DOINGS OF THE DERBY DAME
It's just 5:30 p.m. on Ice Fishing Derby Eve as I sit down to type this. Early reports tell me there is a veritable tent city on ice where Saratoga Lake used to be as avid fishermen from all over the region have converged on our little valley to angle for the magic $25,000 prize fish my colleagues and I turned loose there Wednesday morning.
This is hardly my first derby, but it's my first in charge, my first turn as the Derby Dame and I'm pretty jazzed. I spent this entire day whizzing around town like a human pinball, collecting door prizes here (door prizes! You've never seen so many door prizes – or such quality in them!), picking up ticket stubs and money there, making bank deposits (counting our coffee klatsch this morning, the manager of our local bank saw me five times today, poor thing! But I just hate having that much cash on me, actually physically loathe money, the slightly greasy feel of it, the texture, the smell it leaves on my hands. Freud was right to equate it with excrement). We've loaded up our new chamber president's truck with all of the prizes and paraphernalia, we have two, count them, two travel trailers parked out at the lake to serve as derby headquarters – and unlike at certain other derbies in which I have participated this year, they will be impossible to mistake for anything but derby headquarters.
I've lined up a special celebrity derby offical, a popular Laramie bar singer who is also entertaining at my favorite local bar tonight and tomorrow night. As of this writing, I'm planning on taking up residence there both nights, but am very worried about pacing myself, as breakfast, courtesy of the Knights of Columbus, is at 5:30 a.m. each morning, and then I've hours and hours of being the one to whom everyone turns with problems ranging from "is that a trout or a sucker?" to "can we use minnows as bait if we kill them first?" to "what if the person who wins the giant 25 gallon bottle of schnapps is a teetotaler?"... so I'd better be at my best.
I don't suppose the weekend I'm anticipating is everybody's cup of tea, but right now the satisfaction of seeing plans begun back in September coming to some sort of fruition outweighs any dread of freezing cold, stress at unforseen difficulties, dismay at long hours, or disgust at all the cash I'm going to have to handle that lurk deep in the recesses of my brain, untouched by the repeated surges of adrenaline (and of powerful gratitude – those of you who do not live here cannot imagine how cool everyone is being, how generous with their time have been the volunteers I've drafted, how creative have been the businesses from whom I've solicited door prizes, how accommodating the media outlets through whom I've advertised this thing have been. Really, this is an event with so much history and goodwill attached to it that Clytaemnestra could have made it go well) which have helped me overcome every challenge so far.
But today is meaningless, as my ever-so-supportive coffee buddies never tire of telling me.
We'll see how I feel when I come in for java Monday morning.
Friday, January 18, 2002
Thursday, January 17, 2002
'SENIOR MOMENTS,' HUH?
I've been getting lots of e-mail forwards lately about what have come to be called "senior moments" (I believe the term has even made it into the dictionaries), and they make me laugh, but not in quite the way they are intended to do.
You've all seen something like them, I am sure: elaborate narratives or pithy lists that illustrate, in gentle, self-mocking tones, the writer's inability to keep track of the minutiae of modern life. Some are positively elegiac in their wistful evocation of earlier, better days when the narrator could juggle knives, breathe fire, balance the books of a major corporation, roof a house, raise two children and three St. Bernards, and supervise an initial public stock offering while still keeping track of car keys, glasses, haircut appointments and household bills.
But the nostalgia is not the thing that makes me laugh – and wince – and fume.
It's the basic assumption about what human beings are and can do and should do that underlies these things that bothers me.
I am often, especially when I'm a bit in my cups, heard to observe that we late 20th/early 21st century humans have created a world in which we are not competent to live.
Even when I'm not in my cups, I stand by this observation.
Ever since we first developed machines that could generate a thousand exact copies of the same piece of cloth, brick, cut of wood, coffee cup, or glass bead, we've been establishing for ourselves ever higher standards for perfection and uniformity. Handmade or animal-powered (and yes, human-powered is still animal-powered) devices, gewgaws, parts are now simultaneously inferior (because not uniform and hence not universally adaptable, not identical, idiosyncratic, flawed - and thus undesirably impractical) and superior (because not uniform and hence not universally adaptable, not identical, idiosyncratic, flawed - and thus desirably unique and imbued with considerable snob appeal), but they are NOT the standard.
The standard is a mechanical perfection; the right size and fit, the right weight and density, the right composition and design, so that the thing can be effortlessly incorporated as a part of the whole with no surprises, no breakdowns, no pauses or inconveniences.
And because our tools and toys now work so well, that same standard of perfection now applies to people, whether we like it or not – because ultimately the equipment is only as good as those who run and maintain it, right?
What is more dreaded, what more assiduously avoided, what more sneeringly discussed, than OPERATOR ERROR?
Operator error happens because we are idiosyncratic and flawed, designed for much more – and much less – than just supervising machinery, obeying mechanical clocks, adhering to procedures. We're made of water, that weirdest of elements (my high school science teacher, in preparing us for a discussion of water's weird properties, opened his remarks with the memorable observation that "Water is a strange duck," and the surrealism of his statement exactly captures just how odd water is. Surface tension alone, that quality of water that makes it possible for Yeats' long-legged fly to skim across a pond, can, if I let it, get me to doubting most of my assumptions about the way the physical world works), and of dozens of other elements set to growing along certain largely predictable patterns – but there are all sorts of crazy wild cards in our genes that can give us disease, make us taller or shorter than "normal" (and thus harder to clothe since everything comes in standard, machine-made sizes now).
We are to a certain degree slaves to our DNA and the drive to replicate that molecule skews a lot of our behavior patterns, distracting us with direct and indirect thoughts of sex (think for a moment of how much of what you do in a day isn't in some way an attempt to impress the opposite sex? Your material needs are only a small part of why you work to make money, for instance) (and these drives and more are still there even after you've had children, grandchildren even), eating, drinking, and other messy and imperfect activities..
In other words, our bodies, which only the seriously deluded can even try to say do not affect our temperaments, preferences, and patterns with a straight face, have other priorities than accommodating the requirements of a machine-based society.
But do we accept this and deal with it? Or do we see this as a character flaw which must be ruthlessly corrected?
I feel foolish from time to time when I come home to my apartment and see that there are four or five half-filled cups of lukewarm coffee strewn about – sometimes in very odd places. A reasonable, stable, properly functioning person should only need one cup to drink her morning coffee, should remember where that cup is at all times while she follows a rational, orderly routine in getting ready for work, should methodically empty and refill that one cup instead of forgetting she's already got one going somewhere and grabbing a clean one and pouring... right?
But really, who's in charge here?
