Friday, December 31
Media Diet: 2004
Here are the primary media input devices on the edge of nowhere for 2004:
Hard-copy newspapers: The Greeley Tribune, sometimes Denver's Rocky Mountain News,
Newspaper websites daily e-mail updates: Slate's Today's Papers, Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Washington Post, LA Times, New York Times, SLC's Deseret News, Arizona Republic.
Political/news blogs: ABC News' The Note, Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan,
Websites: The Onion, Arts and Letters Daily, the BBC, Slate, Salon, The Tour de France (July); the Tour of Spain (September), the Tour of Italy (May), CNN.
Magazines: Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, New Republic and Utne Reader (via hand me downs), UU World, AKC Gazette, um, Colorado College and Chico State alumni magazines.
Books: see below.
Television: The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Saturday Night Live, Rockies baseball, American Idol, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office (on DVD), a little bit of Lost, with a sprinkling of Whose Line, Most Extreme Elimination, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SpongeBob SquarePants and, when the kids control the remote, Disney channel tweener sitcoms.
Movies: see below
Hard-copy newspapers: The Greeley Tribune, sometimes Denver's Rocky Mountain News,
Newspaper websites daily e-mail updates: Slate's Today's Papers, Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Washington Post, LA Times, New York Times, SLC's Deseret News, Arizona Republic.
Political/news blogs: ABC News' The Note, Talking Points Memo, Andrew Sullivan,
Websites: The Onion, Arts and Letters Daily, the BBC, Slate, Salon, The Tour de France (July); the Tour of Spain (September), the Tour of Italy (May), CNN.
Magazines: Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, The New Yorker, Smithsonian, New Republic and Utne Reader (via hand me downs), UU World, AKC Gazette, um, Colorado College and Chico State alumni magazines.
Books: see below.
Television: The Simpsons, Desperate Housewives, Saturday Night Live, Rockies baseball, American Idol, Curb Your Enthusiasm and The Office (on DVD), a little bit of Lost, with a sprinkling of Whose Line, Most Extreme Elimination, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, SpongeBob SquarePants and, when the kids control the remote, Disney channel tweener sitcoms.
Movies: see below
Thursday, December 30
Top 10 films of 2004
It's that time of year. My top films of 2004, ranked, graded and sorted.
The first list is limited to the best of the 19 films I saw in the theaters (yes, I keep a list in my calendar…)(and "limited" is correct as you can see the types of films we tend to see skews towards a certain type of audience [of which we are members due to household demographics]). The second is all films I've seen this year (some of which may have come out in '03). The third list is movies I want to see, because as I think the first two lists make clear, I've missed quite a few potentially good movies.
The Edge of Nowhere's Top Ten Movies Viewed in Theaters:
A+ The Incredibles (saw twice)
A Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (saw three times)
B+ Mean Girls
B+ 13 Going on 30
B+ Hero
B Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events
B Oceans Twelve
B- National Treasure
B- Dodgeball
B- Around the World in 80 Days
Top Ten Viewed in '04 (all formats)
A+ The Incredibles (saw twice)
A Harry Potter and the P of A (saw three times)
A- The Terminal
A- Big Fish ('03?)
B+ Love Actually ('03?)
B+ Lost in Translation ('03)
B+ 50 First Dates
B+ Mean Girls
B+ Hero
B Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Top '03/'04 Movies I Still Want to See (alpha order)
American Splendor
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (I need to see it again)
Fahrenheit 911
The Fog of War
Garden State
I Heart Huckabees
Kill Bill (x2)
Laurel Canyon
The Life Aquatic ...
The Station Agent
Spanglish
Super Size Me
Team America: World Police
Top 10 Books of 2004
OK, these are just the top ten most memorable (of the 35 or so) books I read this year, in order of when I read them….
Zero: Biography of a Dangerous Idea - Siefe and Zimet
Pattern Recognition - William Gibson
Joe College - Tom Perotta
Inkheart - Cornelia Funke
Nine Horses - Billy Collins (poetry)
The Confusion - Neal Stephenson
System of the World - Neal Stephenson
Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson (which I re-read after reading the Baroque trilogy)
Plot Against America - Philip Roth
Rabbit Redux - John Updike
Honorable mention to The Pleasure of My Company by Steve Martin, the best book on tape we listened to this year driving across all of nowhere to northern Iowa to pick out our dog.
Wednesday, December 29
Small world
Despite my silence here, I've been thinking about the thousands and thousands (and tens of thousands) of victims of the tsunamis. There really hasn't been much to say, I guess. Here on the edge of nowhere, it's hard to know what to do beside sharing a few of our greenbucks. We're so far away from what's happening (literally, I went and found our globe and sure enough, the Indian Ocean is complete opposite side of the world) it feels abstract, distanced, another of those regular third-world disasters (famines, earthquakes, typhoons) that kill thousands and barely merit a headline in my local daily, just that increasing death toll number: 8,000, 15,000, 28,000, 52,000. Today I saw 80,000.
I read those numbers and it doesn't really sink in. While I tend not to watch televised news, because TV images can distort reality (the nature of which in itself is an endless point of discussion among my friends), I spent some time late last night on international CNN watching amateur video images of the waves of water swirling around various hotel complexes, people clinging to trees and so on. It was something to see. TV makes the world smaller at the same time it's used to divide us.
Also yesterday I saw a line in an AP story from Thailand: "Khun Poom Jensen, the 21-year-old autistic grandson of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was among those killed." Believe it or not, we have a fairly close connection to Poom -- three degrees worth in Kevin Bacon terms (same as mine to Kevin himself). Our friend Julie, who is the special education teacher at our children's school and who we know from our days at the UU church here, has spent much of the past three or four summers in Thailand working with Poom and his teachers, teaching them how to work with his autism. (Think also of this: She tutors the grandson of the king of Thailand. Thailand = Siam. She's Anna in the 21st century real world version of The King and I.)
In an e-mail this morning she says: "Yes, Poom was the student I have been working with. It is such a sad thing. His death is no more important than all of the thousands of others, but it is close to my heart because I loved him. May the world take the time to help all those who were affected."
Our local paper has the story. LA Times has his story, too.
Anyway, like I said, I guess there really isn't much to say beyond I've been thinking about it. And there's not much we can do beyond sharing a little bit of our -- in comparison -- extreme wealth. And reflect on how lucky we are. And remember that, if I'm four relationships away from the King of Thailand, all of us on this planet are much more closely connected to each other than we may think or our governments pretend to be.
I read those numbers and it doesn't really sink in. While I tend not to watch televised news, because TV images can distort reality (the nature of which in itself is an endless point of discussion among my friends), I spent some time late last night on international CNN watching amateur video images of the waves of water swirling around various hotel complexes, people clinging to trees and so on. It was something to see. TV makes the world smaller at the same time it's used to divide us.
Also yesterday I saw a line in an AP story from Thailand: "Khun Poom Jensen, the 21-year-old autistic grandson of King Bhumibol Adulyadej, was among those killed." Believe it or not, we have a fairly close connection to Poom -- three degrees worth in Kevin Bacon terms (same as mine to Kevin himself). Our friend Julie, who is the special education teacher at our children's school and who we know from our days at the UU church here, has spent much of the past three or four summers in Thailand working with Poom and his teachers, teaching them how to work with his autism. (Think also of this: She tutors the grandson of the king of Thailand. Thailand = Siam. She's Anna in the 21st century real world version of The King and I.)
In an e-mail this morning she says: "Yes, Poom was the student I have been working with. It is such a sad thing. His death is no more important than all of the thousands of others, but it is close to my heart because I loved him. May the world take the time to help all those who were affected."
Our local paper has the story. LA Times has his story, too.
Anyway, like I said, I guess there really isn't much to say beyond I've been thinking about it. And there's not much we can do beyond sharing a little bit of our -- in comparison -- extreme wealth. And reflect on how lucky we are. And remember that, if I'm four relationships away from the King of Thailand, all of us on this planet are much more closely connected to each other than we may think or our governments pretend to be.
Like news?
Bootlegged
Thanks go to Nick for sending me not only a bootlegged CD version of the Billy Bragg concert from earlier this month (you can check it out here)(he thankfully copied it to a CD for me since I've got this 20th century phone line 'net connex), and not only a compiliation CD of music that's been keeping him going the past month, but also an autographed Billy Bragg CD of his early singles. ("To Eric" even.) It's the second autographed gift I've gotten this year, after Kristen, our friend Kara, his mom and the US Postal Service conspired on my birthday to get a Neal Stephenson autograph on my copy of Cryptonomicon, thanks to Kara having grown up and been friends with Neal's sister/family.) You can't tell how big I'm smiling Nick, but I am.
Tuesday, December 28
Other edges
I guess there's more than one edge of nowhere:
Trainspotters, tea and biscuits. Historical Australian religious fiction. Good lyrics. The lodge at the edge of nowhere (check those kooky stilts, and I'm not sure I'd get Kristen to stay there.) Another blog. An enduring classic Alaskan memoir. Camping-based slasher/murder novel (Amazon. com Sales Rank: #737,455). Young adult (or old child?) North Dakota-based historical fiction. And finally, a (non Kevin) spacey edge of nowhere.
Trainspotters, tea and biscuits. Historical Australian religious fiction. Good lyrics. The lodge at the edge of nowhere (check those kooky stilts, and I'm not sure I'd get Kristen to stay there.) Another blog. An enduring classic Alaskan memoir. Camping-based slasher/murder novel (Amazon. com Sales Rank: #737,455). Young adult (or old child?) North Dakota-based historical fiction. And finally, a (non Kevin) spacey edge of nowhere.
