The Edge of Nowhere

This morning was one of those stupefyingly beautiful mornings. Driving Reade to Northridge High for 7 a.m. orchestra rehearsal, we sat at the light on the ridge above Sheep Draw and the whole snow-capped Front Range was laid out before us, from Mount Evans to the Medicine Bows in Wyoming, under the sparkling pink glow of dawn. Below, in the valley around the old HP plant and the Australian-themed public golf course was a thick blanket of fog. It's bitterly cold too: -8°F (that's -22°C) currently, the kind of cold that makes you wear your jacket's hood inside the car.

I dropped her off, drove south through the fog, a river fog type that's so thick you can't see the stoplight until you're within a half block, and then headed west again, towards mountains and work. The sun came up then, flaming orange ball visible through the fog, and when I popped out of the fog bank there was a yellow/golden glow to the cornfields, the roadside cottonwoods, the snowfields in the mountains. Micro rectangles of window glass in houses on the mountains 20 miles away reflected the sun back at me; the skewed quadrangle shadow of my minivan ran along the snow-covered ditches and sage brush to the front of me, and the stunning beauty of the morning made be glad to live here on the edge of nowhere.

This afternoon, around 4:30 p.m., I crossed the 50,00 word count plateau in NaNoWriMo 2004. I was way behind pace most of the month (I was at 11k on Nov. 17, and still at 21k as late as the morning of Nov. 24, and only with a couple of near-heroic days (if I say so myself) did I claim a coveted winner's button. I put up 7007 words today, 10,403 word yesterday, and 5694 on Friday. So the four-day weekend saved me, as expected, with a little assist of taking this afternoon off from work to finish up.

The novel itself is showing some progress. The first 20k was mostly just wandering around, looking for people and things they could do, but it seems I hit my stride around then and while it's not finished (maybe I'm 2/3 of the way?), I'm done with 10,000 word days for sure. I like the story and the people, too. So not only did I clear the magic 50k mark, I like what I've got.

My pal Jared cleared the 50k hurdle on Thanksgiving, and my brother was approaching the half-way point when I talked to him last night, which was his goal this year.

See you next year, NaNo folks. And you, too Tabers. You can do it with us next year.

Jim! He cleaned up in the 2004 Thanksgiving Weekend Scrabble tourney. We played first one to 1000 points, and he got there first, winning four games. Kristen also topped 1000 points, and won twice. Joy and I both had lousy lousy letters (we did!) and failed to even collect 850 points in the seven games, altho' she at least won one.

Jim also took two one-on-one games from me, getting his only lead in the second game we played when put down OCEANS to clear his rack and pick up 15 points from me, because I was holding WAX and two Us, ready to play WAX on a double-word score hook, which would have secured the victory. But alas it was not to be. We'll get him at the 2004 Christmas Weekend tourney, I'm sure.

(P.S. to Nick and Terry: Yes, we played by the official and normal rules, unlike some people we know.)

Driving to work today, a ring-necked pheasant flew up out of the snowy field to my right, crossed over the icy blacktop of U.S. 34 and landed near a sign promoting a new real estate development.

It started snowing Saturday afternoon sometime (we were down in Boulder County playing Scrabble at the time) and it kept snowing all day Sunday and into the night. We got a good five inches so far here on the edge of nowhere, the second measureable snow of the year (if you're keeping score at home, Maddog) and the first big snow.

Westley! Can you believe it? Kristen took Westely into the dog show ring for the first time yesterday/Saturday morning, down at the Southern Colorado Kennel Club show at the state fairgrounds in Pueblo. She did not fall down (which was her main preshow goal); he did not trip her, and he came back with three ribbons: first place for best puppy (he was the only one...), a winner's ribbon for best dog (read: male; he was one of two) and a "best opposite sex" (read: second place overall, of three dogs) in the main Spinone 'winners' competion. I don't know what it all means. But it was fun.

It's a balmy Thursday morning here on the edge of nowhere. We've walked the dogs, admired the painterly sky, packed up and are getting to the final stages of hitting the road. Yes: We're going somewhere!

We'll be off planet here for a few days, hitting Jim and Joy's today for food and fun and Scrabble (using official rules...), then Friday Kristen and I are leaving the kids and the two old dogs at their grandparents and we're driving down to Pueblo for a dog show. Kristen is going to show Westley, who celebrated his six-month birthday a few days ago and is thus eligible for puppy class competition and experience.

