Henryton I

We had to escape from our latest institution – a long closed, and reputedly haunted mental institution. Henryton closed its doors in 1985. As with several hospitals of its era it opened, in 1923, as a TB sanitarium and was later converted into something else, in this case an institution of human suffering. The buildings, looking very island-like in their white stucco with turquoise trim, are badly vandalized by taggers and strippers. But much of the flavor of sadness remains.

Unlike at the Rosewood Training Center, we didn’t see bars on the windows or any rooms that were clearly used as holding cells for unruly patient. It definitely seemed a lower level security than Rosewood which makes a certain sense since patients admitted to Henryton were funneled through Rosewood Center.

We arrived mid morning to find the gate across the only entryway wide open. My exploring partner had said the gate would be padlocked so we’d been prepared to park and walk down the long, steep driveway. But coming upon the invitation, we drove right in. The complex is much smaller than Rosewood and is dwarfed by Forest Haven, but still the driveway wound around a few large buildings and several smaller houses. We parked neatly in a space marked “visitor parking” – although the print stenciled on the wall was hard to see through the graffiti – and disembarked our vehicle. Now began the long process of preparing to meet the elements. It was a frigid day, with a biting wind and we were about to test out our new winter gear.

In the trunk were our new puffy Dickies coveralls, insulation rated for stationary work outside. I felt like a kid in a snowsuit as I stepped into it and did up the zippers on each leg and the one up my front. Snapping the leg openings around my ankles was a bit of a challenge – bending down was now harder than usual and the snaps were stubborn – but with help I finally got them fastened. There was a face cover over the lower half of said face, a scarf, a hat that pulled down over my whole head, gloves, and finally I put my jacket back on over the coveralls. The only part of me showing was my eyes, I definitely looked criminal-like. Quickly, the neoprene face cover came off – it was too hard to breathe and when we were inside wind wasn’t a factor. But the hat still pulled down over my face so I remained partially hidden. I still looked like a cop show robber. But I was warm.

All of me, that is, except my toes. They felt like little blocks of ice and after only about half an hour it began to feel unbearable. We’d bought toe-warmers, that stuff you expose to air then stick on your socks and it warms up so I tried it out. This required removing my boots, not a happy activity in this cold and dirt. But the end result was a happy face. My toes stayed toasty all day long (after one readjustment of the toe pad’s positioning – yet another boot removal). When I got home that night, after much brou-ha-ha (coming later) the pads were still warm. Still warm when I remembered to peel them off my socks at about 11 PM just before I went to bed. These are a good product.

new office II

We’re almost completely moved into our new digs across the street from our old digs at work. The new building is newly renovated, the old building was renovated eons ago. The old building is three row houses someone sewed together, the new building is an old bank building that we completely gutted…and then put back pretty much exactly as it was, only more annoyingly. Although they were forced to gut the entire building by the presence of asbestos and other harmful chemicals, we were still not permitted to oversee the details of the renovation even though we had some very particular needs.

In fact, it seemed no one was actually in charge. The architect was making decisions. The university was making decisions. The state was making decisions. The technology people were making decisions. Were any of them talking to one another? I’m going to say no.

First, there is, apparently, a state regulation governing the size faculty offices must be. I wonder what that regulation says, or if it actually really exists. We all know that faculty offices vary greatly in size from building to building from university to university. I suppose since this was a new construction, there might be something saying how large, or small, our offices must be. So let’s just concede there is such a regulation. I’m wondering who wrote the regulation and what they thought we do. Perhaps regulations simply cover people at or below a certain pay grade – but that couldn’t possibly include faculty since our pay is all over the scale and we are ungraded. But it certainly seems that the regulation is about people doing a job where they never (and I mean never) have any need to work collaboratively, see students, or essentially have office visitors for any reason.

My diminutive office affords almost no space for me to set up any chair other than my own. And my whale sized office furniture only adds to that problem. As I inhabit the large C described by my desk system, I can put another chair facing into the opening of the C. Problem with that, of course, is that neither my visitor nor I then have access to any writing surface and so there we are, sitting among a sea of desk, writing in our laps.

My neighbor’s office is slightly larger than mine. Slightly. About seven inches. But in the land of teenytiny offices seven inches makes a world of difference. She can place her two small prison-made chairs in front of her desk system. They are backed up almost touching her bookcases, but they are there. Whoever sits in them is knees to the desk-front, however, since, again, no one thought that we might be having visitors where we’d both have to be working at the desk. Desks exist where a second person can sit tucked in under a desk area. But do faculty have these desks? No. They have been given to higher administrators – people who rarely see students.

Never mind that the sort of work we do in my department often requires teachers to collect and review large projects – mounted posters, constructed packaging, formally constructed proposals. There can be no thought to ever laying them out in your office for viewing. But neither is there really room to even store them here in your teenytiny office between the time you collect them and the time you drag them down the hall to an open classroom where you can spread them out to look at them.

The work area in the office might work as a cubicle – a more open space where if you needed someone to come see you they could drag a chair from the adjoining cubicle and sit half in, half out of the entry way. But as an office it’s simply a goldfish sized bowl – the kind you win at the fair. The ones you’re supposed to take home and get rid of after you transfer the poor fish to a larger bowl. Obviously whoever wrote the regulations about faculty office sizes had no real idea what faculty actually do. Or maybe these notions of collaborating with colleagues and seeing students really are passé.

new office

Well, we moved our offices from an older set of three converted row houses to a newer (really?) renovated bank building. The new building has an interesting hum which I heard as I sat alone in my new office yesterday completely surrounded by still packed boxes. I understand it has that energy saving motion sensor lights off feature: always terrific for people whose jobs involve sitting quietly at their desks reading or writing. After 15 minutes of actual work, your lights are turned off so you’ll need to wave your arms around like a crazy person or get up and go for a pointless walk to reilluminate your office. This is a more advanced version of voicemail that requires you pick up your receiver to see weather or not you have a message. You pick up the receiver when the phone hasn’t rung – again, like a crazy person – and see if you have that “stutter dialtone.” So you come back into your office after a brief sojourn to the restroom and, although it hasn’t rung, you must pick up your phone and listen to it. Why not a visual signal so we don’t have to perform an actual task? The light saving feature especially is just another one of those things – almost everything about the new office has this quality – installed without any thought about the actual end user. I could make a long list. Perhaps I will.

VA Hospital IV

The sad beeping of the dying smoke alarms was a not so subtle reminder that the building hadn’t been abandoned for long. Items – mostly technology – still sporting hang tags marked “excess” told us someone had been though the building making conscious decisions about what to do with its contents. Still, much remained. A good friend who volunteers with a medical project sending supplies to Haiti and Africa is always telling me about the donations they collect. They will take anything, down to a few unused gauze pads. In the VA Hospital major equipment – dental chairs with drill equipment and lights, X-ray machines, refrigerators, exercise and therapeutic equipment – all silently awaited the dumpster. It seemed fairly clear that everything the government wanted had been removed.

Although the place was locked up pretty tight on the ground floors to prevent human intruders, the upper floors let in birds and I’m betting other animals will soon be wandering the corridors. Once windows are broken, the elements begin to have their way with everything in sight. Paint peels, bird guano collects, things start to break down. No matter how tightly a building is locked up, explorers will find a way to get in. We did. And not everyone is as gentle as we are. Kids are much more aggressive in their entry-seeking and disturb much more once they are inside. We saw evidence of their exploits throughout the building: a few toner cartridges emptied across a room leaving a thin film of jet black powder, smashed windows, piles of medical equipment in a broken jumble on the floor.

On the upper floors all window air conditioner guts had been removed leaving only the hulking shells of the old enormous AC units hanging outside the windows. Birds enjoyed easy access through these comfortable shelters. We saw more than a few dead birds who’d obviously not been able to find egress as easily.

Although the place had clearly been gone through, still much remained. Much waste, much that my friend would have happily put in a shipping container bound for a nation much poorer than we and in desperate need of anything salvageable. Furniture, a lot of it, could have been donated somewhere. Yes, it’s that unbearably ugly institutional furniture, but that very construction makes it almost indestructible. It should find a home. Instead, it seems bound for the dump. Recycling our waste takes commitment and energy and apparently these are still lacking. Instead, entropic creep takes over what we leave behind.

play review

Attended the theatre Friday night, and am very sorry I could not get to blogging it here until today. If I can save one person from seeing this show, I will consider my duty done. I love Everyman Theatre, they have a solid company of actors and a good producer. But best of all they have consistently, and absolutely, the best sets in the city. The best. Every production goes on in just exactly the right environment. If the play wants realism, the set delivers a cozy living room with not a detail missing. If the play wants an abstraction, the set can make a single post represent the end of a lonely pier. Whatever play is in production the set meets its mark 100%, 100% of the time. So we were not surprised to find a perfect writer-detective’s office in front of us when we sat down on Friday night. Small old wooden desk, 50’s style couch, old typewriter table upon which sat a small simple old typewriter (I could imagine its black and red ribbon), the entire setting the mess of a single guy living in his office. As usual I expected we were in for a treat.