Wal-Mart and Latin America
Here we go again, from today's NY Times:
"Across Latin America, supermarket chains partly or wholly owned by global corporate goliaths like Ahold, Wal-Mart and Carrefour have revolutionized food distribution in the short span of a decade and have now begun to transform food growing, too. The megastores are popular with customers for their lower prices, choice and convenience. But their sudden appearance has brought unanticipated and daunting challenges to millions of struggling, small farmers.
"The stark danger is that increasing numbers of them will go bust and join streams of desperate migrants to America and the urban slums of their own countries. Their declining fortunes, economists and agronomists fear, could worsen inequality in a region where the gap between rich and poor already yawns cavernously and the concentration of land in the hands of an elite has historically fueled cycles of rebellion and violent repression."
"Across Latin America, supermarket chains partly or wholly owned by global corporate goliaths like Ahold, Wal-Mart and Carrefour have revolutionized food distribution in the short span of a decade and have now begun to transform food growing, too. The megastores are popular with customers for their lower prices, choice and convenience. But their sudden appearance has brought unanticipated and daunting challenges to millions of struggling, small farmers.
"The stark danger is that increasing numbers of them will go bust and join streams of desperate migrants to America and the urban slums of their own countries. Their declining fortunes, economists and agronomists fear, could worsen inequality in a region where the gap between rich and poor already yawns cavernously and the concentration of land in the hands of an elite has historically fueled cycles of rebellion and violent repression."
Monday, December 27
Moonrise and ravioli
Kristen and I just came in from walking the dogs in the fading twilight, she looking like an Old Navy ad, me just like a guy semi-bundled in the cold. Coming down the hill, she spotted the smallest orange arc of the moon rising in Nebraska. We stood and watched it come up, werewolf eyeball orange, behind a few low clouds, tinted by today's brown cloud inversion-based pollution which comes down river to us here on the edge of nowhere. The moonrise was swell!
(Winter based note to Joe and Lesie: the snow is mostly melted off now, remaining only in the shady north-side spots.)
(Food-based note to self: And now I smell dinner floating up from the kitchen level, something ravioli-based it smells like, so I'm out of here.)
(Winter based note to Joe and Lesie: the snow is mostly melted off now, remaining only in the shady north-side spots.)
(Food-based note to self: And now I smell dinner floating up from the kitchen level, something ravioli-based it smells like, so I'm out of here.)
Observation 142
Playing many "games" of ping-pong with Connor over the last two days in my in-laws basement, and by "games" I mean mostly banging the ball off the room's walls, ceiling, floor and trying to score points by hitting it past your opponent, or hitting your opponent, or the wall behind him, or something else perhaps, I realized my son doesn’t care so much about rules or keeping score, he just wants to be creative. This has many implications for him, us and the world. Overall: I think it's a good thing. I think. Yes. Probably.
File under:
+ better place, making the world a
+ business culture, living in modern
+ contemplating our lives before they are gone, the privilege of
+ life, living a good
+ lots of laughter, the medical value and health benefits of
+ play, the beauty of
+ uninterrupted conversation, the importance of
+ unstructured time, the value of
+ business culture, living in modern
+ contemplating our lives before they are gone, the privilege of
+ life, living a good
+ lots of laughter, the medical value and health benefits of
+ play, the beauty of
+ uninterrupted conversation, the importance of
+ unstructured time, the value of
How to tug at heartstrings
Use video to sell a mission/vision statement, a product, candidate or favorite issue:
Fade up from black. Feature slow tinkly piano music. Something sad. Fade in to the images and fade out to a black background. Use slow pans across primary image content of the way things will be without your mission or vision, product, candidate or issue. Best to focus on damaged property, teary-eyed children, unfulfilled adults, war-torn streets, broken, crumbled dreams. Then, sell it! Drum beat kicks in. Create an upbeat rock and roll vibe. Start to pop color images: Happy children. Well lit product. Smiling candidate. Perfect world post issue acceptance. Get a deep voiced narrator to speak slowly, reading the company mission statement. Drag the words across the color images, extra bright/white/bright, a sans serif font, perhaps a bit fuzzy around the edges. Let upbeat music run past last images, fading finally to black. Rinse. Repeat.
Fade up from black. Feature slow tinkly piano music. Something sad. Fade in to the images and fade out to a black background. Use slow pans across primary image content of the way things will be without your mission or vision, product, candidate or issue. Best to focus on damaged property, teary-eyed children, unfulfilled adults, war-torn streets, broken, crumbled dreams. Then, sell it! Drum beat kicks in. Create an upbeat rock and roll vibe. Start to pop color images: Happy children. Well lit product. Smiling candidate. Perfect world post issue acceptance. Get a deep voiced narrator to speak slowly, reading the company mission statement. Drag the words across the color images, extra bright/white/bright, a sans serif font, perhaps a bit fuzzy around the edges. Let upbeat music run past last images, fading finally to black. Rinse. Repeat.
Two Don DeLillo movies?
Looks like it: "Game 6," premiering next month at Sundance, is a script by Don DeLillo, directed by Michael Hoffman (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Soapdish). It's a day in the life of a playwright who skips opening night to watch the Mets-Red Sox game in which Bill Buckner blows it. Robert Downey Jr. Michael Keaton and Catherine O'Hara among the notables. I like it already. And it looks like Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black, Addams Family, Wild Wild West) is working on a version of DeLillo's White Noise, too.
Year-end quiz
Thank you for playing. You scored 62.96% (17 out of 27 correct).
Sunday, December 26
Quake and wave
Saturday, December 25
CSI: Fireplace
Santa came last night. We're so glad. The kids carefully put out the traditional cup of milk and plate of cookies, using care this year to not touch the cup, carrying it between two pieces of cloth so as not to leave their fingerprints. With K's parents staying the night, Kristen and I slept on the living room floor, and I felt some sort of presence during the night and fired off two flash photographs. Did I catch Santa in the act? We'll see when we have the film processed (I know, I know, we're so analog).
However, we did get some proof, aside, y'know, from the full stockings, the mostly drained milk and the half-eaten cookies ("Why does he only eat half of every cookie?" Reade asked): After all the stockings were emptied and the presents unwrapped, Reade noticed the glass front of the fireplace askew, and Connor found a long red thread. They carefully placed the thread in a plastic evidence bag and tagged it, and then dusted (using baby powder) the cup for fingerprints. They didn't find any, and vowed next year to use a black cup so they can capture Kringle's prints.
However, we did get some proof, aside, y'know, from the full stockings, the mostly drained milk and the half-eaten cookies ("Why does he only eat half of every cookie?" Reade asked): After all the stockings were emptied and the presents unwrapped, Reade noticed the glass front of the fireplace askew, and Connor found a long red thread. They carefully placed the thread in a plastic evidence bag and tagged it, and then dusted (using baby powder) the cup for fingerprints. They didn't find any, and vowed next year to use a black cup so they can capture Kringle's prints.
Friday, December 24
Nothing to say
I guess I have nothing to say. It's cold out there, was 8 below zero when I went to bed, and I see with the rising sun it's up to 3 degrees F. Off work today. Wrapping of presents and walking of dogs is on the agenda. Maybe a movie. Maybe some Scrabble. The traditional drive around looking at lights tonight. Later, Santa comes (if we've been good enough).
How about this week's movies? Stayed up late to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Charlie Kaufman, Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet mindsweep conundrum. It was very interesting, had some amazing mind-bending shots, but I think I saw it too late at night (the rest of the house was sleeping) to totally get it. We watched Oceans 11 twice the night before, once straight through with Reade and Kristen, who I saw Oceans 12 with a few days earlier, and then with Connor with the director's commentary going, the student filmmaker and his dad. That was fun. Yesterday I came home to Connor on the floor in hour two (of four plus) of the extended version of the last Lord of the Rings movie -- Return of the King? And I see we have Napoleon Dynamite borrowed for today. Or tomorrow?
See. I have nothing to say. Enjoy the holiday, if that's in your future. Maybe I'll check in later; maybe I'll see you all on the other side.
How about this week's movies? Stayed up late to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the Charlie Kaufman, Jim Carrey, Kate Winslet mindsweep conundrum. It was very interesting, had some amazing mind-bending shots, but I think I saw it too late at night (the rest of the house was sleeping) to totally get it. We watched Oceans 11 twice the night before, once straight through with Reade and Kristen, who I saw Oceans 12 with a few days earlier, and then with Connor with the director's commentary going, the student filmmaker and his dad. That was fun. Yesterday I came home to Connor on the floor in hour two (of four plus) of the extended version of the last Lord of the Rings movie -- Return of the King? And I see we have Napoleon Dynamite borrowed for today. Or tomorrow?
See. I have nothing to say. Enjoy the holiday, if that's in your future. Maybe I'll check in later; maybe I'll see you all on the other side.
Robots!
Thursday, December 23
Snow
Winter's back. Tuesday night we got perhaps a half-inch of snow, enough to cover everything but not hide the grasstops. There were big cartoony flakes falling last night as the kids I had did our holiday shopping. Snowing again when I broomed another inch of powder off the driveway this morning, and it was cold, too. Windy. Feel in in your gloved fingers cold. Freezes the inside of your nose cold. Snowplows have been out all night cold. Drive slowly into work, following lined up pairs of red taillights. Flat sheets and twisting strings of dusty wind-blown snow rush over the highway, swirling and racing an inch above the blacktop. Mirrored dusty whirlpools rise in the wash behind the car ahead of me. Clumps of snow fly off my hood, blinding for a microsec, then the wipers flip and brush it away. Tip-toe across the snowy parking lot, tucking my chin into the wind. It's a cold wind. Little drifts are collecting around the tumbleweeds stuck in the building corners, looking like sand in a minidune. Get to my desk and check: 3 degrees on the F scale, negative 16 on the wind-chill, gusts to 25 mph. Snow still falling. Yep. Winter's back.
