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As of December 1, 2004, this blog has MOVED. It's now hosted on my local site. Find it at:
My Life, Take II
Please update your links, I look forward to seeing you at the new place! |
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It is the simplest things, the ones others might see as insignificant, that I shall miss the most.
I will miss sitting in our living room with my wife, watching Whose Line Is It Anyway.
I will miss long car trips, driving along with her hand resting lightly in mine, reminding me that she's there and we're together.
I miss the phone calls during the day, not the usual ones about mundane things but the ones when she called just because she was thinking of me.
I will miss the feeling of coming to bed very late at night, trying to be quiet as I tiptoe through the dark room, and slipping in beside her, feeling her warmth and knowing that even though she's not noticed me, that she's there beside me.
I will miss having coffee together.
I will miss those quiet mornings when Tony, our big tomcat, would sneak into the bedroom and climb up between us in bed, and then purr and cuddle up as though he were the happiest cat that ever lived, because he loved being near both of us.
I will miss grocery shopping together.
I will miss singing to her. In the last few weeks, she had complained that I never sang to her anymore, and she's right, I hadn't felt very musical for a long time. The night that my life changed, the night it all ended, the irony is that I had been in my office until about 2 AM, with a makeshift recording rig connected to my Macintosh, recording two songs that were meant to be a late anniversary present. I burned them to a CD, went home, and found no one there. I woke the next morning and she was still gone ... that was the last night I spent in our home. It was that weekend that we parted.
How does anyone ever get through this? I can't walk down the street, get in my car, sit at my desk, eat lunch, sleep, or even breathe without being reminded of her, the way she smelled, her smile, her eyes, her touch, her voice. I saw something in the window of a shop last night, thught, "Yvette would like that..." and then had to duck into the nearest rest room as I fell completely to pieces. Today I had to fill out paperwork for a new insurance plan at work and just writing her name was enough to make me crumble.
We both did things to drive each other away. I don't think either of us is any more to blame than the other ... what she did was what she felt forced to do, and what I did is what I felt forced to do, and we gradually put up walls that shut each other out.
There was an old movie starring Natalie Wood called "Brainstorm", about a machine that could record people's thoughts and memories and experiences. In it, the two lead characters are going through a divorce. He puts on the helmet and records a tape of all his thoughts, and gives it to her, saying, "It's me." She plays it, and instantly understands ... understands everything ... and they live happily ever after, eventually.
If only she could somehow see into my thoughts! Words don't work ... every time we talk, the question is, "Well, if you love me as much as you say you do, then how could you <do one of a dozen things I've done that created distance between us>?". The answer is inevitably, "I felt pushed away because you did <one of a dozen things she did that created distance between us>." The problem is that none of those things was meant to distance us, they just ... resulted, just as the ones she did resulted from mine. In the end we were so far apart that we didn't even remotely understand each other's needs. She says she opened up to me ... I think I tried too ... but here we are, and apparently we both failed to do enough. If we could have somehow seen what each other needed, if we could somehow have experienced each other's feelings, in a way that words and arguments and discussions can't hope to provide, it might have resolved everything.
If we could see into each other's minds and hearts, I'd be calling her right now to discuss dinner and tell her how much I love her, instead of sitting here at my desk wishing I could stop weeping.
My close and perhaps oldest friend, Kirk, who lives in Boston and has studied Psychology, feels I should stop sharing feelings like this publicly, that I should keep my verbal catharses private. My friend Omally recommends continuing to share, calling it "Blog therapy". I'm not sure what to think, so if anyone has further advice I'm listening. |
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Disclaimer: What follows might be depressing. It might be boring, and it will definitely be long. I'm disabling comments too. This is something I need to write, and need to make sure has been said. It is going to hurt me to write it, but it is also going to help me because I will have let it out. If you want to keep reading with this in mind, that's fine. If you don't, I'll completely understand.
We met in Orlando. I lived in a small, one-bedroom apartment that suited me all right in the situation I was in. I was working as the chief technical engineer of what was at the time the largest and most prestigious recording school in the country, which was also a working recording studio complex and post-production facility. My work defined me, then. I had been alone, utterly and completely alone for more than ten years. My first marriage, to my high school sweetheart when I was but 20 years old, didn't work out because we were both too young; her understanding of commitment was that it was OK to sleep with other people as long as no one told me. The betrayal nearly destroyed me, and kept me very detached for a long time.
When I met Yvette I wasn't looking for Ms. Right. I wasn't looking for anything other than a good time, nor was she. The first time we met, though, something happened that made us both start thinking of each other a lot of the time. She was involved in a marriage where her husband abused her, and before I knew it I was involved in a rescue of sorts.
This was a hard spot for me to be in. I was falling in love with a married woman, and she with me, and helping her through a divorce was killing me because I felt like the same outsider who'd ruined my own marriage 10 years before. She had the same problem I guess, because she pulled away from me and moved with her husband to New Hampshire to start over. I cried, I fell apart, and then I started to recover. Slowly, I started to realize that I'd never belonged with her in the first place, and I should forget it and move on. I buried myself in my work again.
A few weeks later, the phone rang. Guess who. Her husband had started cheating on her practically the minute they arrived up there, so she'd left him, she was on her way back to Orlando, and wanted to come stay with me. With her 15 year old son and 6 year old daughter. And their dog and cat. For 10 years it had been just me and my siamese cat, dB, living on our own. I couldn't say no, because no matter how much I'd been hurt and no matter how much I denied it, I did love her. In they came ... three people, a dog, and two cats in a one bedroom apartment. It was not easy, but somehow we made a life out of it, and we've been together ever since.
Until now.
In the last two or three months, we've spent more time apart than together. We can't seem to agree on anything, we argue, we hurt each other emotionally, we make each other sad. Finally, last Friday, we came to the conclusion, unfortunately, that I guess we're better apart than together. I have not seen Yvette, Alexis, the cats, the birds, the house, or anything else that was part of my live since last Friday, ten days ago. Apparently, she came to that conclusion before I did ... there was a final indignity that I will not describe in detail out of respect for her privacy and mine, but it broke my heart.
Today, for the first time in four days, my wife called me on the phone. It was only about paying bills, and I just fell apart all over again.
Yvette and I were together for 10 years. Before that, it was just me and my beloved siamese cat. Now, everything that had meaning in my life, everything that really mattered, is gone. Yvette blames it all on me ... it's all my fault, it all started with me, I am the one who created the whole problem. I wish that were true, because then I could just change it all back. Fact is we both grew apart, we both made changes that the other couldn't handle.
I come to work every morning, and I sit here at my desk trying to force back the tears ... talk to friends in the chat room to pass the time ... try to concentrate and work and make something productive happen. I make it through until lunchtime, and I go out to my car, and I fall apart. I get my act together in time to come back in the afternoon, try really hard to get something productive done but I can't think. I hold it in until quitting time, do whatever I can to keep the grief and the anguish at bay, and then I drive to my seedy little weekly room, drink myself to sleep, and start over again. I am not living, I am dying.
I love my wife. I will always love her because she is the only thing in my life that ever made sense, the only person who ever looked at me and saw anything that I really am, the only person who ever made me feel like I was home. I don't know how to live without that. Half of me is gone, and the other half is just dying, just withering away to nothing because I have no soul without my soulmate.
The way things are now, I don't think we'll ever resolve things, and I don't think she wants to. Alexis, who is 15 and rebellious, has always hated me, and I know she's happier with me gone. Yvette has at least got relief from the arguing and the conflict. I have nothing. It's been made clear I'm not welcome in the house. The only computer I have that isn't in this office is there. The internet router there is broken, and I can't fix it from here, so probably she will bring in someone else who will not understand the network I have spent so much time building and tweaking and perfecting, and it will probably get butchered.
Tony, probably the sweetest and most affectionate cat that ever lived, would normally be my comfort at times like this. Now he's there and I'm here. My big bird, Sammy, and our little birds Phoenix and Big Bird, are also gone from my life now.
Our life together wasn't perfect. It was pretty awful sometimes, but it was also really good, sometimes. I wasn't ready to give up the things that were working, just because I was indignant over a few things that weren't, but now there's no choice. I have spent so much time and devoted so much of my energy to making this marriage work that now, when I turn around and take stock of what's left in my life, I don't have a single friend who's close enough and knows me well enough to understand what I'm going through. I do have two or three old, dear friends, but they live in other states. Atlanta is a place where I have had only one true friend, and now I have zero.