What purpose would be served by my devoting a significant portion of the weird sac of water and grey matter in my head to keeping track of whether or not I've left a coffee cup on my dressing table?
And more importantly, what else could I be doing with that brainspace were I not focusing so on where my coffee is?
A large part of the fun of being alive is the funky play that's going on in all of our heads each day. We sit at our desks, for example, toiling away at something but every once in a while we chuckle for no good reason because our inefficient, illogical brains have decided suddenly to remind us of that stupid joke a friend told us the day before, or of a sweet remark a spouse or lover made as we were leaving for work that morning, or of a piece of rueful e-mail about the little indignities of growing older that a colleague just zapped our way.
Our capacity for being so distracted is one of my favorite things about our race, if you can't tell. This capacity is what has produced all the good stuff – all of the books and the plays and the music and the paintings and the photography... and all of the machines. Everything we have made started with someone being distracted from what he was "supposed" to be doing by something that seemed more interesting, amusing or important.
I got started writing this column, incidentally, because I couldn't find my keys. And it's funny: in the course of writing it, I have remembered that I left them in my coat pocket last night when I got home to confront the coffee cups. Yep, there they are.
I don't feel a bit sorry for having lost track of them for a while.
And neither should you.
I've been getting lots of e-mail forwards lately about what have come to be called "senior moments" (I believe the term has even made it into the dictionaries), and they make me laugh, but not in quite the way they are intended to do.
You've all seen something like them, I am sure: elaborate narratives or pithy lists that illustrate, in gentle, self-mocking tones, the writer's inability to keep track of the minutiae of modern life. Some are positively elegiac in their wistful evocation of earlier, better days when the narrator could juggle knives, breathe fire, balance the books of a major corporation, roof a house, raise two children and three St. Bernards, and supervise an initial public stock offering while still keeping track of car keys, glasses, haircut appointments and household bills.
But the nostalgia is not the thing that makes me laugh – and wince – and fume.
It's the basic assumption about what human beings are and can do and should do that underlies these things that bothers me.
I am often, especially when I'm a bit in my cups, heard to observe that we late 20th/early 21st century humans have created a world in which we are not competent to live.
Even when I'm not in my cups, I stand by this observation.
Ever since we first developed machines that could generate a thousand exact copies of the same piece of cloth, brick, cut of wood, coffee cup, or glass bead, we've been establishing for ourselves ever higher standards for perfection and uniformity. Handmade or animal-powered (and yes, human-powered is still animal-powered) devices, gewgaws, parts are now simultaneously inferior (because not uniform and hence not universally adaptable, not identical, idiosyncratic, flawed - and thus undesirably impractical) and superior (because not uniform and hence not universally adaptable, not identical, idiosyncratic, flawed - and thus desirably unique and imbued with considerable snob appeal), but they are NOT the standard.
The standard is a mechanical perfection; the right size and fit, the right weight and density, the right composition and design, so that the thing can be effortlessly incorporated as a part of the whole with no surprises, no breakdowns, no pauses or inconveniences.
And because our tools and toys now work so well, that same standard of perfection now applies to people, whether we like it or not – because ultimately the equipment is only as good as those who run and maintain it, right?
What is more dreaded, what more assiduously avoided, what more sneeringly discussed, than OPERATOR ERROR?
Operator error happens because we are idiosyncratic and flawed, designed for much more – and much less – than just supervising machinery, obeying mechanical clocks, adhering to procedures. We're made of water, that weirdest of elements (my high school science teacher, in preparing us for a discussion of water's weird properties, opened his remarks with the memorable observation that "Water is a strange duck," and the surrealism of his statement exactly captures just how odd water is. Surface tension alone, that quality of water that makes it possible for Yeats' long-legged fly to skim across a pond, can, if I let it, get me to doubting most of my assumptions about the way the physical world works), and of dozens of other elements set to growing along certain largely predictable patterns – but there are all sorts of crazy wild cards in our genes that can give us disease, make us taller or shorter than "normal" (and thus harder to clothe since everything comes in standard, machine-made sizes now).
We are to a certain degree slaves to our DNA and the drive to replicate that molecule skews a lot of our behavior patterns, distracting us with direct and indirect thoughts of sex (think for a moment of how much of what you do in a day isn't in some way an attempt to impress the opposite sex? Your material needs are only a small part of why you work to make money, for instance) (and these drives and more are still there even after you've had children, grandchildren even), eating, drinking, and other messy and imperfect activities..
In other words, our bodies, which only the seriously deluded can even try to say do not affect our temperaments, preferences, and patterns with a straight face, have other priorities than accommodating the requirements of a machine-based society.
But do we accept this and deal with it? Or do we see this as a character flaw which must be ruthlessly corrected?
I feel foolish from time to time when I come home to my apartment and see that there are four or five half-filled cups of lukewarm coffee strewn about – sometimes in very odd places. A reasonable, stable, properly functioning person should only need one cup to drink her morning coffee, should remember where that cup is at all times while she follows a rational, orderly routine in getting ready for work, should methodically empty and refill that one cup instead of forgetting she's already got one going somewhere and grabbing a clean one and pouring... right?
But really, who's in charge here?
What purpose would be served by my devoting a significant portion of the weird sac of water and grey matter in my head to keeping track of whether or not I've left a coffee cup on my dressing table?
And more importantly, what else could I be doing with that brainspace were I not focusing so on where my coffee is?
A large part of the fun of being alive is the funky play that's going on in all of our heads each day. We sit at our desks, for example, toiling away at something but every once in a while we chuckle for no good reason because our inefficient, illogical brains have decided suddenly to remind us of that stupid joke a friend told us the day before, or of a sweet remark a spouse or lover made as we were leaving for work that morning, or of a piece of rueful e-mail about the little indignities of growing older that a colleague just zapped our way.
Our capacity for being so distracted is one of my favorite things about our race, if you can't tell. This capacity is what has produced all the good stuff – all of the books and the plays and the music and the paintings and the photography... and all of the machines. Everything we have made started with someone being distracted from what he was "supposed" to be doing by something that seemed more interesting, amusing or important.
I got started writing this column, incidentally, because I couldn't find my keys. And it's funny: in the course of writing it, I have remembered that I left them in my coat pocket last night when I got home to confront the coffee cups. Yep, there they are.
I don't feel a bit sorry for having lost track of them for a while.
And neither should you.
Wednesday, January 16, 2002
NOTES FROM A HOG AND PONY SHOW
When I started this web page, I made myself a promise. I promised never to mention, criticize, tease or otherwise acknowledge a certain other media outlet serving my fair valley, lest I come to appear petty, vindictive or otherwise unpleasant to have at parties.