If I get the computer out at all in the meantime, it'll be to hack away at the NaNo. Picked up some 3500 words late last night and this morning, and reached the halfway point, a little beyond even. Still, I have to find some way to come up with nearly 4500 words a day for the next six days to make it. It's gonna be rough. But it's gonna be.

Yep, 6200 words I wrote on Saturday, and not just in a single day, but in about three hours of work. This factoid impresses my brother, apparently, who says he can get 1500 words in two hours. When I'm rolling I can type about 1800 words an hour (more if they're shorter words....)(of course, that's only 30 words a minute, a crummy rate for even a lousy typist); when I'm dragging and forcing it I can still excrete (?) 1200 or so words per hour. Of course, most hours of the day I write nothing -- zero fiction, unless you count the propaganda I spew at work -- and am lucky (this month) if I can get even 2 percent of my total alive hours into typing/writing time. (That would be about 4 hours a week, for the more literal minded of us). Not quite enough to crank out the 50k needed in November to be a NaNo winner. Two hours a day? I'd be there with a week to spare, as I have been the last two years.

My brother also suggested I must have a dynamite story to have such high word counts when I write. Dynamite story? Hard to say. It's engaging to me... but I have no idea if anyone beyond me would find it interesting. It is fun to see how the characters take over a story, though. If you can dream up a half-dozen people and set them free in a well-imagined world, you've got a novel. Doing it takes some of the magic out of the process, but then I'm more convinced than ever that there's not a lot of magic involved in writing a novel, just a bit of dedication, a spark of creativity and a lot of hard work and keyboard time. Putting in the time, like any endeavor of course, is that matters. What did Woody Allen say? "Eighty percent of success is just showing up."

Of course, there's plenty of writing magic in a good novel.

Bottom line is I still have crazy dreams of reaching 50k this month, but as I'm still sitting at 21,000 or so, I've got 29,000 words to go. And a glance at my calendar now shows exactly seven days left. That's 4200 words a day. Serious typing ahead of me on this coming holiday weekend.

Ouch.

Last night, laying in bed around 11:30, we hear the distinctive barking/yipping of the neighborhood coyotes through the cracked-for-air window. Coyotes. They're yipping down by the river. A few weeks ago, I was driving home from somewhere in the late afternoon, and I turned the corner at the top of hill by our house and there was a coyote trotting/weaving down the sidewalk. He veered into the street, and then ducked into the space between our house and the neighbor's house to the south. There's fences there, of course, this being the suburbs, and some low bushes. Disappeared.

This might be the edge of nowhere, but it's also a large, paved suburban city pushing 80,000 people. I can walk due south for probably three miles and only be in subdivisions and neighborhoods. Going east, it's probably a good ten miles before I get back out in the open country. North: a cram-packed mile, as you can see from the windows up here on the second floor. And west, towards the now snow-capped mountains, it's a half-mile, but if you visit us in two years, it'll be more like three miles. They're plowing it under. That's the bad news, I guess, if you believe in value judgments (and/or share my values). The good news is I can still hear the coyotes yip yip yipping at night.

It started snowing early Saturday here and it snowed all day and into the night. The first measurable snow of the season, although I didn't measure it. It snowed for a while on Halloween night, of course, as it
nearly always does here. And we saw a few flakes in the sky a few weeks back. But none had stuck until yesterday. Westley, the new dog, discovered romping. He romped and ran in the snow, having a grand old
time. And Sunday morning, when the sun came out, it had all melted off the driveways and sidewalks. Perfect!

In which I start a feud and respond to Krell (see below), thusly:


Of course, in your part of the world (Texas), and definitely in my part of the world (edge of nowhere), there are plenty of "folks" who would disagree with my middle assumption. My congresswoman, for example.

There are also plenty of folks who laugh at me for my anti-violence beliefs, and would openly mock me (if they weren't so kind to my face) for being more concerned about my kids wearing camo than my son choosing to wear a skirt to school tomorrow. Aside from the simple fact that my kids don't seem to be the type to get too involved in school spirit days and would refuse to dress up in either case, why does this bug me?

It bugs me for some of the same reasons it seems to bug you. First, I laugh at those Red staters, your neighbors and mine, who beg and plea for a "culture of life" in support of the unborn and yet eagerly and perhaps even hungrily (in Texas's Bush governorship days) kill people in the state-run electric chairs. They support the death penalty and support a culture of life at the same time? Can't they think?