There is a picture of my wife in the office. You can't see it because it sits on a shelf right underneath the video webcam. There's a picture of Alexis right beside it. It is still there, but I don't really need a picture. I have loved Yvette for so long that I know every line, every dimple, every freckle. Her face is burned into my mind and will always be there, and it is a face I thought I would spend life with ... I wanted us to grow old together, I wanted us to experience everything life had to offer from now until the end. So many dreams, so many visions, so many things I wanted to happen. The birthmark below her right eye, the shape of her hands, the way her shape took my breath away ... I just can't forget, I can't get away from the visions, the memories, the pain is unbearable, I wish somehow everything could be fixed and we could be together again and I know it won't happen. I wish I could just erase all the memories. The weekend at St. Augustine. The week we spent in Gulf Shores, when she wrote our names on the wall at the Flora-Bama. The trip to Virginia Beach. The long drives. The afternoon at a picnic table at a rest area along I-95. It all keeps flashing through my head. Our first kiss. Nights walking along the lake at Sun Key, the apartment complex where I used to live. A chinese dinner in Boston. The dinner at the little Mexican restaurant when I proposed. A week in New York, walking around Times Square. Shopping. Nights when we stayed up until ridiculous hours, just talking. Intimate times.
Life, my life as I know it, has ended. Whatever happens from this day forward is just what came later. It will just fill the time between the day my life ended and the day I stopped breathing. This relationship, this love between my wife and I was all I had, my sole reason for everything I've done in the last ten years. It has been my only validation, the only thing that has made me feel a purpose in my life.
Yes, this all sounds like wallowing. Yes, it's all emotional drivel, and yes, I'm a crybaby. If the loss of the love of one's life is not a good enough excuse to fall apart then I don't know of a better one. The usual thing people say to a man at a time like this is that it gets better, that the pain will fade, that I will forget, and that life will go on, and I know those things are not true. No one who understood how strong my love is would offer that. My wife may not have been happy with me, and I may not have done everything she might have wanted, but at the very least, I was a man who loved her ... she will never find anyone who will love her as much as I do, of that I can be sure.
Thanksgiving is this week. What have I to be thankful for? I wish I could just forget the day exists. Christmas is coming too ... I have always had a hard time at Christmas, missing my father and now my mother, and this year I will have no family at all. Can't I just skip into January? This is all just too much for me.
I am rambling. This is what I guess they call a stream of consciousness, and if I'm incoherent I apologize. There are some things I needed to say when I started out and I have no idea if I've said them, and if I try to read all this back, by the end I won't be able to see again, so let me just try this ... for the record, for the world, for anyone who cares to know.
1) I love my wife, and Alexis who hates me, and my pets more than life itself.
2) No matter how it may have seemed, everything I have ever done has been with my wife and family in mind.
3) I have never meant any of the things I've said in arguments, they just came out of pain and anger.
4) I have never had an affair or been unfaithful, nor could I ever do that to anyone I'm committed to.
5) The good and the bad, the last ten years, I would not trade for anything in the universe.
6) I remember all the good times, and I would gladly sell my soul for one more good day together.
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Sick. Sick with a cold, sick with sadness, just miserable.
I may not write much here for a while.
That is all. |
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As Karl Wirz sat in his hotel room, he reckoned that he had never been in such a desolate place in his whole life. As a newspaper photographer, he'd been sent to some hell-holes, but this one beat it all. One restaurant, one hotel, no bars, and a good hour drive from anywhere.
Karl was a true southerner, though, and a small part of him was comfortable here. He'd been sent to photograph re-enactments and memorial ceremonies at the site of Andersonville Prison, a Civil War camp that during its operation in 1864 had held 26,000 prisoners, mostly Union soldiers, within its 26-acre stockade.
Andersonville had been a hard posting even for Confederate guards, many of whom died from disease and malnutrition due to horribly unsanitary conditions and lack of food and clear water. For the prisoners it was a living nightmare. One soldier wrote, " Wuld that I was an artist & had the material to paint this camp & all its horors or the tounge of some eloquent Statesman and had the privleage of expressing my mind to our hon. rulers in Washington, I should gloery to describe this hell on earth where it takes 7 of its ocupiants to make a shadow."
Earlier today, Karl had walked around the site, his Nikon slung over a shoulder, looking for images that would compel, images that could somehow capture what this place was, and how it had been. Little was left now, just long lines of thin concrete obelisks that marked lines around the former stockade and its deadline. Here and there, historians had erected replicas of the stockade, the deadline, and the makeshift tent city that once stood inside. The place looked serene, idyllic now, just a lush green field, a perfect place for a picnic.
Now it was eight PM, and Karl was disappointed. He'd gotten nothing today. Amateurish snapshots and trite artsy crap, but nothing that had any power. No quintessential image. He was prouder of the photos he'd taken of cotton ready for harvest than of anything he'd shot at the prison. He had eaten the most tasteless, greasy dinner in recent memory, and was now sitting on a lumpy bed watching a rerun of Green Acres. Why? This wasn't what had earned him a Pulitzer.
He sat up, turned off the TV, and reached for the bag that held his Nikons. He loaded a roll of 1600ASA pan film, slipping the box tag into the slot on the back of his F2 and writing "ANDERS - PUSH 1X" on it with his Sharpie. Karl's meticulous nature had always served him well.
He clomped down the stairs of the old hotel, slid into the seat of his rented Geo, and headed over to the prison site. It was a short drive, half a mile or so, and he found a locked gate made of iron pipe, a low gate mainly meant to keep cars out. He sighed heavily, got out of the car, and hopped over the gate. The road into the prison was paved and covered with leaves that made a crunching sound as he walked. A flashlight might not have been a bad idea, he thought, but the moon was nearly full and the sky clear. Aside from deep shadows cast by the trees along the road, he could see quite well. He needed his night vision.
After a few minutes, he reached the northwest corner of the stockade area, where the monuments stood like sentinels. He stopped by the Wisconsin memorial, a huge, imposing stone structure featuring an eagle, and surveyed the site. To his left was the reconstructed northeast corner of the stockade, rough-hewn poles fifteen feet high with a "pigeon's roost" guard platform on top. Inside these, about six yards away, was the lower rail fence known as the deadline, which prisoners were forbidden to cross on penalty of death.
Ahead was a low valley that cut diagonally across the rectangular stockade area. This had been the latrines. Beyond was a small spring house, and an opposing hillside where small, earthwork forts were the only sign that there'd been any organized presence here.
Karl thought this was a far better way to see the prison site. Gone were the throngs of tourists with their strollers and their Polaroids and their picnic blankets spread over the ground. Gone were the cars and the noise and the park rangers with their repetitive talks about life inside the walls of Andersonville. He could hear the wind sweep through the trees, the gurgling of the little brook, and the rustling of leaves. He set up his tripod, put on his wide angle lens and took an establishing shot, a panoramic view of the whole stockade, bracketing the exposure. A second at F/2.8. It would look almost like daylight, he thought, and smiled.
He walked down the hill slowly, past the monuments, and found himself next to a replica of the north gate. It had a sinister look, as he looked uphill at it from the path at the bottom of the valley. He wondered how many Union soldiers had passed through this gate, going in, and how many had lived long enough to leave through it. He set up his tripod again and took several photos, using the 105mm lens this time to take maximum advantage of the sharp angles and stark perspective. The wind was chilly; he turned up his collar and walked on along the line of the stockade. It was at that moment that he noticed the smell. He froze.
Karl had smelled locker rooms, homeless people, bad food, stagnant water, and a million other unpleasant things in his career. This was a combination of all of them. A dank, musty, stale smell, like fabric rotting. The smell of human waste. The smell of unwashed bodies. Where was it coming from?
He looked around him. The road was deserted. Back the way he'd come the monuments stood as quietly as they had for a century or more. Along the treeline the leaves rustled but nothing else moved. Ahead, up by the old star fort ... what was that? Had it been there before? Just inside the perimeter road stood a low shack, resembling a guardhouse. Had he seen that this afternoon? Walking toward it, he rummaged through his camera bag and pulled out a rumpled park map. A blue block marked 'Guardhouse Site' seemed to mark the very spot he was walking toward.
As he reached the guardhouse, he thought it must be a terribly faithful reproduction. The wood was well-weathered, the fixtures hand-blacksmithed. He set up a few yards uphill, setting up a shot with the stockade in the background. He'd have to stop the lens way down, and make a long, long exposure to get the depth of field he wanted. He composed the frame carefully, and as he peered through the lens, the door of the guardhouse swung open.