But... but... but... but...
Anti-pig ordinance?
Anti-PIG ordinance?
WHAT FREAKIN' ANTI-PIG ORDINANCE??????????????
We don't have an anti-pig ordinance, and, I'll go out on a limb and declare, we never will, unless, say, Al-Qaeda somehow finally defeats us all and we are forcibly converted to Islam (under which code the pig and all of its kin are ritually unclean animals).
Imagine if we did have an anti-pig ordinance for a moment!
No bacon at the grocery store (Oh, hey, instant opportunity for a black market. Maybe I need to rethink this whole thing...).
A certain long-established and civic-minded family would have to go to court to change their surname or else leave town. Granted, the middle daughter is a senior this year and so we only have one more season in which to extract more state championships out of her, but still I think they'd be missed.
And of course we'd have a certain paucity in the area of law enforcement.
No, we have many interesting things in the Saratoga Municipal Code, but there is nowhere an anti-pig ordinance.
What we have, as part of Titillating Title 18's Chapter 42, which outlines general district regulations (i.e. rules common to all zoning categories, be they residential, industrial or commercial) and in section 150 treats on the matter of horses and other barnyard animals, runs as follows:
18.42.150 - Horses Any person who keeps a horse or several horses on any lot containing a single family dwelling unit shall keep not more than one horse for the private use of each member of the family living on the premises. The horses shall not be kept or housed within fifty feet of any street or highway. The lots shall have at least ten thousand square feet of area for each horse. Provisions shall be made by the individual landowner to maintain the horse on such property. The keeping of all other barnyard animals in residential districts shall be prohibited.
(Emphasis mine)
All hooting about anti-pig ordinances aside, it is under this section of the zoning code that our planning commission has called Saratoga High School's ag program onto the carpet. Two pigs are currently in residence behind the school, in violation of this section, and there have been complaints from neighbors.
So last week, the planning commission took up the matter formally with representatives of the ag program, as was reported in a local newspaper.
BUT...
While it is true, as has been reported in a local newspaper, that Exhibits A and B in the great Hog and Pony Show of 2002 have been given a period of 120 days to remain in their current quarters, it is not true that the planning commission, the town council, or anyone at all has agreed to change any part of the Saratoga Municipal Code as pertains to this matter!
What has happened is that a certain degree of public support, together with planning commission members' own respect for what the ag program is trying to do in developing such a good, hands-on project for students, has prompted the planning commission to attempt to reach a compromise in the short run – the school year will be over before the 120 days are up – and give program students yet another good, hands-on learning activity this year: the kids and their teacher have been strongly encouraged to work with the commission in developing a proposal to amend the zoning code to allow certain, limited, exceptions for the school. While they're learning to raise pigs, why not learn a bit about how municipal government works, too? I daresay a good civics lesson might be more universally useful to the kids in the long run than a bout of animal husbandry.
(I am trying very hard to refrain from remarking that certain other entities within the community could use civics lessons as well, but as you see I am failing miserably).
If the kids help draft an amendment or addition to Title 18, and if what is proposed is reasonable, the planning commission will consider it, and if they find it acceptable, they will recommend to the Saratoga Town Council (to quote my lifelong hero, Frank Zappa, "That's me! That's me! Ohhhhhhh!) that it be passed and adopted.
Then the council will give the change three readings, during which it will be much discussed, possibly amended, subjected to legal and law enforcement review, and made the subject of hilarious political cartoons in the local media before it is at last accepted or rejected.
That's going to take a while.
But for now, no poor little piggies are getting turned out – though I for one and our planning commission chairman for another would really rather this whole line of thinking were discarded and the pigs moved. The commission chairman has pointed out to me that Carbon County School District No. 2 owns property very near the school, where its bus barn is located, that is zoned differently and where it would be acceptable for the pigs to be kept. No, it's not right in the school's backyard and the kids and teacher would have to walk a block or two to reach the animals, but it's not, I think, any farther than the football team walks each day between the football field and the locker rooms.
As for the many citizens in this town who have voiced their warm support for the Saratoga High School and Hog Farm, be assured that I have taken note of your opinions. I have taken very careful note (and have observed, to my not very great surprise, that all who have expressed support for the piggies live well upwind from them). I will remember who among you told me to quit picking on those poor pigs. And if any of you later come to complain of the smell or the horse flies that will most likely accompany the pigs into the warmer months (anyone remember the last time hogs lived on the west bench? I still have a few scars from some nasty insect bites...), I will remind you of these expressions of support.
Yo he hablado. Harumph!
When I started this web page, I made myself a promise. I promised never to mention, criticize, tease or otherwise acknowledge a certain other media outlet serving my fair valley, lest I come to appear petty, vindictive or otherwise unpleasant to have at parties.
But... but... but... but...
Anti-pig ordinance?
Anti-PIG ordinance?
WHAT FREAKIN' ANTI-PIG ORDINANCE??????????????
We don't have an anti-pig ordinance, and, I'll go out on a limb and declare, we never will, unless, say, Al-Qaeda somehow finally defeats us all and we are forcibly converted to Islam (under which code the pig and all of its kin are ritually unclean animals).
Imagine if we did have an anti-pig ordinance for a moment!
No bacon at the grocery store (Oh, hey, instant opportunity for a black market. Maybe I need to rethink this whole thing...).
A certain long-established and civic-minded family would have to go to court to change their surname or else leave town. Granted, the middle daughter is a senior this year and so we only have one more season in which to extract more state championships out of her, but still I think they'd be missed.
And of course we'd have a certain paucity in the area of law enforcement.
No, we have many interesting things in the Saratoga Municipal Code, but there is nowhere an anti-pig ordinance.
What we have, as part of Titillating Title 18's Chapter 42, which outlines general district regulations (i.e. rules common to all zoning categories, be they residential, industrial or commercial) and in section 150 treats on the matter of horses and other barnyard animals, runs as follows:
18.42.150 - Horses Any person who keeps a horse or several horses on any lot containing a single family dwelling unit shall keep not more than one horse for the private use of each member of the family living on the premises. The horses shall not be kept or housed within fifty feet of any street or highway. The lots shall have at least ten thousand square feet of area for each horse. Provisions shall be made by the individual landowner to maintain the horse on such property. The keeping of all other barnyard animals in residential districts shall be prohibited.
(Emphasis mine)
All hooting about anti-pig ordinances aside, it is under this section of the zoning code that our planning commission has called Saratoga High School's ag program onto the carpet. Two pigs are currently in residence behind the school, in violation of this section, and there have been complaints from neighbors.