Huh? These are the same people, by the way, who swerve their SUVs with the "Respect Life" Colorado license plates through traffic, ram through yellow lights and give me the bird as they cut me off on the freeway. I guess they mean they respect the life of the unborn (preborn? nonborn? clumped masses of wet humanoid cell tissue?) while putting in peril those of our lives who are just trying to make a go of it up here on the surface of planet earth and get to work on time.

(These same cars also seem to have a preponderance of those yellow ribbon-support our troop-magnets cheering when our president and his administration are bombing the living crap out of another civilization on a foundation of lies, you call that a culture of life? but I think that's a different post.)

It bugs me because I was raised to think for myself and it pisses me off when people turn off their brains and let their neighbors or their preachers tell them how to think. Or TV. Or advertisers. Or talk radio. Or their right-wing corporate owned media. I want to holler, think for yourself, people.

It bugs me because I believe in the Constitution, and the freedoms it gives us, the freedom of speech, of (or from) religion, to be left alone, to arm bears and of our inalienable rights for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That's all I want for my family, to be able to pursue happiness the way we see, and to be left alone by people who think my lifestyle choices suck. And I want to leave them alone, too. Until they start picking on my like Tyson does to your three-year old. Then we have to defend ourselves.

I love your enthusiasm and vigor for this fight. I like that you're pissed off too, enough to defend Texas and Red Staters everywhere, even if you (here I'm lobbing you a flaming, too obvious grenade at your Subaru driving feet) seem pissed at people who are sorry we elected our president a second (first?) time. because yes, we are all Americans. The religio-ignorant and the pseudo-intellectual alike because we all live here in these purple states of America together, even those of us on the edge of nowhere. Yes, we cannot rollover and just post 'we're sorry' pictures. We can't just plop down our $11.95 for a "Don't blame me, I voted for Kerry" t-shirt. We can't just let the values-quoting Republicans change the House ethics rules so your (heads up, cheap shot coming:) fellow Texan Tom Delay can keep his leadership job even if/when he gets indicted by a grand jury of your peers.

We have to do something about it. I don't know what we have to do, but we have to do something. And so I end with a Jerry Garcia quote that hangs on my 'fridge downstairs: "Somebody has to do something. And it's pathetic that it has to be us."

So I e-mailed a news story about that Texas camo day (see below) to my friend Krell, who's slyly been letting us know we should leave the edge of nowhere and move to Austin. I added my snarky "here's why I won't" comment.

He responds:


You should hear the TX School Board debate about how evolution should be characterized in my children’s future text books (uh, pretty much as a silly hoax).

Still, now I have to write an essay for your blog about your reaction to Camo Day. Not necessarily as a Texas defense, either. I keep taking note of subtle but pointed digs, particularly in the New York Times and the New Yorker (EA, careful of the intellectual company you may be keeping), about Texas and “The Heartland” – which seem to symbolize the Red States to the Blue team.

The thing is, no one can stay away from The Heartland or Texas. It is us, and we have to deal with it. As depressing and 1930s-ish (Taliban-ish?) as it sounds, there are battles to be fought against slapping “Evolution Only a Theory” stickers on high school science books. One can continue to remain aghast from the intellectually comfortable confines of the shrinking Blue Stadium, or venture out into The Heartland and, yikes, even Least Tejas to see what’s really going on. There are other reasons for the fear that causes one to cling passionately to stupidity. It’s kind of like if a 3-year-old keeps taking violent-looking swings at your 3-year-olds face – your (well, my anyway) first reaction is to pummel the kid. But, without getting too psychological, the toddler Tyson’s punches are a symptom of something else that have to be dealt with, right?

It’s easy to get really pissed off and freaked out by nasty, religio-ignorant displays of retro-suppression, but the roots of that behavior have to be battled rather than the symptoms. Why is pro-life so VITAL while children are ripped apart by bombs, children are starving due to battles/ethnic flare-ups, children are living in extreme poverty on the other side of the city not even worth a blink? How can so many people struggling financially get hoodwinked into future, much more extreme financial suffering by hollow promised of security?