The wind had been calm, hadn't it? And hadn't the latch been closed? At any rate, this was too good ... he stepped inside the guardhouse, walking to the windows that overlooked the stockade. Only, now they didn't overlook just row upon row of obelisks marking the stockade line. They overlooked a real stockade ... and within it, smoke from a thousand campfires rose into the night. The ground moved, only it wasn't the ground, it was a sea of men, tens of thousands of men packed shoulder to shoulder, constantly moving, shuffling, trying to find a bit of space. Karl shrank back and blinked. He ran from the shack, looked out ... and saw nothing.
"Calm yourself, Karl," he thought. "You've been in scarier places than this. You're losing it." It had just been his vivid imagination at work, he was sure.
He stepped back into the shack. Went back to the windows. The camp was back. He could smell it now. The same smell he'd noticed down by the gate was now assailing his nostrils, pungent, horrible, the smell of death. He nearly retched. He turned, and saw a figure in the doorway, limned by the moonlight, squarely blocking his exit.
"Who's there?", he said, sounding a lot less confident than he wanted to. There was no reply. The figure stood, unmoving, but he could hear the man breathing. Suddenly a fire flared in the camp behind him, sending a beam of light through the windows, illuminating the scene. The man in the doorway wore a confederate officer's uniform. He was gaunt, even emaciated. His face was unshaven, and his uniform hung limply from a body far too small for it. As the light flickered, the man seemed to recognize Karl, and he nodded slightly, then took a step back and walked away.
Karl rushed back to the window. He saw the man walking downhill toward the gate. Behind the guard shack, he saw a group of men walking toward him. All were wearing Confederate uniforms, all were very thin as they strode purposefully toward him. Karl rushed from the shack, but this time the scene did not change. Below him, the officer who'd just left was opening the north gate. Prisoners streamed out, all headed toward the guard shack. The stench was overpowering. The men shouted, pointed, and those who were able actually began to run toward him. This wasn't a good reception, he was quite sure.
He turned, ran ... and was caught by the arms by the group of Confederate soldiers streaming from the fort. He screamed. The officer, returning now, stopped before him. He looked at Karl with an expression somewhere between sadness and resolution, and finally spoke at length.
"We are the dead. We are the men who died here, on this ground. We have waited for you."
"Waited for ME?" Karl asked incredulously. "What connection do I possibly have with this place?"
"Karl, Karl. You are a maker of images, and detail means so much to you, yet you've missed the most obvious detail. Hundreds of confederate guards and officers, my brothers in arms, died not far from where you now stand. Thousands of union soldiers died the same way, only far faster and far more horribly. One man was responsible for this, one man placed in charge of this post. Do you recall his name, Karl?"
Karl shivered. He did remember. Earlier today, in the town square, he'd seen the huge monument dedicated to this man. History had long shown him to have been helpless to change conditions inside the prison. He was denied the resources to run the place properly, and was overloaded with twice the prisoners that his facilities could handle. He'd been made a scapegoat and hanged for war crimes soon after the end of the civil war. He'd never been the cruel monster he'd been painted to be, and the monument in town was a tribute to his humanity. These men, though, had died before the truth was known, and these men had been given one name to hate and revile through the decades.
Captain Henry Wirz.
Ranger Sherry Parker found Karl Wirz' Nikon F2 the next morning, still on its tripod, his camera bag sitting beside it. She carefully packed it and brought it to the museum, sure that someone would arrive to collect it. Weeks later, when no one had, she decided there might be some clue to its owner on the film. With the help of a colleague, she removed the film, pulled out the box flap in case the processor needed it, and took it to Elmira at the drug store. The next day, Elmira called to tell her that her photos were ready. Sherry picked them up at lunchtime. "Not often I get a roll of 1600 that needs pushed to 3200," Elmira remarked. "Almost forgot how!" Sherry nodded her thanks and began to shuffle through them as she walked out onto the narrow main street sidewalk.
Suddenly she stopped. Her hand flew to her mouth, and she gasped.
In her hands was a beautiful, wide-angle photograph of Andersonville Prison, exactly as it looked in 1864. Campfires burned, smoke rose, and the faces of a thousand inmates stared intently toward the camera. The detail was sharp, crisp, and clean. It almost looked like daylight.
There were only two known photographs in existence of Andersonville's stockade. Neither of them included the whole area, and neither of them was of good quality. This was an impossible picture, taken at night with ultra-fast film. She shuffled through the rest of the photos. There was one of the north gate, with confederate guards standing sentinel posts along the wall. There was a photo of the spring house, with prisoners lined up for water. Another photo showed the hillside above the sinks, crowded with tents and filled with a sea of men, milling about, with barely room to stand. All totally impossible pictures, but undeniably real down to the last detail.
The last photo on the roll has baffled experts to this day. It's an image of a man, standing in the doorway of the prison guardhouse, a building that has not existed since 1870. He's gripping the door frame, poised to run, and he's looking beyond the camera ... in the direction of the star fort. It's the last image ever seen of Karl Wirz, the self-portrait of a Pulitzer-winning photographer and descendant of Captain Henry Wirz. Behind him, in the guardhouse, stands a man holding a rope, tied into the shape of a noose. |
| » Goodbye, Bandit |
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We lost a little friend on Friday. He will be badly missed.
Bandit was never meant to be ... he was the result of hasty, unplanned sex that took place when our un-spayed female cat, Penny, somehow got outside and had a bit of a wild night. We don't know who his father is.
When the kittens were born, we knew we couldn't keep them. We weren't going to keep any of them at all, in fact, until my wife fell in love with one of them. He was a skinny little kitten but he had a cute face ... he almost looked as if he were wearing a mask, earning him the name, "Bandit". After my wife named him, all of my pleas about our overabundance of cats fell on deaf ears, so the other kittens went on to good, loving homes, and Bandit stayed.
Kittens have boundless energy. Older cats like my big, tiger-striped old tomcat, Tony, generally don't. With the other kittens gone, Tony became bandit's favorite unwilling play partner. He would stalk Tony, jump on him, bat at his tail, catapult over him, smack him in the face with a paw ... anything to get attention. Tony reacted as W. C. Fields generally did ... you could almost hear him saying, "Go away, kid, ya bother me!" There were times when he'd clearly had enough, and he'd get genuinely angry, hissing and growling. This was great fun for Bandit, who could not take a hint. We had several big cat brawls where all one could see were feet and tails and heads flying in and out of a big ball of flying fur, just like in the cartoons.
Bandit ate, and grew, and eventually it became clear that his father must have been a very large cat. His face was unlike any cat I've ever seen, he had these big, puffy cheeks that we called "jowls", and it made him look really cute, like a kitten even after he'd grown quite huge. He eventually got bigger than Tony, so it's a good thing that they eventually developed a calmer, more friendly relationship. When his kitten energy subsided, Bandit had become a lot like Tony. He was mellow, friendly, and above all, supremely lazy.
Late last week, he seemed lazier than usual. My wife told me he'd gotten out and stayed out for a while earlier in the week. Thursday night he was throwing up, not feeling well, and we thought maybe he'd eaten something that didn't agree with him, or maybe got a hairball. Friday morning he seemed a bit better, walking around and not throwing up. I decided that if he wasn't significantly better Saturday morning, I'd take him to the vet. I stroked his fur, rubbed his tummy, and went off to work thinking he'd be fine.
Friday night, on my way home, I got the call. Yvette had come home and found him, and at first thought he was asleep, he looked so peaceful stretched out on Alexis' bedroom floor. Then she touched him, and he was cold and lifeless. I had a lot of trouble seeing the road as I drove the rest of the way home. We wrapped him in a blanket that had been his favorite one to lie on, said goodbye. I then anaesthetized myself with a large quantity of Kentucky bourbon.
The bourbon didn't keep me unconscious for very long, certainly not long enough to make the grief go away, so I didn't continue, though I've got that bottle nearby should its contents be needed. Saturday morning we delivered poor Bandit to the vet's office where he will be cremated. We brought him to the same room and laid him on the same table where my beloved siamese, dB, was euthanized a couple of years ago, and it was not a place I wanted to be. Worse, the incompetent, deaf, or merely stupid veternary assistant told the vet to come prepared for a euthanasia, and she entered the room with a syringe of poison in her hands. It was the wrong kind of deja vu for me and I didn't recover from that one for quite a while. I went off and spent a few hours just sitting in a park, and at one point I even managed to fall asleep on a park bench. This is something fair-skinned people should not do on sunny days. Ouch.