Wednesday, December 22
Tumbleweeds 5.0
Local paper reports, with a photo!: A city of Greeley crew was called to 4th Street about a block west of 35th Avenue where tumbleweeds had blown out into the street, creating a traffic hazard. A crew of seven with a front loader and two trucks went out shortly after the lunch hour to clear the weeds, said Jerry Pickett, streets superintendent.
Tuesday, December 21
Tumbleweeds 4.0
Two -- no, three, wait: four! -- more notes about tumbleweeds:
1: Driving home last night, after the most recent wind-driven invasion of tumbleweeds, it looked like a war zone out in the parking. The broken and destroyed carcasses of tumbleweeds were strewn about, sad, pitiful, piled in corners next to vans, stuck dragging under the passenger side doors of cars leaving the parking lot, broken in two or three amid the empty parking spots. Little tan sticks flattened on the pavement. It was a brutal attack, and while it appeared from the fourth floor the T'weeds were putting up a good fight, down there on the ground it was oh-so-clear the cars won. Oh, how the cars won. The humanity -- wait - oh the tumbleweedity!
2: So then I drive somberly home, lamenting the defeat of the great Wyoming and Montana Tumbleweed Army, and to cheer myself up we're watching The Simpsons, and wouldn't you know it Homer has abandoned Springfield and taken the family out to be a farmer and, when nothing grows, gets Lenny to mail him some P and he spreads the plutonium all over the unproductive land, over the tomato and tobacco seeds he's planted, and at first nothing grows but the glow, and as he stands in his overalls waiting for the tomacco plants to grow, a tumbleweed rolls through. That's two Simpsons' tumbleweed sightings right after tumbleweed storms in two weeks. Weird, huh?
3: What is it with me and tumbleweeds? I swear I've never obsessed about them before. And yet… there're so strange bouncing along, minding their own business, seeking their own journey, causing observers to wonder where they come from and how can there always be so many more coming up the hill, and seeing so many advance on the work complex is weirdly wonderful, a touch of nature in the corporate campus.
4: And my apparent neo-obsession is not to be confused in any way with these Tumbleweeds.
1: Driving home last night, after the most recent wind-driven invasion of tumbleweeds, it looked like a war zone out in the parking. The broken and destroyed carcasses of tumbleweeds were strewn about, sad, pitiful, piled in corners next to vans, stuck dragging under the passenger side doors of cars leaving the parking lot, broken in two or three amid the empty parking spots. Little tan sticks flattened on the pavement. It was a brutal attack, and while it appeared from the fourth floor the T'weeds were putting up a good fight, down there on the ground it was oh-so-clear the cars won. Oh, how the cars won. The humanity -- wait - oh the tumbleweedity!
2: So then I drive somberly home, lamenting the defeat of the great Wyoming and Montana Tumbleweed Army, and to cheer myself up we're watching The Simpsons, and wouldn't you know it Homer has abandoned Springfield and taken the family out to be a farmer and, when nothing grows, gets Lenny to mail him some P and he spreads the plutonium all over the unproductive land, over the tomato and tobacco seeds he's planted, and at first nothing grows but the glow, and as he stands in his overalls waiting for the tomacco plants to grow, a tumbleweed rolls through. That's two Simpsons' tumbleweed sightings right after tumbleweed storms in two weeks. Weird, huh?
3: What is it with me and tumbleweeds? I swear I've never obsessed about them before. And yet… there're so strange bouncing along, minding their own business, seeking their own journey, causing observers to wonder where they come from and how can there always be so many more coming up the hill, and seeing so many advance on the work complex is weirdly wonderful, a touch of nature in the corporate campus.
4: And my apparent neo-obsession is not to be confused in any way with these Tumbleweeds.
On the lawn a clatter arose
Thurber channels Hemingway writing The Night Before Christmas in 1927 for the New Yorker:
"Out on the lawn a clatter arose. I got out of bed and went to the window. I opened the shutters; then I threw up the sash. The moon shone on the snow. The moon gave the lustre of mid-day to objects in the snow. There was a miniature sleigh in the snow, and eight tiny reindeer. A little man was driving them. He was lively and quick. He whistled and shouted at the reindeer and called them by their names."
"Out on the lawn a clatter arose. I got out of bed and went to the window. I opened the shutters; then I threw up the sash. The moon shone on the snow. The moon gave the lustre of mid-day to objects in the snow. There was a miniature sleigh in the snow, and eight tiny reindeer. A little man was driving them. He was lively and quick. He whistled and shouted at the reindeer and called them by their names."
Monday, December 20
Let the sun shine
Tonight's the longest night of the year here on the edge of nowhere. There's plenty of empty black void up there in space tonight, only the brightest stars beaming through the town's twinkling holiday glow and the passing wind-blown clouds, the belt holding up Orion's starry disco pants in the eastern sky, the biggest of the Dipper stars hugging the northern sky, the partial moon floating high and sinking over the western mountains around 1:30 a.m.
The sun hasn't been very high in the sky the past few days, nor will it be for the next few days here at 40.43 degrees north. It looks like its stalled down by the southern horizon, spending a little holiday at the warm southern beaches (and who can blame it?). And we're not even half-way to the north pole. The 45 degree line is up in Yellowstone somewhere, Connor and I saw a sign this summer when we drove back from Washington state. I can't imagine what those of you north of here must endure during these darkest weeks of December, particularly the canyon dwellers in my brother's family.
Nine hours and 17 minutes of sunshine out here today, the sun rising at 7:18 a.m. to its set at 4:35 p.m. That leaves how much darkness kids? Right: 14 hours and 42 minutes. I suspect I'll have no trouble sleeping tonight. (Of course, if you're down under, it's the summer solstice you're celebrating probably with your own trip to the beach [say hi to Sol for us, mate] and some Fosters as your days begin to grow shorter and your nights longer….)
But we're up here in the cold inky winter. And so tonight we'll light candles to ward off the darkness, and flip the switch to turn on the lights adorning our house and Christmas (Solstice?) tree. While others celebrate the birth of the son, I'll be celebrating the rebirth of the sun. It's the same, if you ask me, a recognition of the long winter night and the joyful looking forward to the new solar year, to the fresh start, to living right and to hoping the sun comes back. (We're also post-moderns, so we know with as much certainty we can raise that the precise moment of the 2004 solstice will be tomorrow morning, Tuesday, December 21, at 5:42 A.M. MST. I'm sure Westley will wake us up by then, if Ruth Ann hasn't start her predawn whining first.)
Of course cultures around the world have performed solstice ceremonies for thousands of years, probably because of some ancient fear that the Sun (son?) god would never return unless humans intervened with gifts to the gods or some serious old school partying. Some say the Mesopotamians (in the news these days because of the Iraq war) were first with a 12-day festival of renewal, designed to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for one more year (sounds like Marduk could use some help again this year). But they probably get credit because there were among the first smart enough to learn to write stuff down and store it in a format that could be deciphered years later by British guys in pith helmets.
Neolithic people -- the first farmers, just like those who grow corn, beans, beets and onions around here -- probably kept a close eye on the big wheel in the sky (it keeps on turning) so they could better track the seasons and the cycles of planting and harvesting (the corn here is still too wet to harvest, although Jared reports its [scientific-type number measuring water content] is now 16.). One assumes they watched the movement of the moon (as it would be easier to track) and perhaps they celebrated the sun, too, with fertility rites, with fire festivals, with offerings and prayers to their gods and goddesses, with tiny plastic red-and-green cartoony action figures with their burger meals. And perhaps, our need to hold onto certain traditions today -- candles, wreaths, yule logs, cookies, Christmas cards, letters to Santa (please O please Kris bring me the sun! and a case of Fosters!) and the ever-popular gift-giving -- are DNA-level memories of our shared human past.
We can go on at this forever: lighting fires and bringing winter greenery indoors in order to persuade the sun to return with its warmth had their origin in the ancient Roman Festival of Saturn (the Sun). Northern Europeans -- my people, up there on that brutal northwest coast of Norway -- celebrated December festivals in honor of the Sun God with dancing, feasting and gift giving. The Scandinavians called it the time of yule. The Christmas tree had its origin in the Druid worship of oak and mistletoe. Don't forget Stonehenge. Or Carhenge. Or the hundreds of other ginormous structures throughout the world built to the solstices and the equinoxes. In North America, one of the most famous sites might be the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, built a thousand years ago by The People, ancestors of the Puebloans of today and even of those ancients who built the cliff-side luxary homes at Mesa Verde (from the low $150s!). The Chumash, who occupied coastal California (my old stomping grounds) for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, marked the winter Solstice with celebrations lasting several days, just as our kids mark it with a two-week vacation from school!
They might all be amused, and pleased too, to see that we're still celebrating the sun but in our own traditional ways: endless high-rotation plan of sappy pop songs, web-controlled animated front-yard spectacles, 12-days of Christmas sales, iconic characters like Rudolph and Frosty, beloved stop-action-motion television shows, cool Snoopy-based holiday jazz, associated villains like the Grinch and Scrooge, Kwanzaa and, my perhaps my favorite, Santa-filled Christmas stockings.
And what of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights that occurs around this time every year? Is it related to other celebrations of the season? As I understand it, and correct me if I’m wrong, Hanukkah is tied to both the lunar and solar calendars. It begins on the 25th of Kislev, three days before the new moon closest to the Winter Solstice (and, as a result, the darkest [no moon] of the dark [longest] nights). It also commemorates an historic event -- the Maccabees' victory over the Greeks and the rededication of the temple at Jerusalem (it says here the Maccabbees won with a three-pointer at the buzzer in the second overtime).
