power plant I

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

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

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

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

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

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

debate

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

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

children of presidents

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

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

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

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

hiring

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

drummers are musicians

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

work

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

job complaints

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

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

Commission hearing

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

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

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

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

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

bailout, still

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

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

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

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

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

bailout

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

NBI

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

Last days of summer...

Cool enough for a fall blanket last night.

Lonaconing IV

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

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

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

Mets game

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

Lonaconing III

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

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

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

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

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

Lonaconing II

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

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

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

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

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

Lonaconing I

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

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

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

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

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

civil rights at home II

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

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

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

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

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

civil rights at home I

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

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

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

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

Morty

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

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

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

post 9/11

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

where a cat walks

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

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

order

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

walking

In Baltimore when you walk somewhere, unless you’re in the inner harbor part of downtown, you can count the number of people you pass on two hands and still have seven fingers left over for making shadow puppets. You can say hello to each person you pass, although in Baltimore different races look through each other as though they don’t exist. You can walk for thirty minutes and not pass a single public trashcan. You can, however, pass dozens of dead trees. It’s a town where bike lanes “end.” And a town that requires you use a car but where the streets are pockmarked as if by war and warped like a record in the sun. Not a place for pedestrians.

low tech

I actually prefer the low technology to the high. I’m a pencil sort of girl as opposed to notes in a blackberry. I like ice cream cones rather than a low calorie, factory processed, fudgecicle on a stick. I want my paper Sierra Club calendar, not iCal. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to give up the pictures I get to see each week in a paper calendar. It’s a small bit of pleasure taken away by the electronic environment. The new storage is easier and smaller, but the retrieval is always riskier. I can put my hands on a note I wrote 44 years ago making a bet with a friend about who’d be married first (not me). But I no longer have any way to access my dissertation stored on five and a quarter inch floppies and composed in WordPerfect. (WordPerfect, by the way, does not merit a spellcheck underline as it’s obviously now a “word” in our vocabulary.) The virtual world we inhabit now leads us to believe that the electronic is real and the real is merely stone-age sentimentalism. It leads us to reverse metaphorical and literal meanings. When we say “Jane comes home from school and literally glues herself to the television,” we mean figuratively. And when we use “figuratively” we mean literally. Metaphor is turned inside out and accomplishment is reduced to moving and storing pixels.

one photo

One building viewed from another at HCB.

stand by

Blogspot is not letting me add images. I'm trying to troubleshoot. Please stand by!

shooting at HCB

Another photography excursion yesterday (resulting in the late, late entry last night). Went up to Ashley, PA to the abandoned Huber Coal Breaker. What is a coal breaker, you might be asking. Apparently it was a factor where coal was broken up for use. It’s long closed down, and, oddly, pretty much completely open. As we climbed up into the bowels of the tall buildings kids on dirt bikes, grown men on ATVs, and middle school girls did their thing near the buildings. The middle schoolers wandered by as one of us was shooting outside. They asked if she had a myspace page and told her about the coal miners who haunted the breaker. For a building that’s completely open the graffiti is minimal.

Shooting inside was difficult. It presented the double problem of being enormous and being difficult to move around in – hard to get far enough away for a good vista shot. Structurally the building was filled with disasters waiting to happen. Catwalk metal plates worn through, stairs missing, coal dust floating in the air creating all kinds of lens flair. When I got home and tried to sleep I could understand the black lung disease I saw last week in the Bodyworlds exhibit. Even after a single afternoon trudging around in an abandoned coal factory, not even a mine, my lungs felt as though they were filled with fiberglass. Breathing felt scratchy and labored.

I wasn’t particularly pleased with the shots I got, but I’m working on managing raw images. Blogspot is not letting me add any right now, but I'll do it later.

drug commercial

And now for a commercial interlude: I’m so glad that teenage boy found out about Plavix for his mother who’s suffering from PAD (what the !@#$ is peripheral artery disease?). But she’ll need to be careful about the side effects: “if you develop fever, unexplained weakness, or confusion” (confusion? confusion? what are we talking about here?) “tell your doctor promptly as these may be signs of a rare but potentially life threatening” (oh man, (whining) it’s always life threatening) “condition called TTP” (what the !@#$% is TTP?) “which has been reported rarely” (phew) “sometimes in less than two weeks” (what!?) “after starting therapy” (I’m not in therapy so I guess I’m safe) “other rare but serious side effects may occur” (omigod what could they be, I’m confused).

ticket exchange

Everything so surreal these days and we don’t even notice any longer. I recently exchanged a couple of symphony tickets. I remember days, long ago, when you'd walk up to a box office and hand the seated woman wearing a black sweater two tickets asking for an exchange. She'd reach behind her into a small cubby and pull out a stack of tickets held together with a thick rubber band. Flipping through them, she'd suggest a couple of locations and then take out the two you wanted and hand them to you. Then she'd take your tickets and fit them back into the stack for the date you were exchanging out of. The entire interaction took about 90 seconds.