The pain's begun to dull now, as evidenced by my having an appetite this morning for the first time since Friday. Losing pets is hard, and I've lost far too many lately. Losing dB, who'd been my friend and roommate for over 12 years when I was single, was the hardest, but it's never easy. Bandit was only a year old. He should have had a lot more years ahead of him. We all blame ourselves, playing the what-if game. What if we'd taken him to the vet sooner? What if he hadn't gotten outside? The vet even wanted to do a necropsy to find out why he died, but he looked so beautiful and peaceful that it didn't seem right to let them cut him up.
Bandit, my friend, I'm sorry, and I'll miss you.
Oct. 31st, 2004 @ 11:18 am
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| » Lyrical Things |
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[WARNING: This will be a longish blog, because I'm including some quotes and snips that I think are important ... if you hate long blogs, and don't have time to read this one, I will completely understand.]
I have never had any luck writing music, but I have always enjoyed writing lyrics. I think it's because I admire really, really good ones, lyrics that take the power of the music and direct it right into your heart, lyrics that communicate, words that could stand alone if they had to, but are enhanced and reinforced by the music, and vice-versa.
As the great Harry Chapin once said, through a character in his song, "Stranger With the Melodies", "A song ain't got much meaning if it ain't got nothin' to say!"
I mention this because I've heard both ends of the lyrical spectrum in the last couple of days. I heard a song by local Atlanta artist Shawn Mullins this morning called "Twin Rocks, Oregon" ... part spoken, part sung, but awfully engaging, I thought. Here's the first verse and chorus:
I met him on the cliffs of Twin Rocks, Oregon.
He was sittin on his bedroll looking just like Richard Brautigan.
I thought he was an old man, he wasn't but 37.
He said he'd been ridin trains for 15 years, drawing portraits to keep his belly full of beer.
It looked to me like he'd died and missed the plane to heaven.
But he was a nice ol' guy for a younger man, he had a bottle of Mad Dog he held in his hand
That he waved around a lot to make his point.
And I listened as he told his tales of wine and women and county jails,
And we finished off that bottle and smoked a half a joint.
He said "I came here to watch the sun disappear into the ocean
'Cause it's been years since I smelled this salty sea."
He turned his bottle up and down
And I saw him lost, and I saw him found.
He said "I don't know what i've been lookin for.
Maybe me."
A colleague also passed some Tori Amos music along to me ... I'd only really been familiar with one or two of her songs, 'Silent All These Years" being the one I liked most. Now I've heard three albums' worth of her music and it's been a real awakening. I think I've decided that I really, really like her music, but her lyrics puzzle me. The throughts and ideas are so disconnected, they seem almost random. An example from "Little Earthquakes":
Yellow bird flying gets shot in the wing
Good year for hunters and Christmas parties
And I hate and I hate and I hate
And I hate elevator music
The way we fight
The way I'm left here silent
Oh these little earthquakes
Here we go again
These little earthquakes
Doesn't take much to rip us into pieces
We danced in graveyards with vampires till dawn
We laughed in the faces of king never afraid to burn
and I hate and I hate and I hate
and I hate disintegration
These lyrics clearly have deep meaning for Tori, and probably for those who understand her and her style better than I, but to me they're more of a texture ... they don't add meaning, it's as though her voice and her words are being used as just another instrument in the mix.
Without music, lyrics are basically just poetry with a bit more structure and repetition. So, being musically handicapped, I write a lot of poetry ... not that I would go so far as to call myself a poet. One kind soul recently offered to have a go at some of my lyrics, setting them to music, and one of these days I'll go through the things I've written and find some that are fit for such. It'll be a pleasant thing to hear my lyrics sung again.
Once, while I lived in Florida, some friends and I met a singer named Meta (MAY-Tah) Scholan. She was about seventeen, a breathtakingly pretty girl with long blonde hair, brilliant stage presence, and a voice that would make Britney Spears hang her head in shame. We all thought she was an amazing talent, and together we wrote, arranged, produced and recorded a demo for her. My friend Trina Harmon wrote most of the music ... she's a brilliant songwriter and has since gone on to write songs for Eden's Crush, Jessica Simpson, Nick Lachey, and Jennifer Paige. Most of the arranging was done by John Marsden, another talented guy who's still working in the music industry too. All of us collaborated on lyrics, and I engineered and mixed. Just as we were finishing the project, I had to leave for Atlanta and I lost touch with everyone, which is a shame ... that was some of the most enjoyable time I've ever spent in a studio.
One last word about lyrics. Sometimes, the very fact that there ARE lyrics is a message in itself.
Chet Atkins was one of the finest guitar players on this planet, and I think few people would dispute that. Every guitarist in the world has probably spent at least two or three hours trying to steal one of Chet's licks, because he made the instrument sing in a unique way that was his trademark This is why he's been described as "Mister Guitar" and is world-renowned for his skill and innovation ... as a producer, a record company executive, a songwriter as well as the most-recorded solo instrumental artist in history. Chet, however, simply could not sing. In fact, the man was so shy, so soft-spoken that he could hardly talk. His hit songs are all instrumentals, he hasn't really recorded a vocal since the 1950's ... except for one song. One song that was important enough that it had to be sung, and he had to sing it.
Around 1988, Chet wrote a song about his father. It's a nice song, but being about his Dad, it needed lyrics. He wrote them, and in the first of what would become dozens of live performances, he stood on stage with only a guitar and a microphone, wearing a hat, and introduced the song by saying, "Every time I look in the mirror, I see my Dad. I guess that's why this song means so much to me." He then played the song and sang it, in a shaky, unsteady voice that everyone knew was the real Chet, and not one person noticed that he was no singer. They didn't hear that the lyrics were a little disjointed, a little choppy. They just heard something so real and so deeply personal and honest that it was breathtaking. These are the lyrics he sang.
When I was young, my Dad would say,
"Come on Son let's go out and play!"
Sometimes it seems like yesterday.
And I'd climb up the closet shelf
When I was all by myself
Grab his hat and fix the brim,
Pretending I was him.
No matter how hard I try
No matter how many tears I cry
No matter how many years go by
I still can't say goodbye.
He always took care of Mom and me.
We all cut down a Christmas tree
He always had some time for me
Wind blows through the trees
Street lights, they still shine bright
Most things are the same
but I miss my Dad tonight.
I walked by a Salvation Army store,
Saw a hat like my daddy wore,
Tried it on when I walked in.
Still trying to be like him
No matter how hard I try
No matter how many years go by
No matter how many tears I cry
I still can't say goodbye.
If you can listen to that recording with a dry eye, you are a better man than I am, because I can't. Chet's not with us any longer, he passed away in 2001. His memorial service was held in the most fitting place imaginable ... the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville. Chet once said in an interview, "Years from now, after I'm gone someone will listen to what I've done and know I was here. They may not know or care who I was, but they'll hear my guitars speaking for me."
And your words, Chet.
Oct. 28th, 2004 @ 03:03 pm
|
| » Police, out of control. Again. |
|---|
The young woman you see to the right was a journalism student at Emerson College. She was a Boston Red Sox fan. She was bright, attractive, and by all accounts on her way to great things. She was 21. Was. Now she's on a slab, thanks to an overzealous Boston police officer.
An important win by the Sox led, as important wins or losses often do, to a riot. Kids scaled the rafters of the "Green Monster", climbed up on signs, set small fires, and generally made asses of themselves. Police arrived on horseback just in time to make things much, much worse than they might have been.
Apparently, one particularly unpleasant kid refused to leave the area after being ordered out by a police officer. Enraged at the youth's contempt, the officer grabbed him by the back of his shirt and threw him to the ground. Others, seeing this brutality, began hurling bottles and other debris at the officers. It's interesting how sometimes, all it takes is a bit of contempt to turn a person sworn to uphold the law into someone determined to uphold his own ego.
One cop began firing what are sometimes called non-lethal projectiles into the crowd. These were plastic balls filled with pepper-like spray, designed to shatter on impact. They're designed to be fired low, but the officer shot into the crowd at eye level, apparently in an indiscriminate way. Victoria "Torie" Snelgrove was standing by a hot dog cart with friends, not part of the altercation and not involved in anything other than conversation. When the officer fired into the crowd, she was hit directly in the eye with a projectile. She went down, bleeding profusely.
Friends tended to her as she lost, regained, lost consciousness. A cop, not the one who fired the projectile, briefly checked on her and then left. Someone called an ambulance. Five minutes after being hit, she was taken to a hospital.
The "non-lethal" projectile inflicted a lethal injury. She died hours later. The Boston police commissioner, in a stunning emotional response, spoke today and said, essentially, "Gee, maybe we shouldn't use those things anymore."