So last week, the planning commission took up the matter formally with representatives of the ag program, as was reported in a local newspaper.
BUT...
While it is true, as has been reported in a local newspaper, that Exhibits A and B in the great Hog and Pony Show of 2002 have been given a period of 120 days to remain in their current quarters, it is not true that the planning commission, the town council, or anyone at all has agreed to change any part of the Saratoga Municipal Code as pertains to this matter!
What has happened is that a certain degree of public support, together with planning commission members' own respect for what the ag program is trying to do in developing such a good, hands-on project for students, has prompted the planning commission to attempt to reach a compromise in the short run – the school year will be over before the 120 days are up – and give program students yet another good, hands-on learning activity this year: the kids and their teacher have been strongly encouraged to work with the commission in developing a proposal to amend the zoning code to allow certain, limited, exceptions for the school. While they're learning to raise pigs, why not learn a bit about how municipal government works, too? I daresay a good civics lesson might be more universally useful to the kids in the long run than a bout of animal husbandry.
(I am trying very hard to refrain from remarking that certain other entities within the community could use civics lessons as well, but as you see I am failing miserably).
If the kids help draft an amendment or addition to Title 18, and if what is proposed is reasonable, the planning commission will consider it, and if they find it acceptable, they will recommend to the Saratoga Town Council (to quote my lifelong hero, Frank Zappa, "That's me! That's me! Ohhhhhhh!) that it be passed and adopted.
Then the council will give the change three readings, during which it will be much discussed, possibly amended, subjected to legal and law enforcement review, and made the subject of hilarious political cartoons in the local media before it is at last accepted or rejected.
That's going to take a while.
But for now, no poor little piggies are getting turned out – though I for one and our planning commission chairman for another would really rather this whole line of thinking were discarded and the pigs moved. The commission chairman has pointed out to me that Carbon County School District No. 2 owns property very near the school, where its bus barn is located, that is zoned differently and where it would be acceptable for the pigs to be kept. No, it's not right in the school's backyard and the kids and teacher would have to walk a block or two to reach the animals, but it's not, I think, any farther than the football team walks each day between the football field and the locker rooms.
As for the many citizens in this town who have voiced their warm support for the Saratoga High School and Hog Farm, be assured that I have taken note of your opinions. I have taken very careful note (and have observed, to my not very great surprise, that all who have expressed support for the piggies live well upwind from them). I will remember who among you told me to quit picking on those poor pigs. And if any of you later come to complain of the smell or the horse flies that will most likely accompany the pigs into the warmer months (anyone remember the last time hogs lived on the west bench? I still have a few scars from some nasty insect bites...), I will remind you of these expressions of support.
Yo he hablado. Harumph!
Monday, January 14, 2002
THE FINE ART OF FRIENDSHIP
"I think back to the time
When I wouldn't drink wine,
And they taught me right and wrong
And black and white.
"Sometimes I cried
Stumbling through my youth,
'Cause I loved so much
Yet so little."
- Doug Pinnock, Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill, "The Fine Art of Friendship"
It's a good song I've quoted here, better than most of my readers will ever know, but even I never really appreciated it, never really got it before tonight.
In 1988, I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school, ready to take on the world, riding swiftly out of town on a big scholarship to a swanky school of which no one in my little world here had ever heard. I did not look back, couldn't get out of this town fast enough, thought of Saratoga and its environs only as a torture chamber in which I had suffered and from which I was now free. I would never come back willingly, except to visit my parents, whom I regarded as the only people here whom I would ever wish to see. I burned no bridges in reality, but in my soul the very borders of Wyoming were scorched beyond recognition.
But still I carried all of this life we've known with me. I made a name for myself on the east coast for telling a good yarn about the people I'd left behind, for being the only person in my dorm who knew how to tap a keg (a skill I'd acquired during my elementary school years as a dugout rat for the infamous Over The Hill Gang), for being from a land more exotic and unknown than even Casablanca or Patmos or the Yangtse River. I carried it with me and over the years it grew within me until I had no choice but to come back.
And now I am back, and now I know what was going on before. It's straight out of one of my friend's books: as many who have read them know, James Hillman is a firm believer in "life lived backwards," as his illustrations of, e.g. the famous bullfighter Manolete demonstrate. Manolete as a youngster was so shy he never ventured beyond his mother's skirts; he feared everything and everyone. James says (and so do I) that this was because something in him knew that someday he would face huge hulking fierce hellbeasts for a living, but the six year old he then was could not cope with them. With such a destiny before you, would you not cling to such skirts as were there in which to hide?
So did I feel nothing but misunderstanding bordering on contempt for the people for whom I would someday feel such tremendous stewardship that I would endure anything that fate threw my way to remain among them.
A lot of things have happened to make me feel this way.
An example of what I'm talking about came this last weekend, when for the first time I got up before my own people and spoke (True, I had given a campaign speech of sorts when I was first a candidate for the town council, but that forum was poorly attended, and the small number that was there largely comprised my own well-wishers who were so determined that I would succeed that I probably could have been much more silly than I was and still met with their approval). My duty was merely to welcome them and prepare them for the full slate of oratory (and yes, even I agree that same wound up being a little too full, and our young advocate for embracing change and I are busy paring down her speech for competition) that lay before them (I am a terribly partial speech coach, I am!), but still, as I looked out at that gathering of over 100 people whom I have come to admire and respect more than anyone else in the world, I felt a swell of pride and love and hope and the will to do even more than I have to keep this place one in which we could all justly say it was worth any sacrifice to live.
It's still there, this feeling, many days hence, because of the other gift I received in coming back to this valley.
I have the most stunningly remarkable collection of friends that perhaps has ever existed anywhere in the world, people who do nothing deliberately to raise my spirits but do so simply by being themselves and sharing their thoughts.
I have a veritable Henry Miller in my life ("I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive" Miller wrote in his first and greatest book. My friend who seems to me Miller reborn is in a materially much more favorable position, but has reached that same state of grace, as rare today as it was nearly 70 years ago when Miller sat typing away in his garret in Paris, and one which is infectious and communicates itself easily to me whether I spend five minutes or five hours talking to this modern counterpart).
I have a friend down in Riverside so passionate and so radical that he makes me seem a church-going, Pat Boone listening Rotarian, and who recharges my own passion, my will to work and to take care of what the gods have set before me like no other.
I have an ice fishing buddy whose insights into the human soul at 22 awe and humble me and fill me with giddy anticipation as to what kind of person, what kind of citizen he will be when he finally is able to take his place here.