Again, I may be wrong, but it says on the internet that Jewish tradition does not celebrate the military victory so much as the miracle of the lamp lit in the Temple that burned for eight days on a single bottle of oil: dude, there it is again, the lighting of candles against the darkness, the rekindling of hope and dedication in a dark time (and you know everything on the internet is true!!! [<---those are for you, Krell]). I like this idea a lot. The light in darkness. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I am. And with those eight candles at the heart of the ritual, Hanukkah is wonderfully compatible with creating light to bring the sun back.
So, yes, the winter solstice signifies a natural time of transition and renewal. On these days, when daylight is at its shortest and the commercial pressure to celebrate "traditional" patriarchal televised advertised family Christmases (do it all! now! hurry up! and enjoy it, dammit!) is at its highest, take a moment to reflect and settle in the darkness for a few moments. Seek (ye) the light in you, and in the future, that calls to us as we celebrate gifts of light (the sun), of joy (the family) and (wished for) peace on earth.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
The sun hasn't been very high in the sky the past few days, nor will it be for the next few days here at 40.43 degrees north. It looks like its stalled down by the southern horizon, spending a little holiday at the warm southern beaches (and who can blame it?). And we're not even half-way to the north pole. The 45 degree line is up in Yellowstone somewhere, Connor and I saw a sign this summer when we drove back from Washington state. I can't imagine what those of you north of here must endure during these darkest weeks of December, particularly the canyon dwellers in my brother's family.
Nine hours and 17 minutes of sunshine out here today, the sun rising at 7:18 a.m. to its set at 4:35 p.m. That leaves how much darkness kids? Right: 14 hours and 42 minutes. I suspect I'll have no trouble sleeping tonight. (Of course, if you're down under, it's the summer solstice you're celebrating probably with your own trip to the beach [say hi to Sol for us, mate] and some Fosters as your days begin to grow shorter and your nights longer….)
But we're up here in the cold inky winter. And so tonight we'll light candles to ward off the darkness, and flip the switch to turn on the lights adorning our house and Christmas (Solstice?) tree. While others celebrate the birth of the son, I'll be celebrating the rebirth of the sun. It's the same, if you ask me, a recognition of the long winter night and the joyful looking forward to the new solar year, to the fresh start, to living right and to hoping the sun comes back. (We're also post-moderns, so we know with as much certainty we can raise that the precise moment of the 2004 solstice will be tomorrow morning, Tuesday, December 21, at 5:42 A.M. MST. I'm sure Westley will wake us up by then, if Ruth Ann hasn't start her predawn whining first.)
Of course cultures around the world have performed solstice ceremonies for thousands of years, probably because of some ancient fear that the Sun (son?) god would never return unless humans intervened with gifts to the gods or some serious old school partying. Some say the Mesopotamians (in the news these days because of the Iraq war) were first with a 12-day festival of renewal, designed to help the god Marduk tame the monsters of chaos for one more year (sounds like Marduk could use some help again this year). But they probably get credit because there were among the first smart enough to learn to write stuff down and store it in a format that could be deciphered years later by British guys in pith helmets.
Neolithic people -- the first farmers, just like those who grow corn, beans, beets and onions around here -- probably kept a close eye on the big wheel in the sky (it keeps on turning) so they could better track the seasons and the cycles of planting and harvesting (the corn here is still too wet to harvest, although Jared reports its [scientific-type number measuring water content] is now 16.). One assumes they watched the movement of the moon (as it would be easier to track) and perhaps they celebrated the sun, too, with fertility rites, with fire festivals, with offerings and prayers to their gods and goddesses, with tiny plastic red-and-green cartoony action figures with their burger meals. And perhaps, our need to hold onto certain traditions today -- candles, wreaths, yule logs, cookies, Christmas cards, letters to Santa (please O please Kris bring me the sun! and a case of Fosters!) and the ever-popular gift-giving -- are DNA-level memories of our shared human past.
We can go on at this forever: lighting fires and bringing winter greenery indoors in order to persuade the sun to return with its warmth had their origin in the ancient Roman Festival of Saturn (the Sun). Northern Europeans -- my people, up there on that brutal northwest coast of Norway -- celebrated December festivals in honor of the Sun God with dancing, feasting and gift giving. The Scandinavians called it the time of yule. The Christmas tree had its origin in the Druid worship of oak and mistletoe. Don't forget Stonehenge. Or Carhenge. Or the hundreds of other ginormous structures throughout the world built to the solstices and the equinoxes. In North America, one of the most famous sites might be the Sun Dagger of Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, built a thousand years ago by The People, ancestors of the Puebloans of today and even of those ancients who built the cliff-side luxary homes at Mesa Verde (from the low $150s!). The Chumash, who occupied coastal California (my old stomping grounds) for thousands of years before the Europeans arrived, marked the winter Solstice with celebrations lasting several days, just as our kids mark it with a two-week vacation from school!
They might all be amused, and pleased too, to see that we're still celebrating the sun but in our own traditional ways: endless high-rotation plan of sappy pop songs, web-controlled animated front-yard spectacles, 12-days of Christmas sales, iconic characters like Rudolph and Frosty, beloved stop-action-motion television shows, cool Snoopy-based holiday jazz, associated villains like the Grinch and Scrooge, Kwanzaa and, my perhaps my favorite, Santa-filled Christmas stockings.
And what of Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights that occurs around this time every year? Is it related to other celebrations of the season? As I understand it, and correct me if I’m wrong, Hanukkah is tied to both the lunar and solar calendars. It begins on the 25th of Kislev, three days before the new moon closest to the Winter Solstice (and, as a result, the darkest [no moon] of the dark [longest] nights). It also commemorates an historic event -- the Maccabees' victory over the Greeks and the rededication of the temple at Jerusalem (it says here the Maccabbees won with a three-pointer at the buzzer in the second overtime).
Again, I may be wrong, but it says on the internet that Jewish tradition does not celebrate the military victory so much as the miracle of the lamp lit in the Temple that burned for eight days on a single bottle of oil: dude, there it is again, the lighting of candles against the darkness, the rekindling of hope and dedication in a dark time (and you know everything on the internet is true!!! [<---those are for you, Krell]). I like this idea a lot. The light in darkness. This little light of mine, I'm going to let it shine. I am. And with those eight candles at the heart of the ritual, Hanukkah is wonderfully compatible with creating light to bring the sun back.
So, yes, the winter solstice signifies a natural time of transition and renewal. On these days, when daylight is at its shortest and the commercial pressure to celebrate "traditional" patriarchal televised advertised family Christmases (do it all! now! hurry up! and enjoy it, dammit!) is at its highest, take a moment to reflect and settle in the darkness for a few moments. Seek (ye) the light in you, and in the future, that calls to us as we celebrate gifts of light (the sun), of joy (the family) and (wished for) peace on earth.
Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.
New Year's Resolutions
I suppose this is vanityblogging at its best (worst?), so my apologies (and/but I'm still going to do it)... My new year's resolutions are posted now (see above) to beat the holiday rush:
Do mores:
+ Get outside more (running, hiking, mountain trips)
+ Write more (finish a novel and start distro to publishers/agents, circulate stories/poems)
+ Play more Scrabble (break 400 points? nah, that's too concrete for me)
+ Make more music (with Reade, with Connor, with friends)
+ Write up the family history
Do lesses:
+ Lose those 20 pounds again (and again; and again)
+ Watch less bad TV (I'm ok with the good TV)
+ Throw away crap
+ Clean out the garage
Do the sames:
+ Keep hanging with the family as much as possible (as long as they tolerate me)
+ Keep road-tripping
+ Keep reading good fiction (MELDAR 05: Joan Didion? Anne Tyler? Wallace Stegner?)
+ Keep on keeping on
Do mores:
+ Get outside more (running, hiking, mountain trips)
+ Write more (finish a novel and start distro to publishers/agents, circulate stories/poems)
+ Play more Scrabble (break 400 points? nah, that's too concrete for me)
+ Make more music (with Reade, with Connor, with friends)
+ Write up the family history
Do lesses:
+ Lose those 20 pounds again (and again; and again)
+ Watch less bad TV (I'm ok with the good TV)
+ Throw away crap
+ Clean out the garage
Do the sames:
+ Keep hanging with the family as much as possible (as long as they tolerate me)
+ Keep road-tripping
+ Keep reading good fiction (MELDAR 05: Joan Didion? Anne Tyler? Wallace Stegner?)
+ Keep on keeping on
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Autopen solves your signing problems
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Twerp
Dana Milbank in Sunday's Washington Post: "The Pentagon has acknowledged that Donald H. Rumsfeld did not sign condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq, but it said that from now on the embattled defense secretary would stop the use of signing machines and would pick up the pen himself."
Tumbleweeds 3.0
So, last week, I meant to tell you, there was a tumbleweed sighting on an episode of The Simpsons, the one where Homer wins a Harley in a dance contest with Marge at a '50s theme restaurant and he forms a motorcycle gang and then the motorcycle gang who had the name first come and take over his house. The owner of the restaurant was lamenting the closing of his place with a tumbleweed rolled by.
And now, here on the edge, the wind has come up again (National Weather Service reports winds 30-35 mph with gusts to 50 mph) and I looked out the window here on the fourth floor and I can see those marching, rolling, terrorizing tumbleweeds passing through. One just shot across the ice on the frozen corporate pond down below, and a flock of geese jumped skyward in fright and were blown off to the southeast, after those menacing tumbleweeds. Curse you tumbleweeds!
Sunday, December 19
Weekend, part 2
Had a swell walk today down along the Poudre river, Kristen and me and the dogs. Not much sign of live down there, however: just a couple of other hominids, mostly engaged in riding two-wheeled contraptions called bicycles; several dozen bovines, a few equines, a flock of pigeons and a few swallows or sparrows, small birds flitting in the trailside underbrush. Perfect weather, tho, sunny, blue sky, warm, or December warm: mid 50s.