No more. Now I walk up to the window, give the intern on the stool my tickets and tell him what I want. After about two minutes of fiddling with his computer he tells me why I have the tickets I have. “These are your regular subscription seats.” I smile and say OK, but I really don't care why I have these tickets, I just want to exchange them. Back to the computer for him: tap, tap, tap, tap -- vacant eyes staring into the computer screen. Finally he looks up at me and says "OK."

OK? I'm done? "yep." I walk away from the window. No tickets in my hand. No receipt. Nothing. The exchange has been made (I suppose). The interaction took over five minutes.

I have a distinct feeling of dis-ease. Do I have tickets? He tells me they'll come in the mail. The mail?

garbage cans

In London there are no garbage cans in the tube. Only when you emerge from the underground and then you can find a place to dispose of it on the street. They do this, I’ve heard, to deprive terrorists of places to leave bombs. Not bad thinking, I suppose. And I didn’t mind at all carrying a banana peel from Marble Arch all the way to Westminster (not all that far, but two subway lines away) and up into the street to find a place to throw it away. Stowing a banana peel in one’s bag is messy so it made the journey in my hand, but it was a small sacrifice in the global war on terror.

On the other hand the trashcan shortage here in Baltimore seems without rhyme or reason (especially reason). When I moved here I found that I could walk from my apartment to my office and pass not a single trashcan, but five mailboxes. I considered mailing my garbage, but that would be a federal offense. Now, years later, the mailboxes are mostly gone – fallen victim to workforce shrinkage at the postal service – and the garbage cans remain conspicuously absent. The current mayor seems to be trying to give us a place to toss our refuse, a couple of garbage cans have been appearing here and there. But the need still far exceeds the presence. No reason, like the eternal GWOT, supports this no-garbage can mentality. It seems to be simply a resistance to public trash. It’s not as if there’s a shortage of garbage, but Baltimore seems to just want to keep it inside. Yeah, keep it hidden, that’s the ticket.

back to work

Vacation is over. Back to work today. Already during the course of the day at least four emails from the anally controlling AD about things I need to take care of. I don’t dislike the AD, just wish she’d dial it down a couple of notches. We do need someone who pays attention to detail (especially at this shop), but the love affair with what the technology tells us often spins things right off the table. Wish me luck.

thy neighbor's bike

My neighbor is getting ready to go out on his motorcycle again. He always starts the thing up and lets it loudly percolate for a while before he mounts and rides off. There have been times the bike’s been out there running for twenty minutes before he finally silences it by taking it out of range. It’s one of those noises that gets in your head as just annoyingly noisy. The motor sounds like it’s in my house. I don’t know what kind of bike it is, but I’m betting, just based on the noise, that it’s a Harley. Why does it have to warm up for a decade before he putters off on it? Finally, he’s gone.

medal hunt

Olympics jail is closing in on me. My Olympics partner wants to watch Michael Phelps try to make history with his quest for eight gold medals. For some reason I don’t find the pursuit all that compelling. It’s nice, I suppose that this hometown boy is trying to win eight races. But the thousandths of a second the timing is down to make victory feel almost inconsequential. How, I wonder, can we just keep going faster and faster? Is there no ceiling, or floor rather since the numbers keep sinking lower, to how fast human beings will eventually be able to swim? Will we soon see the 100 meters won in 11.27 seconds? Will swimmers one day finish races before they even enter the water? I don’t have anything against competition. And I adore all the pomp and circumstance and ritual and challenge attending the Olympic games. Somehow, though, the Phelps set up feels too culturally loaded. The deal being made of his medal hunt feels too much like it comes not from him but from some newsish desire to create a 2008 hero after the grueling primary season that gave us an old man and a black guy, after the last seven and a half years of an oaf in the White House, after five years of endless war. It’s a pseudo-event waiting to crack apart. I want to see Phelps race. But I just want to see him swim his best in a field of swimmers also doing their best. It’s not that I don’t care whether he wins. But the medal count jingoism feels dangerous and explosive.