But Filthy Rich was anything but a treat. The play itself was poorly conceived. Although the main character gets drunk and sobers up at least three times inside the two acts, the dialogue seems to indicate that all the action takes place within 24 hours. Not only does the inebriation belie this, but the action itself seems impossible for such a small window. People travel around the city – from one end to the other – learn new things about each other, bring them back to the detective’s office and try to set each other up. A non-character is killed in the detective’s office and the police investigation and removal of the body takes place inside this tiny window of time – still allowing time for all the other events.

Time is not the only problem. The play is a classic example of what writing teachers all over the world call telling, not showing. The major exposition of the play’s backstory takes place when one annoying character reads a letter to another annoying character. So essentially the audience is simply hearing a telling of the story. No action, no actual character driven exposition…just someone reporting a tale. What’s the point of having a characters and a play if all you’re going to do is have one character read off what’s happened?

None of the characters is likable, not even the main sort-of-cute writer-detective. It’s clear he’s trying to be cute and/or funny but most of his humor is just enough off to be only mildly, if at all, amusing. With no humor relief there’s really nowhere for the irritation caused by the non-development of the story to come to rest. It’s just two hours and ten minutes of people walking in and out of this wonderful set, reporting what’s happened off stage, and fretting about who’s betrayed whom. Why the audience should care about any of this is never explained. The set and the film noir music that occasionally plays people on are the only pleasant parts of the evening.

As we left the theatre I turned to one of my companions and asked if he’d liked the play. The sour look in his reply told me he didn’t have to think about his answer, but only about whether or not he should voice his opinion. He uttered a single word: “no.” “Me neither,” I joined. None of the four of us liked the play. My most revealing reaction came during the play’s last twenty minutes – which seemed interminable and were a reverberating demonstration of every character’s irritating and unlikable personalities. I just kept thinking "I could be…asleep."

VA Hospital III

Emerging from the heavy institutional door that lead from pipe crawlway to main floor felt a little like stepping out into a real world after being trapped in funhouse torture land. We stashed our gear in a hematology lab and went to explore the building. The care taken to prevent intruders had semi-paid off inside. There was almost no graffiti and very little trashing had taken place. The occasional room had some mischief – one office was covered in a thin layer of jet black copier toner, another floor saw every interior window smashed – but the vandalism we usually see when kids get in and start behaving like wrecking crews was absent. Pieces of equipment still sported their “excess” tags, although it seemed clear that these bits were going nowhere.

Much of what made the hospital a hospital was gone. But many of the heavy pieces remained, seemingly abandoned there. And what a waste. X-ray machines, dental chairs, machinery and lights, beds – mostly still sitting quietly in their attentive posture awaiting their patients. A lot of the furniture was obviously gone – not every room had not a bed. But much had been left. Office furniture, lots of it, was corralled in waiting rooms – waiting. Were these pieces going to see a recycled life? I suppose it’s still possible that all this stuff could be donated somewhere. But it seems unlikely. And with every passing day another team of intruders reaches the inner bowels of the structure with more possibility for vandalism. Not all intruders are exploring photographers, many are kids hoping only to make a mess they’re not required to clean.

Every stairway door we encountered was disfigured by crowbar at its latching point. With great intentionality, someone had destroyed every door so secure closure would have been impossible…and had removed all latching mechanisms just to be safe. It felt very odd. Also on every floor we heard the wispy chirp of the low battery signal in the smoke alarms. The note bent as it, too, slowly died. At first we were surprised by the electronic beep, wondering momentarily if they could be motion detectors (we were screwed if they were). But it was obvious they were not as, like slight auditory ghosts, they simply followed us from floor to floor. Eventually the sound faded into the background and re-entered our consciousness only toward the end of the day as darkness fell and everything, once again, became unfamiliar.

Odetta

Odetta has died. As the obits point out, she was the voice of the civil rights movement. An amazing deep, thoaty, powerful voice. Her signature song, This Little Light o' Mine, remains our mantra as we strive for a more just society and find ourselves in situations that demand song. I had a single encounter with several years ago when I volunteered at a folk venue for weekly concerts. One Saturday night the legendary Odetta graced us. As she was preparing in the "green room" (a classroom off the main church sanctuary where the concerts were) the house manager went in and told her she'd be going on around 7:30-ish, after the opening act. Odetta pulled herself up to full attitude -- head high with the massively intimidating posture of a trained singer, and in full voice she said "I don't do 'ish'" -- a very Odetta(ish) moment.

Sad that she will not be able to serenade our next president at his inauguration – she was trying to last until January 20 for that. She will be tremendously missed. (See the great video piece the NYTimes did on her.)

VA Hospital II

The main building entrance facing the water felt like the most likely place we might gain entry. But every old window sported a giant air conditioner and windows without AC were replacement windows – sturdy and unopenable. How, how had others gotten in? We knew they had, we’d seen photos. We do not like to be stymied. A grate over a basement “window” revealed a small hole we could probably have fit through. But a small lake lay beneath it and it led to a small crawlspace – we didn’t know where it would wind up and we decided to keep searching. Around in the ambulance bay several windows looked like they should be openable, but they weren’t. Here another grate over a basement crawlspace window led to a larger opening with no lake. Should we try? My opinion is that no matter how tiny and isolated a basement crawlspace looks, there is almost always a connection between a downstairs area and the upstairs. It’s a rare basement area that doesn’t need to be accessed from above. There were pipes of all sizes and we were pretty sure someone would have needed to come look at them every now and then.

The grate covering the window area would have killed us had it fallen on us as we crawled beneath it and we cautiously leaned it at enough of an angle to prevent its falling. We smushed ourselves through the window opening and landed in muddy crawlspace about three and a half feet high. Trying to keep our gear out of the mud we crouched our way under a series of pipes, both of us hitting our head on the final pipe that had been sawed off to create a rather sharp final blow. And there were the stairs. A small half-flight to a door that led into the basement floor of the hospital. We were in.

last month of the year

Hard to believe we’ve arrived at the last month of the year. One more notch on the belt of the twenty first century. We’ll be into double digits before we know it. But first, the final year of single digits: 2009. I still find it hard to believe. I’m sort of getting used to writing 200… as the year. Checks (although who, besides me, still uses checks?) now have that as their prefix on the date line, most spaces where you are required to fill in dates have that prefix, we’re getting used to saying it. But we still don’t have a name for this low, dishonest decade (Auden was never so appropriate). The best thing about 2009 – getting rid of the criminal in the White House and restoring dignity and respect to America’s name around the world. I don’t quite understand why they become unprosecutable when they leave office. People like Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez, Donald Rumsfeld, and the head idiot (I don’t even want to write his name) should be held accountable for their wrongdoing. Or as that guy would say, evil-doing.

I don’t believe I’ve ever detested a president quite so much. My first memory of an awful president was Richard Nixon. I remember telling my mother (who was significantly younger than I am now at the time) on the day after he was elected that we’d just have to “live with it.” She snapped back “we cannot live with it.” We know now she was right, of course – we couldn’t live with him. But he was not a political hack. He managed a few important things (opening relations with China, creating the EPA and OSHA, yeah yeah yeah…). He was the only president to resign in disgrace, he kept a war going so he could be reelected, through his health care policy he created the behemoths of the insurance industry, and countless other bad things. So we thought it was bad under Nixon and then came Ronald Reagan, the man who thought he was at the liberation of a concentration camp because he’d seen a movie about it. He wouldn’t utter the word AIDS during his entire presidency, effectively marginalizing an entire segment of the population at a time when they most desperately needed to be attended to. His inane focus on feeling good distracted the nation from his lunatic policies that favored the religious right. His Supreme Court appointment of Clarence Thomas reflected his total commitment to ideology over judgment. George H.W. Bush continued Reagan’s approach but in a subdued just-following-this-guy sort of way. But I do remember feeling that someone had been beating me with a large stick for twelve years and had finally stopped the day after Clinton was elected. He wasn’t my first choice, but finally “family values” as code for straight/christian/married-with-children/religious-fundamentalist values was going away.

All these guys were bad. Awful. But none as bad as this George W. Bush. Not even close. Our president is a criminal, an idiot, an ideologue, a true believer in the worst way. He should be prosecuted for war crimes, his vice president should be imprisoned in a bricked up room, his cabinet secretaries (many of them at least) should be held accountable in court for all their crimes. I respect the office of president. I do. But I don’t think I could behave civilly were I to find myself in the same room with this man. I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to stand at the playing of Hail to the Chief, I wouldn’t be able to shake his hand, I wouldn’t even be able to speak to him without boiling over with rage.

So this is my favorite thing about the upcoming year change. We will finally be rid of Bush. I can’t believe they get to do what they’ve done and get off scott free. It’s like the country’s been run by a bunch of thugs for eight years and all we’re going to do is send them off to the country homes they’ve built on the backs of the people whose lives they’ve ruined. But I suppose we will have to be satisfied with simply having done with them. Done. Finally.

