volition501

ElBaradei

2011-02-02T22:27:00.002-05:00

In June of 2008 I sat in the chapel at Amherst College and listened to a talk by Mohamed ElBaradei. ElBaradei was head of the International Atomic Energy Agency from 1997-2009. The US was the only country to oppose him for his second term, one more thing the thugs in the Bush administration should hang their heads in shame about. But he won the day anyhow and went on to serve a second and a third term.

He was at Amherst that graduation week to receive one of several honorary doctorates. His was certainly the most inspirational speech I heard over those two days, and probably the most inspirational I’d heard in years, perhaps even ever. The chapel was packed to the rafters, people knew how important it was to hear him.

He began by talking about his service over the years. He talked of how he considered himself a civil servant in the most honorable understanding of that term. His desire was simply to serve. To serve his country, the UN, the cause of peace, the citizens of the world. From him it did not sound hokey, he spoke with authenticity – from his heart and from his years of dedication. His translation of his job was to stand in service to people who needed dedicated and smart policy makers and administrators. A civil servant was someone who could, very simply, get the job done.

It might have been enough to hear something so humble emerge with such integrity from so essential a man. But the bulk of his talk was given over to what he considered the most important problem facing the globe. Poverty. It was poverty, he said, that fueled terrorism, poverty that fueled unrest, despotic governments, famine, disease, and syphilitic political opportunism. What courage he spoke with. Poverty is not a sexy problem. It doesn’t attract high profile donors, people don’t make careers fighting it, it seems intractable. Politicians and NGOs who want to address it usually select one tiny corner of the problem and make a lovely garden of their attempt to hold back the deluge. But no one raises it as the most important issue we really need to address, though it is, indeed, the most important issue we must address if we are to remain living on this planet. How brave it is to say this is our issue, this is the moment, this is what we must take on – knowing there is no simple way to frame it and no solution at hand.

As if he was staking his reputation on this moment, he eschewed talking about atomic profiles. Most of the questions were about atomic energy – did Iran have a bomb, how soon until they could use it, how could we extinguish the firestorm in the middle east? He answered the questions – people wanted desperately to know – but he returned again and again to his theme. I am a simple civil servant, I’ve done this all my life, and this is the real problem – the heart and soul of all other problems.

He would make a brilliant leader for Egypt. May the tide carry him there.

shingles I

2010-12-29T21:32:00.006-05:00

OK. I’ve been avoiding writing the story of the shingles, but it seems like I should probably diarize the recovery as its glacial pace is alarming. At first I thought I had a kidney stone – pain in the back that was clearly not muscular. After a couple of days I went to the doc in the box and they confirmed it. On the basis of pretty much nothing, just my complaint and a blood test that ruled out diverticulitis – her only other idea. She did not look at my back. She said the pain would move to the front and down to my groin. The next day when I began to feel pain in front I assumed she was right. But by that night the pain had started to diminish and I began to feel a rash on my back. What the fuck is this was all I could think. It began to feel like a bombardment of odd disease symptoms. It didn’t feel bad and decided to ignore it.

The next day – Tuesday – I was busy ignoring the rash, which was small on my back and smaller on my front. But at some point during the day I had an instant’s revelation. I had shingles. I showed them to a colleague and she confirmed it. You need to get to a doctor right away she said. I didn’t believe her, but I called my doctor anyway. When she called me back she was alarmed and prescribed an anti-viral immediately (without even wanting to see me). After some negotiating with the drug store (the first prescription had no generic equivalent and was about $220) I started on acyclovir.

At first they just tingled, and my neighbor (a nurse) was surprised that they didn’t hurt. But then the pain began. The first symptom, back when it was a kidney stone, began on December 10, two and a half weeks ago. Since that time it’s been through several phases. All of them, after that initial tingle, unrelentingly painful. And still so. This ends the introduction.

creature feature

2010-12-29T15:08:00.002-05:00

As I walked along the back side of Sherwood Gardens in Baltimore I saw a cat sitting at the edge of a tree line. He was intently watching something and it took me a moment to realize there was another cat sitting about four feet away from him staring, leaning, into the bush. The cats did not scatter as I walked over thinking I would save whatever they were stalking. I didn’t want to be in the middle of a catfight, but just the same I didn’t want the cats to kill anything.

Under the bush a hawk the same size as the cat stared back. At first I assumed the hawk was injured. Why else would he be sitting still as two cats stalked him. But they weren’t in their stalking pose – belly close to the ground, legs moving silently forward. They were both sitting up just staring at the enormous bird. I had visions of the cats pouncing and I didn’t know how I could save the lame bird except to scare the cats away. “Hey,” I called out, and the three creatures turned to look at me. And then the bird took off. He landed on a branch about thirty feet up and sat. The cats ran off, probably irritated at me for ruining their morning.

I think the hawk was irritated too. He sat for a while on that branch then moved to another branch. When he changed branches two ravens followed and lit on a branch a few feet away from him. Each time he moved, they moved. He changed trees, they changed trees. They cawed and followed.

Perhaps he was injured and the ravens were stalking him. Had I made his situation worse? It was impossible to tell. I continued on my walk and when I came around to that spot again all the creatures were gone.

died yesterday

2010-12-23T15:38:00.002-05:00

I went out for a walk today for the first time in over two weeks. I’ve been sick and when I get sick I get really sick. I do not do sick well. This particular sickness feels like my body is attacking itself from the inside. Needles of pain shoot up through nerves exploding on my body’s surface in sharp pinholes. It feels like someone is dragging a hot rake across my body – following the meridian from spine to belly button. Every morning I wake up hoping the pain will be gone, but no. It’s itching now and feeling like someone has punched me in the gut and in the back from the inside. I can see why people with chronic pain contemplate suicide. It is unrelenting and I am just constantly angry.

During my power-walk I stopped for a contemplative walk in a labyrinth. I wanted to honor Chris, whom I never called and who died yesterday. I stood still at the entry to the labyrinth trying to think of something profound and lovely to say – as people have been posting profound and lovely thoughts all day to the media ecology listserv. But I just said her name out loud: “Christine,” and then “I love you,” and then I stepped onto the first slate. As my foot came down in the labyrinth the bells tolling the quarter hour started to ring. It was startling but comforting as it seemed to say she was here with me and not afraid.

I have heard that she, even in these last days, was still taking care of people – emotionally, spiritually – even as she wished she could be relieved of that. I think this is one reason why I never called her. It seemed clear to me that my calling her was for me, not for her. Even though I hate to admit that. I will miss her greatly. The world is a richer place for her having lived and an enormously poorer place for her passing. Rest in peace, Chris.

Loss

2010-12-20T20:58:00.000-05:00

My graduate advisor is the sharpest woman I know. I met her first when as an undergraduate when she and our most famous faculty member came to an English class I was in to tell us about a new undergraduate minor they were introducing called media ecology. At that moment I knew it was my field. It was popular culture with a twist, saving the whales and bringing them cable TV, culture and technology interacting as an ecology, McLuhan as an academic program. Odd that the farther out I get from it the less I feel I understand it as a field…or even what a field is. My colleagues in the academic organization we’ve formed are so certain about who we are. I am still just interested in studying culture and symbols.

I took absolutely every class I could with Chris – undergrad classes, MA classes, and then PhD classes. By the time she was finished with me, she knew me. I could never quite tell if she liked me – although I suspect she did – but I was completely in her thrall. She was the smartest women I knew.

After I completed my final degree I went off to another city and did not keep in touch. I am a bad keeper in touch. Not because I don’t want to – I’m loyal as a cocker spaniel and try to keep all my friends close – but because I’m terrible at taking that initiative. I wasn’t sure she’d want to and I’m bad at it – a faulty combo for keeping in touch. I sent her a card when her sister (to whom she was very close) died. I saw her at the occasional conference. She is a solitary individual, not keeping many friends and I didn’t want to presume upon her big brain.

I was surprised when she retired about eight years ago. ‘Twas after that famous guy died (I sat with her at his funeral) and she seemed done with the place after he was no longer her confidant.