I’m still formulating this line of thought – which has been building up and really hit home when I, at first, chuckled at the EA’s link (see below) to all the photos of people holding up “We’re Sorry” signs. On second thought, if I were looking at those “sorry” photos outside the U.S., I might be angry. A “sorry” pic before coffee and a quick look at the post-election spurt in our 401(k) balances – hey, not a bad consolation prize – would not cut it. At worse, it might look like the French (combustible comparison coming) shrugging and saying sorry after the Germans goose-stepped into Paris.

So this is getting interesting. Below I mention Sadie Hawkins day in a post about the Texas school district cancelling its cross-dressing day, which also had aspects of Sadie Hawkins Day as I remember it: it was that dance in junior high when the girls got to ask the boys. I suspect they had them in high school, too, but you forget I went to an all boys Catholic school. I was always afraid of that day in junior high because of a misguided fear that a girl would ask me out. Misguided in that they never did. Nothing to fear but fear itself and all that.

Anyway, check this out: Here is a holiday that originated from a cartoon. It all began in Al Capp's "Lil Abner Cartoon in the 1930s. In the cartoon series, the mayor of Dogpatch was desperate to marry off his ugly daughter. So he created Sadie Hawkin's Day. On this day, a race is held and all the single men were given a short head start. If the ugly woman catches her man (probably a girlie man, in Ah-noldese), he had to marry her.

This all took place in Dogpatch. Where's Dogpatch? Arkansas, of course. A red state. It all comes full circle.

I volunteered at work to pitch in and help get four needy families a Thanksgiving meal. Now, as a nonmilitant but philosophical vegetarian, I have my own idealistic issues to deal with about the realities of modern Thanksgivings, but as they like to say around work, I'm a team player. And I like to help. I really do. So this morning on my way to work, I stopped to get cookies and snacks for four families. I wasn't buying at Wal-Mart, of course, but going into Safeway I see they have a black-on-white laser printed "we're hiring" sign posted in the window of the automatic door.

Why are they hiring? They're preparing for the potential strike of their union employees. Why are they maybe striking? Because Safeway management is trying to hold the line on wages and won't give into the union's demands. Why? Because Wal-mart sells groceries here on the edge of nowhere. And Wal-mart staff is not unionized. Hence their food costs less (supposedly) than I can get at King Soopers or Albertson's or Safeway. Should I care?

You've probably seen this news item by now: The Spurger, Texas, school district cancelled a long-standing tradition where boys and girls reverse social roles for one day during homecoming week. It lets the older girls invite boys on dates, open doors and pay for sodas. (Remember Sadie Hawkins day?) It also calls for guys to dress like girls -- and girls like guys.

It's cancelled because a parent -- one parent -- complained about a dress-like-the-opposite-sex day has homosexual overtones. Instead, the district will hold "Camo Day" instead. Camo Day? Camo Day. Yeah, let's encourage our children to go kill stuff instead.

Now, Texas for the most part is Somewhere, although Spurger itself sounds like it may be on the edge of nowhere(OK, I can't even find it in the index of my road atlas, so it's quite likely on the edge of nowhere too, or judging by this story, it is actually nowhere). This story is a classic example of American's love of violence and fear of sex and reliance on lawsuits (or threats thereof). And of red state vs. blue state. Culture clash. And of other things that I can't quite express right now.

My initial, natural response (to my friends who want us to move to Austin, which, clearly isn't Spurger) is "things like this make me want to stay away from Texas."

I love the UNC School of Music. As gushy as that sounds, I admit it. We just got in from a night downtown at Foundation Hall, a barn of a building (really -- the interior is definitely 1960s education facility concrete with a 50-foot ceiling held up by these huge arching steel beams) just off campus. Took Connor and Annette to the percussion ensembles, a twice-a-year highlight of our musical calendar. Kristen was off with Westley at dog showoff school. The part I love best about these student concerts is simply the narrowband culture they bring to the edge of nowhere. The entire concert is percussion, some songs even designed espressly for non-pitch percussion instruments, played by the school's percussion students.

My favorite pieces are the ones that feel like Art, or those that are a cross between beatnik poetry and big city avant gardeism, right here on the Edge. One year the highlight was a guy throwing tennis balls at a gong. Another year featured trash cans. Tonight a guy had a broom handle for one song. One of the pieces tonight -- "Preachers, Thieves and Acrobats" by John Gibson -- featured each of the student percussionists taking a turn at the microphone and reading along in varying degrees of enthusiasm these southern micro-short stories. The only thing missing was the snapping of fingers. And maybe Jack Kerouac.