VA Hospital I

Getting into the VA Hospital was not an easy task. The fence surrounding the complex was simple to breach; holes all along the perimeter allowed someone willing to get dirty underneath access. But the buildings were boarded up tight. Not many windows even within climbing-in distance, and none of them broken. A hulking main hospital building was joined on the grounds by what looked to be a smaller hospital building, an office building, a few duplex homes, several outbuildings, and a neat row of private houses. Inside the first house we just felt like we’d broken into someone’s home – and a nervous raccoon was upstairs – we ignored the houses and aimed at the institutional buildings. We found access to the office building, but – hard for an explorer to say – nothing of interest was inside. Upstairs were dormitory style bedrooms done in boxy wooden 1970’s institutional furniture, portending things to come. We left without shooting and headed for the big hulk.

The main hospital building had been retrofitted with countless other buildings attached to it by a web of trailer-built hallways; like an octopus it had reached out and suckered onto the smaller buildings around it. But all those attached buildings, and still…no open windows. Circling the building was no easy task with all the appendages it had grown, and three vehicles were parked in front of a much smaller building across a large parking lot. We worried they were associated with human beings who might catch us. Surreally at one point, a fire truck made a circuit of the road around the complex. We hid behind one of the attached trailers. We tried everything: air ducts (too slippery – only works in the movies), lowering the tops of windows (they stuck on pieces of plastic designed to stop them from lowering), climbing down into cellar window areas (none opened). It was hard to believe we were going to be stymied. That’s happened only once before and at a place that was not abandoned, only closed. This place was definitely abandoned.

old friend

A couple of weeks ago my mother, who is a hospice chaplain, sent the family an article from the NY Times about hospice chaplains. I read part of it, it was two pages long, and left it open on my desktop to finish later. As is my habit, it remained there for a long time as I kept seeing it and not having time to finish it. But last night I was trying to catch up on old reading and instead of ignoring this article as I’d been doing for weeks, I decided to simply finish it. I scanned the first page for a review and clicked to page two. In the very first paragraph it mentioned a name I recognized as someone who was using a hospice chaplain to help her die. I thought, well there have to be several people with this name and I continued on. But like coming upon a wreck that’s broken apart and strewn pieces over a debris field I found more clues: she lived on the lower east side of Manhattan (so did my Karen Gilbert), she was the same age as my Karen Gilbert. At least she was the age I thought my Karen Gilbert was, I’d not communicated with my old friend in over 24 years. We’d been in graduate school together, working on our Master’s degrees. She married a lovely man, a guy we’d all thought was pretty cool. The wedding was in Goshen, NY – a bunch of us took the train up. Her wedding cake was homemade with loving hands, not bakery bought, decorated with real flowers. We kidded often about how her husband, Paul, was one of the few good men in the world and how mostly they were just pretty well useless. When she got pregnant I asked what she’d do if she had a boy and she answered that would be bad because then she would have to leave it at the hospital. Her beautiful baby girl came home a few months later. Thanks be to the gods for that one, huh?

The hospice chaplain article said its Karen Gilbert had died of colon cancer; and a narrated slide show was attached to the piece. I still hadn’t discovered the hulking shell of the wreck that my debris field was pointing toward. But when I played the slide show, there was her husband’s name, Paul Gregory, yes that was him. I knew it was impossible that all these clues could not be adding up to my old friend and there in the slide were pictures of her. It was difficult to find in the photos of a 56-year-old woman dying of colon cancer the same woman I’d known a quarter century ago. But when it showed photos of her and Paul from their wedding I knew my long ago friend had died on September 29, of this year attended by her friends, husband, and a Buddhist hospice chaplain.

How odd, to find out someone you knew a long time ago as a vibrant young woman has died a sad and painful death – or any kind of death. How should one react to this sort of news? Should you be sad even though you’ve not seen each other in years? Years of missed opportunity for reconnection have passed and now the chance is over. Are you allowed to miss a person you haven’t talked to in two and a half decades, someone you’ve not been close to, someone who simply passed through your life for a few years – years ago? One death summons all loss and particularly Karen Gilbert’s death for me. The article mentioned her sadness and guilt at having to leave her children. She died of colon cancer, the same disease that claimed my mother, who also had to leave her child. I recall our months and months together in classes, late night conversations, the people we knew. I think about how many of them have died in the intervening years – the roommate I lived with when I met Karen died of breast cancer several years ago. I think of the number that counted her years and it seems foreign to me. How could we be that age? How could we die at that age? How can we leave children, husbands, a life well-made? How could we have come from graduate students to here?

what to write

I’ve missed talking about a couple of abandonments we’ve visited lately. I can’t quite remember, but I may have also missed putting up the address of my new website (built for me by my exploring partner) where all my photos are now going. The site for seeing my photos is secondlaw.net – the main text has appeared here. I will now also be setting off as a blogger to blog the exploring on that site. But I am not abandoning this blogsite. I will not leave this site to deteriorate and be explored by virtual explorers in some dark electron-disintegrated future. I will maintain this blog and continue my writing practice here. Promise.

A colleague just published a book wherein she writes short essays about people who’ve influenced her life in various ways but who are now dead. I wish I’d thought of that. I would like to present a twist on the theme. What could it be? People who’ve influenced my life who are now executed? People who’ve influenced the lives of people who are close to me but who are now dead? I’ve always loved (among pretty much all her review writing) Dorothy Parker’s assessment of Margot Asquith (wife of the 1908-16, British Prime Minister, she was a writer well known in London’s social circles). Asquith’s autobiography told of her many encounters with important folk. Parker noted “I don’t say that Margot Asquith actually permits us to rub elbows with them ourselves, but she willingly shows us her own elbow which has been, so to say, honed on the mighty.” So I thought I might write about other people’s dead folks, show off my elbow that I’ve rubbed with them. We shall see how it comes out.

what I remember

What do I remember from what came before? Garrison Keillor says we remember things from childhood more vividly than those things that occurred last week. Especially as we age, the things lodged more effectively in the memory are those that have had long to find their place. So what do I remember?

One day when I was five or six I wanted my dad to come play with me. He was on his bed, newspaper spread in front of him. When I asked him to come on out and play he said he would as soon as he finished “this article.” “What’s an article,” I wanted to know. “An article is the word a, an, or the.” Well that is true. Those three words are articles. But why? Why would a grown man tell a six-year-old child, to whom he’s just said “wait till I finish this article,” that this is the definition of an article. Did he, in the ten or fifteen seconds between my first question – “come play” – and my second question – “what’s an article?” – forget that the two questions were linked together by his answer in between? Was he intentionally trying to mess with the kid? Did he somehow think that those three words were the most essential meaning of the word article, such that it trumped having his tiny daughter know what he meant? Did he think I wouldn’t notice that he’d performed a semantic slight of hand? What? What was he thinking?

It’s not as if I didn’t notice the incongruity. In fact, I spent many hours between the moment of his utterance and my learning parts of speech years later wondering how it could have possibly taken him so long to finish reading one of those tiny words. Even if he’d been reading all three of them, how could that have taken the 15 minutes that passed until he emerged from the bedroom for some play? When he did appear, I couldn’t figure out how to articulate a question that would indicate perplexed-ness. I was, after all, only half way through the single digits. But I was terribly confused. And I never forgot it. I never forgot how he absent-mindedly answered me and how I tried desperately to make sense of what he’d said.

That absent-mindedness, I think, accounts for many confused children. A friend told me that she once, at about the same age, asked he mother why, when addressing an envelope, she was supposed to write “New York” twice. Her mother’s reply? “I don’t know.” It seems impossible that her mother really didn’t know. But it was one of those “oh really” answers you give to three-year-olds whose speech is still unintelligible, one of those “don’t bother me,” or “I’m not paying attention to you” replies. Usually those answers rush by in the heat of a thousand a day. But every now and then one lodges in a child’s mind and you can have years of wondering...what did she mean by that?

second law II

To continue some ideas about my photos:

Each abandoned site was once a humming, functioning, part of American culture. But each has been consigned to obsolescence as society moved past them. Factories closed down as manufacturing processes shifted in both location and method; hospitals that warehoused and prisons that tried not to were replaced by different institutional approaches; theatres, resorts, and other entertainment venues slipped into disuse as patrons abandoned them for other amusements and the economy forced them off their rails. What were once ways of life in America have become our distant past, with the clock turning ever more rapidly.

Technology goes not alone into obsolescence. It is joined (in Kuhnian style) by our worldviews and our ever-fluid relationship to the environment. This trajectory toward entropy becomes opportunity another McLuhan dictum: that all things once useful return eventually as art. Here, then, is my humble recording of the journey of these places as they slouch toward their destiny.

The moment before

There’s that moment, the moment before it happens, that the world is still the same. Everything is in its place, all you know is as is always has been, nothing you see is any different from what it’s always looked like. Just before the car is broadsided, just before you open the door to find the stereo missing, just before the diagnosis arrives, just before you touch her forehead and find it cold. And then…the world changes. Irrevocably. Eternally. Nothing will ever feel the same. No matter how much time passes, you will always be a woman who lost a child. Never again just a teacher. Never again just a dancer. Never again just a parent. But always a teacher who’s lost a child, a dancer who’s child died Sudden Infant Death, a parent who’s child was kidnapped from her tent.