Then about a year ago I heard she had lung cancer. I still resisted calling – I didn’t want to be morbid and I wanted to assume she’d recover. But it became clear she would not and I sent her a card asking if we could get together. Boy, did I want to see her again. She’s the sharpest woman I know.

I met her for lunch twice and heard many bits about her life that said we were friends. I was happy to feel her embrace, and devastated I’d not gotten in touch before this. I was on my way for a third lunch but the day before it was to happen she moved a thousand miles away. She left to live out the rest of her life closer to her relatives (though she’d never actually lived there), in a place where she owned a home (though she’d never lived there), where she had a larger space for someone to come take care of her. She told me she wasn’t afraid to die. But I am afraid for her to die. I will miss not having been closer to her. I will miss getting more stories from her. I will miss having her in the world.

I want to call but I’m afraid. What will I say, how will be conduct a phone conversation across a thousand miles when she may be fading and we have only talked a few times over the last many years? How can I reconnect with someone at their very end – I don’t want to be doing it just for my own satisfaction. Every day I try to screw up my courage to call. Maybe tomorrow.

Loss

2010-12-17T09:07:00.000-05:00

I got a phone call from my cousin Betsy who lives in Ohio a few weeks ago. We are not close, although we are far more friendly than I am with her sister who lives about 15 minutes away from me here in Baltimore. Her mother is my mother’s sister. I grew up with our families spending Thanksgiving together. And every other year my mother would make a huge batch of fruitcake and ship off half of it to their family. We knew each other well. We have not kept in touch over the years. Her mother is occasionally in Baltimore and I never make a point of going to see he. When I didn’t see her after her knee surgery my mother had a little fit (“she’s your family!”) and that’s when I realized I had stopped thinking about them as family.

Bob, the middle child of the three, died 25 years ago of leukemia. It was a terrible blow to us all. I had spent quite a lot of that summer training back and forth to Utica where he lived to spend time with him. I can still recall the feeling of raw shock I had for my young cousin dying. He’d been a marine and was driven by that caretaker gene that good marines develop. He was his sisters’ and mother’s protector. Bob was the member of that family I was closest to. When he was originally diagnosed he kept it from his family for as long as he could, telling them he was having some stomach problems. He finally had to come clean when he was on the oncology ward. That was in the spring of 1985. By the early fall he was dead.

When I answered the phone that day and heard Betsy’s voice I was surprised to hear from her, but somehow also soothed that this blast from my past would probably not be presenting a problem for me. I don’t know why I felt like this would be a safe phone call, but somehow I did. The call would not ask me to do anything, feel anything in particular, join with it in some sort of family escapade. Usually when a hardly-spoken-to family member calls it’s with some request, but I felt safe with Betsy – we speak a same language even though we do not stay in touch.

She and her mother had discovered that Bob’s cancer had been caused by exposure to benzene while he was in the marines. They’d just returned from a conference in Pittsburgh detailing large cancer clusters at Camp Lejeune. We talked for over an hour and a half, often just repeating things we’d already said. I felt as though I’d been hit in the chest with a log, that feeling amplified by my incredulousness at feeling like that. After a quarter century how could it suddenly feel so raw again? We both engaged in the dramatic – but somehow it felt not dramatic but real. He should have been here having Thanksgiving with us for the last 25 years, but instead he’s dead. Learning why he died brought his death back into hyperfocus, and it was like it happened yesterday. They were preparing to sue and, although more often than not I feel that that avenue is just a road to more pain, I said I supported them. I wanted not to feel an intense investment in the discovery, I wanted to have the revelation, feel and embrace the sorrow anew and move on. But I was unable to resist the vortex of Bob’s life reopened. My old grief was polished and shining again. His death had been….unnecessary.

The part of the phone call that shook my world the most was when I said, almost off-handedly at first, that Bob had always thought that the marines had killed him. Slowly it became apparent to me that she didn’t know this. And neither did her mother. Bob had said to me several times that he felt that he’d been exposed to something while he was in the marines that had given him this cancer. I asked him what and he had no idea, it was just a suspicion on his part. He couldn’t have known then what we know now. He couldn’t have known the connection between benzene and leukemia. He couldn’t have known that his barracks were a stone’s throw from where old fuel was dumped, containers rusted and leaking. He simply couldn’t have known. But in his gut he knew. He knew the marines had killed him.

where's my dresser?

2010-09-27T08:08:00.002-04:00

Here’s what I hate. I hate that women’s clothing maintains an antiquated belief in a dresser. Someone who waits on you hand and foot, who helps you into your bodice, ties you into your girdle as you clutch the bedpost for dear life. Someone who lifts your laden velvet jacket over your arms and onto your shoulders as you stand with your arms outstretched. I mean really – some of our clothing closures weren’t even invented with this sort of thing was going on.

Don’t we all mostly dress ourselves these days? Even the rich? Don’t we even have a saying about it – he puts on his pants one leg at a time. I’m betting that Oprah Winfrey, although there might be a retinue in her bedroom as she prepares for the day, still gets her own blouse on and manages to get it closed up. So why. Oh why are women’s buttons still sewn on the left side of the shirt? They’re there so our dresser can easily, and right handedly, button us up. But where’s my dresser?!

Why, and this is a particular problem for the great majority of us who are right-handed, do women’s zippers still zip from the left side? My left hand is always pulling the zipper in an odd way and never getting it up on the first try. Although it might be so subtle as to go without notice, I always wind up having to raise the little nub more than once.

And every time my zipper sticks a little because of the non-smooth raising my left handed job is doing, I curse those renaissance women who had nothing better to do than stand around while someone got them dressed.

Resistance

2010-09-18T09:22:00.002-04:00

Resistance is not futile, it works. It works to keep me from accessing the deep melancholy. And it’s futile because the deep melancholy overtakes me anyway.

A few notes on climbing

2010-09-10T21:14:00.002-04:00

The sport of rock climbing requires your attention in a way unequalled in most other sports. It’s not just that if your attention wanders while you are climbing the results will be instantaneous (and they will). It’s the exceedingly intimate nature of the climber’s relationship with her belayer. A climber’s life very literally, and very immediately, depends on the willingness of the belayer to pay the proper heed. In a time of parsed attention and multi-tasking that diverts our gaze, climbing requires that the parties genuinely and with full concentration look at, really see, each other’s gear. In a time of clouded intentions and embarrassment about authenticity, belayers must confess that they care whether their climber lives or dies. In a time when baring our souls, investing our energy in what we really believe, has fallen victim to increasing partisanship and posturing, climbing is our primal relationship made real: our lives depend on one another.

why work

2010-09-09T17:24:00.001-04:00

That's pretty much my question. Why do I have to work? I'm feeling a bit overworked (whatever "a bit" means in reference to "overwork"). And I'm thinking I'd like to have my first job back -- a candy stand attendant in a movie theatre. (Although I'd like to make the salary I'm making now.) The theatre I worked in didn't sell popcorn -- the management thought it attracted rats. But even though there was no popcorn to be seen anywhere in the vicinity of the stand, people would still approach me and ask for popcorn. That's how ingrained popcorn at the movies is. Near the end of my time there a man came to the counter and asked for popcorn. In my usual way, I said "I'm sorry, we don't sell popcorn." He looked at me and very quietly he said "bubblehead" and walked away.

back in a saddle

2010-09-07T09:59:00.000-04:00

I ran into the former president of my university this morning on my power walk. He’s looking old. He recognized me as someone who used to work for him, I guess I should be a little flattered. I’m sure, however, that he has no idea what my name is or where I work. He did ask how things were and told me to give his regards. He was out walking his westie, carrying his cane and limping like a hip replacement candidate. There’s a guy who overstayed his welcome by a long, loooonnnnnnng, time. But as I walked away from him I longed for his days of benign neglect. Now that we have a meddler, micromanager, a guy who thinks in the equation of his university that faculty are a confounding variable, a nuisance often minor sometimes major, the hired help, it’s not so much fun. And I fear of the doings of our new dean, what agenda has she brought? I am torn between becoming actually involved and learning what I need to learn to participate in the fight, and shutting off my caring bone and just doing as I’m told. Being, in short, hired help. Why should I care? Should I care? I care?