The recent ubiquitousness of video cameras has shown us a side of law enforcement most of us aren't keen to see. We have seen deadly, out-of-control police chases kill people and destroy property, solely to catch someone guilty of speeding or driving a stolen car. We have seen police beat people to death with wooden clubs for the crime of vagrancy. We've watched people shot with tasers, and we've heard about a few of them dying mysteriously, hours or days later. We've watched the Philadelphia Police serve their version of an eviction notice on some extremists living in a row house: a bomb, dropped by helicopter. (That one was a long time ago, but I still get visions of Philadelphia Police cruisers driving around with little row-houses painted on the front fenders.) On the other end of the spectrum, every day I see taxpayer-owned police cars being driven at unsafe speeds and in an unsafe manner for no apparent reason. At every level, our police are in many cases completely out of control.
Will this young woman's death finally bring this situation to the attention of the public, the only people who are empowered to actually do something about it? I wish I could think so.
Oct. 22nd, 2004 @ 06:22 pm
|
| » Sammy-bird, Teresa Heinz-Kerry |
|---|
Yesterday was an interesting day. My big blue and gold macaw, Sammy, came to the office with me so we could more conveniently get him to an afternoon grooming appointment.
It was quite an adventure. I was late to work because of all the preparation. The porta-perch had to be washed and disassembled for the trip, water and food needed to be brought along, the carrier needed to be prepped, and Sammy had to be convinced that going into that box was in his best interest. He was unhappy but managed not to inflict any serious injuries to me or himself during the hour drive to my office. Once he was here, porta-perch assembled, newspapers spread out on every poop-imperiled surface, he finally relaxed. I put the webcam on him for the day, so the world missed a day of my silly facial expressions and got a day of wing-stretching and yapping and chewing instead. The bird, not me.
When we finally arrived at the appointed place at the appointed time, the woman who had promised to be available to do his grooming was nowhere to be found. When we called her on the phone, she simply said she'd changed her mind and was going home. Sammy spent two hours in a box and seven hours in my boring office for essentially no reason. I believe we'll be finding another groomer ... it's not easy to find one who's competent and worthy of trust, but this one is a flake for sure.
Speaking of flakes, I really don't understand people who idolize Teresa Heinz-Kerry. I don't usually make snap judgements about people, and when I do they're usually positive ones, but I really think that Mrs. Kerry isn't the sort of person I'd like to see become our First Lady.
I'm remembering the incident in July where she made a speech calling for a more civil tone:
"We need to turn back some of the creeping, un-Pennsylvanian and sometimes un-American traits that are coming into some of our politics," she said.
A reporter for a Pittsburgh newspaper asked her afterward what she meant by "un-American," in an encounter caught on tape by a nearby TV crew. She said "I didn't say that" repeatedly. A moment later, the reporter tried again and she replied, "You said something I didn't say. Now shove it."
What does this exchange say about Mrs. Kerry? For starters, it shows she's not only dishonest, but comfortable about lying. She repeatedly states that she "didn't say that", even when videotape and thousands of eyewitnesses confirm that she did.
The exchange also shows that while she's confident when she speaks publicly, and seems to make her points dramatically, she's clearly not prepared to support, explain, or even justify her words in an unscripted conversation. This is probably because they're not her words, but a speechwriter's. Still, most political figures tend to deflect direct questions in a more graceful manner.
Finally, in my opinion, she's shown herself to be a bad-tempered, unpleasant woman. Even under ordinary circumstances, I would have expected more self-restraint from a woman of her supposed status and maturity. If she can't even rein in her foul mouth when her husband is running for the nation's highest office, if she can't present herself in public as a woman worthy to be called First _Lady_, then I have to wonder about her judgment in other situations, perhaps more important, diplomatically crucial ones.
The battle for the Presidency may not yet be over, but if there were a battle of the first ladies, Laura Bush (quite a lady in anyone's book) would have already won.
Pistachio stats: NONE yesterday (hands were too busy keeping the bird from eating the office), NONE yet today.
Oct. 14th, 2004 @ 11:10 am
|
| » Librarian Abuse |
|---|
There's been a recent flurry of stories in our blogring about teachers, and ways of gently but hilariously tweaking them. I've felt the need to participate, but most of my teachers were boring, a few were inspiring, a few were infuriating, but none was genuinely, spontaneously funny even when teased.
Librarians? I did have an interesting high school librarian. There's the story!
Molly Miller was the stereotypical librarian. She was an elderly, gray-haired lady who wore eyeglasses that covered only the lower half of her eyes, and which were perpetually perched on the end of her nose. She was a strict disciplinarian and allowed no noise or other distractions in her library. This hard facade was softened somewhat by the fact that she was a bit unbalanced. By this, I mean that she was as crazy as a bedbug. She was often seen talking to nonexistent people, and she sometimes went off on strange tangents in her speech from which she returned only with great reluctance. If someone said something to her that was too complex for her limited ken, she would freeze in place with a peculiar expression on her face, sometimes for a minute or two at a time.
One day, my friend Kirk Steele and I were in one of the study rooms of the library. I was reading something, I don't recall what, and Kirk was eating popcorn out of a small vending machine bag. Molly walked in, saw the popcorn, and informed Kirk, "There's no eating in here."
Kirk said, "I'm not eating." and continued to crunch.
Molly put on her very best cross expression and repeated her warning.
Kirk, with a "Who, me?" expression on his face, said again, "I'm not eating, Molly!"
Molly blinked. Then she blinked again. She cleaned her half-glasses with a fold of her blouse, put them back on, and blinked again.
"Kirk, I can see you eating. You're eating popcorn. You can't eat in here!"
Kirk sat up very straight. He looked right into Molly's eyes as I sat there chuckling.
"Molly. I am not eating. I am not eating. Do you see? NOT EATING!"
He then picked up a large kernel of popcorn, took careful aim, and bounced it off Molly's forehead, *THORK*, right between her eyes.
Her eyes crossed. Her mouth opened wide. She tried to speak, but words failed her. She blinked again, spun precisely five hundred forty degrees in place, and walked briskly away, muttering. Kirk laughed so hard he spilled the rest of the popcorn, while I fell over backward in my chair.
Molly never spoke of the incident again.
Pistachio stats: One 1.5oz bag this morning.
Oct. 12th, 2004 @ 12:38 pm
|
| » Country Fair |
|---|
Very quickly and by way of explanation, I offer the following first paragraph. My wife and I had some problems in the last few weeks. There has been no betrayal or infidelity or violence or anything else tabloid-worthy, just what might be described as growing pains. Happily, we have reached the mutual conclusion that we're better together than apart, and have resolved to work these things out as a team. We're reunited. (The teenager ... that's a different issue! :)
We spent part of our weekend at a country fair in Cumming, Georgia. We both love country fairs. The smell of the horribly unhealthy food cooking in gallons of fat, the electronic calliope music from the rides, the sound of kids barfing on the Tilt-a-Whirl, and the gaudy layer upon layer of neon lights takes us right back to our childhood. We wandered around looking at the exhibits, catching an occasional show, and eating some of the unhealthy stuff. Grilled turkey legs and roasted corn eaten right off the cob are our favorites, and we topped that off with a funnel cake for dessert. Then we waddled off to see what else we could see. Some of the highlights:
* A "petting zoo". Oddly, this was the sort of petting zoo that put the animals, most of them anyway, behind two fences that are about four feet apart. This makes it physically impossible to pet the animals, so we can only assume that they expected the patrons to engage in heavy petting while looking at the animals. There was an emu in a single fence, and children were allowed to pet it ... and considering how hard an emu can kick if it gets irritated, I had to wonder at their choice of petting creatures.
* An attraction called "Baboon Lagoon". The fact that baboons don't live in lagoons was only a mild precursor to the type of nonsense we were about to see. These baboons were, I suppose, fairly intelligent (compared to, say, insurance salesmen) but they really did little that amazed or awed us. One of the females seemed to truly hate her little tutu outfit and repeatedly yanked it off and threw it down every time the trainer turned his back. Oh, and the announcer at the beginning was careful to point out that Baboon Lagoon was a "Copywritten Performance". This is one of my pet peeves. Has anyone ever heard of a copywrite? I haven't. The correct term is CopyRIGHT, as in having the RIGHT to COPY, so it's a "Copyrighted performance!"
* Bear Mountain. This was a really impressive show, with several large captive-born syrian brown bears who seemed, all in all, a lot more intelligent than the baboons and their trainers. There's no sight to compare with a big, 1000-pound bear jumping on top of a large beach ball and rolling on it, unaided, around a ring while standing upright on his hind legs. I couldn't do that if my life depended on it, and I'm supposedly adapted to walking upright. Awesome.