After that moment comes another moment. The moment in the pocket, when only you and the few gathered with you know. To everyone else in the world she is still alive, the murder has not yet occurred, her body not yet turned on her; everyone still loves a living, breathing woman. But soon the echo chamber will cry out the news and slowly the darkness is populated with eyes filled with sympathy. The world is forever changed. You are forever changed.

The moment has far less to do with the event than with knowledge of the event. We live in a constant state of not knowing, altered periodically by searing tragedy. The trajectory of our lives bounces wildly off these moments, atoms carving paths through the ether. The moments in the pocket are precious moments, moments of held silence where the news hovers before its ignition. The moments we long to recreate.

Veteran's day

Tuesday was Veteran’s Day. Or as it used to be called: Armistice Day. When the first of our republican idiot presidents signed the Uniform Holiday act in 1968, he moved four holidays to Mondays: Washington’s birthday, Memorial day, Veteran’s day, and Columbus day. Washington’s birthday has become President’s day; I won’t address the stupidity of celebrating Christopher Columbus (although I am surprised it hasn’t become Explorer’s day); Memorial day has stuck. But veterans throughout the land were unwilling to give up their date. Everyone remembered – soldiers, children of soldiers, people who cared about the country’s wars – that the armistice ending The Great War (World War I, before World War II appeared on the scene) was signed on November 11, and celebrating it on a random Monday (for some odd reason I can’t explain the first one after the UHA was celebrated in October) violated the symbolic sensibilities of the nation. Hooray for the veterans who insisted on the symbolic meaning of 11/11. They knew that their treaty, signed at 11 AM on the eleventh day of the eleventh month had meaning beyond ending this particular war. By the eleventh hour we must end all war. If we don’t we are surely consigned to the abyss of mutual suicide that any war eventually becomes.

end of election week

Listening to the news is safe again. Well almost – 74 days till the ass is out of office. I heard my first Obama press conference on the way home from work. What delicious cadences, what a marvelous deep and sonorous voice, what intelligence, confidence and thoughtfulness. So much the opposite of what we have had for the last eight years. No more of that idiot, no more of that twang, no more mispronunciation, no more misunderstanding, no more ridicule of ideas, or hostility to reason. Praise be to the gods.

Now. Can the damage be undone?

post election day

I spent last night in front of the TV as I do every election night. Unlike twenty years ago when they took down Dukakis’s picture and put up Reagan’s vice president (GW Bush) by half an hour after the polls closed in New York, tonight they waited until polls on the West coast were closed. But just moments after 11, the election was called for Barak Obama. Tears streamed down my face. And Jesse Jackson’s face. And Oprah Winfrey’s face. And the faces of people all across the country. So incredibly emotional was yesterday’s election. A catharsis.

For the first time in a long, long time, I’m hopeful again, proud again to be an American. I’m not ashamed of my country or my president. We may be just reinvigorating that old 60s idealism, but I genuinely feel this man can change politics. Maybe we can have a government that works again. There’s still the religious right that’s infected the other party to deal with. That party will need to do some soul searching. And find ways to reconnect with actual people and not just corporate interests. Real people and not just ideology. Real people and not just hatemongerers. But this man’s presence is the picture of hope and calm, he is this generation’s inspiration.

How far we have come. I never thought I would see this in my lifetime; I never thought I’d see a black person even contend for the nomination. But now he is our president. President Obama. The words have come smoothly for months, it always felt right. He is powerful and calm and reasoned and smart and he ran a perfect campaign. Never wavering from his primary message, never reacting to unreasonable and silly attacks, never changing approaches, never making ad hominem his tactic, never losing faith in his ability to scale the height. When he came out last night, “America’s next first family,” he looked so calm and in command. This is our next president. Our smart president. Our president who was actually elected, not one who stole an election and then drove every important element of government into a ditch, leaving it there twisted and burning. This president will surround himself with smart people not afraid to speak their minds. He will base his decisions in sound reasoning after listening to what he needs to hear. This will be a good president, an honorable president, a president for the 21st century. Our eight year long nightmare is over, it’s morning in America. Now is the time, and yes we did.

election day

I cast my vote early this morning. Too excited to remain in bed, I got up at 6 AM. Arriving at my polling place at 6:30 I found a line awaiting the 7 AM opening. I talked eagerly to the folks in line near me for a short while then read the magazine I’d brought and put in my iPod headphones. I found it difficult to contain my excitement. A small cheer went up at 7 when the line began to move into the building. It didn’t take as long as I thought it would to get to the registration table. I assisted the blind man in line behind me and then took my registration card to the next line where a man stickered me with an “I voted” sticker. He put it on vertically as if it didn’t matter. But it does matter, it matters so much.

The Provisional Ballot Booth, off to my left, was a piece of cardboard table display tri-folded to look like the voting booth privacy sides – like a child’s copy of a real voting booth. In magic marker the poll workers had written “Provisional Ballot Booth,” seeming almost a joke. It sat low on a child’s desk, this being the elementary school gym.

Finally I was called to the booth. It’s not a booth any more, but a small Diebold machine on thin metal legs, plastic privacy sides stand up left and right, the cover of the machine forms the front barrier. My first choice was for president and my guy was listed first. Barak Obama and Joseph Biden. I voted. As I ran through the rest of the ballot – bond issues, judges, constitutional questions – I was eager to get to the end. I reached the end of the ballot and it gave me the page for review; I saw at the bottom right corner a large button titled “cast ballot.” As I touched it my eyes welled up with tears. I just can’t believe I’m getting to do this. I never thought, in my lifetime, never, that I’d be able to vote for a black man for president. I never thought, ever, that there would be a man who energized the electorate like this man. I never thought, ever, that I’d be cast a vote in an election where the choices were so stark – between a mechanical, twentieth century approach to the world and a twenty first century digital-age understanding. I never thought.

I’m beside myself with excitement. I’ve been ferrying voters to the polls from the senior center near me. But many of them voted absentee so the load is light. Later today I’ll go to the gym for a little work out. I’m just trying to pass the time until 6 PM when some polls start to close and I can start listening to results.

I'm back

Blogging is slowing down, but running in the background my brain is humming with things to write about. It’s bad being out of practice because what I want to remember runs away from me like mercury. I still haven’t written about our trip to the Forest Haven Asylum this past Sunday. And the task of putting up the website is also an adventure. The photo website is up, but still in need of some major cleaning up. I can't tell you where it is yet, but as soon as it's a little cleaner we'll have a little coming out party.

second law I

Marshall McLuhan’s laws of media, the second law of thermodynamics, and the poet William Butler Yeats collide where things begin to deteriorate. McLuhan’s second law tells us that all new technologies dispatch a contemporary technology to obsolescence; the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, suggests that the universe moves from order to disorder. Here at the crossroads of obsolescence and entropy, things definitely fall apart.

The arrival of the automobile sent the horse and buggy to the pages of history; the compact disk (and finally the MP3) sealed the phonograph’s demise. Mr. McLuhan’s other laws explain in lovely symmetry how those older technologies reappear. But here I’m concerned with only the second law – the one saying that new technologies always obsolesce an older technology. And the second law of thermodynamics: all systems break down. And Yeats’s Second Coming: the center cannot hold, the anarchy of the inanimate overtakes us.

Each abandoned site was once a humming, functioning, part of American culture.

reality TV

Dancing with the Stars, Tabitha’s Salon Takeover, Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style, The Amazing Race, Top Design, Food Challenge, Top Chef, Design Star, Next Food Network Star, So You Think You Can Dance, Last Comic Standing, and of course Project Runway. Am I a reality competition addict? Some of them aren’t even competition shows, they’re just plain reality television. At least I’m learning something from the shows – about dance, about cooking, about designing, about the world, about dressing. As the reality shows improve they get easier to watch, especially for those times when I’m sitting in front of the TV doing something else, they’re excellent for that because they do not require complete attention. Everything important is repeated and the regular format always lets you know when you need to look up. Hosts and competitors evolve and viewers form relationships with them and with their tasks. It’s reality heaven.

aliens a-comin'

There’s a pretty entertaining discussion going on on a list I belong to. Someone posted a link to a couple of You Tube videos about a visit from extraterrestrials we should be expecting this Tuesday. Here they are, if you’re interested:
UFO on October 14, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DKI93lBMI4
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Blossom Goodchild clarifies October 14th
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFyK2N4RG_o&feature=related
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Proof that Blossom Goodchild is right about October 14th UFO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFyK2N4RG_o&feature=related
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Oregon SkyWatch » Blog Archive » Mysterious Sky Phenomenon ...
http://oregonskywatch.com/bluesky/?p=814

Someone replied saying that 10/14 wasn’t good for him, could we contact them and see if they could come on 10/15. The someone else chimed in saying that 10/14 was OK for him, but he’d like confirmation of the appointment.

Then, for some reason, there arose some semi-serious discussion about why they were contacting only one person (why not everyone on earth), why insist they’re coming in “love” (are they disgusing their true motives?) and why send the message in English (frankly, I think it’s more that the person channeling them speaks English, not so much that they speak English), and finally – if they don’t show up on 10/14 will “these people” admit they are wrong and that this is their own fantasy.