Last Last Comic Standing

I’m not sure why, but I watched this year’s version of Last Comic Standing. My LCS partner checked out after last year, but I love comedy and was up for it again so I checked in. But this has got to be the last time. It’s not that the comedy was awful, although it was pretty poor, the show format defied any sort of explanation: logic, entertainment, snarkiness. Lots of preliminary comedic “challenges,” comics performing at car washes, at the playboy mansion, in Bed Bath and Beyond. But none of these lunacies were really had any impact on the outcome of the competition. Three, count ‘em three, actual challenge “competitions” and performances saw one of two (and one immediately eliminated) female comics perform three times. And then it was over. “America voted” and then, even though the votes were in the remaining seven performed again. After they’d after they’d done their best two were sent packing based on a vote that had nothing to do with the routine they’d just performed. Then there was a “finale” – ninety minute snoozefest featuring Jon Lovitz and Triumph the Insult Dog who performed with exceedingly poorly attended continuity (cigar in the mouth, cigar out of the mouth, eyes askew, cigar dropping out, oh hell what does it matter anyway). Repeatedly the two hosts stood like popsicle sticks trying to figure out what to do, three times they told one of the lined up comics they were eliminated. Then down to two, they took 15 minutes of air time (including a five minute commercial break) to announce that the winner was the woman who’d survived three challenges. The first female winner of Last Comic Standing. But it’s hard to imagine anything more anti-climactic. After they reminded us of past winners, including the mediocre Jon Reep and Josh Blue, it was hard to imagine this winner making anything of this terribly choreographed “opportunity.” The best winner, Alonzo Bodden, wasn’t even included in the role call because the year he won the show was cancelled after the penultimate episode; the audience didn’t even get to see the winner. Not a good sign. The format is altered every year; but a fix has been elusive. The elusive format does nothing to create either a following or any desire to appear on the show since there’s no way to know what you’ll be asked to do. Shrinking audience, bad comic contestants. No reason to watch.

Olympics

Olympics are under way and I’m in Olympics jail – wanting to watch as much as possible so never leaving the television. I’ve heard that something like 3500 hours of Olympics will be on TV over the next two weeks. I don’t think I can do that much, that’s almost 146 days. I don’t have quite that much time before school starts. Just FYI my spellcheck automatically capitalizes the word Olympic. Interesting. What if you want to use it as an adjective?

Eckford

My visiting houseguest friend is trying to change the name of my cat. This large, completely black cat came to live with me four years ago. I went through several different names for him and felt dissatisfied with all of them. Finally, in desperation, I settled on Ivan – so he could be a black Russian. But it never felt right and I never called him by that name. Instead I always called him buddy. Not so much as a name, but as a description of our relationship. A couple of years later I realized what I really would name a black cat is Eckford. Elizabeth Eckford, one of the Little Rock 9, was the woman in that famous photo by Will Counts (one of the top 100 photographs of the twentieth century). As behind her a white woman, mouth contorted in hatred, is shouting venomously at her back, Elizabeth walks calmly on. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette called it “hate assailing grace.”

I could never tell anyone that the cat’s name was Buddy because I thought that was far too commonplace as a name for an animal. As my godson always said with disgust when I let slip a “hey buddy” when talking to him “Buddy is a dog’s name.” I was just too embarrassed to admit I had named an animal Buddy. So his name was always reported as Ivan, but I’ve always called him buddy. After I figured it out I thought Eckford would be a great name for a black cat. But I felt unable to change his non-name of Ivan. It seemed stupid to give him another name I wouldn’t use.

So my visiting friend has been calling him Eckford since she arrived (and heard the story). I think another two weeks of her doing that and his name might actually change. I will ask my graphic designer friend to make up name change cards for us to sed out announcing his appellation alteration. And I can start calling him Eck. I wonder if it will stick now since she is going home tomorrow. We shall see. What do you think?

colonoscopy

We’re getting closer to eight-eight-oh eight. The opening of the summer Olympics and my friend CH’s 50th birthday. Woo hoo.

A friend is visiting with her new beau. He is going through treatment for colon cancer, the cancer that killed my mother over half a century ago. I’m reminded of my reluctant quest for a colonoscopy several years ago. Nagged relentlessly by my family and urged on firmly by my doctor I finally agreed to go see a doctor of the rear. First I insisted on a woman and found one who then joined in with the eternal nagging. She was nice. She seemed concerned. She kept calling me saying I really needed this, the family history indicated it, I should have started having them at age ten…that sort of thing. Once she called me from her car. This doesn’t sound unusual now, but it was eons before every grade schooler had a cell phone – I imagine it was one of those enormous car phones that required hooking into the automobile’s electric system and were mounted permanently and inconveniently directly at the driver’s elbow. Ultimately at that point, being honest with my insurance company made us all think they would not pay. The quest was, thankfully in my eyes, on permanent, in my eyes and again thankfully, on hold.