I’ve got a project I want to work on. It is the exemplification of my fear of committing to projects, my fear of failing, of doing poorly, of being a bad researcher, of not understanding the information I do find. But the project’s been in my quiver for 13 years now, ever since I was tenured here at this institution. I’ve worked hard on it and I’ve completely ignored it over the years. I’ve made numerous commitments to do something with it, anything. And skipped out on them. Now I’m done with that. I finished another project that came along afterwards and I am moving on to the next, prior thing. This thing. This project about Belle Mazur, favorite aunt, odd woman, and fascinating person all rolled into one. She was that relative you hear stories about, the one who led such an interesting life you can’t tell fact from fiction. I’m not sure what form it needs or wants to take, but I’m hereby putting myself at the service of this story. I open my hands wide and make ready my heart. What is first, I wonder? I keep trying to find the trajectory of the narrative. Is that the beginning of the project?

US Open

2010-09-06T22:13:00.001-04:00

Maybe next year at the open Ralph Lauren can have the ball people wear actual polo pony costumes. That's the only way I can imagine his logo being any larger than what he's designed this year.

Kittens III

2010-06-24T07:55:00.003-04:00

Three of the kittens have found homes. Phew. Two got to stay together. I'm relieved. The one remaining is number one (the first kitten snagged). He's black, well he's black with black stripes. I'm still working on getting a good photo that will show his loveliness. I am considering keeping him. He had ringworm, the reason the spca rejected them. "If you leave them here we might have to consider what this contagious disease will do to our other animals." -- meaning if I left them there they'd be euthanized. I finally got them to actually say what they meant. It was almost impossible for the woman on the phone to speak the truth without metaphor or evasion. So I went to pick them up and thus began the nightmare of finding them homes. So now he is the only remaining kitten. I think he's cured of the ringworm, he'll go back to the vet next week for clean slate pronouncement. He's much happier now that he's moved from the oven-hot guest room to the nice cool basement.

kittens II

2010-06-20T09:56:00.002-04:00

Well here are two of the four kittens at play. Yesterday the mama cat found her way to my second floor window and was having a conversation with black kitten (not pictured here). It was a tense moment when I walked in -- I love my new(ish) windows but the screens are pretty flimsy. Now she knows I'm a kitten criminal, having discovered one of her own held captive indoors.

Still looking for homes for these guys if there are any takers -- I'm a bit desperate to de-kitten my house. Although they are cute, I don't want any more cats. Every day they remain in the house I get more attached. Uh oh.

kittens

2010-06-19T11:08:00.002-04:00

Yes. Kittens. I rescued (although I'm sure mama cat would have a different name for it, perhaps "kitten napping") four kittens from a feral mother living in my back yard. Now why didn't I see this coming when I started feeding the ferals? I've got these four kittens in my house -- one isolated to treat his ringworm. I officially hate the MD SPCA who said they'd take 'em, but called me four hours after drop-off to say come get them or they'll all be euthanized. I've spent hundreds of $$, devoted two closed off rooms in my house, disrupted my entire routine, called many shelters (all full). I'm about to lose my tiny mind. If you want a kitten please help. They need good homes.

age

2010-01-02T11:01:00.001-05:00

A few days ago I found myself wandering around a Target muttering to myself. “Why do they always move stuff around? I can’t find a dang thing in here…where are the calcium chews? I wish they’d stop rearranging this place.” And I realized I’m beginning to feel like my grandmother. Not like my mother, because in my mind my mother is still quite young: the age I am now or even younger. But my grandmother – long dead – will always be, in my mind, that old woman I couldn’t quite relate to across the chasm of our ages.

I loved my grandmothers, both of them. But they were always old women. My mother, although obviously older than I, was never an old woman. She was a professional woman with professional friends, living in a world where she had many activities (most activities, in fact) outside of her relationship with me. She had an identity in addition to her age. But my grandmother was simply that old woman who came to take care of me periodically. Or on occasion we’d go to visit her. But, for this youngster, her existence was pretty limited to being my grandmother and being old. Even though she told stories of her past, even though we went to the zoo, playground, and shows, even though I saw scads of pictures of her as a younger woman, her identity for me always remained locked to her age. She was old. She never quite understood the new fangled ways of the twentieth century. She had no interests outside her grandchildren.

Because the plane on which I interacted with her was only “visiting grandma” I never got to see her in the rest of her life the way I saw my mother having the rest of her life. I knew my mother had portions of her life, major parts in fact, that didn’t revolve around me because I saw them daily. But all I saw of my grandmother was her interaction with me. And in that interaction she was two things: concerned only with me, and old.

So when I found myself wandering around the store muttering I felt, in that moment, pretty old. And in my memory old is assigned to my grandmother, not my mother. I had become a woman who couldn’t handle her own life and needed a grandchild, or guide dog, to help her through her daily activities.

cats

2009-12-31T13:03:00.001-05:00

I just figured out that there are three cats living in my basement stairway. As I noisily took out this morning’s recycling two of them ran out of the stairwell and took off over the chain link fence. Down two or three yards they ran. As I looked over the stairwell, I didn’t imagine I’d see anything since I’d obviously just frightened the residents, but one cat remained, legs tucked under against the cold. This shouldn’t surprise me since I’ve seen cats in my back yard several times, these same cats I’m pretty sure. And I’ve heard cat fights nearby. But I am saddened to think of these cute cats living outside in this terrible cold. We’ve been having pretty bad weather so far – it’s been cold and we did have that enormous 22-inch snowstorm. That couldn’t have been comfortable for them. I am inclined to put out food for them, but I know what that would mean so I’m hesitating. One is a Siamese, one tabby-stripped, and one mostly black with some white. They clearly live here, I’ve seen them in the back yard. What to do, what to do. I feel the generous spirit of the new year. But I fear I will soon be caring for a gaggle of cats. Hmmmm.

SQ 6

2009-12-17T08:43:00.000-05:00

Noel
Born is the king of Israel
Really? The king of Israel? This seems an attempt at deep co-opting of one religion by another. Clearly – clearly – by the time this carol was written it was clear that this guy Jesus was not the king of Israel. Not even close. In fact, he was sort of the opposite of the king of Israel – Israel being the land of the Jews. Israel had long since been separated from the religion that Jesus followers founded. Yes, it’s true that Christians had been wandering all around this portion of the globe for many years, doing all manner of distasteful things. But to make this guy king of a land and religious people that do not share the path his followers have taken seems akin to the Mormons converting the dead. They do, you know.

SQ5

2009-12-16T07:56:00.000-05:00

I’ll be home for Christmas

Presents on the tree

On the tree? This line has always confused me. My limited experience with xmas gift giving has been with presents under the tree. I’m not even sure how one would put presents on the tree. Attach them to branches with alligator clips? Hang them with those easily bendable ornament hooks? Toss them lightly over branches as we do with tinsel? (This last one would work only with fabric gifts, unwrapped at that.) I could swear that sometimes I hear people render this line as “presents ‘neath the tree,” or “presents ‘round the tree,” but I’m not sure I’m recalling that properly. It could be simply my yearning for reason. I really have no answer for the question of what this line means. If anyone might be reading this blog and has a thought, please feel free to share it.