I’m not sure why this message started to wander into serious consideration, but the next response was from a person refusing to change his existing plans for October 14 because “too many times in the past I have moved heaven and earth only to be disappointed.” He suggested the last poster be the one to make first contact so the aliens wouldn’t “hang [him] out to dry yet another time,” and ended by suggesting that the “if the aliens aren't prepared to buy up all of our toxic mortgage securities as a gesture of their good will, then they shouldn't even show up.” I am in definite agreement with that.

Maybe in the land from whence the aliens hail banks are liquid, mortgages are made to people who can actually afford them, credit is easy to come by, and scratchings on paper don’t drive the economy. I wonder what the world will look like when we emerge from this final coda in the truckload of failures that has been the Bush presidency.

power plant III

Today, Yom Kippur, the numbers of the date are in descending order.

To complete our trip to the Power Plant. Through many twists and turns at the top of the long coal shoot we found our way into the main building. Coal shoot land was also pretty enormous, shoots shot off in several directions and at one point when I’d retuned to get some gear I’d set down while searching I twice went into the wrong doorway.

As with most entries, the way in we’d found was a door where someone had already knocked in the bottom panel. This is our normal mode: finding a door or window that’s already been busted in. The moment a structure is abandoned, kids, nature, and other photographers start invading. By the time we arrive, it’s usually only a matter of locating that entry.

Inside everything was beginning to look pretty large. I walked across an open grate section of the floor, like crossing the ocean, and arrived at a series of enormous engines. An engine house sat between each one. The doors to most engine houses were locked, but the small windows in every door were broken. Massive semi-circular pipes swept away from the engines in different directions. Everything was a monochromatic shade of white-beige rust. It looked like every engine house, every wall, every floor had been covered in a soothing layer of chalky white, almost as if the place had been painted that way when they closed it down. It gave this part of the plant a theatrically odd look, as if it was preparing to be a Keith Herring photo backdrop.

Finally, after shooting engines (and waiting for my partner to return from her long trip to retrieve the gear she’d left it at the bottom of the coal shoot), we continued our quest for the main engine room where we knew the working machines were far more massive than what we were seeing here. The “room” where we finally found those machines could have housed an indoor football field. The stunning architecture, clearly from another era, was filled with intricate and caring detail – even in an industrial building. The arched roof swept down to every corner in a series of gentle curves. It stood eight or ten stories above the floor of the building; all in between was air.


I’d never seen machines this large; they looked, at once antique and futuristic. No wonder Transformers II had recently filmed here. It was a perfect backdrop for a science fiction movie that wants a retro-fitted past. We spent the rest of the day in this cavernous place finding both tiny and enormous things to preserve in camera. I was happy to have my new, wider angle, lens. Every time we approached the front part of the building we saw security immediately outside and we had to remember to keep our glee in check. At one point I was ducking down just inside an open window at the end of a long hallway, trying to get a shot of fifty feet of doors standing open as if everyone had just run out of their rooms. Not fifty yards behind me, outside the large window through which I’m certain my tripod was visible, security stood around chatting.

As the golden hour began to pass, that brief time as the sun sets and casts a glowing ethereal light, we made our way out of the main building and back across the ocean of grated floors. First, to retrieve our gear, and then to find the way we came in. It was clear there would be no easier way out. All first floor doors were welded shut, they wanted no sightseers in this plant. Egress was simpler though, the crew working on the power outage had gone and the security detail seemed down to one man sitting near his truck a football field away. As we emerged from the wooded path that led to the fence several people were fishing in the stream leading to the river; they’d brought metal folding chairs and plastic coolers.

The fishers had parked where we wanted to park but were too nervous to. Instead where we had parked seemed like the poorer choice at this moment. A man inside a BMW sat just behind the gate we’d parked in front of. Since we’d been doing something wrong we were certain he knew that as we loaded our gear into the trunk. The moment we pulled out a police car was behind us. Whether they suspected what we’d been doing we never knew. The man remained in his car behind the gate and the police car turned off away from us, but not before stopping a long while and watching us drive off. It was slightly unnerving. But at that moment, we were just industry tourists down by the river. These days, officials are particularly cautious about people with cameras around power plants – we didn’t want to get reputations as terrorists. We’re just simple photogs, explorers with camera. One more site conquered.

commission hearing

A break from the power plant story for an update on the death penalty commission hearings. Today that toad Baltimore County State’s Attorney Scott Shellenberger gave his own testimony. He spoke at great length about why Maryland’s death penalty is different from all those other state’s death penalties (we’re carefuller), why Maryland’s death penalty is not racist or jurisdictionally discriminatory (his jusridiction, accounting for 75% of death row although only 8% of Maryland’s homicides, just happens to have more white victims), why cost is not a factor (admitting for the first time that it does cost more), why Kirk Bloodsworth’s case proves that the system works (even though he’s alive only because a few people made fortuitous mistakes), and why he needs the death penalty (because we have the most frightening defendant he’s ever sat across from). He spoke from a sheaf of papers and went on forever. He pretty much just wants the penalty for use as a bargaining chip, totally unethical – plead guilty or we’ll kill you. I sat two rows behind him and, having had already one run-in with the State Police because I’d forgotten my ID to get into the building (a delegate had to come vouch for me), wanted to knock his block off. He and his bad haircut were still answering questions when I left.

Before Shellenberger spoke the current Secretary of Public Safety gave information about prisoners in the system – how they decide where people are incarcerated and what kinds of crimes people inside the system have committed. His information did not support those fixated on the possibility of lifers who kill in prison. We know that lifers usually behave better than most other inmates and instances of lifer crime represent a miniscule proportion of prison crimes. The Secretary’s testimony supported that. And the one MD case of someone who did – Kevin Johns – was able to commit a homicide because the police who were transporting him seated him next to someone he’d threatened to kill. And then they were shocked.

power plant II

We got across the road and into the building, but this was only the beginning of a long obstacle course. A door was wide open and room we landed in had been a maintenance shop, although it was now empty save for two fire carts. As we searched for our way in to the main part of the building we encountered our next big obstacle. Every door was covered with heavy iron plates, welded in place. Removal was impossible. A few interesting shots could be had in the maintenance shop, but mostly it was an empty room. My partner was beside herself with frustration. We ate our sandwiches and started shooting.

At some point we noticed a man standing outside. At first he was looking over the river in seeming reverie. But after a little while he turned to face the building we were in and jus stood there, arms akimbo. We were sure he had heard us and was just going to wait us out. But eventually, after many minutes of hiding at opposite ends of the room, we peeked out and he was gone.

But still, there was no way to get into the building. Out on the pier, a football field away, a coal shoot terminated in a small building. We thought if we could get to the building, we could walk up the shoot and we were certain it must connect with the main building. But to reach the small building on the pier we’d have to cross the open parking area where we could be seen by the workmen whose cars were a football field to the right, and get by the fence on the pier.

Again, we made a run for it across the open concrete. Crouched down like spies, we ran across the lot and climbed over a large pipe. Keeping our bodies ducked down behind the pipe we moved ourselves and our equipment along to the fence at the pier. The fence blocked the entrance to the pier, but because we were behind the pipe, we were almost behind the fence – we only had to step across the right angle made by the pier, over the water. Which we did.

We dodged and ducked down the pier to the end and finally, around the other side of the small building, we were safe from being seen. The door here had also once been welded over, but someone – almost certainly another explorer – had somehow removed the iron panels. The were still welded together and served us as a small stepladder to get over the bottom half of the door and in through the window. Several flights up we found the shoot and started our hike. The hill was steep and l o n g. Finally at the top it looked a lot like the Huber Coal Breaker in Wilkes Barre, PA. It was definitely coal conveyor belt. We set off in search of the place where this terminus connected with the big building and after some searching – we were certain it was there – we found it.

power plant I

OK, I’m back. I needed a few days of non-blogging to test the development of my blogging muscle.

Yesterday we shot photos at a decommissioned power plant in Philadelphia: The Philadelphia Electric Company. For the first time it seemed as though we really might not be able to get in. Located down by the river immediately next to a live power power plant and a sanitation truck nest, the plant was surrounded by a fence that had obviously been breached several times. But unlike so many other places we explore, the first three holes we discovered had been patched – in ways that were difficult to undo. One had a heavy rusted chain woven through the patching, another was sewn back together with thick metal cable. Oddly, the hole we finally found was the largest and closest to the building.

Security was watching the entrance to the empty plant and one of the cars we’d seen earlier was now gone. Obviously people were coming and going – not exactly what you want when you’re trying to sneak in somewhere. Slipping through the hole, we followed the fence line around behind a knoll to a thin treeline. It felt a little like a military maneuver and before the day was over that feeling would only increase. We ran, ducked down, from the fence line to behind a large aluminum structure a few feet away from the building we wanted to be inside. Between us and the building was the entry road to the plant; at the other end of the road stood the security booth.

“Let’s just make a run for it.” For some reason – I assume because we wanted to believe it – we thought we’d make it across the street without being seen. Just as we gathered up all our stuff again and prepared to make our run a pickup truck appeared on the road in front of us. Busted.