I have a friend whose eye and hand can make heart-breaking images of the most ordinary sights - a rusted car, a rock, an abandoned launch site, and who keeps me believing that someday I will have a contribution to make to this world on a par with his. It might not be so, but belief matters, as he has taught me.
I have a friend whose every word is some surreal kind of poetry that I understand instantly and yet could spend the rest of my life trying to interpret.
And there are more, so many more. A desert mystic, a hilariously funky speech coach, a gifted teacher, a rock painter and a caretaker, a chef, a poet, a ruthless businessman, a quirky attorney/horticulturalist, a duo of wine connoiseurs who also like a good cheap shot of horrible schnapps... the list goes on, and I'm still only talking about the people who physically live here.
I have a night sky above me vivid and pulsing as I make the drive from one town to another in my endless stream of meetings. To my right as I return from Encampment burns Orion, which always reminds me of Ajax, my particular patron hero who is worth a column all his own for his impact on my life, and on yours, too, if you let him teach you. Poor Ajax, so often thought to be just a warrior lunkhead, standing athwart history and fate at the cost of his sanity and his life. He's there in all of us, and especially in me, and in you who set your jaw from time to time and draw a line in the sand and say "this further and no more," and maybe you successfully fight back the forces that oppose you and maybe you don't, but still you stand.
As I read over these lines, late of a Monday night that has been filled with giddy, silly winter carnival plans and Guiness-soaked plots for Encampment's future and intense reminiscing about what this valley was and can be, I have to laugh at what many who don't know me, don't know us, would make of it.
Any trained therapist except for James, for example, would look at this entry and mark it as a symptom of mania, as he would doubtless examine my private notebooks, written in the depths of insomnia and a serious sense of my own unworthiness to complete the tasks I've been set, and say AHA! This girl is bipolar, or manic depressive, or something. Clearly deluded, in need of help, even chemical assistance. There are those who would read this and put me on Paxil or Zoloft or some other godawful pharmaceutical horror that certainly would temper my reactions, soften my edges, dampen my mood swings, but at what horrible, horrible cost? I'll take the dizzying highs and the horrid lows. I'll take the depths and the heights, for they make me know that I am alive, and that I am where the gods have always expected me to be.
On a small scale, happiness is sitting in a beloved pub with a beloved friend, swilling Guiness and ranting about jury nullification. On the grand, happiness is being where one is supposed to be, in accord with the wishes of whatever powers placed one there, doing the work one was born to do. When all that is right, the very air around one sings out that it is so, making it, admittedly, hard to sleep at night, but the loss of a little shuteye is worth it.
This is the place and the time to be here. Many in the world would envy me, envy us for being here, where there is faith and trust in one another even if we don't always like each other all that much (winter here is funky; in another month or so we will turn into Scandinavia, populated with freaked out and despairing drunks staring blearily over glasses of rum and vodka at faces they are so sick of seeing that they'd very nearly blind themselves just for the change).
When I need volunteers for an event, it's easy to find them. When I need donations or advice or a little push to make something happen, it is there. Always. How many people in the world can say that?
I have advisors and critics (and often the critics are the most valuable; nice as it is to be loved unconditionally, the ones who think I'm a waste of human flesh often have the sanest, most reasonable perspective on what I'm trying to do), assistants and accomplices, drinking buddies and study partners, people into whose eyes I can look and know they just get it, get it all and people whom I will never understand at all, but all of them, all of them, are pulling along with me on the same yoke.
I've loved them all all along, but didn't really get it until now.
Or maybe I did, and just wasn't ready to face it.
"I think back to the time
When I wouldn't drink wine,
And they taught me right and wrong
And black and white.
"Sometimes I cried
Stumbling through my youth,
'Cause I loved so much
Yet so little."
- Doug Pinnock, Ty Tabor and Jerry Gaskill, "The Fine Art of Friendship"
It's a good song I've quoted here, better than most of my readers will ever know, but even I never really appreciated it, never really got it before tonight.
In 1988, I was 18 years old, fresh out of high school, ready to take on the world, riding swiftly out of town on a big scholarship to a swanky school of which no one in my little world here had ever heard. I did not look back, couldn't get out of this town fast enough, thought of Saratoga and its environs only as a torture chamber in which I had suffered and from which I was now free. I would never come back willingly, except to visit my parents, whom I regarded as the only people here whom I would ever wish to see. I burned no bridges in reality, but in my soul the very borders of Wyoming were scorched beyond recognition.
But still I carried all of this life we've known with me. I made a name for myself on the east coast for telling a good yarn about the people I'd left behind, for being the only person in my dorm who knew how to tap a keg (a skill I'd acquired during my elementary school years as a dugout rat for the infamous Over The Hill Gang), for being from a land more exotic and unknown than even Casablanca or Patmos or the Yangtse River. I carried it with me and over the years it grew within me until I had no choice but to come back.
And now I am back, and now I know what was going on before. It's straight out of one of my friend's books: as many who have read them know, James Hillman is a firm believer in "life lived backwards," as his illustrations of, e.g. the famous bullfighter Manolete demonstrate. Manolete as a youngster was so shy he never ventured beyond his mother's skirts; he feared everything and everyone. James says (and so do I) that this was because something in him knew that someday he would face huge hulking fierce hellbeasts for a living, but the six year old he then was could not cope with them. With such a destiny before you, would you not cling to such skirts as were there in which to hide?
So did I feel nothing but misunderstanding bordering on contempt for the people for whom I would someday feel such tremendous stewardship that I would endure anything that fate threw my way to remain among them.
A lot of things have happened to make me feel this way.
An example of what I'm talking about came this last weekend, when for the first time I got up before my own people and spoke (True, I had given a campaign speech of sorts when I was first a candidate for the town council, but that forum was poorly attended, and the small number that was there largely comprised my own well-wishers who were so determined that I would succeed that I probably could have been much more silly than I was and still met with their approval). My duty was merely to welcome them and prepare them for the full slate of oratory (and yes, even I agree that same wound up being a little too full, and our young advocate for embracing change and I are busy paring down her speech for competition) that lay before them (I am a terribly partial speech coach, I am!), but still, as I looked out at that gathering of over 100 people whom I have come to admire and respect more than anyone else in the world, I felt a swell of pride and love and hope and the will to do even more than I have to keep this place one in which we could all justly say it was worth any sacrifice to live.
It's still there, this feeling, many days hence, because of the other gift I received in coming back to this valley.
I have the most stunningly remarkable collection of friends that perhaps has ever existed anywhere in the world, people who do nothing deliberately to raise my spirits but do so simply by being themselves and sharing their thoughts.