Later, we went and saw Oceans 12, Kristen, Reade and I as Connor went with Annette and her friend to see Lemony Snicket again. Oceans was OK, a chance for the stars to get some screen time and look nice with a mostly secondary plot, but enjoyable, fine popcorn time. Came home and watched The Day After Tomorrow on DVD, horrible script, mostly wooden acting (Quaid looked awful) and some keen special effects, like the weather channel's Storm Stories on steroids. No thumbs up for that one. Anderson out.
Later, we went and saw Oceans 12, Kristen, Reade and I as Connor went with Annette and her friend to see Lemony Snicket again. Oceans was OK, a chance for the stars to get some screen time and look nice with a mostly secondary plot, but enjoyable, fine popcorn time. Came home and watched The Day After Tomorrow on DVD, horrible script, mostly wooden acting (Quaid looked awful) and some keen special effects, like the weather channel's Storm Stories on steroids. No thumbs up for that one. Anderson out.
The weekend
I like weekends. While Connor yesterday went with some drummer friends from school (and Kristen, and their music teacher) to the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder to bang on buckets and try to raise money for a set of marching snares, Reade and I cleaned house a bit and then hung our Christmas lights. I like Christmas lights, too, and I always have. I remember as a kid my dad hanging a single strand or two of multi-colored lights around the front edge of our house, and sometimes into the courtyard. We lived on a hill, and had a swell view of Santa Rosa, and you could see that strand of lights from Fourth Street when you drove around downtown, if you knew where to look
I also loved going to Christmas Tree Lane and Candy Cane Lane, a few blocks of spirit on opposite sides of town where everyone (I'm sure some were forced...) put up lots and lots of lights, some had plywood cutouts of Christmas figures and a few played music outdoors. It was magical. We have a similar street here on the edge of nowhere, but it doesn't have a clever name. It seems a lot more people hang lights now, than 35 years ago when I was kid, and my kids enjoy driving around looking at lights, seeking out the crazy houses where you still go 'whoa' because it's just too much. We have a traditional Christmas Eve drive where we listen to seasonal music and take in the sights.
I also remember as a child loving to lay on the floor of the living room, with the house lights off but the tree lights on, and just staring at the colored lights, squinting to make them fuzzy, and so on. We finally decorated the tree in our house this year, after it standing naked in the corner since Tuesday, us humans too busy to find time to decorate it. But we got that done yesterday, too, when K and C returned home (with a good experience and a mere $12 for the efforts), and then we went and saw the Lemony Snicket movie. The sets and production values were awesome, love the feel of the world they created, and while the first 45 minutes or so were just too much of Jim Carrey, once that was out of his system (it seemed) and the story was allowed to progress, the film grew on me. I liked it; would give it a B, or an 8, or three stars, or the little guy would be sitting up in the chair clapping (but not jumping out of it), or a thumbs up, or a silver star, or a red ribbon. THen we came home and watched (or slept through, in my case) The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart.
I also loved going to Christmas Tree Lane and Candy Cane Lane, a few blocks of spirit on opposite sides of town where everyone (I'm sure some were forced...) put up lots and lots of lights, some had plywood cutouts of Christmas figures and a few played music outdoors. It was magical. We have a similar street here on the edge of nowhere, but it doesn't have a clever name. It seems a lot more people hang lights now, than 35 years ago when I was kid, and my kids enjoy driving around looking at lights, seeking out the crazy houses where you still go 'whoa' because it's just too much. We have a traditional Christmas Eve drive where we listen to seasonal music and take in the sights.
I also remember as a child loving to lay on the floor of the living room, with the house lights off but the tree lights on, and just staring at the colored lights, squinting to make them fuzzy, and so on. We finally decorated the tree in our house this year, after it standing naked in the corner since Tuesday, us humans too busy to find time to decorate it. But we got that done yesterday, too, when K and C returned home (with a good experience and a mere $12 for the efforts), and then we went and saw the Lemony Snicket movie. The sets and production values were awesome, love the feel of the world they created, and while the first 45 minutes or so were just too much of Jim Carrey, once that was out of his system (it seemed) and the story was allowed to progress, the film grew on me. I liked it; would give it a B, or an 8, or three stars, or the little guy would be sitting up in the chair clapping (but not jumping out of it), or a thumbs up, or a silver star, or a red ribbon. THen we came home and watched (or slept through, in my case) The Philadelphia Story with Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn and James Stewart.
Counting
Let's count what's happened since the November election: 1) Nine of Bush's 15 Cabinet leaders have quit his Administration, except the one who should have as 2) Bush pledges to keep Don Rumsfeld, who won't support our troops in Iraq with the armor they need and then mocks them when a soldier asks him about it; while 3) Bush's mob-connected nominee for Homeland Security has to withdraw because he didn't follow immigration and tax rules for an illegal nanny, and 4) Bush pushes a scheme to financially and morally bankrupt Social Security by funneling tax money earmarked for our retirements to risky stock market accounts.
Meanwhile, 5) the Bush- and Republican-run federal government is still more than $430 billion in debt, 6) Bush still hasn't answered questions about why he walked away from his own National Guard service and 7) 175 more American soldiers have died in Iraq since Nov. 2, bringing to the total to nearly 1,300 deaths. 8) Bush hasn't even been inaugurated for his second term yet, but count me 9) unimpressed.
Meanwhile, 5) the Bush- and Republican-run federal government is still more than $430 billion in debt, 6) Bush still hasn't answered questions about why he walked away from his own National Guard service and 7) 175 more American soldiers have died in Iraq since Nov. 2, bringing to the total to nearly 1,300 deaths. 8) Bush hasn't even been inaugurated for his second term yet, but count me 9) unimpressed.
Corn and cameras
Are you like me? Do you live near corn, lots of corn? Have a camera? Maybe next year you can win the corn photo contest.
Friday, December 17
Overheard at work
"At times our propaganda is almost sincere... it's beliveable even… you know, at least we believe it."
Jazz combo
Last night we were treated to see/hear Connor (drums) and Reade (fiddle) and Ben (piano) and Katelyn (bass) play three classics with their school jazz combo. Opened with Ellington's "It Don't Mean A Thing" (if it ain't got that swing), slowed it down beautifully with "A Nightengale Sang in Berkeley Square" (on which Ben nailed his solo and Reade's tone was wonderful) and then kicked it back up with Prima's "Sing, Sing, Sing," powered by Connor's kickin' rhythm. I've got a bootleg if anyone's interested. (Connor and Ben sat in with the young jazz choir, too, giving them a nice solid wall of sound to try and sing over...)
Champ
We're thinking of my pal Champ today, who's undergoing some sort of disc/back surgery this afternoon way over on the other side of nowhere, out in central Illinois. Keep walking down that country road, dude.
End of fall?
After that last blast of snow (the five inches the Sunday after Thanksgiving) and below zero temps (three ofthose days the following week), we've been fairly mild. Warm even, warm enough that nearly all the snow is gone after sticking around (thanks to the cold temps) for maybe almost two weeks. A quickie storm blew through last night, we walked in snow back to our car after the concert last night, and drove a few miles in it, but aside from an icy back deck and the slightest dusting on the shady/cold spots around the yard, there was nothing to show for it. And the forecast for the final week of fall looks perfect: sunny, highs in the upper 40s or low 50s, and lows in the mid 20s. A nice weekend to finally get the lights up outside, if we can swing it after a very busy week.
Space is the place
Thursday, December 16
Fuzzy curtain of sky
I seemed to have lost Wyoming today, if only temporarily or by atmospheric illusion. I was standing early this morning at our second-floor bedroom window, threading my one and only belt through my uniform pant loops, looking through the winter branches of that tree we have there (mood destroyer: this would be a good place to show off my arboreal/horticultural knowledge of suburban plant life and name the tree, but I don't know what this tree is -- an ash of some sort, maybe? -- so instead, for this discussion which actually ends now, we'll call the tree "Robert") to the north (resuming, here), over the thousand rooftops looking to the north and there was this pale blue blanket of downy sky blocking my fifty-mile view of the lumpy rock tops at Vedauwoo and the Medicine Bows, which sulk up there on the northwestern horizon on clear days.
It was a flat matte wall of sky, as if someone pulled a shade down at the Wyoming border somehow, a cloudless but fuzzy curtain of sky . The sun came up a few minutes later and the bottom third skewed to the pink end of the spectrum, and I rubbed my eyes (we were out kind of late last night, late for forty-something edge-of-nowhere dwellers at that Chris Isaak concert in Boulder -- he must be the clown prince of campy/kitschy rock-a-billy crooners: the show as a kick, full of Xmas tunes from his new album and his standards, and his band is super tight! -- and when we came out of the show a nice quiet Christmassy snow was drifting through the large barren trees on the CU campus) and refocused (my eyes, resuming again), and yep, sure enough, that's what the Wyoming sky looked like. And then the day was here.
Wednesday, December 15
Tonight
Fact
When the President gets bored during today's White House economic conference, he has to pretend to listen.
Tuesday, December 14
Frost
A soft frost this morning, the car windows covered in cross-hatched tracings, looking like Frankenstein scars or architectural drawings of ancient ruins. The lines of frost look green on the auto glass, murky ice and when the scraper lifts them they disappear easily into white snow, brushed away with a flick. The rear window in the mirror looks like a children's drawing, a three-year-old's idea of sky, scribbled into totality. The sky is cloud free, ice blue, the sun an unseen white spot on the eastern horizon behind the rows and rows of suburban houses, our wooden treetops yellow in the glow of dawn.