We fell back on our two middle-aged women with photo equipment position, with just a tad of honesty for zest. “We just want to take some photos of the outside of the building.” Yeah, yeah, that’s it. He asked if security knew we were there. “No, we snuck in,” came our sheepish reply. He considered himself for a brief moment and said “I never saw you.” Then he volunteered more information: a power outage in the city had brought a full crew to the working plant next door; he warned us not to go around to the other side of the building. We politely promised we wouldn’t and he drove off. Amazing.

This bathtub in the staunton prison facility was used during the time the place was an asylum to discipline patients who'd gotten out of hand. Of course they didn't consider it discipline -- they considered it calming. Next to the tub is the temperature gauge, not too hot, OK?

debate

I’ve blogged every day (missing only six) for six months. Took a little break yesterday just to see what it’d feel like. I will no longer be blogging every single day – weekends are tough because they’re heavy workdays for me. So don’t always look for new entries on weekends (and maybe not on Thursdays). I’m dialing back to 3-5 times a week.

Right now I’m watching Sarah Palin and Joe Biden do a pretty good job of debating one another. So far the Senator has acquitted himself well. Not running over, not being patronizing. He calls her Governor each time he refers to her and he keeps within his time limit. He focuses his criticism on McCain and calls him John. She’s called her ticket “A team of Mavericks” twice, and she’s using her folksy voice (dropping lots of g’s at the ends of words, saying “doggone it,” “I betcha,” and “gosh darn it”). She does much better when she’s on script, when she strays her voice weakens and she begins to lose track of even the generalities she’s trying to deliver. With the very low expectations, she’s doing well. Biden is doing a good job not being a blowhard going on and on. Pretty much all that can happen in a VP debate is harm, you’re not going to convert voters with a number two. So far it doesn’t seem they’re losing votes for their guys.

children of presidents

Three days ago an op ed by John S. D. Eisenhower in the New York Times revealed that he’d agreed to commit suicide if he was in danger of being captured during the time he was deployed in the Korean Conflict. His father, almost president at the time they had the conversation where this agreement took place, said he’d accept the risk of his son being wounded or killed, but the prospect of his capture brought visions of presidential blackmail.

Eisenhower, now 86, wrote that he didn’t believe the children of world leaders should serve in war zones. “No matter what the young person’s desires or career needs are, they are of little importance compared with ensuring that our leaders are able to stay focused on the important business of the nation — and not worrying about the fate of a child a world away.” I don’t object to the thrust of the piece – it’s true that soldiers with politically powerful parents can be used as pawns. I agree that Prince Harry put his unit in danger while serving in Afghanistan, and that’s why he had to be pulled out the moment his presence became public.

What I find almost sensationally odd was the agreement the Eisenhowers – father and son – made with one another. If something bad is about to happen to you, kill yourself. That’s strange enough. But how can a person possibly predict how he will react in that situation? Even a soldier, trained to do as he’s ordered? The possibility of capture won’t come in a calm moment, nor will there be much time to contemplate what’s happening. And what if he’s with his men? Will he announce, like a Roman soldier, that all is lost, whip his blade from his toga, and make a dramatic exit leaving his soldiers stunned and wondering what just happened…and how they’re supposed to deal with the Korean troops advancing on their position? The entire setup is fraught with insane pitfalls.

A fascinating revelation from a grown presidential child as both vice presidential candidate's sons prepare to ship out to war. Of course the Vice Presidency is not really a positions of political power.

hiring

We’ve seen four candidates for vice head of upper middle management. The look-for-it committee brought these four in, although I hear they really wanted not all of them. After sessions with all of them we met as a group to make recommendations. One candidate presented as totally unacceptable and we voted to tell head honcho that in no uncertain terms (“we will not work for him”). But I’m betting that’s who he wants..and I’ll bet that’s who he hires. Will he flout our recommendations and show total disrespect and disregard. Will he? We shall see.

drummers are musicians

I’m listening to a Michael Daugherty composition called UFO. Daugherty is a contemporary American composer and the piece was written for Evelyn Glennie, an astounding percussionist. (That’s Dame Evelyn Glennie to us.) I saw the BSO perform the piece last week at the opening concert of this season. Glennie played more percussion instruments than I even knew existed, thirty feet of the downstage area was taken up by the wide variety of her musical equipment. Her speed and precision seemed beyond human dexterity. Her musical mastery evinced total control and glorious passion.

During intermission I overheard one woman say to another “I wonder if it’s the same every night.” The clear implication, that percussion is always improvised, revealed a common misconception about musicians who play instruments you pound on. It felt so terribly ignorant a comment to hear at the symphony – I always hope that those people are generally more educated about music, but apparently not. How, I wondered, could it be a piece played by orchestra and soloist if it is not “the same every night”? Would she have thought that a violin concerto was improvised? A piano sonata played on the fly? It seemed a perfect example of that old boorish question: who hangs out with musicians? Drummers.

work, explained (in full...ha ha)

At work: ridiculous revolving sets of orders – use your department copy machine for all your needs and send nothing to the copy center, use your department copy machine only for single sheet copies and send anything longer to the copy center, use your department copy machine for half your copies, use your department copy machine for none of your copies, use your department copy machine everything in the world you want to copy, use your department copy machine for students to copy their papers, use your copy machine as a doorstop, use your copy machine to lure small animals into the office. Just one thing.

Workload requirements: you must teach 18.3 classes every semester. It doesn’t matter that you cannot technically teach three tenths of a class – you must teach three tenths regardless. Oh, but that’s not a precise enough way for us to measure how much you teach. You must have 47 students per class (860.1 students per semester), or…you must aggregate 47 students per class between all the faculty in your department. But…only courses taught by regular faculty count. No courses taught by adjuncts count toward your aggregate of 47 hundred students per class (or 860.1 students per faculty member per semester). You’re not allowed to hire more faculty because you’re not aggregating 47 thousand students per class. But you can’t aggregate 47 hundred thousand students per class because you don’t have enough faculty. And on and on and on.

Adjunct tautology thinking: You don’t have enough regular faculty to cover all the courses you offer. They won’t give you money to hire more regular faculty (because your regular faculty aren’t making their workload numbers). You can’t cover the courses you offer without hiring adjuncts. They want you to stop hiring adjuncts.

More workload theatre of the absurd: you are required to teach 18.3 classes every semester with 47 million students per class (that’s 860.1 students per faculty person per semester, remember). You can aggregate those students if you like. For instance, if you have 17 regular faculty, 14,621.7 students need to be in classes taught by regular faculty every semester (that’s 17 x 860.1 per semester). But say some of those faculty have decreased teaching loads for doing things like taking care of the department copier and attracting small animals. Even though they have decreased loads, the required aggregate still doesn’t change – they’re still (the department actually) responsible for their quota of 860.1 students per semester. This means that enrollments increase in other courses. So you might have an Advanced Chinese seminar, enrollment supposed to be 15, with 136.6 students to make up for that person with a reduced load because the copier requires petting.

The copier must be cared for and small animals attracted. If no one does that, the entire department falls to tiny pieces. It’s true. But rather than figure out how to make this work so that no one is overloaded with teaching or copier work, lower middle and upper middle management just tell departments to manage it. So they manage it by driving the faculty crazy and making them totally miserable. I won’t even go into the copier manager problems – it’s just a constant stream of betrayal.

work

Work just sucks. I’m too infuriated about it to explain it right now. I hope I can make it make sense tomorrow. We’ll see.

job complaints

I’m beginning to hate my job again. All those of you out there reading this who are intimately acquainted with my job are sworn to secrecy about any mention I make here. But things are going from bad to particularly annoying. All kinds of demands coming down from on high and I get no feeling that the folks who are supposed to be the representatives of us peons in the chambers of power are doing so. Each person whose job it is to be a peon advocate caves easily to the pressure, and often in a way I think particularly betrayal-like.

My favorite example: The factory bosses want to produce more. So they want the workers currently employed to increase their hours to show that more can actually be produced and higher needs met. When the factory bosses see that output can actually be increased, they’ll let us hire more workers. I think that’s the stupidest approach in the book, especially for the workers. My take is that if the bosses cannot fill all their orders with the current number of workers working their current number of hours, they should hire more workers. If the factory bosses don’t hire more workers, they don’t get to fill all their orders. If they hire more workers they can fill the orders and no one has to work overtime. Just the fact that I’m using a factory metaphor should tell any readers here how nutso this all is. It’s demoralizing.

Commission hearing

The concluding day of testimony, on Monday, for the Death Penalty Commission in Annapolis was a good day, although not as eventful as some of the other four days. An air of winding down settled over the room. Obnoxiously contentious Scott Shellenberger was a little less so, although he did attack a few people as if he were in a courtroom. As usual, he seemed most interested in defending against any hint of anything that might impugn the reputation of his office (“have you ever known the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s office to make any decisions based on race?”). Sounding exactly like a geek economist, Dr. Ken Stanton explained in the mildest possible tones why the Urban Institute cost study is an excellently done piece of work and why what it shows is an underestimation of what we spend to continue this useless bit of public policy. “You’re spending thousands of dollars to implement something that’s not working, that’s what we economists call a complete waste,” raised a soft chuckle in the room.