At one point, late in the show, the trainer (a dark-haired, pretty lady who for no stated reason was wearing a Royal Canadian Mounted Police uniform) brought out a huge 1500 pound bear and danced with him to a popular hip-hop tune. The bear was right on the beat, had some great dance moves, and while everyone else applauded wildly, I doubled over laughing. Why? It's all Stu's fault. In the back of my mind, in a comical finnish accent, I kept hearing the words, "Loooook at the happy bear! He's dancing yooooost for you!"
* Brian Ruth, Master of the Chainsaw. This man is unbelievable. He starts with logs, usually 12" or more in diameter, and carves amazing, detailed sculptures of animals using ordinary chainsaws. He uses normal, everyday saws for the rough work, and a special saw with a narrow bar to do the fine detail work. Brian has been at several of the fairs we've gone to, and I actually bought one of his sculptures at auction a couple of years ago. It was a parrot, beautifully carved from a single log ... exquisitely detailed, accurate, and beautiful. Alas, it was so delicate that a crack formed as it dried, ruining it. Perhaps I'm just clueless as to the proper care of wood sculptures. As we watched this year, he turned a piece of raw wood into a deer, grazing with its head down, ears at attention, tail held high. Words can't describe what a great eye this fellow has, nor his easy grace with a chainsaw. It's not something one sees every day. There are some small, crappy photos here.
Webcam bulletin: Sammy the Macaw may be coming to the office with me tomorrow, enroute to have some grooming done. Stay tuned.
Pistachio stats: 14 ounces today alone. I am badly addicted. :)
Oct. 11th, 2004 @ 05:33 pm
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| » Pistachios are dangerous. |
|---|
In our office, the shipping and receiving guy, Mike, is the local junk food entrepreneur. An entire shelving unit in his office is filled with snack items which run the gamut from candy bars to chips to nuts to dried meat. Mike's prices are reasonable, especially since his little "honor system" payment cup is usually filled with IOU's. (Not from me ... I refuse to go into debt for junk food!)
Mike recently added a new item to his menu, pistachio nuts. I like these. A few years ago I worked with a British fellow named Neal, whose father-in-law used to send him big bags of pistachios at the holidays, not knowing that Neal absolutely hated them. (I haven't used your last name, Neal, so you're still in the clear.) The nuts would end up in a big bowl in our shop and would disappear in a day. Ever since then they've been a favorite snack. This is why it's a problem that they're now so readily available.
Pistachios come to us, the consumer, in their own natural shells. The roasting process makes the shells split open at the seams, and this leaves a crack where you can insert your fingernail and pry the shell apart. Unless you are a freak of nature, this process takes two hands. Therein lies the problem.
It is virtually impossible to get productive work done while eating pistachios. It takes a good five seconds to pry open the shell, extract the nut meat, eat it, and drop the shell halves somewhere. During this time, I am totally non-productive. I haven't quite worked out the ratio of time shelling pistachios to time working, but it's bound to be significant. I probably could have typed this blog in 25% less time if I'd not been so pistachio-distracted.
At the moment, I am fairly depressed, and when I'm depressed I tend to eat, and when I eat I tend to eat some more. Combine that with the sudden availability of large quantities of pistachios and the effect on my work habits could be quite dangerous. My boss may come in one afternoon and find me buried under a mound of pistachio shells, accomplishing nothing, and see fit to fire my worthless ass (arse, for those of you across the pond.) I will then lose not only my job, but my convenient supply of pistachios. Disaster!
What I need is the ability to de-shell pistachios with one hand. Any suggestions will be appreciated, and acknowledged as soon as my hands are free.
Sep. 30th, 2004 @ 02:30 pm
|
| » I wish I were... |
|---|
Borrowed from the terrific a capella vocal group, "Da Vinci's Notebook".
I wish I were a bird,
'Cause if I were a bird
Then I could take wing high above you,
And you could watch my white wings flap
And I could take a great big crap
On anyone who tried to hurt you.
But then I'd have to desert you
Flying southward in the fall...
I don't want to be a bird after all.
I wish I were a dog,
'Cause if I were a dog,
Then I'd do tricks to show I love you,
I could run and fetch the stick,
And I could sit right down and lick
My privates when your mom came over
But if I was your rover,
You'd have my testicles recalled...
I don't want to be a dog after all.
I wish I were a deer,
'Cause if I were a deer
Then we could play out in the forest,
'Til you shot my by mistake,
Then you would carve me into steak
With a touch so sweet and gentle
Keep my head as a memento,
Hanging in the upstairs hall...
I don't want to be a deer after all.
I wish I were a monkey
'Cause if I were a monkey
I could be your furry jester
And whenever you were blue
You'd come and see me at the zoo
My antics would be reassurin'
But I would always reek of urine
And throw my feces at the wall...
I don't want to be a monkey after all.
Sep. 29th, 2004 @ 09:29 am
|
| » Still alive |
|---|
I am still alive. It has been a long, lonely, upsetting weekend.
If you've ever had a car accident, you're familiar with that feeling you get when you see the other car, or telephone pole, or deer, or big truck looming large in your windshield, and you KNOW the collision is coming. You're so close that you know it's inevitable, and you know it's really going to hurt, and all you can do is sit, and say the four-letter word everyone says in that moment, and brace yourself, and wait for the crunch.
I wake up with that feeling every morning, and I go to sleep with it every night, at least on nights when I sleep. It's a moment in time stretched out into an eternity. I have time to reminisce about times when the road was clear ahead, and I was driving along smoothly without a care, knowing where I was going, confident, secure. I have time to analyze the coming crash, considering all the individual details of the disaster, weighing their impact and dreading the pain and upheaval and sorrow.
The metaphor breaks down after a bit, because when a car crashes, the pieces get picked up, the broken glass is swept away, and a nice friendly insurance adjuster writes a big check to make everything all right again. When a relationship crashes, one that took ten years to build and nurture and grow, the damage is immeasurable, and irreparable. The pieces embed themselves in the souls of those involved, and they're there to stay. I literally don't know how to be alone anymore, how to live outside the context of that bond. I never thought I'd have to again.
I do appreciate all the comments on my last blog, it's nice to have friends, but please know I'm not writing this because I want pity or to have anyone feel sorry for me. Rather, I'm writing it to externalize these thoughts and feelings so that I will better understand myself, and also to give vent to some of the pressure that comes from keeping these things bottled up. I always intended this blog to be that sort of an outlet, the one place where I can be honest with myself and write what's in my heart.
And now, I will go and try to do an honest day's work ... which will be interesting since my ability to concentrate on anything is highly in question. We'll see how it goes.
Sep. 27th, 2004 @ 10:28 am
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| » Politics |
|---|
My last entry was about the Flora-Bama lounge, a place that was special in my heart because of a good time that was once spent there, and a memory rooted to some writing on the wall.
That part of the place appears to be gone, just a mass of twisted debris lying along the highway on Perdido Key, soon to be swept away with all the other detritus the storm left behind.
I won't go into excruciating detail, but there have been some changes in my situation recently, and they've left my life in much the same condition as Orange Beach and Gulf Shores. It's still there, but it'll never be quite the same again. I am not myself lately, and things that would normally roll off me like water off a duck's back are now burdening me. Put simply, I have a thin skin these days.
Back before hurricane Ivan hit, a person I thought was my friend told everyone, via his blog, that America deserved the destruction Ivan would wreak on its shores, because of all the horrible things we've done. His assertion was that it was somehow right and proper that thousands of coastal residents should have their lives thrown into chaos, and that many should be killed or injured. I was shocked, and hurt.
When I posted my last entry, that same person put a comment here on my blog, again saying basically, "Serves you right." The Kyoto Agreement was mentioned, as though I was personally responsible for not signing it.
Some friendly person objected to that comment ... and then early this morning, another America-basher, posting as a self-admitted "anonymous coward", saw fit to continue the tirade.
I simply can't handle this right now -- I have enough hard emotional issues occupying my attention, without trying to defend myself and my nationality. I tried to turn off comments for that entry, but being unfamiliar with those functions in LiveJournal, I seem to have screwed it up. I somehow deleted all the comments and I can't figure out how to get them back. I didn't delete them on purpose as an act of censorship, I swear that's true, it really was an accident -- but I must admit I'm not completely unhappy that they're gone.
As they say in twelve-step meetings, hello, my name is Scott, and I am an American. I like to think that despite that, I am a respectable, honest, likable person. My country and my government might have done some things I'm not proud of, but I didn't bring any of those things about, and I use my vote and my voice to do my part to change them. A wise man once said that people should be judged "not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." I believe that maxim extends to nationality as well as skin color.