I have a veritable Henry Miller in my life ("I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive" Miller wrote in his first and greatest book. My friend who seems to me Miller reborn is in a materially much more favorable position, but has reached that same state of grace, as rare today as it was nearly 70 years ago when Miller sat typing away in his garret in Paris, and one which is infectious and communicates itself easily to me whether I spend five minutes or five hours talking to this modern counterpart).
I have a friend down in Riverside so passionate and so radical that he makes me seem a church-going, Pat Boone listening Rotarian, and who recharges my own passion, my will to work and to take care of what the gods have set before me like no other.
I have an ice fishing buddy whose insights into the human soul at 22 awe and humble me and fill me with giddy anticipation as to what kind of person, what kind of citizen he will be when he finally is able to take his place here.
I have a friend whose eye and hand can make heart-breaking images of the most ordinary sights - a rusted car, a rock, an abandoned launch site, and who keeps me believing that someday I will have a contribution to make to this world on a par with his. It might not be so, but belief matters, as he has taught me.
I have a friend whose every word is some surreal kind of poetry that I understand instantly and yet could spend the rest of my life trying to interpret.
And there are more, so many more. A desert mystic, a hilariously funky speech coach, a gifted teacher, a rock painter and a caretaker, a chef, a poet, a ruthless businessman, a quirky attorney/horticulturalist, a duo of wine connoiseurs who also like a good cheap shot of horrible schnapps... the list goes on, and I'm still only talking about the people who physically live here.
I have a night sky above me vivid and pulsing as I make the drive from one town to another in my endless stream of meetings. To my right as I return from Encampment burns Orion, which always reminds me of Ajax, my particular patron hero who is worth a column all his own for his impact on my life, and on yours, too, if you let him teach you. Poor Ajax, so often thought to be just a warrior lunkhead, standing athwart history and fate at the cost of his sanity and his life. He's there in all of us, and especially in me, and in you who set your jaw from time to time and draw a line in the sand and say "this further and no more," and maybe you successfully fight back the forces that oppose you and maybe you don't, but still you stand.
As I read over these lines, late of a Monday night that has been filled with giddy, silly winter carnival plans and Guiness-soaked plots for Encampment's future and intense reminiscing about what this valley was and can be, I have to laugh at what many who don't know me, don't know us, would make of it.
Any trained therapist except for James, for example, would look at this entry and mark it as a symptom of mania, as he would doubtless examine my private notebooks, written in the depths of insomnia and a serious sense of my own unworthiness to complete the tasks I've been set, and say AHA! This girl is bipolar, or manic depressive, or something. Clearly deluded, in need of help, even chemical assistance. There are those who would read this and put me on Paxil or Zoloft or some other godawful pharmaceutical horror that certainly would temper my reactions, soften my edges, dampen my mood swings, but at what horrible, horrible cost? I'll take the dizzying highs and the horrid lows. I'll take the depths and the heights, for they make me know that I am alive, and that I am where the gods have always expected me to be.
On a small scale, happiness is sitting in a beloved pub with a beloved friend, swilling Guiness and ranting about jury nullification. On the grand, happiness is being where one is supposed to be, in accord with the wishes of whatever powers placed one there, doing the work one was born to do. When all that is right, the very air around one sings out that it is so, making it, admittedly, hard to sleep at night, but the loss of a little shuteye is worth it.
This is the place and the time to be here. Many in the world would envy me, envy us for being here, where there is faith and trust in one another even if we don't always like each other all that much (winter here is funky; in another month or so we will turn into Scandinavia, populated with freaked out and despairing drunks staring blearily over glasses of rum and vodka at faces they are so sick of seeing that they'd very nearly blind themselves just for the change).
When I need volunteers for an event, it's easy to find them. When I need donations or advice or a little push to make something happen, it is there. Always. How many people in the world can say that?
I have advisors and critics (and often the critics are the most valuable; nice as it is to be loved unconditionally, the ones who think I'm a waste of human flesh often have the sanest, most reasonable perspective on what I'm trying to do), assistants and accomplices, drinking buddies and study partners, people into whose eyes I can look and know they just get it, get it all and people whom I will never understand at all, but all of them, all of them, are pulling along with me on the same yoke.
I've loved them all all along, but didn't really get it until now.
Or maybe I did, and just wasn't ready to face it.
Tuesday, January 01, 2002
AT LONG LAST, THE PASSING OF THE POULTRY
Bank the fire! Fill your pipe! Get comfy in your chair:
The Bard of Saratoga's here with tales both odd and rare.
She's going to tell a story; though we all know how it goes,
The fun is in the telling, the recounting of the blows
In this long-standing prank war twixt a lady and a lord
Of long acquaintance, rivalry and occasional kind word.
"The origin of this ritual is shrouded in the past,"
The Bard begins, "Who cares though how it's started? It's a blast!
The Passing of the Poultry! It's a marvelous event
And one on which all pains and care and effort are well spent.
One early salvo, I recall, came when like some devilish fox
The lord filled up the lady's yard with a dozen fighting cocks.
'I hear that she likes chickens' came the crowing explanation.
And that is all he ever said about this new sensation.
So all the while the roosters wandered 'round their new abode
At every mention of the jest the perpetrator glowed.
For her part, the lady bore the jape with one thought on her mind.
What else was there for her to do but to respond in kind?
Time passed, and all of us in town enjoyed indeed the wait.
When now would she strike? And how? What was the joker's fate?
Then one happy Christmas morning all of town let out a whoop,
For on the lord she had bestowed an ugly chicken coop.
It stayed there, quite an eyesore, till he had it hauled away,
Vowing underneath his breath that she would rue the day.
It seemed his turn, his time to strike – or so we at first thought.
But the coop was but a thread in this, the injured lady's plot.
A warning shot it was; a tiny token of esteem,
Foreshadowing, as so it proved, of this witty lady's dream.
For to the lore of Togie she would make this contribution:
For every Poultry Prank there must be Poultry Retribution.
And what came next you ask? What form then did vengeance take?
What filled the bird lord's yard upon the next year's Christmas break?
Alive and gobbling, ruffling downy feathers, oozing charm:
The brand new dwellers in the brand new Togie Turkey Farm.
(And just when he'd got rid of them, had thought that that was that,
Those turkeys' feathers showed up in the poor man's birthday hat!)
Well! No man's pride can e'er sustain so many heavy blows
Without a thought of sweet revenge, and sure 'nuff, one arose.
The lord engaged the aid of someone skilled with thread and needle,
And from some crusty mad old fart a union suit did wheedle.
The pair adorned with feathers that fell hideous underwear
Till it was something that would give a scarecrow quite a scare.