Joseph D. Tydings, former Maryland Senator and federal prosecutor, and James Abbott, police chief from West Orange, NJ, both talked about how they could philosophically favor the death penalty and yet vigorously support its repeal as a public policy that is simply unworkable. Patrick Kent, chief of the forensic division of Maryland’s Public Defender’s Office, gave one of the most poorly put together power point demonstrations I’ve ever seen that said, essentially, all the work done by any forensic division anywhere is suspect. It seemed an odd, yet oddly compelling, thing for him to insist on. Calvin Lightfoot, former correctional officer, and Robert Johnson, researcher at American University, delivered a fantastic one-two punch about what really makes correctional officers safe and how lifers behave in prison: correctional officers need proper staffing and lifers are usually the best behaved prisoners.

After the experts, the citizen witnesses took turns explaining their reasons for wanting the death penalty repealed. People who support the death penalty are welcome, but except for the daughter of one murder victim in the second hearing – who was an expert witness, not a citizen witness – none show up. The mainstay of retention: Harford County State’s Attorney, who always shows up to make his case (we need to have some serious sentences for serious crimes) – he lies as a matter of course, I’ve personally witnessed it.

The biggest surprise was Rick Prothero – Commissioner and the brother of a murdered police officer. He considers himself to be strongly in favor of retaining the death penalty. But on Monday we learned some interesting things about him. He revealed he'd voted against the death penalty for his brother's killer in the initial family meeting. He's not the sharpest tool in the box; when he asks questions they are usually impossible to follow and the witness usually winds up trying to answer some odd version of what she thinks Rick is asking. But his questions today made it obvious now that he experienced at least some minor family turmoil over this issue. At the murder of his brother, became the head of the family and they were split down the middle. After four sessions of listening to him ask unintelligible questions I’ve been able to determine that his main concern is for the law. He’s primarily concerned about people who have jobs that require they execute (no pun intended) the penalty but who are personally opposed to it. “Didn’t you know this was the law when you took the job?” His family finally decided to accept the seeking of the death penalty because it was the most severe sanction permitted by law. Could it be so simple that he doesn’t really recognize that the law can be changed, thus relieving all those people, and families like his, of being in this terrible position? The most surprising thing I heard him say yesterday was that he thought his family "shouldn't have been put in this position" (of making that decision). If the death penalty is repealed, families will never be put in that position again.

Now the Commission turns to their discussions about what to recommend. Those hearings are public too and I’m looking forward to hearing where they all land on the issue after five days of testimony.

bailout, still

I wish I could get away from this bailout thing, but my rant yesterday was far too disorganized to stand as my only exploration of this issue. So let me try again (although I’m not in any way sure I can keep the ranting tendency in check). Let me name the figure again: seven hundred billion dollars. That’s a seven followed by eleven zeros: 700,000,000,000. Even the number of zeros is beyond a single digit. Eleven zeros. With no oversight. Paulson and Bernanke were before congress today using the standard Bush administration tactic – fear and panic. “If you don’t give us this power right now the entire world will come apart, the global financial system will disintegrate, the American economy will come crashing down taking with it small businesses, home owners, major financial corporations, the entire credit system, and the terrorists will win.” “Now. We need this power now.”

When some congresspeople – dems and republicans alike – balked, suggested that this be tied to, for example, a limitation on the compensation company executives can receive, or some help to the struggling homeowner, the guys now in charge of the government say not on your life “that would be a disincentive.” A fucking disincentive?! They won’t take free money from the government because they’d have to limit their own income? Actually, and tragically, I believe it. I believe those people would let the economy descend into the black abyss of mammoth bankruptcy and deep irredeemable fiscal depression because they don’t want to give up their 10 million dollar packages.

People in the administration now will soon enough be back on Wall Street, wanting to take advantage of whatever package is finally passed. Once again, the idiot president is insisting threateningly that we must act now and act dramatically or all is lost. The constitutional violations embedded in the package proposal – total power with no oversight to the treasury secretary, conflicts of both interest and interests.

Republican Senator Jim Bunning called it financial socialism – “Unamerican.” (Only the NYTimes reproduces that word as “un-American” because American must always take a capital letter.) Hard to believe that he’d be objecting if it weren’t an election year. They’re desperate to get help for these guys, what other industry could be melting down and demand so much attention? Every day people die from going without health care. Every day children sit in overcrowded classrooms, suffer violence in schools, drop out and fall between the cracks of an educational system that ignores real needs and focuses its slim moment of attention on the administrative farce of “accountability.”

I guess that’s my rant for today. Tomorrow, a few interesting moments from Monday’s Death Penalty Commission hearing.

bailout

I don’t know whether to write about my outrage about the Wall Street bailout – 700 billion dollars, total power to the administration’s guy (Secretary of the Treasury, Hank), trashing of the constitution, and now they’re worried about giving total power to someone. It was apparently fine to trash the constitution and give total power to someone back in 2001. And now we have socialized business: seven hundred billion dollars to bail out businesses that have been irresponsible. What if someone had suggested setting aside seven hundred billion dollars for education…or health care? What if? Imagine the screeching on Wall Street about socialized medicine. Just imagine. And now Hank wants congress to give him 700 billion dollars with no oversight. None. Just to do with whatever he pleases. Yeah. When financial institutions are in trouble congress answers. When the financial sector has made bad decision after bad decision, brought upon itself a disaster that could dwarf the crash of 1929, and then paid off the guys who made the bad decisions with huge severance packages…when republicans cry foul when the slightest regulation is even waved in the wind. When all this converges in a perfect storm, congress comes to the rescue. It’s true what they say: if you owe ten thousand dollars it’s your problem, but if you owe a hundred million dollars it’s someone else’s problem. So I could either write about that...or the Death Penalty Commission hearings I just came from. I guess I'll do the hearings tomorrow.

NBI

Now driving myself and my shooting partner crazy trying to find ways to get to North Brother Island to take pictures of the place my father lived when he was in college years ago. I wonder if we will drown in the process. We must go in the spring or summer for a long day and I must practice my kayaking. I’m excited for such an adventure.

Last days of summer...

Cool enough for a fall blanket last night.

Lonaconing IV

We painfully tore ourselves away from our final photos, trying to get every shot we wanted before we could shoot no more. The outside world began to reassert itself and we became aware of the sounds of children’s voices. They seemed nearby, almost in the same room with us. We arrived on the second floor and started for the window where our escape ladder lay in a heap on the floor. But the kid’s voices seemed too close. Approaching the window I swiftly ducked down, even though I knew they almost certainly could not see inside the building. But they were right outside. On the road just past the thin line of trees, three or four young teenagers were riding their bikes in circles: directly in front of us. Beyond the road a few younger kids tossed a softball around the diamond. Trapped.

We certainly couldn’t lower the metal-runged escape ladder down now. Its awkward clattering would announce we were in the building. I wasn’t even sure we could use it on the other side of the building without them hearing it. As silently as we could we gathered up all our equipment from where we’d left it there near the window and moved it across the building to the window originally used by the man in the picture we saw. Now we had to figure out how to make the escape ladder work on a window with no inner lip, nothing to hook the thing onto. We let it down ever so slowly, a single rung at a time. Once again our intrepid leader held the ladder as we made our descent. She tossed the ladder off the ledge then she lowered all our equipment out on the rope. When our stuff was once again sitting on the muddy ground she went back to her original entry point and shimmied down the tree like a fireman. Except she is not a fireman and the tree was significantly wider and rougher than a fireman’s pole. It must have hurt like the devil.

I was certain she’d kill herself, or at least hurt herself getting out that window and I wanted to get there fast. But by the time our third and I had figured out how we were going to carry all the equipment and gathered it all up, our leader was coming around the corner to see what we were doing. She made it. Just as we did at the beginning we moved all the equipment to a spot in front in a small pile behind the tree line. I walked out of the trees alone with my backpack on as if I’d been hiking. Nothing suspicious about that. The kids glanced in my direction but the most attention they paid me was when I tried to back my car out. They were riding like wheeled wasps around the front of the vehicle and had a hard time negotiating themselves out of my way. I pulled up to where my partners in B&E were waiting and popped the trunk. In about 30 seconds all our equipment was in the trunk and they were in the car. We were out, we’d had a good day shooting, and we hadn’t been caught. That’s about all you can ask.

Mets game

A day’s break from the Lonaconing adventure (we’re return to the silk mill tomorrow). Last night I caught a Mets/Nationals game at National Park in the nation’s capitol. You can only see the capitol from a small corner of the upper deck, but the ballpark is advertised to have a view of the great building. Last night, September 17, was half-Patty’s day: halfway between St. Patrick’s days. Miller Lite provided Kelly green baseball caps with the Nationals “W” – although to me it looks like the Walgreens “W.” The Mets scored two homeruns in the first inning and never gave up the lead. I love seeing games with my friend Kate because her former boss is usually there too and he is also a Mets fan. We cheer delightedly together, DC seems to attract a lot of Mets fans. I only had to leave a tiny bit early (saw the first out of the bottom of the ninth) to catch my MARC train home. In NY we call bad fans – for instance those who leave a game early, behave badly, or get publicly drunk – Yankee fans. A good fan always stays till the final out. Because in baseball, as we all know, it ain’t over till it’s over.