I am going to leave comments enabled for this entry, mainly because I don't know how to safely disable them. I will be an easy target, because I haven't the energy or the strength to respond in kind to further attacks. I am waving the white flag, so if you have something negative to say, please keep it to yourself or send it to someone more accustomed to being hated and reviled: president@whitehouse.gov.
Sep. 23rd, 2004 @ 10:19 am
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| » Flora-Bama, post-Ivan |
|---|
From the Mobile (Alabama) Register newspaper:
Legendary Flora-Bama belted, buried, standing Portions of bar's walls, roof damaged Friday, September 17, 2004 By JOE DANBORN Staff Reporter The Flora-Bama lives. In a manner of speaking. That's the tentative answer to one of the more earnest questions that people on Alabama's coastline were asking Thursday: Did the Flora-Bama Lounge & Package store, that Perdido Key paragon, survive Hurricane Ivan? "I heard the 'Bama's totally gone," an officer said at the Orange Beach police station. A friend of his got that from folks in Florida, he said, raising his eyebrows, pursing his lips and nodding gravely. Actually, it remains in its rightful place, straddling the state line on Beach Boulevard. But its familiar wood floor is now 3 feet of sand. The structure lost portions of walls and its roof and appeared to have heaved its contents onto Alabama 182. Among the items left standing were the bar's marquee and a front window covered by a plywood sheet on which someone had spray-painted, "till we float away." Parts of the bar itself and much of what had been inside were strewn across the high way -- simple bar stools, aged ice chests, electric beer signs, steel kegs, a wood-handled blade for shucking oysters. An industrial-sized propane tank sat on its side in what would have been the roadway, hissing and smelling of sulfur. Something else reeked of rotting seafood. And everywhere, there was booze. Stacked neatly on a shelf inside, bottles of champagne and merlot. Cast about in the tempest, flasks of Southern Comfort and Jose Cuervo Gold, 1.75-liter bottles of Jack Daniel's and Finnish vodka and Puerto Rican rum and several longnecks of Flora-Bama Mullet Head Red, some near-buried in sand, a few broken but most still sealed. It was as if a pirate ship had run aground. The Flora-Bama has been a beloved rebel legend. Before Baldwin County eased its blue laws, Alabama drinkers would go there to pick up a six-pack on Sunday. And Alabamians would avoid the authorities' evacuation orders by shuffling to the Florida side of the bar, and vice versa. Or so the story goes. Developers built their high-rise condos, pastel and sand-hued, steadily closer to the bar in recent years, to the point that one began to steal some of the beachfront bar's sunlight. The Flora-Bama and its gritty, graying wood stayed put. Until Ivan. There's probably enough of the structure left that the proprietors could bolster a couple of the walls, build around it and insist that the Flora-Bama never fell. Still, the bar and the few other older buildings took the storm far harder than the more recent structures, especially in the stretch between Alabama Point and the state line. Ivan tore away the walls of several of the shorter condos. Practically every single-family home sustained more severe damage. A few were leveled, their utensils sitting atop the sand hundreds of feet from their kitchens. One house just across the Florida line came to rest more or less intact, squarely in the middle of the sand-covered road. The hurricane mangled large sections of the highway, which was undriveable at any rate due to a massive crane that fell across it. And the storm flattened the Perdido Key dunes. At least the Flora-Bama is still there, for now. Mobile lawyer Braxton Counts was among the handful of souls who managed to make the pilgrimage Thursday. He had come back to assess the damage to a nearby residence he and his wife own, one they had visited just Monday. But Mrs. Counts didn't want to make it down to the 'Bama that night, her husband recalled. "I tried to get her to come," he said, "but she wouldn't do it. I said, We need to go one more time, just in case.'"
Sep. 17th, 2004 @ 10:45 am
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| » It doesn't look good for the Flora-Bama. |
|---|
Yesterday, the Tampa Tribune story mentioned the Flora-Bama Lounge:
The Flora-Bama Lounge remained resolute. ``Open until we float away,'' read an attached sign.
The roadhouse, which Tampa author Tim Dorsey once wrote ``looked as if it was built
by enemies of its owners,'' sits on the Florida-Alabama state line along the Gulf Coast's
"Redneck Riviera.''
Regulars and employees said Ivan scared them.
"It's gonna sound stupid, but since it popped up, something in my gut told me this one's
going to be bad,'' said Diane, a patron who declined to give her last name.
Prophetic words. There's not a lot of coherent news coming out of the devastated area today, but these two paragraphs from Reuters caught my eye.
Across Mobile Bay in the swamped town of Gulf Shores, homes and apartment buildings were
damaged and the beach road was washed away after a storm surge of up to 15 feet (4.6
metres) that carried water 10 blocks inland.
The Flora Bama, a famed roadhouse straddling the Alabama- Florida line, was destroyed,
after optimistically posting a note on its Web site that it was "riding out the storm."
Sad.
Here in Atlanta, we're OK. As predicted, lots of wind, some trees down, but nothing seriously
destroyed, and no "Finger of God" tornadoes.
Sep. 17th, 2004 @ 12:01 am
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| » Batten down the hatches, mateys, we're in for a blow! |
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I remember an evening, a year or two past, when I was in the Crescent City of New Orleans for a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). We had worked hard all day and were sitting on the second floor deck of the JAX Brewery, sipping the local drink, a fruity rum concoction known as the Hurricane. It had been a hot day, but cool onshore breezes were cooling things off nicely, and the last of the day's sunshine danced on the waters of the Mississippi.
I began to think about hurricanes. New Orleans is a unique city in that almost all of its land is below sea level ... parts of it are twelve feet or more below sea level. A system of levees kept the water out during good weather, but when the mighty Mississippi reached flood stage, they were no defense. Primitive pumps of the day could never keep up, and the city flooded regularly. Around the turn of the century, things looked bad for the city ... repeated floods had nearly convinced everyone to simply give up and move out. Then in 1918, a young engineer named Wood invented a new sort of pump ... a screw-type pump that could move more water, faster, than any pump ever developed for the purpose. New Orleans built massive pumping stations using 14-foot diameter Wood screw pumps, which lifted New Orleans' drainage water right into Lake Pontchartrain, and give the city some hope. Today, three dozen of Wood's original pumps still stand between New Orleans and the river, lake, and bayou waters that threaten to inundate it.
I thought of this as I sat sipping my Hurricane, and as I felt the energy of the thriving city all around me. New Orleans is a vibrant, living city, steeped in tradition and overflowing with culture. The citizens seem as though they're constantly celebrating, and it's contagious. It awed me that a people who are always riding the ragged edge of disaster could be so carefree. I tried to imagine what the river before me would look like at flood stage, with the winds of a hurricane beating against the shoreline, and decided it was easier not to imagine. The chorus of a fine song by Leon Everett called "Hurricane" came into my head:
Well I was born in the rain by the Ponchartrain
Underneath that Louisiana moon
I don't mind the strain of a hurricane
When she comes 'round every June
High black water she's the devil's daughter
She's hard an' she's cold an' she's mean
Nobody taught her that it takes a lot of water
To wash away New Orleans New Orleans will be ready. She'll likely get a clean miss with Ivan passing well to the East, but of course as with horseshoes, hand grenades, and nuclear weapons, there are still points for a near miss. There'll be wind, a storm surge, and torrential rains. We may see the Bonnet-Carre Spillway opened for the first time since the late nineties. Oh, and Orange Beach and the Flora-Bama lounge will most probably feel the more powerful, eastern edge of the storm.
It's a gray morning in Atlanta, both in sky and in mood. The only good thing Ivan could do at this point is fizzle or turn south, and hurricanes over the gulf aren't likely to do either, so everyone will just have to brace themselves, do what can be done, and hope for the best. Good luck, New Orleans ... good luck, Alabama ... and Ivan, here's hoping you're a shadow of your former self when you visit Dixie.
UPDATE: A friend pointed out that while Leon Everett recorded "Hurricane", the song was actually written by well-known Nashville songwriter Stewart Harris. I regret the error.
Sep. 15th, 2004 @ 09:49 am
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| » Hurricane watching ... again? |
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It looks as though we're once again in hurricane watch mode, and this one's a real humdinger.
Hurricane Ivan, which we've had in the back of our minds for a week and a half now, has developed into a Category 5 hurricane with freakishly high winds and an appetite for small island communities. Jamaica felt its fury early yesterday, and tonight Ivan seems poised to clip the end of Castro's little cigar-shaped empire, making its Russian name more than a little ironic.