He topped the suit with something I'm near powerless to describe,
Something that he knew for sure would amuse the whole damned tribe.
In shape it's like a lady's cap in a painting by Renoir,
But that is not what he did hope would stick there in her craw:
For true to form and function and to meet all expectations
It was a chicken hat and he collected congratulations.
All innocence he joined for lunch the lady and their friends
And upped the ante in their epic game that never ends.
In front of all and sundry in the famous Wolf Hotel,
Bestowed his gift and smirked there when she told him it was... swell.
She wore the hat through lunch, I'm told, and bore it well, they say.
But not the suit; she said perhaps that's for another day.
She had of course already made her yearly Christmas move
As the rubber duck in his iced tea quite shortly was to prove.
The ducky was, of course, of her revenge but a small taste:
That selfsame morning she had with much calm and little haste
Built for her friend a duckpen in his very own front yard
And thoughtfully left also a most tasteful Christmas card.
Without the card and ducky we might still be unaware
Of what nature were those beasts that she left pooping in his care.
Silent they were and docile, but alarming to behold,
The most hideous ducks that ever, ever, came into the fold.
Of mottled black and white were they and of alarming size,
The foulest fowls that ever fouled a pair of mortal eyes.
When one escaped next day there was indeed a mad uproar.
'Help help, the devil's duck himself is scratching at my door!'
Came the all too typical complaint over the phone.
'Send on a cop or something; I can't face this beast alone!'
And that is how on one fine clear and cold December day
Our town crew found themselves at last a part of this whole fray.
A lady cop was first of all arriving on the scene.
She thought she'd catch the beastie but the beastie proved too keen.
So then our stalwart treasurer bravely came up to her aid
But of his brave attempts to help a mockery was made.
The ice was slick, the duck was quick, and so he quickly fell.
(But was not injured; last I heard, I heard he's doing well)
Next round the corner fighting off the weather and the chill,
Came our Minister of Fun with just the tool to fill the bill:
A fishing net turned out to be exactly just the tool
To snare the wily duck, to capture this unholy ghoul.
The trio brought the bird back home with nary a quake nor quack,
But some reason found the duck farmer did not want his duck back!
The ducks are gone by now on this cold quiet New Year's Day,
But I am sure the next attack is not too far away.
The lord cried foul and asked to have his lady friend arrested
For trespassing, but e'en in this the poor man has been bested.
The mayor gave his prankster foe a lifetime of immunity,
So the Passing of the Poultry can continue with impunity.
And that's the tale, though I am sure it's just the tale so far.
I know both parties, know full well how devilish they are.
The whole town waits and smiles now every year with bated breath
For we all know this aviary battle's to the death.
We've years of entertainment, laughs and cackles yet in store,
As each of them tries year by year to even up the score.
Bank the fire! Fill your pipe! Get comfy in your chair:
The Bard of Saratoga's here with tales both odd and rare.
She's going to tell a story; though we all know how it goes,
The fun is in the telling, the recounting of the blows
In this long-standing prank war twixt a lady and a lord
Of long acquaintance, rivalry and occasional kind word.
"The origin of this ritual is shrouded in the past,"
The Bard begins, "Who cares though how it's started? It's a blast!
The Passing of the Poultry! It's a marvelous event
And one on which all pains and care and effort are well spent.
One early salvo, I recall, came when like some devilish fox
The lord filled up the lady's yard with a dozen fighting cocks.
'I hear that she likes chickens' came the crowing explanation.
And that is all he ever said about this new sensation.
So all the while the roosters wandered 'round their new abode
At every mention of the jest the perpetrator glowed.
For her part, the lady bore the jape with one thought on her mind.
What else was there for her to do but to respond in kind?
Time passed, and all of us in town enjoyed indeed the wait.
When now would she strike? And how? What was the joker's fate?
Then one happy Christmas morning all of town let out a whoop,
For on the lord she had bestowed an ugly chicken coop.
It stayed there, quite an eyesore, till he had it hauled away,
Vowing underneath his breath that she would rue the day.
It seemed his turn, his time to strike – or so we at first thought.
But the coop was but a thread in this, the injured lady's plot.
A warning shot it was; a tiny token of esteem,
Foreshadowing, as so it proved, of this witty lady's dream.
For to the lore of Togie she would make this contribution:
For every Poultry Prank there must be Poultry Retribution.
And what came next you ask? What form then did vengeance take?
What filled the bird lord's yard upon the next year's Christmas break?
Alive and gobbling, ruffling downy feathers, oozing charm:
The brand new dwellers in the brand new Togie Turkey Farm.
(And just when he'd got rid of them, had thought that that was that,
Those turkeys' feathers showed up in the poor man's birthday hat!)
Well! No man's pride can e'er sustain so many heavy blows
Without a thought of sweet revenge, and sure 'nuff, one arose.
The lord engaged the aid of someone skilled with thread and needle,
And from some crusty mad old fart a union suit did wheedle.
The pair adorned with feathers that fell hideous underwear
Till it was something that would give a scarecrow quite a scare.
He topped the suit with something I'm near powerless to describe,
Something that he knew for sure would amuse the whole damned tribe.
In shape it's like a lady's cap in a painting by Renoir,
But that is not what he did hope would stick there in her craw:
For true to form and function and to meet all expectations
It was a chicken hat and he collected congratulations.
All innocence he joined for lunch the lady and their friends
And upped the ante in their epic game that never ends.
In front of all and sundry in the famous Wolf Hotel,
Bestowed his gift and smirked there when she told him it was... swell.
She wore the hat through lunch, I'm told, and bore it well, they say.
But not the suit; she said perhaps that's for another day.
She had of course already made her yearly Christmas move
As the rubber duck in his iced tea quite shortly was to prove.
The ducky was, of course, of her revenge but a small taste:
That selfsame morning she had with much calm and little haste
Built for her friend a duckpen in his very own front yard
And thoughtfully left also a most tasteful Christmas card.
Without the card and ducky we might still be unaware
Of what nature were those beasts that she left pooping in his care.
Silent they were and docile, but alarming to behold,
The most hideous ducks that ever, ever, came into the fold.
Of mottled black and white were they and of alarming size,
The foulest fowls that ever fouled a pair of mortal eyes.
When one escaped next day there was indeed a mad uproar.
'Help help, the devil's duck himself is scratching at my door!'
Came the all too typical complaint over the phone.
'Send on a cop or something; I can't face this beast alone!'
And that is how on one fine clear and cold December day
Our town crew found themselves at last a part of this whole fray.
A lady cop was first of all arriving on the scene.
She thought she'd catch the beastie but the beastie proved too keen.