Years pass, I can’t remember how many. And the family nagging – why didn’t I just lie? – was intolerable. A new doctor was even firmer, and in a quieter way which was that much more irresistible. Another visit to another doctor of arrears, this one a wacky sort of guy. I sat in his office listening to him be thrilled about being a butt doctor. “I love what I do. Love it. I love being a doctor. It just so happens that I examine colons all day.” I think he loved it because he didn’t have to deal with patients – they were all, of course, unconscious and silent. His large dark wooden desk was completely empty. His office looked like a furniture showroom – no signs of anyone actually working in there, just a desk with chairs, a matching dark wood credenza, and some quiet industrial carpeting. So I agreed to the procedure.

His office called the insurance company. I called the insurance company. The insurance company created that well-known situation in which you are actually required to lie. As I hung out on hold waiting to talk with someone I listened to their cheerful loop of medical advice. I must have heard five or six times of the importance of screening for colon cancer. So their recording probably would have green lighted the procedure. But the agent would not. Of course they’ll never, ever (ever) tell you before you do something whether they’ll cover it or not. They’ll only say “probably.” A final decision can only be made after the procedure is completed and the bill submitted. But family history was not enough for a colonoscopy. A sigmoidoscopy, maybe. But let’s not go overboard and explore the whole colon. Nah. The only indicator that could get you an actual colonoscopy was the presence of actual symptoms. So when they said cancer screening, what they really meant was cancer confirmation.

I was about to walk away again. But the butt doctor called me up and with an audible wink asked me if I had any of these symptoms. And he read me a long list. Finally I agreed. Yes, I have this one. (I won’t share here, you’re not my doctor. Nor will I say whether it was actually a lie or not.) And so I came to have my first, and so far only, colonoscopy. I must say – it was awful, I never want to do it again. So don’t bother nagging.

the commission

The Death Penalty Commission hearings are underway. Commissioners are hearing testimony from invited witnesses who speak for as long as necessary and the public who are asked to “make it brief.” Scott Shellenberger, State’s Attorney of Baltimore County, is overeager in his desire to discredit witnesses who discuss problems in the death penalty’s application. My hope is that even those who may be on his side of the issue will see through his transparent attempts to imply people like Deborah Fleischaker, former director of the ABA Moratorium Implementation Project are not credible. He accused her of traveling the country testifying that the death penalty wasn’t working. Well of course she travels speaking, she was the director of an implementation project and people wanted to hear the results. Commission Chair Benjamin Civiletti actually cut him off as he was starting to run down the list of places she’d spoken. The only pro-death penalty testimony heard from invited witnesses yesterday was from Phyllis Bricker, the daughter of the couple murdered by a man currently on Maryland’s death row. Her story is heartbreaking, her elderly parents were murdered 25 years ago and the case has been in and out of the courts that long. When she said she and her family have been waiting that long for “justice” Civiletti said “which you interpret to be his execution.” Finally. Someone points out that justice does not necessarily equal execution. Far too many people phrase it this way without even a second thought. I can’t count the number of times I’ve watched news reporters standing outside the SuperMax saying they were, we all were, waiting for “justice” to be done as if this were how we all thought about executions. When Civiletti made his remark she seemed not to even understand it, as if her singular interpretation was the only one possible. Justice requires fairness.

I was moved by the story told by a citizen witness of his violent father. The father tried to kill him and eventually murdered his step mother and step sister. He spoke of what it was like to be the son of a man convicted of murder, what it’d been like to testify at his father’s trial, and how the experiences had shaped him. His powerful story continued as he told of his nephew’s murder twenty years later. At the trial he spoke of seeing the to the son of a man who’d murdered his nephew and thinking about what this poor 9-year-old boy was going to have to go through. He never mentioned the death penalty. But his message was clear. Even a violent murderer has a family; his actions have an impact on those people too. The relationships are never simple, a web always connects us to one another. Even if the connections are invisible now, later they will manifest.