Monday, December 13
Bandstand
Earlier tonight I had the pleasure of sitting in the audience at the University High winter concert, featuring Connor on drums. He plays with both the middle school and high school bands, and he and a pal sat in to provide some percussion for one of the high school select choir's songs. The percussion section was particularly brilliant tonight, I must say, and overall the bands did pretty well, considering there can't be more than nine or ten kids in each group. And coming Thursday: Connor and Reade play with the jazz combo at the After School Arts Program performance, a trio of jazz standards that, as far as I've heard listening to them practice, rock. Or bop. Jam? Are swell!
Enjoy/annoy
Those who know me are well aware of my enjoy/annoy relationship with my daytime job. For example, there's this "Classic Edge of Nowhere" "post" about what I was up to, from 11:59 a.m. on Tuesday, December 16, 2003. That's almost exactly a year ago:
Been sitting in a meeting. A unit meeting. A meeting of units. Pieces. Parts of the machine. Cogs. Square pegs, or are we round pegs? Yes. Round pegs. Square holes. Called cubicles. Translating Bossspeak into something resembling communication. Or information. Now I'm sitting here typing, storing information that was once instead my head, in my brain, as waves and pulses and electricity, I'm converting to other bits of electricity and storing it outside my body. Soon you will read this stored information. On the phone were people. Voices, really, voices of people. More information stored outside their bodies. We read off paper, which of course is just more information stored as symbols on thin mulched strips of water and paper. Trees. Trees have information, too. It's different. Most of us can't use it. Or understand it.
So, now that meeting is over, I'll sit by myself for a while, a strip of blue sky visible above the cubicle wall, below the ceiling. Sometimes a white strip of cloud matter forms behind a jet. I think they call it a contrail. I'll see that, and if it's windy up at 30,000 feet, five, no, six miles up, the thin stripe of cloud will blow around. I may look at it. I may not. Mostly I'll be staring at other types of information. Text. Bits. Bytes. Pixels. All of it pixels. Information wants to be free. Much of the meeting was about trying to control various types of information.
So I'll take information other people "submit" to me and convert and repurpose it for general audience readership. I'll convert all to a solid healthy American G rating. Or B, for Boring. Most of it is boring. But because I have skills of this nature, I get to convert information from other less skilled people and make it more consumable. And maybe people, other round pegs, will convert this information and maybe they won't, ingest and digest and regurge it for their own use. Some may even internalize said information. It doesn't really matter to me. Information wants to be free. I help set it free, despite my job description saying I must control it instead. No one notices. And in exchange for my time in converting and repurposing information, the owner of these square holes will convert some of its information, from bits and bytes, through some phone lines to a repository of information that I don't own but have access too. It's called a checking account and it has a bunch of numbers and pixels associated with it.
Sometimes I can use my brain and hand to write other numbers and names on a piece of paper I carry around and trade my information written on these pieces of paper for other things, like paper cups of hot chocolate, or stuff I just consumed, cheese crackers and a manufactured can of sweetened, additive-filled water. Amazing. What a crazy world.
Still. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. The wheel of night rotates the stars around the sky. The solstice is coming, the goose is getting fat, let's put a penny in an old man's hat.
Been sitting in a meeting. A unit meeting. A meeting of units. Pieces. Parts of the machine. Cogs. Square pegs, or are we round pegs? Yes. Round pegs. Square holes. Called cubicles. Translating Bossspeak into something resembling communication. Or information. Now I'm sitting here typing, storing information that was once instead my head, in my brain, as waves and pulses and electricity, I'm converting to other bits of electricity and storing it outside my body. Soon you will read this stored information. On the phone were people. Voices, really, voices of people. More information stored outside their bodies. We read off paper, which of course is just more information stored as symbols on thin mulched strips of water and paper. Trees. Trees have information, too. It's different. Most of us can't use it. Or understand it.
So, now that meeting is over, I'll sit by myself for a while, a strip of blue sky visible above the cubicle wall, below the ceiling. Sometimes a white strip of cloud matter forms behind a jet. I think they call it a contrail. I'll see that, and if it's windy up at 30,000 feet, five, no, six miles up, the thin stripe of cloud will blow around. I may look at it. I may not. Mostly I'll be staring at other types of information. Text. Bits. Bytes. Pixels. All of it pixels. Information wants to be free. Much of the meeting was about trying to control various types of information.
So I'll take information other people "submit" to me and convert and repurpose it for general audience readership. I'll convert all to a solid healthy American G rating. Or B, for Boring. Most of it is boring. But because I have skills of this nature, I get to convert information from other less skilled people and make it more consumable. And maybe people, other round pegs, will convert this information and maybe they won't, ingest and digest and regurge it for their own use. Some may even internalize said information. It doesn't really matter to me. Information wants to be free. I help set it free, despite my job description saying I must control it instead. No one notices. And in exchange for my time in converting and repurposing information, the owner of these square holes will convert some of its information, from bits and bytes, through some phone lines to a repository of information that I don't own but have access too. It's called a checking account and it has a bunch of numbers and pixels associated with it.
Sometimes I can use my brain and hand to write other numbers and names on a piece of paper I carry around and trade my information written on these pieces of paper for other things, like paper cups of hot chocolate, or stuff I just consumed, cheese crackers and a manufactured can of sweetened, additive-filled water. Amazing. What a crazy world.
Still. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. The wheel of night rotates the stars around the sky. The solstice is coming, the goose is getting fat, let's put a penny in an old man's hat.
Poem of the week
Tumbleweeds 2.0
Reading an earlier post, my friend Bill notes this Outer Limits episode: "Traveling in the desert, a man and his wife have car trouble. They encounter a strange farmer. The farmer tells them a story about an alien landing. He claims to be resisting mental control by aliens. The husband and wife flee to the desert. They are surrounded by mobile, alien controlled tumbleweeds. The husband sets fire to the tumbleweeds, destroying the alien menace."
Sunday, December 12
Longmont Fiddlers
Yesterday we drove down to Longmont, across the brown winter fields with stupendous views of the Indian APeaks Wilderness and Longs and Meeker peeks. We went and sat in the lobby of a fairly large hospital in Longmont, a town to the southwest of here, and listened/enjoyed Reade and five fellow fiddlers fill the place with dancable Scotish jigs, reels, and other tunes. The kids sounded great, and it was fun to watch hospital patients and staff wander down to hear what was going on.
Lyric mangling 101
I'm notorious for my enthuiastic mangling of lyrics. Case in point: the post below. I've now heard the song 10 times since then, and it goes "Whoop de do and dickery dock" and the version I was hearing in my head is by Andy Williams, not Sinatra. Oh-and-two count on Anderson.
Friday, December 10
It's the holiday season...
(So whoop-dee-do and la-dee-da….the Sinatra version of that song kills me). Like good suburbanite parents everywhere -- heck, good Americans! -- we've packed the mid-December calendar. Tonight, the kids are busy so we're drivers. Saturday: Reade plays her fiddle with some other fiddlers at an old folks home in Longmont, and then we go to see the local version of the Nutcracker ballet back here on the edge. Sunday we're going to Denver with Jim and Joy to see a A Colorado Christmas, "a Denver holiday tradition for over twenty years featuring more than 300 performers on stage at Boettcher Concert Hall" with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra, Colorado Symphony Chorus and the Colorado Children's Chorale. The laptop will remain unplugged this weekend.
Next week Connor performs with his school bands on Monday evening, we see Chris Isaak (and Shawn Colvin) in Boulder on Wednesday, Reade and Connor both perform with the After School Arts jazz band on Thursday, and… live music rules!
Wangari!
"Peace on earth depends on our ability to secure our living environment. Wangari Maathai stands at the front of the fight to promote ecologically viable social, economic and cultural development in Kenya and in Africa. She has taken a holistic approach to sustainable development that embraces democracy, human rights and women's rights in particular. She thinks globally and acts locally." Read more.
Dude...
Thursday, December 9
Tumbleweeds
The wind came up today, just about 1 p.m., one of those atmospheric changes that forces the National Weather Service to issue high wind warnings and wind advisories and so on. The mountains are getting snow, three to eight inches they say, and we're getting wind.
I happened to be in the fourth floor break room at work when it came up, eating a burrito, reading Updike, the windows rattling, the sticks of winter trees bending and dancing, the evergreen shaking shaking shaking like a Polaroid picture. And then here came the army of tumbleweeds, flushed out of Montana and Wyoming, rolling, marching, cart-wheeling, plucky, spunky, heading southeast, always southeast. Across the field. Across the highway, past the open end of our three building horseshoe-shaped campus, on southeast. There's so many of them, all rolling in parallel paths, southeast. It looks funny, all of them bouncing southeast. A migration. A herd. A tumult of tumbleweeds? Serious. Resolute. Determined. So are these tumbleweeds.
Where do they go? And what do they do when they get there? Is there a huge pile of tumbleweeds in Oklahoma, tucked up against some chain link fence along I-40? Do they roll all the way across Texas, sun themselves on the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico? Are they going for a swim in the Gulf of Mexico?
Billy Bragg - live!
So I "sent" Nick, who's in London this fall, to see Billy Bragg, one of my top 10 all time performers, in exchange for a full report. Nick has now posted his full report. Thanks dude!
No beliefs?
No beliefs? Well, that might be a bit too much. You have to believe in some things: Santa Claus, for example. Rally caps. Guitar solos. Mimes. A toasted grilled-cheese-and-onion sandwich (on sourdough!). Road trips. That Lee Harvey Oswald had someone on that grassy knoll. Children. Bigfoot. The future.