SQ 4

2009-12-13T09:15:00.000-05:00

Deck the Halls
Don we now our gay apparel
Well I don’t think it’s so odd, but many of my gay friends are completely enamored of this line. I suppose the image of getting into all that holiday attire – velveteen pants, wide suspenders with enormous buttons, floppy ties, tailcoats and top hats – can seem intriguingly ridiculous. It certainly does make a man look a dandy. And those women, in their long petticoated dresses, bonnets tied on securely. Now what am I thinking of? It’s those Norman Rockwell-ish illustrations that always accompany this song. So I suppose our gay apparel could be a different conception now. Chaps without jeans, leather military hats, mirror aviator glasses for the men. Heavy flannel shirts, wide belts, ill-fitting jeans and motorcycle boots for the women. But why must it be stereotypically thus? What qualifies as gay apparel? What century’s definition of gay are we applying here? It could be merry apparel, brightly colored apparel, homosexual apparel (but only men, because women long ago claimed a separate label: lesbian. I’ve always thought saying gays and lesbians was like saying people and women…but no one consulted me). And what, exactly, is homosexual apparel, anyway? Any apparel a homosexual is wearing? A specific sort of apparel? Is there a gay uniform? Maybe it’s the “donning” that seems so strange.

SQ 3

2009-12-11T16:24:00.001-05:00

O Holy Night
The soul felt its worth

Exactly what is a soul worth? And which soul is this that they’re talking about here. This Jesus guy has to appear first and then “the soul felt its worth.” So you don’t feel your soul or its worth until the savior comes? How does this work? Is it the soul of the entire world? I thought inanimate objects didn’t have souls. It seems peculiar to imply that no souls felt worthy until this guy comes since people had been populating the planet for quite some time before he arrived. So we walked around feeling worthless? Why engage in anything then? Like inventing an alphabet, or figuring out how to farm, or looking after your children…or your dead? Seems like we’d been doing soul enhancing activities for some time already. Or had we…?

seasonal queries

2009-12-10T09:44:00.001-05:00

Onward, Christian Soldiers

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war

Well if ever there was a line to make the rest of us non-christians fear – this be it. Here it is buried in song, the real purpose and objective of the Jesus-worshippers. It’s a war: a war to move the rest of us to belief. They’ll hope for a revelatory moment – Paul (nee Saul) on the road to Damascus – but they’ll make battle if necessary. This ain’t no idle threat, neither. Think of the hundreds of years of crusades we’ve endured while Christians saw it as their mission to bring and defend the cross. Missionaries traveling into the deepest, most remote, parts of civilization to bring the “good news” to savages who hadn’t heard yet, converting people at any price. Yes, indeed, it’s a war. And a war is as good a bit of material for a holiday song as anything. It’s the tiny fish bone buried in the joyousness of the season, it’s the buried treasure of Christianity, it’s the id of Christmas. “Wahooo, we get to fight.”

seasonal queries

2009-12-09T08:23:00.002-05:00

I'm back! The blog continues...

Every holiday song seems to contain a song of questionable seasonal-ness. Herewith a sampling to take us up to the dreaded day:

Winter Wonderland

To face, unafraid, the plans that we’ve made

At first it seems ridiculous to come across such a line in a song of holiday cheer. Why would we be talking about plans of such immensity that they might frighten us here in this song about how lovely it is to be walking in the snow. Might we be, on our wintery perambulations, contemplating the buildup in Afghanistan? Why, when bundled cozily for a winter stroll with a partner, would we be thinking about the quarterly taxes due on the business we’ve just launched? The line seems decidedly out of place.

The carol sings about having a snowman perform your nuptials. Are these the plans to which it refers? Plans to have Frosty “do the job when he’s in town”? Maybe we’re worried that these plans might cause consternation among the guests, render our marriage illegal, or simply make us look fools. It could be the boldest step anyone’s ever taken with a marriage, the wedding planner was at first shocked but came around as we discussed the possibilities for snow globe guest favors.

On further contemplation we might see it is a serious line dropped without warning into a frivolous song. A poignant reflection of our understanding that no matter how lightly we approach the lifelong commitment marriage is meant to be, it can still unearth feelings of discomfort and unease. Lightheartedness is trumped by wedding anxiety.

new office III

2009-02-01T16:50:00.001-05:00

We moved our office into our new digs last month (two blog entries about it back in December). The more I’m in the office the more I like the facility. It’s a really nice building and the students have great places to hang out. My office is still the size of a small fish pond, and I still feel cramped. But I’m getting used to it. This is it so I want to like it. I can’t decide whether to remove most of the furniture and feel a little more open, or keep all my stuff (I have a lot of stuff) and feel surrounded by all my fun. Although the furniture is cubicle furniture, it should have those little ¾ walls around it, it’s still fun to have all that surface area – you could play football on the desk system. But there’s something very cozy about the room and I like that it’s simple to find my colleagues.

The first week of class was a bit rocky. I’ve had to shift my entire approach to undergrad classes. I wound up having to fire and adjunct and take on his class. My teaching partner is having trouble showing up. Things feel pretty stressed in oh so many ways. I wish I were an archivist so I could just sit alone all day looking things up.

inauguration II

2009-01-21T12:10:00.001-05:00

Random thoughts on yesterday's big event:
I loved that Justice Roberts made the last part of the oath a question: “So help you god?” Barack answering firmly “So help me god!”

I have never been in a crowd that immense. There were times, not moments, but chunks of time, when we were literally jammed together, no movement possible. Poor six-month-pregnant Rachel at one point thought she’d faint. “Pregnant lady coming through” helped a lot at that moment.

We barely made it to the mall, climbing over a fence and skipping any legal, security-staffed entry, before the official ceremony began. We couldn’t hear well, but well enough. Eventually we got to a place where we could see the side of a jumbotron, but all I needed to do was be there and hear it. I’ve already watched it several times on TV since returning home. I weep every time.

I loved the speech. I loved the direct and nuanced attacks on the prior administration (maybe I can not mention that jackass’s name). “We will restore science to it’s rightful place…” oh yes. Yes. Yes!

The coda to the day occurred on my drive home from the train station. I was behind a car that had driven here from far away (I can’t remember the state). The license plate read “obama12.”

inauguration

2009-01-20T20:40:00.000-05:00

Although it was incredible to be on the mall today with two million others to witness history. Although it was amazing to hear Barack Obama deliver his inspiring inaugural address. Although it was fantastic to see the full of Washington DC transformed into a hard-to-access event arena. My favorite moment of the day was watching Marine One, the helicopter carrying former president Bush, fly down the mall away from the capital. My thoughts? Good fucking riddance to the war criminal, hope you are arrested upon landing.

rejoice!

2009-01-19T14:00:00.002-05:00

Rejoice!! Tomorrow we will have a real president. After eight years of the guy who stole an election, we will finally have a president who won a majority of the votes. After eight years of a guy who pronounced it "nuke-u-lur" we will have a president who can pronounce multi-syllabic words, knows their meaning, and can use them with ease in syntactically varied sentences. After eight years of a president who lied, committed war crimes, and ran an administration based on ideology and political favoritism we will have a president who will listen to dissenting voices and make thoughtful decisions based on genuine information. Rejoice. Tomorrow we make one more step in America's long road away from a thousand isms. Rejoice. Tomorrow I will believe the arc of the moral universe is long, but it does, indeed, bend toward justice. Rejoice!

I am ever struck by the profound essentialness of symbolism. Yesterday’s concert at the Lincoln Memorial welcoming the Obamas to Washington was, of course, rife with it. But even with a replay of Marian Anderson’s famous rendition of My Country ‘Tis of Thee from the selfsame steps after she’d been denied permission to sing at Constitution Hall, even remembering Martin Luther King’s powerful words delivered also in front of Lincoln’s statue, even with all the readings from former presidents and moving verbal reminders of how far we’ve come, even with all that the most powerful event of the afternoon – more powerful even than the handsome, young, black president-to-be speaking briefly against the backdrop of real marble columns – was an almost 90-year-old Pete Seeger singing not just the happy fellowship verses of Woody Guthrie’s famous song, This Land is Your Land, but all the verses. Even the verses that talked about Americans suffering during the depression, about promises not kept, about abuse of power – he sang those too.