bifocals

I’ve been wearing my new bifocals for about a week now and the headache they gave me in the beginning is starting to go away. I didn’t think I could get used to them and I’m still not sure that I can. These are not for close and far, they are for close and really close. I found myself swapping out different strength pairs of glasses when I was working on the computer: one for the computer, a stronger pair for reading books or papers. It just felt ridiculous. So I went for the bifocals for computer (arm’s length as the eye doc said) and reading. But I’m having a tough time getting used to shifting my eyes and my head every time I want to read something. If something’s arm’s length – like the computer – I’m looking through the top part. But the hard line – I’m not sure why he ordered a hard line, but he did – seems to be right in my line of vision so I have to slide the glasses a little bit down my nose which makes them not quite right. As I approach the bottom of the computer screen I have to either drop my head or lower the glasses because I don’t want to be looking through the lower, stronger, part of the glasses – it’s too strong and it blurs the arm’s length stuff. Then if I want to read actual paper I have to slide the glasses back up toward my eyes and tilt my head counter-intuitively up instead of down so I can sink my eyeballs to look through the reading half of the lenses. Oi. The entire operation still requires way too much fiddling, although now with a single pair of glasses. The line in the middle still gives me a headache. It feels like my vision is literally resting on that line. Sometimes it feels as though I’m looking directly through it and that makes me feel like I’m an old camera lens where you brought top and bottom halves of your screen together to adjust focus. Everyone with bifocals told me I’d get used to it quickly and then I’d do it without thinking. Still awaiting that conversion moment.

some shots

My arm is sore from the tetanus shot I got for the two gouges from going over the fence, but it’s better that I got the shot now since I plan to do more shooting in such environments. My excitement about photography is completely reignited by this shooting expedition. Here we were seeing mill life at a sudden cessation. Papers left on desks now blown all around the room, work shoes lying in piles of paint chips and rusted dust. Water is the enemy of order always. As the windows break and the weather comes in the mill everything begins to break down. Some papers in one of the offices were dated 2002 so it’s been only six years. But the disintegration of the environment is rapid. The stillness of the abandonment, even with the occasional small animal creating a noise, is palpable. I’m hoping to become a much better photographer as I keep on doing this. Here are a few photos from my very first expedition.



Greased gears















Window Seat




















Portrait of the artist as a long exposure photographer.

clamshell

I just opened and set up my paper shredder. There’s nothing really remarkable about that, except that the shredder has been sitting, packaged, in my office for about four years. This is how unpleasant opening clamshell is. I moved the thing around my office for four years, tossing thousands of credit card offers whole into the recycling, rather than attack the thick impenetrable plastic it came in. I know I’m not alone in hating that clamshell packaging. Ellen Degeneres has a joke about it: listing what’s wrapped in it but then pointing out that lightbulbs…“thin, thin plastic.” It’s true, of course. The packaging is a cultural statement on our habits. It’s hardly ever to protect the product, but almost always to prevent pilferage. Opening the stuff is a dangerous exercise. Scissors are ineffective, box cutters dangerous, I’ve heard can openers are safe, but I’ve never figured out how to use one with the shell. Rare is the packaging that permits the buyer to neatly pull the sides apart. I usually wind up bloody and of course the cuts aren’t clean – the ragged edges gouge the flesh. Fingers are at the biggest risk and it seems incredible that deaths have not resulted from slashed arteries. And then of course there’s the environmental impact. I’d like to make a vow not to buy items thusly packaged. Let’s see how long I can go before I run into something I need that can’t be found any other way.

mill shot

I’m sorry I missed August One. But here I am on two. I was actually in a place with no Internet connection, how strange did that feel? On the way to my brother’s house to help with the kids/move my car turned over to a hundred thousand miles. That’s 100,000 with five zeros. I am now the fave of the littlest of those children: An-def is my name. Middle child has a favored object: a small, child sized rainbow umbrella. She does everything with it, including sleep. My first night there I checked on them before I turned in and there she was, splayed out on her back left hand hanging over the edge of the bed, loosely holding the umbrella handle as it rested jauntily on the floor. She would absolutely not be without it.

Today I met up with another friend for a photo shoot in an abandoned mill. The oldest mill in Delaware, apparently. I injured myself climbing the fence – two pretty bad scrapes that tore my pants and are now cushioned in brightly colorful bruises. My tripod broke and I punctured my knuckle trying to make it do what the broken part was supposed to do. As a topper I lost the back of an earring, but the earring stayed with me. Through all this I did not complain. Rather I was delighted to be shooting in this enormously rich environment. Will post a shot or two after I get them out of the camera.