Still: Whenever self-appointed fanatical religious leaders start saying everything they do in the name of Christ is perfect and infallible and we're either with 'em or agin' 'em, we're either gol'durn Amuricun patriots or not, then it's time to get nervous. This is what scares me today: This kind of religious participation in government makes me a little jittery, same as when Colorado's own James Dobson weighs in on something
And yes, perhaps I do need to get that Roth book out of my system. I've overcome my west coast public school bias and have started an Updike classic: "Rabbit, run."
Say it ain't so
Gasoline. Health-care insurance. Baseball ticket prices. And now: AP reports Procter & Gamble Co. on Thursday announced a 14 percent price increase for its Folgers roast and ground coffee, the biggest rise in a decade, because of sustained increases in the commodity cost of green coffee.
Did you know that here on the edge of nowhere as recently as four years ago we had no Starbucks franchises? And now, we have, um, hang on, let me count, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven? Eight? Still, we prefer Daz Bog Until they put in the huge flatscreen TV. What's that all about? We might have to return to Margie's Java Joint.
Wednesday, December 8
Why I send Christmas cards
Why I send Christmas cards (when I'm not a Christian), and a history of nearly everything else while I'm at it (in five parts):
Part I
In the beginning was the void, they like to say, and the void was all there was, and is, and ever will be. And then a spark gets into the gunpowder, or a trigger is pulled, or a string released, or a first step on thousand mile journey is stepped, or a ganglion fires sending an impulse down the nervous system or it or she or he who is nameless and has no name and no existence buy much influence over many flips the toggle, and there's like this massive thermo-meta-explosion, and everything that ever was is no more, and that which was not now is, and everything expands at a rate and speed and distance that even your advanced meat computer thinking brain can not comprehend, and the void that was and is is now filled with the perception of what was and will be, and a million billion trillion weeks go by, plus a few days, and this space stuff coagulates like a scab on an elbow or knee following a skateboard accident and there are masses of starstuff, explosion excretion, spaceboogers spinning and spinning into the widening gyre, the center cannot hold, mere anarchy is loosed upon the streets, sometimes the light's all shining on me and following the well-established rules of gravity and space-time and other Newtonian and Einsteinian rules, plus some that resolutely remain undiscovered as of yet, these masses of space stuff orbit into solid masses for a million billion weeks, and then clouds form and a lightning bolt -- thunder bolts and lightning, very very frightening! -- happens to accidentally (or is it on purpose!) hit a pond of scummy organic carbon-based compounds at just the right time of night, or dawn, metaphorically, in the right conditions, with the right temperature and humidity and so on, and two become one, mixed just right, completely, totally accidentally...
Part II
And a lightning bolt happens to accidentally hit a pond of organic carbon-based compounds at just the right time of night, and two become one, mixed just right, completely, totally accidentally, correct me if I'm wrong, but then that one becomes two, and cells grow, and there's just no stopping these cells, and they become four and sixteen and two-hundred fifty-six and two thousand forty-eight and so on and so on and then you've got giraffes and spiders and emus walking around this blue green space orb and monkeys start talking and building SUVs and collecting fire and stamps and beating the crap out of the tribes that live across the river or over the mountain, hording the natural resources they have because of some serious overpopulation problems because making babies is like so totally much fun so these premodern old guys create these elaborate noun-and-verb-based systems to explain how everything works, how it used to be better when they were kids walking to the cave uphill through the snow and they're really swell stories, see ...
Part III
So these premodern old guys create these systems to explain how everything works, how it used to be better when they were kids and they're really swell stories, see, so we the people like these stories because they seem to make sense to our monkeybrains, so we tell them over and over and over (and over) again, and then some wise guy like me writes them down but the problem is their perceptions are wrong, maybe, or probably, again, correct me if I'm wrong, and these stories get mutated into ideas, and then Big Ideas, which become guidelines and then rules and laws and governments are formed to enforce these philosophies and systems of thought and rules and then we decide that our rules are better than the rules and ideas of the people over the hill or across the river, and then every few years, when one side or the other exploits the idea of one of the smarter guys on their side, who comes up with a wheel or iron or catapults or rockets or germs or memes or some other technology, one side or the other goes off and beats the crap out of the other side for awhile until the other side steals the new idea or adopts the same meme and catches up, and then improves on it, even though if you look at their original sources of their stories, and the origional content, they're very similar, very very similar: be nice to each other, get along with each other and so on ...
Part IV
Even though if you look at their original sources of their stories, and the original content, they're very similar, very very similar: be nice to each other, get along with each other, don't take crap that's not yours and so on, good common sense tips for living together with few resources in small bands or tribes. Then a better system comes along and we co-opt the old systems, and then a better system comes along and we co-opt both of the older ones, and so on and so on, and then we're at the shopping mall, decorated in non-offensive holiday greenery, boughs and wreaths, and lights, lots of pretty pretty lights (because on these, at least for now, we who are somewhere and we who are nowhere, and even those of straddling the edge of nowhere, can all agree, since it goes back to the original nature-based systems that's hardwired into the nervous systems of the various descendants of all those apes) and we're buying stuff with batteries not included and sending paper-based missives to friends and family with little one-page recaps of what happened this year...
Part V
And we're buying stuff with batteries not included and sending analog paper-based missives to friends and family with little one-page recaps of what happened this year (or 19k worth of pictures) because even though we're friends and families, we're all spread out over this vast blue orb, torn from our little tribes by the needs to create vast income to pay for petroleum to fuel our SUVs and power mowers to cut our lawns in summer and to consume, yes to CONSUME stuff and so we move all over the empty landscape and live by oceans and rivers or out here on the edge of nothing and we don't talk to these friends and families so much as we used to so we write little annual notes and make photocopies and mail them all over tarnation, even to the friends and families who are so close to you they know you better than you even know yourself and you speak to them every day about everything worth knowing and doing and being.
Epilogue
And to think some people say I think too much.
(Thanks to Champ Payne for making me explain it.)
(Thanks to Champ Payne for making me explain it.)
OK, time to write
Whew. OK, time to go work on my novel before all the GreNoFiMo folks start freaking out. (Doesn't that sound cool? 'Go work on my novel.') Check out the photo below, too!
See?
A beautiful day
Stunning. Cloudless high blue Colorado sky. Long shadows from the early morning low slanting sun on the corn-stubble, snowy fields. White snow-covered peaks. A ferruginous hawk, or maybe he's a rough-legged one, sits atop a small golf course cottonwood scanning for rodents. The boarded up Treasure Island Motel Cafe sits lonely and lost along the road. A farmer with a German Shepard riding shotgun. Yes, a fine day.
And, to top it all off, it's my son's 14th birthday. Happy Birthday, Connor.
And, to top it all off, it's my son's 14th birthday. Happy Birthday, Connor.
Tuesday, December 7
Larry King, film star
When I saw Larry King playing himself in National Treasure, which we saw Saturday night, I leaned over and asked Kristen in how many movies has Larry King played himself? (Actually, I didn't ask it in such a
gramatically pure way and most likely ended my question in a preposition, which doesn't really bother me until I typed it up here...) Not counting made for TV movies, it looks like National Treasure is his fourth film of this year (tying his personal record for movie appearances in a year), and his 25th overall playing himself.
The complete list: National Treasure (2004); Catching Kringle (2004); Mr 3000 (2004); The Stepford Wives (2004); John Q (2002); Last Party 2000 (2001); America's Sweethearts (2001); The Contender (2000); Disney's The Kid (2000); Enemy of the State (1998); Bulworth (1998); Primary Colors (1998); The Jackal (1997); Mad City (1997); An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997); Contact (1997); The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996); Open Season (1996); Spin (1995); We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993) (voice); Dave (1993); The Exorcist III (1990); Crazy People (1990); Lost in America (1985); Ghost Busters (1984). (Leave it to Ivan Reitman to see a good idea first).
He also voiced an Ugly Stepsister in Shrek 2 and played (shock!) a talk show host in Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives (1989). See, this is exactly the kind of important information you'll only find on the edge
of nowhere.
gramatically pure way and most likely ended my question in a preposition, which doesn't really bother me until I typed it up here...) Not counting made for TV movies, it looks like National Treasure is his fourth film of this year (tying his personal record for movie appearances in a year), and his 25th overall playing himself.
The complete list: National Treasure (2004); Catching Kringle (2004); Mr 3000 (2004); The Stepford Wives (2004); John Q (2002); Last Party 2000 (2001); America's Sweethearts (2001); The Contender (2000); Disney's The Kid (2000); Enemy of the State (1998); Bulworth (1998); Primary Colors (1998); The Jackal (1997); Mad City (1997); An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn (1997); Contact (1997); The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996); Open Season (1996); Spin (1995); We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story (1993) (voice); Dave (1993); The Exorcist III (1990); Crazy People (1990); Lost in America (1985); Ghost Busters (1984). (Leave it to Ivan Reitman to see a good idea first).
He also voiced an Ugly Stepsister in Shrek 2 and played (shock!) a talk show host in Eddie and the Cruisers II: Eddie Lives (1989). See, this is exactly the kind of important information you'll only find on the edge
of nowhere.
Monday, December 6
We vs. Us
Is it a fear of the future? Is it religion? Is it economics, or racism? Is it fear of our so-called culture? Good old fashioned narrow-mindedness? Traditionalism? Fear of the unknown, the unfamiliar? Is it just people not thinking? What is it that separates us progressives from the conservatives around me? Is it some combination of all that stuff? A lack of awareness of the needs of humankind? Selfishness? The need to let others think for you? The need to think for yourself? What makes people tick? What makes them want to restrict freedoms for other people? To not consider the common good? Why do groups of people hate other groups of people, particularly groups organized around religions?