The last piece was stellar -- featuring guest artist Michael Spiro with the college's Percussion Ensemble I. They tore it up and Michael was fun to watch with his two kick cowbells, his shaker gourd on the kick and his four congas. He changed shoes to play. When he soloed, he made awesome rhythms -- four at a time, I think -- and it was fun to watch the rest of the group watch him, impressed, smiling, jamming, happy to be alive and sharing the stage. It was a kick. We might be the edge of nowhere, but this town has music.

Driving home from work tonight, coming out of the building into a low cloudy sky, I see they've started cutting -- I'm sure they'd say harvesting -- one of the many corn fields that line my drive to and from work. I'll have to check with Jared tomorrow and see what the deal is. Maybe they're drying to beat the snow that's predicted the next few days.

The hardest part of this blog, for me, is defining the audience, which of course defines the content. Am I writing it for the whole world, all of whom will never see it? Am I writing for my family and friends, most of whom will likely never see it more than twice? Am I writing it for myself?

Yes, I'm writing it for myself. But I also want an audience. So, what am I writing about?
I think what I want to do with The Edge of Nowhere is write about where I live. One thing I've said/thought several times is that it would be swell to have someone (i.e., me, in a continued, prolonged bout of unlaziness of which I seem unsuited) write a series of books like the Laura's Little House on the Prairie books about life when I grew up, in the '60s or '70s, or about growing up now (as my children are doing). Her books are wonderfully full of details and you get a tremendous sense of what it was like to live on the prairie in the late 18th century, which is when/where my ancestors are from. Someday, a hundred years from now, people will wonder what it was like grow up in the 20th century, and what it was like the first time we got a color television, or a VCR, or cable TV, or a cordless phone. What was everyday life like? What did the people who lived as primitively as we do now, today, think about their lives? How did they feel about them. So that's one thing I want to do with The Edge of Nowhere.

"Hero," which we saw in its re-release Thursday night at the second run cheap seats facility, is visually stunning, a true cinema experience. Be a perfect double feature with another fav of mine, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Saw "Saved" at home Saturday night and I think I liked it. Doesn't really work as a comedy (I laughed twice maybe) and it's not quite sarcastic enough considering the material, but it's almost there, and clearly worth watching as an alert to the dangers/mind-sets of born-agains (with Bush having four more years now). Might make my kids see it so they can keep their defenses up.

My favorite line was (of course) used in the commercials and previews:

--> Hilary Faye [throwing a Bible at Mary's back]: I am *filled* with Christ's love!

Also watched most of the always quotable "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure" (Ted: "As you can see, Genghis greatly enjoys Twinkies because of the excellent sugar rush.") on TV Saturday night and the Muppet/Bowie collaboration "Labyrinth" on Friday night.

And I can't say enough good things about The Incredibles, which we saw twice last weekend. The insurance office scenes (perhaps because they cut so close to home) are hilarious/perfect, and I like the whole James Bondian aspect of the last two-thirds of the film.

We drove over to Fort Collins (from the edge of nowhere to almost somewhere!) to check out some furniture. We're looking for a bookcase or something to hold our CDs, so the new dog doesn't chew them up (as he likes to do). Something with doors, you know. We made many stops. We got hungry. We got trapped by a stepford designer. We couldn't agree on food, but all that's another story. This story is about what we saw on the way there, when we were still cheerful and happy to get out of town.

Anyway, driving north out of town, across the river, through the yellow corn fields (they still haven't cut it -- and it's so late in the year I asked my pal Jared over at the Colorado Corn Association what the deal was, and it said it's because the corn is still too wet, he gave me some stat that it's at point three-two now and it needs to get down to point one eight or point one five, we think it's some sort of water-content measurement, but then both he and I are California suburban kids) and the plowed onion fields and the gray trimmed alfalfa fields with both kids and a friend in the back, Kristen spies high above the country road (remember, this is farm country, so because we're driving north, you can know we're on an odd-numbered road, CR 31 in this case) a large, dark winged raptor.

"Hey," she says. "Is it?"