After its visit in the tropics, Ivan appears to be scheduled to hit the US gulf coast somewhere between New Orleans and Tallahassee, with the double-nuts center of its track aimed squarely at picturesque Gulf Shores, Alabama.
A year or two ago, my wife and I took a trip to the Gulf Shores area with a group of good friends. We rented a large condo on Orange Beach over a long holiday weekend ... it was one of the most relaxing and happy times I can remember. I took the picture at left one evening as we sat on the deck, feeling the ocean breeze and the cool of the evening, watching the moonlight play in the waves just offshore.
One of the highlights of the trip was the afternoon we all descended on the famed Flora-Bama lounge, a collection of tin roofs, plywood, and beer signs that looks more like a refugee city than an establishment. It's sort of a bar, sort of a restaurant, sort of a convenience store and beer outlet, and above all these a hangout in the true redneck spirit. It gets its name from the fact that it sits directly on the border between Florida and Alabama, along a busy stretch of highway, on a beautiful sandy beach. Two stories of pure ramshackle slumminess. We loved it.
If Ivan hits dead-center, or even a little to the west, the flora-bama will probably be history ... at present, I think only a few well-placed wads of chewing gum are holding it together. It surprised me that the wind from passing trucks didn't topple it. However, the place is still special because inside it is a reminder of a time that I will always remember.
Graffitti is a long-standing tradition at the flora-bama. Almost every square inch of every accessible wall, rafter, table, bench, and fixture in the place is covered with names, quips, and other writings.
Somewhere, on the second floor of that impromptu structure, high above one of the big plywood tables, up by the rafters that inexplicably support the roof, is an old tin Budweiser beer sign nailed to the wall. On that sign my wife wrote our names. To some that would be just a silly, juvenile gesture, but it meant the world to me, so much so that I took a picture. So much so that to this day, two years later, I've never forgotten that it's there.
So much of life is fleeting. As songwriter Jon Vezner put it, "Those memories are just moments you hope will ever end / But they never stay, they just float away like ashes in the wind." The only thing constant in life is change ... things change, people change, and sometimes all we have are memories to remind us of the times that make life worth living. In the movie, "Groundhog Day", Bill Murray's character is vexed by the fact that he repeats the same day of his life, over and over, endlessly. I don't blame him; it had all the hallmarks of a truly bad day. There are a couple of days in my own life that I would happily repeat for the rest of my life, and this was one of them.
OK, enough of my sentimental stupidity, back to hurricanes. I've decided that unless and until things get very ugly, I'm going to leave the updates in the capable hands of the authorities, and the Merman who by virtue of his nautical nature is a far better forecaster than I shall ever be. All my weather knowledge comes from being a pilot, so what do I know about surface weather? :)
In lieu of updates, I would like to provide everyone with a good catalog of links to fresh, up-to-the-minute information on the storm system. Listed below are the very best information resources I'm aware of on the web.
National Hurricane Center, TPC
This link takes you directly to the web site of the Tropical Prediction Center at the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Operated by NOAA and the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center tracks all tropical depressions that form in the hurricane spawning grounds in the tropics, and uses mathematical models to predict their behavior, strength, and track. Their predictions are among the most accurate available.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
NOAA's home page is the best place to look for good, clear satellite images of the storm, both in visible light and infra-red. There is also some storm surge and wind speed prediction information here that can be of help in anticipating the storm's likely effects.
National Weather Service NEXRAD
This link takes you to the national mosaic of National Weather Service NEXRAD (NEXt generation RADar) products. This is the most up-to-date radar information available on the web ... it's generally only a few seconds behind the radar itself and is very nearly a live image. Clicking on the mosaic will take you to the nearest NEXRAD site to the place where you clicked, and from that point you can navigate between sites easily to get a good image.
There are three types of images here. The long- and short-range "Base Reflectivity" pictures are plots of a single radar sweep at a low angle to the horizon (under storm conditions, typically 0.5 degrees.) This gives a good general overview of the position, shape, and distribution of the heavier precipitation in the storm, and is the best indicator of conditions at the surface. The long- and short-range "Composite Reflectivity" pictures consist of several radar sweeps, made at gradually increasing beam elevations from 0.5 to 5 or more degrees above the horizon. This allows the radar to pick up the higher-altitude components of the storm and is the best view for gauging the true size and strength of a storm and its movement as a whole. Finally, the "Rainfall" pictures are the output of an algorithm that determines how much rain has fallen in the radar's coverage area, based on density of precip returns on the radar and how long they persisted. There are one-hour and "storm total" pictures available.
NEXRAD, a doppler radar system, does also provide a "Storm Radial Velocity" product, which actually gauges movement of the precipitation in the air, relative to the direction of the radar beam. Using computer analysis, the NEXRAD system can use this data to detect mesocyclones (rotating storm systems that are the precursors to tornadoes). However, the raw radial velocity picture is almost impossible for an untrained eye to make sense of, so it isn't provided on the web interface. You CAN find it at...
Intellicast
This link takes you to Intellicast, which is a web interface to the products of WSI, a commercial weather information company that has been serving the aviation community for two decades. In my opinion, WSI is shooting itself in the foot by providing this data free of charge ... the commercial WSI services really don't offer a great deal more than this web site does!
The link takes you directly to the tropical storm page ... click the "Available" link on each storm for its predicted track, and from there you'll find tabs at the top to get you to any imagery you might want. Under the RADAR tab, at the very bottom, is the Storm (SRM) Radial Velicity NEXRAD product.
GOES Floater
This is a handy direct link to the NOAA "floater" image. The GOES satellite has one visible-light imaging system that is kept in reserve for tropical storm situations. That camera is kept zoomed and focused on the current tropical system of interest, which means that for the next week it'll be watching Ivan rather closely.
Ivan looks to be another storm that might affect Atlanta if things continue apace. Rest assured that even though I'm not flooding the web with updates, I'm watching this thing as closely as anyone.
Sep. 13th, 2004 @ 11:21 am
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| » Sidewalks: Our Stupid City Government At Work |
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Yesterday's "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" carried a story that left me gaping at the complete stupidity that local governments seem not only to suffer from, but to celebrate. Goat-ropes like this are one of the reasons I don't live in the City of Atlanta itself and never will.
Recently, some of the shopkeepers, residents, and other citizens of Atlanta's urban areas have noticed the lack of maintenance of the city's sidewalks (pavements, for our UK readers.) Sidewalks are part of the public domain, and are generally constructed at the same time as the roadways they border. Most cities do a pretty good job of maintaining them ... there's nothing too difficult about patching up concrete when tree roots break it up, or when ice gets into the joints and pushes them open.
You'll notice I said "Most cities". Atlanta has recently taken a novel approach to this. Sometime in the city's history, they've sneaked through an ordinance that states that while sidewalks are indeed public, maintenance of them shall be the responsibility of the owner of the building that abuts them. In other words, if you own a coffee shop, you don't own the sidewalk outside, but you're responsible for paying to maintain and repair it!
It's not even that simple. Due to the high number of complaints, Atlanta has instituted an inspection program. They've hired a few carloads of high-priced public servants to go around the city, find sidewalks that need repair, and tell the owners of the adjoining building to fix them. If they don't fix them within a certain period of time, they'll have to pay a fine. If they still don't make the repairs, the city will send a crew to make the repairs ... and bill the building owner!
Oh, and if the building owner actually decides he wants to pay for the repairs himself, he'll have to pay the city a pretty big fee just to get a permit to do the work!
I read this last night and thought about it long and hard, decided it was completely ridiculous, and then came up with an equally ridiculous solution.
If I ever own a house in Atlanta with a sidewalk in front, and the sidewalk needs repairs, that sidewalk will have toll booths installed. I will levy a toll from every person who uses that sidewalk, a toll calculated not only to pay for the eventual repairs and maintenance to the walkway, but also sufficient to pay the salaries of the toll collectors I will be forced to employ, to purchase and maintain the toll gates, money-handling systems, and cameras to photograph violators. Funds will also need to be allocated to compensate me for my management of the whole affair. Anyone who doesn't wish to pay the toll, of course, will still be free to walk in the street, so long as the city continues to pay for street maintenance.
If the city government thinks they can out-stupid me, they have no idea what they're up against.
Oh, yes, the wind and rain. Frances' droppings have caused some fallen trees, and some minor flooding, but for the most part she's been something of a non-event. Nonetheless, I was up all night last night, so right now even if she were blowing stone churches down I'd probably sleep through it. All's well in Atlanta.
Sep. 7th, 2004 @ 03:54 pm
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