still organic. Storms follow rules and laws of nature that we didn’t / couldn’t understand, and we were both drawn by the fact that a storm was always capable of doing something totally unexpected. One moment the sky would be grey and scarred with dark clouds, the next it would turn a weird purplish-green, the color of a three-day old bruise, and then half an hour later it would be blue again. Or maybe it would stay dark and rain like it was the End of Days. You just didn’t know.

That’s Jesse Eugene in the photo above. He’s been dead for almost two years now, and I miss him. Not every day, but I miss him. It’s not necessarily painful — it’s usually just a quiet but sudden sense of the absence of the familiar. Like if you get a new office chair. Or you switch from winter boots to sneakers. It just feels a wee bit off. It’s a reminder that things are different now. But you know that feeling will pass. You get used to it.

But during yesterday’s storm, I missed him a lot. I missed the feral grin he’d get when the storm was getting stupid wild, or getting too close. It was a grin that said If we had a lick of sense, we’d get back in the vehicle right now and haul ass — but isn’t this great? Let’s wait just a tad longer.

Here’s today’s weather forecast:

A few t-storms, some severe; storms can bring downpours, large hail, damaging winds, and a tornado.

I don’t believe in any sort of afterlife. I don’t believe Jesse Eugene is somewhere else, on some other plane of existence, looking down and enjoying the storm with me. But I know if he was still alive, he’d be watching the horizon for a shift in the weather. And grinning in anticipation.

Editorial note: All of the photographs above were shot in a span of fifteen minutes on 21 June, 2011.

walking like a camel

Posted on April 28, 2013 by greg

No, I don’t do it for the exercise. Yes, I understand that both walking and cycling are terrific forms of exercise, but no, that’s not why I do it. Yes, I’m usually going somewhere when I go for a walk or a ride, but no, that ‘somewhere’ isn’t a destination. I’m not actually going to that place. That place is just a prompt, a nudge, a reminder that it’s time to turn around and go back. Yes, the walk or ride serves a purpose; the walk or the ride is the purpose.

I do this almost every day, regardless of weather. Sometimes I’ll walk or ride for hours, sometimes just for ten or fifteen minutes. I might stroll for a couple of hours along the river; I might ride five minutes to the nearby Stop & Rob and buy a Coke Zero. The purpose isn’t to see the river or fetch a Coke, though those are both fine things. The purpose is movement, the purpose is to move the body and disengage the mind from whatever I was doing and allow it to re-engage in…well, something else.

Here’s a true thing: I don’t really walk or ride. I saunter. I even saunter when I’m on a bicycle. This is how Chambers defines saunter:

to walk, often aimlessly, at a leisurely pace; to wander or stroll idly

That’s me, wandering idly on foot or bicycle, somewhat aimlessly, at a leisurely pace.

There’s some uncertainty about the etymology of saunter. It’s been suggested the term derives from sans terre, ‘being without land or a home,’ which would be a good reason for walking aimlessly. Others believe it comes from s’aventurer, ‘to take risks or leave to chance.’ My favorite explanation of the term, though, comes from the Middle Ages, during the period of the Crusades.

When we think of the Crusades, we generally think of armored knights on destriers, traveling to Jerusalem to ‘rescue’ Christendom. But it wasn’t just knights and noblemen who made their way halfway around the world; poor folks were also seized with the irrational desire to travel to the Holy Land. But they had to walk and beg for food as they made their way à la sainte terre. While of lot of those folks were sincere, the willingness of people to help a common sainte-terrer (it was a sacrifice that would gain them favor with God) created a population of poor folks who wandered through much of Europe claiming to be journeying to the Holy Land, but actually were just medieval hobos.

Obviously, I’m not that sort of saunterer. I’m more in the Ludwig Von School of walking. Beethoven took a long stroll almost every afternoon, with a pencil and some paper stuffed in a pocket so he could write down any musical thoughts he might have. I keep myself open to ideas when I walk or ride, but I don’t take any writing paraphernalia with me. I tell myself that if an idea is good enough, I’ll remember it. If I don’t remember it when I get home, I tell myself the idea couldn’t have been that good.

That’s probably nonsense, but it gives me some comfort when I get home and can’t recall the ‘great’ idea I had when out sauntering.

Or maybe I’m more in the Thoreau School of walking. Thoreau said this:

[T]he walking of which I speak has nothing in it akin to taking exercise, as it is called…but is itself the enterprise and adventure of the day.
Moreover, you must walk like a camel which is said to be the only beast which ruminates when walking.

I’m very much taken with the notion of riding a bicycle like a camel.

I think I could argue that the real reason I take walks or go on rides is to get outside of my mind. Things happen when you’re out and about. Real things, and they happen to real people. The things that happen when you’re at your desk only happen in your mind.

Here’s an example of the way things happen. This thing happened to the composer Benjamin Britten, who was a great walker. It’s my favorite Benjamin Britten story (okay, my only Benjamin Britten story, because c’mon, does anybody have more than one Benjamin Britten story?). He was walking along a railroad track one day and came across a couple of young boys standing by the track, waiting. They had a newt in a jam jar. Britten asked the kids what they were doing. They said, “We’re waiting for the two o’clock train to come out of Aldeburgh, so we can show this newt what a steam train looks like.”

I’m willing to bet you five dollars this will become your favorite Benjamin Britten story too.

louche

Posted on April 2, 2013 by greg

Louche. I can’t recall the first time I encountered this word, but I immediately fell in love with it. I’d no idea what the definition of louche was, but I knew exactly what it meant.

Checking a dictionary simply confirmed it.

Louche, adjective:
1) of questionable taste or morality; decadent
2) not reputable or decent; shady, dubious, seedy

What else could it possibly mean? I was attracted to the word partly by the way it comes out of your mouth. Loosh. You have to make a sort of kissy-face to say it.

It’s French, of course. How could it not be? From the Old French term lousche or lois, which apparently meant ‘cross-eyed’ or ‘squint-eyed.’ That came from the Latin lusca, which is the feminine form of luscus which meant ‘one-eyed.’

You can almost see it, can’t you. A man peering squint-eyed through the half-gloom of evening at a woman wearing a red smear of lipstick. A louche scenario.

But louche isn’t just an adjective; it’s also a noun and a verb. As a noun it describes the cloudiness that comes from a suspension of fine particles in a liquid. As a verb it describes the act of suspending those particles. That sounds so very scientific, but it can be an almost erotic act of decadence.

When preparing absinthe to drink, one first pours the liquor into a glass. A slotted spoon is laid across the rim of the glass. A cube of sugar is placed on the spoon. Ice-cold water is then very slowly dripped over the sugar, dissolving it into the absinthe. The absinthe itself is highly alcoholic — forty-five to eighty percent alcohol combined with anise, fennel, and other medicinal herbs. The high alcohol content keeps the herbal oils in suspension. The higher the alcohol content, the more oils the absinthe can hold. The introduction of cold sugar-water causes the herbal oils in the absinthe to become cloudy, creating a sort of milky opalescence and releasing the aromas and scents of the herbs. The cloudiness is called the louche.

Decadent. Of questionable taste or morality. Disreputable. Shady. Louche.

Which explains why, when I was recently walking down 5th Street as evening approached and shadows began to obscure and conceal parts of the world, I passed a bright red doorway glancing at me sideways out of the darkness, the first word that came to my mind was louche.

gregfallis.com

it's this or get a real job

Category Archives: confessional crap