We all stare up, in my case leaning in over the blue steering wheel to look up. We get closer, and sure enough, it is. Eagle eye, our son, confirms it. And he's a huge one. The first bald eagle sighting of the year in these parts. Winter's here, or at least getting closer, even if the calendar still says fall and the sunny 59 degrees doesn't feel like it.

I'm attempting to write my third NaNoWriMo novel this year. I'm off to a fairly slow start compared to my two previous efforts, but I urge anyone out there with even the smallest long-term desire to write a novel to hook up with Chris and these guys next year (or even this year -- it's not too late). The deadline is the thing, and no matter how busy/crazy your life is, there's no time like the present to do those things you've always wanted to do.

Is it possible to find American made bath towels? I was in the bathroom a bit ago, pre-shower, having just read a bit of Stephenson's Cryptonomicon about Yamamoto flying in a Mitsubishi plane during WWII, and I looked up to see the towel in front of me was made in China. I'm a proponent of Think globally, act locally. I'm also a believer the international community of humans. And I suppose my job is (distantly, but not unrealistically) potentially subject to outsourcing to a cheaper English speaking country. (I called my local cable company the other night to find out the channel number of the new Denver Nuggets channel and spoke to a woman with a definite sub-continental India English accent.) I don't think of myself as Republican buy-American type (I don't have a flag magnet on my car; my politics skew blue-state), but if I wanted to buy a good quality towel from a local source, could I do it? There must be a dozen stores in this town where I can buy a towel -- all the biggies (Wal-Mart, Target, Dillards, JC Penney, Kohl's, Ross, Sears, K-mart) are here -- but are all the towels from elsewhere, overseas, giving me low low prices for the exploited poorly paid work of others? Can I get a locally (in this case, contintentwide) made towel?

Made me wonder. Made me imagine a whole freelance article about the topic. Maybe I'll write it.

So I just finished a kick-ass four-song set earlier tonight on the wintry patio (cold breeze/blistering ceiling heaters) of a local/chain Johnny Carino's restaurant. I went electric after all (was considering an acoustic set) and did self-modified solo cover versions of Hotel California, American Pie, City of New Orleans (actually, Kristen wrote this one) and REM's Man on the Moon. Crowd (if 20 people is a crowd?) probably enjoyed it (if you were there, feel free to refute/confirm in comments). My singer-songwriter days seem to have begun for real.

What am I not telling you? Oh yeah, well, it was only an office party, a going-away gathering (spouses, kids, etc.) for a friend/co-worker/former boss Maria who's been doomed to leaving ever since our department went through a euphemistically labeled "transition" two years ago. Others lost jobs much more clearly and quickly; don’t think anyone lost one quite so slowly/painfully. Anyway, it was just as you expect/fear, and I only mangled a few chords (stupid Dm) and lyrics a couple of times. I think I was even louder than the Muzak.

So I live in this town that was founded as some sort of utopian society 140 years ago (plus or minus a few months). The 'go west young man guy' may have meant here. Anyway, the town is laid out nearly completely on a rigid/solid east-west grid. Avenues run north and south. Streets run east and west. It's a rectilinear two-dimensional cartesian grid. The buildings are not very tall.

My house, however, sits on sort of a cul de sac, and it's anchored off-kilter on a 45 degree angle to the rest of this flatland (but not as flat as you assume) world. I was just outside a bit ago, with the amazingly huge black void of clear November sky, a few pinpricks of stars viewable through the streetlight glare, and from my back deck, as the dogs were romping and taking care of their business, I saw the blue box glowing for the first time this year.

I see it frequently at night, in winter mostly, or rather starting about this time of year when the leaves have dropped. Our house is on something of a gradual, very gentle hill (see, not so flat), dropping to the north down to the local neighborhood river which is maybe a mile away as the geese fly, so we overlook this huge (former) field of now gridlocked suburbia, crops and rows of rooftops (various shades of composition asphault singles) instead of corn, which is probably what it was 15 years ago.

Because my house is off center, I have weird sight angles. Tallish mountains in Wyoming are visible from the upstairs bedroom windows. The snow-capped Front Range can be seen between houses from the upstairs office windows and from the kitchen, if you stand and stretch and look in just the right place. One of these weird angles allows me to see from the back deck right into the back window of a house some distance away. I see the large sqare blue glow from a huge TV. Always seems odd, and oddly comforting. This house is about four or five houses away, across my healthily lawned yard, across a fairly busy street (hence, east-west), and then down an avenue (N-S) on which I've never even been (in a whole other neighborhood) (this being car territory, mostly) although it can't be more than 500 yards from my house. Glowing blue box. Sign of winter's approach.