I just finished reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," in which a Nazi-supporting Charles Lindbergh runs for president in 1940 and defeats FDR on a stay-out-of-the war platform. (I read it as part of my MELDAR* reading group.) Now, it's a heavy book, a typically good Roth read, with some startling modern-day what-ifs about the Ashcroftites in the Bush administration, and good ol' Dubya himself. The plot against America as described in the novel never happened, but it doesn't seem so far-fetched, not the anti-Semite "Just Folks" campaign or the Office of American Absorption, which is set up to send inner city ghetto kids to go live in middle America and soak up red-state American Christian values, and eventually, as the story moves forward, to break up the political power of ethnic groups (in this case, Jews) in America's cities. Remember what happened to Japanese-Americans not long after this book is set, such as the Amache "relocation center" in southern Colorado, which we visited last February when we were down there for the Snow Goose Festival).
They might have to pick a different "minority" to pick on (gays? Muslims? left-handed non-practicing Buddhist pagans?) next time, and I hate to be alarmist, and maybe it's just too much Roth in my system right now, and maybe it's just because I live on the edge of nowhere, or maybe it's just because I'm afraid of what mob-thought can do, but something like this (the Nazi plot against America from the book, or Japanese internment) happening again doesn't seem as impossible to me today (with Bush claiming a mandate) as it did a month ago, or especially pre 9/11.
*MELDAR = Multiple Eric Long Distance Association of Readers, a reading-for-writers duo of me and Mr. Krell, trying to learn/be inspired for our own fiction efforts. MELDAR reads two-three books a year, for the past three or four years.
I just finished reading Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," in which a Nazi-supporting Charles Lindbergh runs for president in 1940 and defeats FDR on a stay-out-of-the war platform. (I read it as part of my MELDAR* reading group.) Now, it's a heavy book, a typically good Roth read, with some startling modern-day what-ifs about the Ashcroftites in the Bush administration, and good ol' Dubya himself. The plot against America as described in the novel never happened, but it doesn't seem so far-fetched, not the anti-Semite "Just Folks" campaign or the Office of American Absorption, which is set up to send inner city ghetto kids to go live in middle America and soak up red-state American Christian values, and eventually, as the story moves forward, to break up the political power of ethnic groups (in this case, Jews) in America's cities. Remember what happened to Japanese-Americans not long after this book is set, such as the Amache "relocation center" in southern Colorado, which we visited last February when we were down there for the Snow Goose Festival).
They might have to pick a different "minority" to pick on (gays? Muslims? left-handed non-practicing Buddhist pagans?) next time, and I hate to be alarmist, and maybe it's just too much Roth in my system right now, and maybe it's just because I live on the edge of nowhere, or maybe it's just because I'm afraid of what mob-thought can do, but something like this (the Nazi plot against America from the book, or Japanese internment) happening again doesn't seem as impossible to me today (with Bush claiming a mandate) as it did a month ago, or especially pre 9/11.
*MELDAR = Multiple Eric Long Distance Association of Readers, a reading-for-writers duo of me and Mr. Krell, trying to learn/be inspired for our own fiction efforts. MELDAR reads two-three books a year, for the past three or four years.
If a tree falls in the forest
Does anybody read it? So I've been doing this for a month or so now, and am starting to get a feel for it, for what it is, or what it could be. It's about living a normal life on the edge of nowhere. It's a place to tell family what's going on. It's a place to tell Californians who might be considering moving here (that's you, Analese {and to a lesser degree you, Maddog}) what it's like to live here. It's about cataloging reasons why we in turn should consider moving to Austin, or Flagstaff, or Santa Fe or California (not that we'll move any time soon, kids, just, you know, after you graduate from college...). And I guess because of who I am, it's a place to share some political thoughts, to help change the world, or actually, to understand it better. That's it. I want to explain what it's like to live here, in red state land as a person of blueness. I haven't really done that yet, but I think about it a lot. It's on my mind: how do we get along? And what's wrong with them, anyway? (Not that anything is wrong with them, they just see the world differently.)
The point of this post is I've only told three people of the existence of this blog, yet, Kristen, Krell and Jared. Feedback has been encouraging. And I'm enjoying it. So I guess it's time to expand that audience. If there is an audience, that is. And I'm fine if there's not, since this mostly serves as an echo chamber to set free some of these thoughts that have been cooped up inside my head. But more readers would be interesting, too.
The point of this post is I've only told three people of the existence of this blog, yet, Kristen, Krell and Jared. Feedback has been encouraging. And I'm enjoying it. So I guess it's time to expand that audience. If there is an audience, that is. And I'm fine if there's not, since this mostly serves as an echo chamber to set free some of these thoughts that have been cooped up inside my head. But more readers would be interesting, too.
Long's Peak = Jabba the Hutt
Sitting up in the fourth floor break room overlooking the Front Range today, eating my bagel sandwich and finishing "The Plot Against America," the twin peaks of Meeker and Long's Peak looked like something, what was it? Oh yeah, a frog. No, wait: Jabba the Hutt.
H.L. Mencken
H.L. Mencken in the Baltimore Sun in 1920:
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Doesn't mean we have to like it. Or live with it.
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
Doesn't mean we have to like it. Or live with it.
GreNoFiMo update
I'm proud to report that this weekend I, um, uh, well, saw a movie (National Treasure, a fine popcorn flick, the brainy sidekick was hilarious but Nic Cage is miscast), and watched a couple of others on DVD (really liked The Terminal) and a of couple episodes of Northern Exposure's first season, and read quite a few many pages from the Roth novel I'm about to finish, and, uh, let's see. Oh yeah, walked the dogs a couple of times. Organized the CDs on the new CD cabinet Kristen finished staining (we went for alpha order, with the soundtracks and compilations on their own shelves), cut and glued up some trim on my daughter's dollhouse, and um, well, I actually wrote ZERO words on my novel.
But I thought about it once or twice, and when I got up at 5:30 on Sunday morning (stupid early-rising dogs) I even took my laptop downstairs with me thinking I'd work on it for a couple hours before everyone else got up, but I read instead and mostly struggled to stay awake.
But I thought about it once or twice, and when I got up at 5:30 on Sunday morning (stupid early-rising dogs) I even took my laptop downstairs with me thinking I'd work on it for a couple hours before everyone else got up, but I read instead and mostly struggled to stay awake.
Sports jury
The local newspaper has put together a panel of a few locals to serve a two-month tour of duty on what they're calling a "sports jury." I volunteered last month and was selected last week to share my opinions in December and January. It starts this week, so check Wednesday's paper to see my short response to the first question, about baseball and steroids.
Saturday, December 4
Sledding
Just in from a quick sledding excursion with Connor and his friend Garrett and the video camera. Connor was filming -- well, directing, as I was holding the camera -- a best sledding crashes of 2004 movie. A few were truly spectacular.
But it's been a week now and most of the snow from last Sunday is still here. The backyard is still covered, and so are most of the fields between here and work. I haven't see this much snow stay on the ground here in many years, certainly since we moved into this house three years ago. It was so cold earlier this week, 8 below one night, three below the next, and even today didn't warm up much above 35 or so. But next week looks beautifully sunny and warm: in the 40s!
But it's been a week now and most of the snow from last Sunday is still here. The backyard is still covered, and so are most of the fields between here and work. I haven't see this much snow stay on the ground here in many years, certainly since we moved into this house three years ago. It was so cold earlier this week, 8 below one night, three below the next, and even today didn't warm up much above 35 or so. But next week looks beautifully sunny and warm: in the 40s!
Friday, December 3
The weekend
Has finally arrived; seemed like a long week. My GreNoFiMo word count so far is zero, but I have hopes/plans to pick up 5k words this weekend as I move the story along. Taking Connor over Garrett's for a sleepover then picking up pizza and a movie to lay on the floor and vegetate. This might be my first post with nothing to say. Hmmm.
Oh - my nephew Nick is seeing Billy Bragg tonight or tomorrow night, taking the tube out from campus to some new arts center for a benefit concert. I bought his ticket in exchange for a full concert report. Perhaps even a bootleg song or two. Connor's ready, so see you later.
Oh - my nephew Nick is seeing Billy Bragg tonight or tomorrow night, taking the tube out from campus to some new arts center for a benefit concert. I bought his ticket in exchange for a full concert report. Perhaps even a bootleg song or two. Connor's ready, so see you later.
Music to my ears
Last night we attended the Northridge High School orchestra and band concert, featuring my seventh grade daughter on violin with the orchestra. It's a nice public school auditorium, although the building itself from the outside looks like a county-level correctional facility, with its industrial cinder block and tiny window construction. She plays with the Northridge orchestra because, well, frankly she's good enough to play with the high school kids, and her own school doesn't have an orchestra (although she and my son play with a great jazz combo there).
The two best pieces were the second (or third?) movement from Bizet's Carmen (which you've heard, whether you know it or not) and a combined group faithful rendering of Sleigh Ride. Looks like Dean from District 6 was in the house, so those of you living here on the edge of nowhere can watch your local cable channel three to catch the whole show in coming weeks. If anyone needs a bootleg, let me know.
Thursday, December 2
NaNoWriMo --> GreNoFiMo
So I met with the Greeley NaNo winners last night at Borders (all three of us - Jared, Amy and I -- plus another guy -- Chris -- with good intentions), and we had a good conversation about the fun and benefits of single-month noveling. So when Jared suggested somehow keeping up the pace, and using each other for peer pressure, he created Greeley Novelists Finishing Month, which we'll celebrate in December by continuing to work on our novels and/or finishing them. Let's hope our own water-buffalo sized deadline of January 5 makes a difference.
So far, my December word count remains zero.
So far, my December word count remains zero.
Wednesday, December 1
Jared joins the blogosphere
My pal Jared has launched his fumbling fatherhood blog to braindump and (hopefully) promote his book. Check it out over in the Links.