Lonaconing III

Inside the mill equipment had withstood a lot of wind and rain coming in the windows. The paint was peeling, but not too badly; only the top floor had bad roof damage. Someone had been keeping watch, though, because fairly new bracing beams kept the roof from collapsing. Spools about five inches high, some metal but mostly wood, were stacked everywhere. The place still looked surprisingly orderly.

The spinning equipment looked in decent shape for having been walked away from over half a century ago. Calendars on every floor told us it was 1957. A sign on one wall advised workers to “call at the office of the social security board to inquire about your old-age insurance benefits” when they reached 65. The politeness and complete sentences of the language alone summon another era.

I was surprised at how small the mill really was. A sign outside said it was the only silk mill in the US, but we couldn’t tell from the equipment exactly what they manufactured out of silk. Silk thread – lots of spools. Silk fabric – unlikely, no fabric bolts anywhere. Silk ribbons – could be, the spools were large. We found a large stash of labels announcing the fabric “Rayon,” but didn’t know what they were intended for. And we found what we assumed to be raw silk – locks looking like blonde wigs, one was even braided.

In the basement workshop brightly colored powders had eaten through their large rectangular tins. Dye, we guessed. Confusingly we noticed a few magazines and newspapers from the 1960s, not a clue how they came to be in the building. It felt terribly sad that they place and everything in it was being allowed to rot. The equipment was still in good shape, with hundreds, maybe thousands, of pristine spools and spindles that would have fetched a fortune at antiques markets.

We went to work taking photos, amazed again and again at what we were seeing. We chased the light across the building, a continual timing challenge, until we began to lose light even on the top floor.

Lonaconing II

The night before, I’d had a restless sleep trying to think of ways we could attain the height we’d need. Carrying a ladder up to the side of the building was out of the question; we couldn’t be seen carrying construction equipment up to a no-trespassing site. As we drove away from home in the morning we’d stopped at Home Despot and bought two things: a fire escape ladder and a length of rope. Now we used them both.

I longed for a bat-utility belt with a little bat-boomerang I could shoot up to the window and have it wrap around some upright conveniently located just inside the window. Using the fire escape ladder was a good idea, but we’d still need to get it up there. How?

Nothing about the entry was easy. Not one thing. Straining to get up the tree, muscles seized and limbs trembled. Finally at the window’s height, there was nothing to grab onto – the sill too smooth and deep with no lip on the inside. I handed the ladder up to her, hoping she could hook it on the window, but the ledge’s depth made it almost impossible. Her determination won out, though, and somehow she made the ladder work for her top two steps away from the tree and into the building.

The window was too small, she couldn’t fit through, but she was kneeling on the very wide ledge. Finally. A little more space made and she was inside.

I climbed up as she held the escape ladder in place then we used the rope to pull up all our equipment. Our third person made it up the ladder, although she definitely was not amused. Finally we were all inside. We pulled the ladder up after us and erased all outward evidence of our entry.

Lonaconing I

Yesterday, Lonaconing Silk Mill in western Maryland. It was a very dicey entry. From a photo we’d been sent, I could see a faceless guy climbing in a very high window that looked fairly tiny. But I had faith that we could get up there and in. So far we’ve always been able to find a way, and once a place is abandoned – all kinds of things force entry. We had a third person with us who doesn’t really like the dicey entry. She’s a walk-right-in, go-back-out-to-the-car-and-get-something-to-drink kind of gal.

After a little driving around we stumbled upon the mill on a neighborhood street between a yappy dog in a yard and an SUV parked in a gravel driveway. Only about ten feet back from the street, a thin strip of trees had grown up between the broken building and the street. Across from the mill a small baseball diamond stood empty. The street was hushed, not one person outside.

Our consternation about how to approach and where to park was irrelevant – no one was watching the building, no one seemed to care what happened to it. And there was no easy way in. Every first floor window was barred, all doors were padlocked. The building was small, not at all like the Delaware mill complex of buildings we’d done in August. The only reason it took ten minutes to circle its tiny circumference was that the terrain was a soggy steep incline of mud, broken glass, plastic sheeting, dead trees, and damp boulders.

Many of the broken second floor windows were boarded up, but a few remained open to the elements. We always prefer not to break anything if at all possible, and we located the window the man in the photo had used. The waterlogged cardboard he’d laid down to protect himself from any glass still on the thick concrete sill remained half out of the small opening. But there was no way for us to climb up. It was clear his purchase on the building came from his strength and height – we had neither. The rusted iron gate fronting the windows below his entry was topped with pointed pikes and the brick wall of the building was smooth – no place to grab until you got to the sill, too high up for any of us.

The only other possibility was a window around on the front side. A thin tree grew only a foot away from the building and the master explorer was certain she could use the trunk for an ascent. I was doubtful, but it seemed our only option after all other ideas fizzled.

civil rights at home II

It's late, but I must finish the story. Tut wrote...

“I know you must be angry with me by now for not writing, but there is so much happening here in Mississippi at present that I hardly have or find time to sleep. I haven’t had five minutes to myself since I’ve been back to Mississippi. I have been taking pictures of the march during the day and on guard duty during the night. I hope your mother received my letters it is so hard to get a letter out now, people are always watching for us to mail a letter so they could stop the mail.”

Later she asks me if I’m still “doing some of the things we used to do. (smile)” And I search my brain to remember what those things were but all that swims forward is the wonderful feeling I had when I was with her.

As I carefully return the letter to its place I am remembering the fear my parents felt when she returned to Mississippi after her training in New York. When we didn’t hear from her for lengthy periods my mother would hope out loud that she was still alive. Even though I knew people had been killed I couldn’t believe it could actually happen and I would say “oh Mom.”

As I grew up through the rest of that decade reading the news and becoming increasingly aware of what was happening, I still don’t think I ever quite understood, until I read this letter to the young me all these years later, how terribly dangerous her life had been. And what enormous courage she had.

civil rights at home I

Deeply involved in the civil rights movement of the 60s, my parents opened our home to SNCC volunteers who were coming to New York City for training seminars. Two people had, one at a time, stayed with us. One was a dark brown man, I think his name was Greg. The other was a small slim woman with the unlikely name of Tut Tate. Tut has lived in my memory all these years and a little while ago when I was getting ready to take seven kids of various ages on a civil rights trip south, I looked her up on the Web.

It was no surprise to find she’d remained involved in the civil rights movement all her life, moving from voter registration drives in the 60s to union work in the next decades. I was able to recover all this information in her obituary. She’d died young, at only 49, from lung cancer. Although I’d missed her death by several years, I felt a hole open up in my universe.

Reading the obit through carefully it slowly dawned on me that she’d been a mere six years my senior. As I was attending elementary school in Manhattan, she was risking her life registering voters in Mississippi. She was only 18.

I couldn’t remember the games we used to play together, but I had a clear sense memory of our lives intertwining deeply for those few weeks she spent living with us. After learning of her abbreviated life, I went searching through some boxes where I was sure I had a physical memento from her. I sat very still on the bed as I opened the folded letter dated June 17, 1966.

Morty

Morton Sobel, 91 years old, has finally admitted that he did, indeed engage in spying. He was convicted in 1951 with the Rosenbergs and maintained his innocence until just a few days ago. He admitted to the charges of which he was found guilty because the National Archives was about to release the previously sealed grand jury testimony that he tried to stop from coming out.

To me the interesting part of the article was about what the government was willing to do in order to get a conviction against Julius Rosenberg. It’s not clear what role Ethel Rosenberg, Julius’s wife, had in the entire affair. Some believe that she typed up notes her brother, David Greenglass, brought to the house. Some believe she did nothing. But it’s generally acknowledged that she did not engage in actual espionage. She may have known some of what was going on, she may not. But the government used her in an effort to get Julius to implicate others in the conspiracy with which they were charged. She never talked and neither did Julius. They were both executed in 1953, the only Americans ever executed in peace time for espionage. They left behind two young sons.

They used her as a pawn in a game they were playing with her husband. William P. Rogers, the deputy attorney general at the time is quoted in the Times article: “That strategy failed…she called our bluff.” This is what happens when the death penalty is used as a tool, a ploy for getting people to do what you want them to do: innocent people are executed.

post 9/11

A while after the terrorist events of 2001 I became aware that many of my acquaintances had altered their behavior ever so slightly. So I began to inquire about the changes. Some people said they would never now leave their cell phones at home. Now, that seems quaint, but then cell phones were not as ubiquitous. The attacks turned us all into that woman on a dark road at night with a flat tire – living in fear of being caught incommunicado. Some people said they avoid tall buildings, others that they avoid elevators. Some, who’d not heard the news for hours, said they now always keep a radio on softly tuned to the news to avoid that state of not-knowing. As instructed by Homeland Security (the agency that brought us color coded states of alert) many began to keep cash and non-perishable food on hand at all times. For others, the car’s gas tank is never allowed to skip below half full. Or half empty. We face east. Or west. These are the small concessions to the world that 9/11 has wrought. But the survey I took was years ago, just months after the attacks. I wonder now, what habits remain? What vestigial behaviors do we keep not even remembering their origin?