The ban commercial television had held against Pete Seeger was long ago, but he’d rarely appeared since the fifties. He was one of only a few artists who never sold out and never gave in through so many eras of dissent. Time has finally made its circuit. Now he sings as the conscience of music. His voice is weaker now, but his grandson, Tao Rodríguez-Seeger, sounds remarkably like him. The three of them, both Seegers and Bruce Springstein, led the assembled masses, a large young person’s choir, the attending dignitaries, and even the president-elect in singing all the verses – the ones of promise and the ones that point out how far we have to go – of the great anthem. They told the full truth, both by standing there and by singing the complete song. For profoundly symbolic moments – this one wins my vote.

cool stuff

2009-01-16T08:39:00.000-05:00

Counting today, only five more days until we have a real president. A president who actually won a majority of the votes. A president who can speak in full sentences, who wants to find the best way instead of the ideological way, and who treats people with respect. Yes, he’s a bit too conservative for me (I’ve said this about him since he declared) and yes, I’m nervous about heightened expectations. But oh my goodness, I never thought, in my lifetime, that I’d have the opportunity to vote for anyone but a white guy for president and I did and he won. Racism, sexism, other isms aren’t over – not by a long shot. But what a start this is.

That’s my countdown moment.

I am all psyched up to see this. A program that allows people to draw an object and then have that object behave with the properties that the object would have in the real world. It’s called Crayon Physics. Looks very cool.

Henryton II

2009-01-15T08:17:00.001-05:00

I must complete the Henryton story before it goes from my head. We spent the day as usual exploring the buildings on the grounds. The large main building, white stucco with tropical turquoise trim, still had parking spots marked for visitors and we parked there. All the buildings had been heavily graffitied, remaining windows were rare, and there were often inches of dirt and debris on the floors. Most of the piping had long ago been stripped and that also left evidence of random vandalism.

The day was cold, very cold. But our new outfits kept us toasty. Late in the day a small group of six kids came walking across the great space behind the main building where the auditorium and kitchen had been until arson had destroyed it last year. It’s never clear when you run into other explorers whether you’re meeting friendlies or not, we’re never too comfortable until the conversation takes place. After all, we’re running around abandoned buildings, alone and with significant photographic equipment. Often we leave a photo bag stashed in a room somewhere for later retrieval – the stuff gets heavy. The six of them came tromping up the hill and just the number of them made us leary. But it turned out that one kid was like us – a curious explorer with a camera – and the others were his friends. A young photographer who knew what he was interested in; his self assurance drew his friends to him.

But these poor kids had not dressed for the weather, the one girl was wearing tights and a tiny mini-skirt, another of the boys was wearing skin tight jeans with holes in the knees. They were all dress inappropriately for the ten degrees they’d been marching around in. But I guess the folly of youth permitted them to see the day through. They complained. But they stayed the course. They’d already been to two other abandoned places and had turned up here just as the sun was sinking. We took a few photos of them, exchanged website info, and then we each went on our way.

We peeled off our coveralls, packed our stuff back in the car and took off up the long driveway. As we reached the road we couldn’t believe our eyes. The short iron gate across the driveway, open when we arrived, had been padlocked closed. There was no way out. Slightly panicked we drove back down the driveway to the complex and tried every windy road – but the all just led to small parking lots by the buildings. We drove down to the power plant by the railroad tracks. It seemed we could drive along the tracks on the large gravel bed, but there was no telling how long we’d have to drive to find a way out. As far as we could see in either direction, no exit.

We were locked inside the Henryton Psychiatric Hospital. That’s what my partner kept saying on the phone as she began calling people to come help us get out. “Bring big bolt cutters.” “Call a strong guy to come with you.” We knew we could get out. It was simple to just step around the gate. But the car. The poor car would have to stay at Henryton until we figured out who to call, and that would almost certainly be a couple of days. Not a pleasant prospect.

We sat just beyond the locked gate in the warm car (thanks to Zeus for enough gas) watching the traffic go by on the main road. We felt wistfully close to freedom. If only we could just lift the car over the gate. There was no driving around the side – the cold and rain had made a wet mess, and we weren’t even sure the space between the gate and steep hillside was wide enough. As we waited, and my partner made phone calls, a pick up truck stopped on the main road. It backed up, just out of our view and the driver sat for a while. At first we thought he was going to rescue us, but he spent so much time doing other things we assumed he had just stopped for his own reasons. I could see his orange hunter’s hat as he walked around his truck and got back in. Then he sat some more. Finally he started the truck back up and drove the twenty feet to the driveway we sat in. He started to drive by, but then turned in slowly and drove fifteen feet down the driveway to the other side of the gate and stopped. His headlights shone directly into our eyes. I got out of our car, as my partner was still on the phone trying to find us a way out.

“Are you stuck in here?” “Yeah, we were taking pictures all day and it was locked when we tried to leave.” “Can you help us get out?” Just as he was saying yes and I was jumping with mental excitement, my partner showed up at my side. And our rescuer knew her. She had spoken to a class about the photography she was doing. He had been a student in the class. She was famous. We were rescued. He dialed his cell phone and said “Hey old man, what’s the combination for Henryton?” And he undid the heavy, very modern, combo lock that was holding the gates closed. I’d never been so grateful to see a hunter in my life. Obviously he was a local guy who knew just who to call to get anything done. Phew! And Thanks!

It was an adventure we didn’t particularly like having. But underscored how careful we’d have to be on our upcoming trip to New York State. Up there, no one would know us and there’d be no one near by to come rescue us. No taking any chances that could wind us trapped somewhere. Right, no take no risks – that’s definitely not us.

commencement

2009-01-12T14:47:00.001-05:00

Yesterday as I was sitting at commencement for the umpteenth time I thought back to my own college graduation in the bicentennial year of 1976. Our ceremony was held for the first time in Washington Square Park, where it’s been held ever since. I had been thinking of teaching high school upon my release from the educational system, but New York City was on the verge of bankruptcy. The front page headline in the October 30, 1975, NY Daily News read “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” Schools were scaled back to four major areas: English, math, history, science. Experienced teachers lost their jobs and no new teachers were in the mix. The country wasn’t in much better shape, but at least the president wasn’t explicitly denying them bail out funds.

New York University is the largest private university in the country and gives about eight thousand degrees each year. (The school I teach at now doesn’t even have eight thousand students. Nowhere close.) Those eight thousand students and their teachers had to file into the park at the beginning of the ceremony and then file out again at the end. In order to cut down confusion of regular folk getting in the way of people trying to return their academic garb there was a small sentence at the end of the program reading “please remain seated until the recession is over.” Now that would have been a long sit. And today…an even longer sit, I’m sure.

Henryton I

2008-12-24T08:14:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-19T08:36:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-14T11:09:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-12T08:27:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-09T08:11:00.000-05:00

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

2008-12-04T10:10:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-03T15:21:00.005-05:00

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

2008-12-02T10:45:00.001-05:00

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

2008-12-01T08:31:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-30T11:46:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-29T07:07:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-26T07:57:00.002-05:00

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

2008-11-21T20:32:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-16T09:29:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-14T21:59:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-13T07:40:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-07T18:07:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-05T20:00:00.001-05:00

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

2008-11-04T13:23:00.000-05:00

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

2008-10-22T20:26:00.002-04:00

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

2008-10-17T21:40:00.003-04:00

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

2008-10-13T21:52:00.001-04:00

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'

2008-10-10T16:14:00.002-04:00

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
----------------
Proof that Blossom Goodchild is right about October 14th UFO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFyK2N4RG_o&feature=related
------------
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

2008-10-09T10:03:00.002-04:00

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

2008-10-07T19:34:00.000-04:00

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

2008-10-06T22:05:00.002-04:00

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

2008-10-05T20:52:00.004-04:00

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.

2008-10-03T14:22:00.005-04:00

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

2008-10-02T22:51:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-30T21:46:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-29T21:40:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-28T23:08:00.001-04:00

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)

2008-09-27T21:31:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-26T18:35:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-25T20:49:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-24T20:19:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-23T19:30:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-22T22:31:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-21T22:26:00.000-04:00

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...