So. The blue tube of television is glowing again across several backyards. We're waiting for Kristen and Reade to return with the pizzas and a movie. All is right with the world here on a chilly Friday night here on the edge of nowhere.

I'm a guy who lives on the edge of the vast empty quadrant of North America. Feel funny talking about myself, but like all bloggers share an odd and uncontrollable urge to tell the whole wide world what I'm thinking about. Still testing how all this works.

The Enlightenment is being rolled back before our eyes. Yes, it scares me. This town I live in is as red as it gets (and I love that Republicans got stuck withe much hated in my youth commie Red) and there are a lot of reasons I choose to live here. Its Republicaness is not one of them.

How Republican is it? Our rep in Congress is Marilyn Musgrave, the notorious pink-suit wearing '50s hairdo styling mistress of the wacked religious right, you remember, the one-trick pony pushing the bigoted anti-gay-marriage act. I'm sure 65 or 75 percent of this town agrees with her. George Bush himself came to visit here right before the election, which we took as a sign of how desperate they were to win Colorado (I mean, if he had to come here to get votes...) but the visit turned out to be part of their strategy to turn-out the base. His visit cost us city taxpayers $30,000, and you could only attend the rally at the local rodeo/fairgrounds if you took a loyalty oath and promised to work/vote for Bush.

What really scares me is the lack of trust in progress or science or freedom of thought. My mom, who died just a few weeks ago, would've been appalled if she'd had any control of her thoughts, or ability to share them. Freedom of religion, she would've said, also means freedom from religion. I may not be a religious person, but I am a spiritual person, and frankly I thought the past 400 years of progress was a good think. I'm not ready to go back to the dark ages.

The Edge of Nowhere. Welcome!

Preblog flashback:
A Vienna Teng house concert is as cool as it sounds.... we arrived a bit early on Oct. 5 to help the Tabers set up some more chairs and make coffee, and Vienna (piano) and Alan (violin) and Marika (cello) were there, the instruments already set up and we got to talk for awhile. Alan's probably in his mid-30s and until January had worked for a software company until he gave it up to pursue being a professional/traveling/musician. Vienna herself worked for Cisco for two years, according to her bio. Marika gave Kristen's some cello bow-hold lessons/exercises (K continue to teach herself how to play); the kids smiled and had photos taken with them (Reade and Caitlin both had Vienna Teng shirts and matching gray pants -- look for a photo on her website someday....), and Reade gave Vienna a bead bracelet she'd made for her. The Tabers gave them "Greeley" gift bags, half joking, have serious attempt -- a Greeley Homes brochure, a book from Connie Willis, other stuff.

Then everyone else arrived and people chatted with Vienna and ate cheese and wine and whatnot. Most were friends of the Tabers, but at least four people showed up who learned of the show from the net, and it was fun to see these true fanboys get to see her in such a small setting.

Then we sat down, Vienna at her keyboard, the other two with the backs to the windows, the rest of us in folding chairs and couches, and Mike the meteorology PhD squeezed 35 people into his living room, entry and hall, and they played for about 90 minutes, mostly wonderful versions of songs off their two albums, two new songs and a couple of covers; they even played a sing-along encore, with us the 'crowd' singing the background chorus for her. Emma the two-year old finally fell asleep in Mike's car, and the sitter they hired to watch her sat in the car in the driveway with the sleeping child during much of the concert.

When it was done, we all ate cookies and brownies and people trickled off, Marika and my friend Jonathan the music professor had a friendly debate about the evils of corporate America and the needs of flyover country (a precursor red-state/blue-state conversation)(Starbucks/Borders prompted it, she hating them, he taking the position that yes they're evil but at least we in middle America can now get a good cup of coffee) and we helped them pack up, and Reade and Caitlin performed the hastily arranged Vienna Teng Dance in the now-cleared living room for Vienna and Marika while Alan counted/balanced the merch table and sorted/lamented the stickers, and Connor and Ben recited Monty Python bits, with Vienna joining in on several of them, and it was just a swell swell time.

They graciously sat for more family pictures and autographed posters and then we helped them load their minivan .... They play a Denver club tomorrow, AlbuQ this weekend and then on to Texas.