2008-09-20T23:11:00.000-04:00

Cool enough for a fall blanket last night.

Lonaconing IV

2008-09-18T21:07:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-18T21:07:00.000-04:00

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

2008-09-17T14:44:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-16T17:29:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-15T19:55:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-15T00:19:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-13T21:51:00.001-04:00

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

2008-09-12T21:02:00.002-04:00

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

2008-09-11T10:19:00.002-04:00

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?

where a cat walks

2008-09-10T18:59:00.002-04:00

When my mother had her hip replacement part of the preparation material suggested that she train her animal not to walk in front of her. She has a cat. But even if she had a dog… It’s not just the idea that a cat can be trained to do (or not do) such a thing, but that you might be able to train an animal to do something within that tiny time period between receiving your list of instructions and having the surgery. No freaking way. And anyway. A cat cannot be trained not to walk in front of you. Walking in front of you is what a cat does. That’s a cat’s job. A cat’s profession is to walk slowly underfoot so that you must weave and dance to your destination. Go to the bathroom in the middle of the night? Returning to bed is a circuitous route around waving tail as the butt slowly sways from side to side. The animal might be seated in the doorway as you head into the kitchen but as you pass by it arises majestically and takes its spot between your feet. A cat wants to arrive with you and before you. Therein lies the rub.

back in session

2008-09-09T20:19:00.001-04:00

Classes ramping up, schedule settling into cramped regularity, weather shifting with every breeze, throat’s getting sore.

order

2008-09-08T12:22:00.001-04:00

A writer friend of mine used to tie herself to her chair to make herself write. I can certainly relate to that impulse because as I sit here trying to start writing I’m staring at the untidy piles on my desk and dreaming of the fun I will have organizing them into neater piles. A blizzard of little pieces of paper dusts my desk, each one an important note. I know precisely where each piece of information is and if anything is moved chaos will ensue. This storage style seems to be creeping from the desk to invade the entire room and I must walk gingerly around the perimeter so I don’t disturb sorted piles of books, carefully ordered file boxes, various pieces of equipment in need of maintenance. And dust. Dust has settled over everything. I can’t dust the room because that might disturb the fragile organization I believe exists. But my belief, I believe, is illusory. Beneath the settled snow of paper might be a once-searchable small stack of once-useful information. But as the room shrinks with each new layer of precariously ordered stuff, I fear order has flown.

Fall

2008-09-07T21:23:00.000-04:00

Having a three year old here today was strenuous. He’s cute as heck, but a bundle of unintelligible energy. Even though he’s a far more calm child than his older sisters, he still rouses a cloud of what’s-going-on-here. Football is back, tennis is almost over, Mets & Cubs are still in first place (sadly, I missed my last chance to see Shea because of a game-time change), Fall’s on the way.

death penalty commission hearing

2008-09-06T17:04:00.001-04:00

The joint hearing room in Annapolis was frigid yesterday. When I left, after only three hours of testimony, my feet felt like small blocks of ice and my fingers would not straighten out. I sat a few seats away from the daughter of a murder victim. Her parents were horribly murdered over 25 years ago and she’s been waiting this long quarter century, attending every hearing and court session, for the murderers to be executed. She’s in her 80s now and she will say, if asked, that she is waiting for justice. I don’t fault her for framing the death penalty that way, she occupies a unique and terrible position. But the death penalty is justice for no one – not the victim, not the survivors, not the killer, not the community. It was an exercise in respect to sit near her and her husband, ever reminding me to be respectful in my treatment of the issue. It must be terribly painful for them to attend these hearings as most of the expert, and even citizen, witnesses speak eloquently against what she so fervently wants. She knows that she has several supporters in the room. But, although they are outnumbered, they remain current practice – even if in name only. Repealing existing law is always far more difficult than not putting it there in the first place.

sarah palin

2008-09-05T10:11:00.001-04:00

The election is two months from yesterday. We will soon be rid of the jackass who came into the presidency appointed by five supreme court justices. They made a mockery of the democratic system – stopped the recount and then ruled that it could have gone forward but alas, the deadline had passed.

This Palin woman makes me very nervous. Her picture with him on the official McCain website is the photo from her governor website – they didn’t even get a picture taken together. Leaning into the camera, she wears a beehive hairdo, tailored suits with cinched waists, rimless glasses with dark arms, and yes, she looks like a Tina Fey parody of someone. Her five children all under 19 are supposed to be attended to only on her terms (look, I have a big happy family) and not in any sense of reality (17 year old pregnant daughter not exactly a poster child for abstinence only sex ed in school). Her record is malicious – she fires, or has fired, anyone who gets in her way (including a state trooper who used to be married to her sister). She lies and twists facts, as do they all, about the things she brags about – yes she turned down the bridge to nowhere, but she kept the funding. She is a barracuda. But one problem is that in this misogynistic world it remains difficult to debate a woman. And Joe Biden has a big mouth. He will need special training and have to be exceptionally careful. It’s so easy to look like a bully, and she will milk that for everything she can. She is almost more frightening than McCain, if only because of her severely limited experience. No foreign policy experience, even though she is governor of the state closest to Russia – and you cannot run the state department like a small town in Alaska. I have, yes – literally , been having nightmares about her.

prison break-in, part IV

2008-09-04T10:55:00.005-04:00

After five hours of shooting I was exhausted. There was still so much to shoot, but my judgment was failing and my knees would no longer go up and down as requested. Although it didn’t really seem like it from where we were, daylight would soon be gone. And we still wanted some outside shots (always taken last in case of discovery). We wound our way back out through the tunnels, past Phantom’s threat, and stepped out into the fresher air. By the time we headed back into the woods dusk was creeping. If not for my companion’s expert sense of direction in the bush, I think we might we wandering around still. I led us in the opposite direction – apparently my interior compass works only on city streets. Finally we emerged right back where we’d entered the forest, and within 15 minutes it was dark. It was kind of a big “phew.”

It’s a great feeling – you imagine that you’ve really pulled off a secret mission, getting into and out of a complex without detection, especially when security monitors the grounds. The wait to see the pictures is almost unbearable and we usually pull out our cameras at some point on the way home to look. Although we’re filthy and exhausted, we always feel satisfied and excited.

Next mission in two weeks. I don't know why, but blogger keeps blowing out the color in the photos (any help appreciated!). But you can see them here.
(Tomorrow: Sarah Palin, she’s been giving me nightmares.)

prison break-in, part III

2008-09-03T20:08:00.001-04:00

We went to work doing recon on the buildings. My companion is a much more diligent scout than I and she went deep into the buildings. I’m trying to learn to be a better explorer, but I’m so eager to start shooting I can barely contain myself. The main hall in which we found ourselves was filled with interesting things to photograph: a guard box was flanked by two low rows of visiting stools – the windows between the sides boarded up, seven or eight doors lead from the hall – at least three of them permanently locked, the others wide open, the mess hall faced the box, an observation room one floor up looked out on both rooms. I wanted to eat our lunch sandwiches in the mess hall, but it was too filthy – coated with dust, grime, and rust.

We stayed in the buildings for about five hours altogether. Stacks of file drawers filled with old records were piled by a window in the recreation hall. X-rays littered the infirmary wing. The kitchen freezers were marked supplies, milk box, juice box, and meat box. Too close to the end we discovered the main tiers in what was probably the oldest building on the campus. The cells were tiny, far too small to house a human being. I could reach out my arms and touch both walls, one floor had two beds to a cell. Much had been removed already from the prison, it was to be torn down. But much still remained. The sun moved across our canvas as we went from floor to floor.

More than once we felt as though we weren’t alone. Both of us were certain we heard footfalls and voices. We found a crowbar in the entry hall and carried it with us for a little while. Afterward we figured that whoever was in the building had heard us, thought we belonged, and fled before being discovered by us. On the way in through the dank tunnels, and in many other rooms, we’d seen a tag by someone named “phantom.” In the underground darkness he’d spray painted on an electrical cabinet “in here, you’re prey.” Neither of us mentioned until we were out and away how creepy it was, but we were both thinking of it as we strained to identify noises in the distance.

prison break-in, part II

2008-09-02T09:28:00.000-04:00

Getting into the buildings was a more difficult challenge. Not only was every door we tried locked, but we kept going down passageways between buildings that dead-ended in imposing stone walls topped, also, with razor wire. A close maze of trailers had been laid out next to one of the main buildings. At first I thought we were looking at construction trailers, but quickly it became evident that they’d been there a long time and were built to house inmates. We extricated ourselves from the labyrinth and made our way in a large arc around the building complex. We’d need another point of attack. I think we walked through what had once been an exercise yard, the vegetation was high, and found what was left of a road leading around and down. More locked doors, and windows – a usual point of attack for break-ins – were all barred. It was, after all, a prison. Finally, in what looked like the hospital building, a door leading downstairs off its hinges. We descended into the bowels of the building, pipes, dirt floors, cut off from any outside light. Just keep walking, we knew, and usually such tunnels would emerge into some part of the building. And it did. Coming up out of Alice’s rabbit hole, we found ourselves in what looked like the administration building. It, as we suspected, was connected to a prison building, and it, as we hoped, was connected to other prison buildings. We were inside.

Most interior doors stood ajar, many removed from their hinges or with the locking mechanism cut out. The doors to our prison were thrown open.

A building unattended deteriorates swiftly. Many think that no activity would be good for a building, nobody to cause any damage. But just the opposite is true. Once a window is broken – and a window will always be broken – wind and rain wreck havoc. Water is the enemy of order. Paint peels quickly, leaving an expanding layer of chips on the walls and floors. Papers are blown around, wood and even metal begin to decay, animals get in the building and live and die, vandals rip out anything that was left and tag the walls with territory marking graffiti, furniture is rifled through, plant life takes hold. Rust, mold, dirt, even sunlight rapidly eat away the thin veneer of order that contains our lives.

prison break-in, part I

2008-09-01T21:11:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we broke into a prison. We had advice from others who’d been there on the best places to enter. But when we arrived in the manicured community we found a Labor Day Weekend block party just exactly at the intersection we needed to depart from for the short trek back into the woods to the prison fence. Children were hopping round everywhere like crickets. Adults were glaring at us as though illegal aliens might shortly invade their picture perfect day and require escorting off the premises. We drove around looking for another entry point; none was visible, but we did find a park that backed up onto the woods about a quarter mile up the road. The park’s lot, and all the surrounding dead end streets (that’s how you can tell an exclusive community) had temporary no parking signs tacked to naked birch stakes and pounded forcefully into the ground. They did not want anyone who didn’t belong taking part in their local festivities. What had we been thinking that a holiday weekend would be good for an adventure because people would be away? What?

We changed into our exploring clothes in the park’s completely empty lot and left the car in front of a house where we hoped the inhabitants would not summon the police to investigate our out of state tag. Then we walked back into the woods. As we trudged I had the nagging feeling that making our way back might be difficult; there were no landmarks and it was impossible to tell what direction we were going. Eventually we encountered the first layer of fencing, but the prison was still beyond our sight. That first fence was high, at least 20 feet, the links were small and it was topped with razor wire that still looked as though it’d been put up yesterday. We knew that somewhere there was a hole in the fence, but the grounds map was in the car. We walked a length in one direction and then in the opposite direction. Finally, around a corner, was the large enough for a hippopotamus hole. Great. Second layer, we were sure there had to be a simple way in. This fencing was temporary, put up to protect the construction site. The uprights anchored in concrete blocks, the links the standard larger size. And off to the left was an open gate. We were on the prison grounds.

party

2008-08-31T07:57:00.000-04:00

Terrific mojito party last night at upsidedownhippo. Goblin was in wonderful form demonstrating her fully healed mobility. I wish I’d brought more Obama buttons to distribute, I easily gave away the six I brought along. One partygoer had a secret theory that McCain picked Palin to throw the election. Somehow I doubt that. I see her now on his official website which is, itself, so packed with billboard crap it looks like a cheesy commercial site. The blue they’ve picked is a wishy washy turquoise and the busyness of the front page makes the site look like something McCain himself might have built in an intro to web design short course. There she is, her hair in a tight conservative up-doo, looking like a parody of a soccer/hockey mom. Nervous smile, leaning forward, staring eagerly into the lens. Although many of us will say he’s shot himself in the foot, we need to learn from the last two elections to never make simple assumptions.

veep choice

2008-08-30T16:58:00.001-04:00

Sarah Palin is John McCain’s vice presidential selection. I suppose he thinks she will bring on board the disaffected Hillary supporters. I find it somewhat insulting since she’s opposed to pretty much everything Hillary stood for. About the only thing they have in common are the breasts and vagina. However, democrats underestimate her at their peril. She’s young, strongly conservative, attractive, has executive experience, and can present a terrific narrative. Furthermore, it’s very difficult for men to debate women. We’ll see how she does in the carbon-arc glare of a national campaign. She may have vulnerabilities we don’t yet know, she may become a star. We’ll see.

corn

2008-08-29T22:21:00.000-04:00

Ever since reading Omnivore’s Dilemma I’ve felt discouraged whenever I shuck corn. Having learned that there is a piece of silk for each kernel I just know there’ll be no getting it clean.

Beau Biden

2008-08-28T18:12:00.000-04:00

Glued to the TV watching the democratic convention, I was enormously moved last night watching Beau Biden introduce his father, the vice presidential nominee. Beau told the story of the automobile accident that occurred between Biden’s election and the time he took his first oath of office. The accident killed Joe Biden’s wife and 1-year old daughter and left the two boys seriously injured. He wanted to step away from the senate seat he was about to take as the youngest senator ever elected. But of course the old lions of the senate, Kennedy, Mike Mansfield, Hubert Humphrey, talked him into taking his place. The story was emotional and now, as we all know, even more than 35 years later, its impact can still be felt. I expected the shot of Jill, Joe Biden’s current wife, sniffing back a tear. And the brief brush of Michelle Obama felt a little gratuitous. But I did not expect the shot of Jon Stewart wiping a tear away. That was an odd surprise.

However this is not what moved me. I was sad for his story, yes – such a thing is always tragic. What touched my soul deeply was what he said next. Five years later, he said, they “Dad, my brother and I, married my mom Jill.” My heart heard him say “mom” and I felt a rush of gratitude for someone who understands. My mother married my father when I was five, after my mother had died very young of cancer. She gave birth to my two brothers. I have never called her my step-mother, nor called my brothers half-brothers. Others sometimes insist on naming the distinction, but these words are meaningless to me. In fact I find them offensive. They seem to call into question the relationships, questioning not only their closeness but their validity. This woman is my mother. These men are my brothers. The fact that blood may not tie us to one another is inconsequential. We made our lives together and not one of us every thinks for a moment that we are not “related” to one another. Relationships are what we make them. Those other words are only what the culture dictates by terminology.

convention II

2008-08-27T20:14:00.001-04:00

Hillary Clinton’s classy act tonight brought tears to my eyes. It was better, even, than her insistent speech last night. I never thought I would see in my lifetime a serious candidate for the presidential nomination who was a woman, or a person of color. Never. And now here we are. Geraldine Ferraro’s nomination was historic. But no one ever really believed she and Walter Mondale would win that election. Running against the hugely popular actor turned acting head of state their chances were measured in a thimble. But this is real. This intellectual powerhouse will be the next president. Shattering the image of president as a guy you’d like to have a beer with, this is a person of many dimensions. Always, always, misogyny is stronger than racism – Shirley Chisholm my congressperson from NYC – who ran for president in 1972 said she always felt more discrimination based on her gender than on her race. It is a fight we must continue. Progress is happening, the majority of delegates at the convention this year are women – 100 years after the first five women delegates attended a convention in Denver. But for the moment, this moment, this man is the right candidate.

Rest in Peace, Rachel

2008-08-26T20:26:00.001-04:00

I first met Rachel King during my very first abolitionist event. I participated in a civil disobedience action at the Supreme Court on January 17, 1997 – the twentieth anniversary of the execution of Gary Gilmore. There were 18 of us – we called ourselves the DC 18 – and Rachel was one of the support staff who remained on the outside. She was an attorney, but was mostly there as a photographer. But she’d broken her foot about a week earlier. Hobbling around was hard and carrying her camera bag was even harder. She wasn’t necessarily graceful about the entire situation, but her foot was bad, the situation was difficult, few of us knew each other, and making requests in that environment was tricky.

Rachel and I struck up an email correspondence almost immediately after that and the emails were deep revelations of the nature of both our connections to the movement. We connected instantly. When she came down to attend the first session of our journey through the DC courts she stayed with me. I was shocked to see her, even though she’d warned me that she’d accomplished one of the things on her list of things she wanted to do before she died – shave her head. In fact, Sam Sheppard, son of Dr. Sam Sheppard the man on whom The Fugitive is based, did the shaving for her. I was impressed with her celebrity hairstyle but it made her head enormous. And cold. I had to lend her several hats and I wondered out loud about her timing. The dead of winter is not the best time for head shaving.

This was the beginning of a fast friendship that lasted the dozen years until now. Last night came the news that she’d finally lost her battle with breast cancer. She died in her home in Maine surrounded, yes, by friends and family. Only 45 years old. The abolitionist community, to which she was completely dedicated, will miss her sorely.

Convention

2008-08-25T19:47:00.001-04:00

Well Olympics jail is over and I’m now in Democratic Convention jail with a kicker from the US Open in case there’s a break in the Convention schedule. I’m such a sap, I love hearing all the hopeful speeches talking about how we’re going to make a difference. It reminds me of the 60’s Bobby Kennedy rallies I stood at cheering my little heart out. I love seeing the big tent of all the authentically diverse people at the Convention – not like the created diversity of the other party. Attending a Democratic Convention is on my list of things I want to do before I die. I really want to go as a delegate, but I’d go in any capacity if I could. I wish I were at this one, it’s going to be historic. If I were there, I’d be on the floor every possible minute just drinking it all in. It’s almost 8 PM and Nancy Pelosi will be out to speak in a few minutes. Then Teddy if he’s well enough – that’ll be a moment. I remember leaving work one day in 1980 to attend a Teddy for President rally in midtown. He was challenging Carter for the nomination that year and maybe if he’d have defeated Reagan. Maybe. I wish I were in Denver. Tonight is apparently American flag night. Maybe later they’ll have Michelle signs.

Staunton

2008-08-24T11:03:00.002-04:00

Every night after we’ve been out on an abandoned site shoot I lie in my bed and feel for coal miners who suffered from black lung disease. Having seen an actual black lung recently, I think of the way coal dust accumulates in the breathing apparatus – clogging the alveoli, hardening the bellow and shrinking it to an unusable size. The air in yesterday’s buildings was heavy with asbestos, black mold, lead paint dust, and decades of sweat and toil. In Staunton, VA, the DeJarnette facility began as a Lunatic Asylum that later became Western State Prison. Now it’s being converted into condominiums. One building is completed the others in various stages of readiness. Most of the flavor of the prison, and the asylum, has already been removed. We went into rooms where dust and paint chips had been swept into a neat pile at the side of the room, garbage bags full of peeled paint and construction trash were carefully grouped by the door awaiting pick up. Doors and fixtures had been removed, and evidence of new construction was pervasive both inside and out. Mostly it felt like shooting a building renovation. The occasional remnant of prison life reminded us of the place’s second purpose. But from this shoot the biggest souvenir was that fiberglass feel in my lungs with every inhale as I slept.

olympics jail

2008-08-23T07:36:00.003-04:00

Olympics jail is almost over. Tomorrow the closing ceremonies will finish us up until February 12, 2010 in Vancouver. Although on Sunday they will say 2012 in London, those of us who watch Olympics look forward to the winter sports between summers and the summer sports between winters. We love it all; each one is a break from the other and each one a major event between off seasons.

The eighty million hours of television we’ve seen this time has been tolerable in what we’ve missed. Always too much, never enough. The real time coverage is exciting. Even the taped coverage is nicely done. We’ve learned about NBC’s upcoming series, especially Kath and Kim. We’ve seen Jeremy Warner’s too-close-together eyes when he finally removed his shades for the 400-meter medal ceremonies. We’ve seen Michael Phelps and his huge “that’s gold” after number eight. We’ve seen Nastia Liukin get silver for tying for first on the uneven bars. We’ve seen both USA men and women drop the baton at the handoff from three to anchor in the 100-meter relay. We’ve seen the Chinese take, amazingly, only seven of eight possible golds in diving (but not a single medal ceremony). We’ve seen the last of Olympic baseball and softball, for eight years at least – until they can be reinstated.

The men’s marathon will take us to the end, and who will carry the American flag? Who could it be? Who?

about a dog

2008-08-22T20:11:00.001-04:00

I love the sound a dog’s floppy ears make when he shakes his head. As I sit in my office at home, across the alley a yard houses two springy pit bulls. Just jaws with eyes, they have enormous heads. They’ve not suffered the indignity of cosmetic surgery, which animals definitely do not require, so they have their velvety ears and slappy tails. As I drive through the alley the male meets me at his back fence, the female is tied up on a long chain and can’t reach the fence. They’ve recently made her chain longer so she can get to the fence in only one spot – but she can get there and she’s happy about it. I get out of my car to pet the smiling beasts, they’re always happy for a pet. I pet them because it seems inevitable that they will one day escape. They can jump so high that clearing the fence is only a matter of time and will. No doubt they can get out if they feel like it (well, not the girl – she’s tied). I want them to like me for the time they’re running around loose and panicked. They’re not trained for meanness, I’ve seen small children out in the yard playing with them.

As I sit up in my office trying to concentrate on work they’re lying down out of my sight. But every now and then I can hear the flop-flop-flop-flop of the soft ears swinging around the head like those balls on the tiny plastic drums. That sound makes my heart sing. It means somewhere a dog is relaxed and happy and just being a dog. And every time I hear it I wish I could be a dog too.

driving

2008-08-21T07:24:00.001-04:00

Baltimore is not even an easy city to drive. Entire sections of the city – not outlying sections, but close in popular destination sections – are cut off from traffic in many ways. No grid here. The center part of the city, like a long fish, is traversed by three main north-south streets. To the left and right lie several popular neighborhoods: Hampden, Fells Point, Canton. But you can’t get to any of them easily, they require roundabout approaches through winding streets that backtrack and circumvent large obstacles like a college campus and a slash of highway that runs downtown. There are simply no good east-west routes, all speed is to the up-down and none to the cross. This is magnified by the setting of the lights, every one is red as you try to drive east or west. Trying to get from side to side is an exercise in frustration. Trying to get up and down can go smoothly except for the war-torn quality of the roads themselves. A city that forces you to drive should not then impede your progress in this manner. Chicago, they are proud to tell you, is laid out entirely in a grid. And if you look at a map it is, indeed, laid out that way. But all the streets have names, no numbers at all. Unlike Washington or some suburban DC cities like Arlington, VA, the street names indicate no relationship to one another. So although the grid is easy to traverse, it is not easy to navigate. But at least Chicago provides its citizens with decent public transportation. Baltimore is scraping the bottom of that public transit barrel. You are forced to drive in Baltimore if you want travel to take less than an hour at minimum. Decisions made over the last century have reduced Baltimore to simply a large town with bad transportation and no help on the way. If those who run the city really cared about public transportation they’d make it expensive and difficult to drive instead of continuing to try and accommodate the cars. Although it’s difficult to get to the neighborhoods, it’s simple to get downtown. The way a beltway removes life from the interior of a city, Baltimore has set up its north-south routes to be straight shots for getting to work fast. None of this will be good, all must be reconsidered.