So then our stalwart treasurer bravely came up to her aid
But of his brave attempts to help a mockery was made.
The ice was slick, the duck was quick, and so he quickly fell.
(But was not injured; last I heard, I heard he's doing well)
Next round the corner fighting off the weather and the chill,
Came our Minister of Fun with just the tool to fill the bill:
A fishing net turned out to be exactly just the tool
To snare the wily duck, to capture this unholy ghoul.
The trio brought the bird back home with nary a quake nor quack,
But some reason found the duck farmer did not want his duck back!
The ducks are gone by now on this cold quiet New Year's Day,
But I am sure the next attack is not too far away.
The lord cried foul and asked to have his lady friend arrested
For trespassing, but e'en in this the poor man has been bested.
The mayor gave his prankster foe a lifetime of immunity,
So the Passing of the Poultry can continue with impunity.
And that's the tale, though I am sure it's just the tale so far.
I know both parties, know full well how devilish they are.
The whole town waits and smiles now every year with bated breath
For we all know this aviary battle's to the death.
We've years of entertainment, laughs and cackles yet in store,
As each of them tries year by year to even up the score.
Monday, December 31, 2001
HAPPY NEW YEAR
As I write this I'm just minutes away from heading out the door to our Best Ever Impromptu New Year's Eve Party. My ice fishing buddy, my brother in anthropology, the pumpkin/rock guy and the physician's assistant (there to keep the rest of us from overdoing it, perhaps?), and who knows who else will soon be partaking of a fabulous fish dinner of freshly caught trout and other delicacies, Guiness (it really does go with everything, even fish!), many different wines and asti at midnight.
Originally we had planned to go party hopping – all four Saratoga bars are open all night and have DJs and other hijinks planned, and Saratoga's one local band is due to play at the big fancy roadhouse just outside the city limits – but as my fishing buddy filleted and the physician's assistant looked up recipes and I looked over my vast stock of beverages and assorted hors d'oeuvres makings, we realized we would nowhere have as much fun as right there in the house.
Elsewhere people I love dearly are gathering to play charades up on the hill, and farther away my brothers and sisters in Secularity are gathering at Mr. Wilson's house (i.e. the house used in the Dennis the Menace movie as Mr. Wilson's house) to drink scotch, smoke cigars, and play the ever-popular Crunch Beast Game in formal wear.
Myself, I'm probably the only person who will be "dressed up" for our fish fry, but I do so in honor of Secular Johnson and... I'll bring a bib.
Already this is the best New Year's Eve since last year's.
2001 has been a tough year on both a national and a personal scale for pretty much everyone I know. I don't know of anyone who will be sorry to see it pass. It was a boring year until it became a terrible year for us all – but at the same time, it's a year in which amazing new friends came into my life at least, old friendships deepened, and my love for the land all around me and the people has deepened. Surely I'm not the only one...
Here's hoping that all of you who read me have something lovely to look forward to this evening and next year.
(I'll be drinking my first toast at 11 p.m. Mountain Time so I can share it with Sec-J – and especially with Opera, who was the one who finally got it through my thick head last year that it was indeed Richard Strauss who composed Also Sprach Zarathrusta in time for us to find the CD and play that tune at midnight last year).
I wonder what we'll play at midnight tonight?
Probably St. Booty.
As I write this I'm just minutes away from heading out the door to our Best Ever Impromptu New Year's Eve Party. My ice fishing buddy, my brother in anthropology, the pumpkin/rock guy and the physician's assistant (there to keep the rest of us from overdoing it, perhaps?), and who knows who else will soon be partaking of a fabulous fish dinner of freshly caught trout and other delicacies, Guiness (it really does go with everything, even fish!), many different wines and asti at midnight.
Originally we had planned to go party hopping – all four Saratoga bars are open all night and have DJs and other hijinks planned, and Saratoga's one local band is due to play at the big fancy roadhouse just outside the city limits – but as my fishing buddy filleted and the physician's assistant looked up recipes and I looked over my vast stock of beverages and assorted hors d'oeuvres makings, we realized we would nowhere have as much fun as right there in the house.
Elsewhere people I love dearly are gathering to play charades up on the hill, and farther away my brothers and sisters in Secularity are gathering at Mr. Wilson's house (i.e. the house used in the Dennis the Menace movie as Mr. Wilson's house) to drink scotch, smoke cigars, and play the ever-popular Crunch Beast Game in formal wear.
Myself, I'm probably the only person who will be "dressed up" for our fish fry, but I do so in honor of Secular Johnson and... I'll bring a bib.
Already this is the best New Year's Eve since last year's.
2001 has been a tough year on both a national and a personal scale for pretty much everyone I know. I don't know of anyone who will be sorry to see it pass. It was a boring year until it became a terrible year for us all – but at the same time, it's a year in which amazing new friends came into my life at least, old friendships deepened, and my love for the land all around me and the people has deepened. Surely I'm not the only one...
Here's hoping that all of you who read me have something lovely to look forward to this evening and next year.
(I'll be drinking my first toast at 11 p.m. Mountain Time so I can share it with Sec-J – and especially with Opera, who was the one who finally got it through my thick head last year that it was indeed Richard Strauss who composed Also Sprach Zarathrusta in time for us to find the CD and play that tune at midnight last year).
I wonder what we'll play at midnight tonight?
Probably St. Booty.
Friday, December 28, 2001
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR
“I got some gumdrops!”
“I got a caramel apple!”
“I got chocolate!”
“I got a rock..”
- paraphrasing of typical trick-or-treat dialog in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
As the above quoted-from-less-than-perfect-memory passage from an old cartoon might indicate, not too many people out in the wide world would be too thrilled to receive a rock in their Halloween goodie bags, or, for that matter in their Christmas stockings or wrapped up as a gift under their Christmas trees.
But we in Saratoga do not live in the wide world. We live in Saratoga. And this Christmas, the hot gift, the most coveted keepsake, the most memorable mathom it was possible to exchange as a token of affection, friendship or just as a jolly good joke, was a rock.
To explain why, I suppose I should hearken back a few months to Halloween, when a new artist-about-town (with a little help from his new reprobate friends, the chamber director/town councilman and the town recreation director) set out to introduce himself in the valley by the most creative means at his disposal: selling custom-painted pumpkins to area businesses and individuals.
It was a merry trio indeed who took a spooky Friday afternoon off to wander about Saratoga hawking pumpkins and introducing the new artist. It is perhaps a pity said artist met the movers and shakers of Saratoga’s business community while in such company, but it can’t be helped now, and doesn’t seem to have done quite as much harm as was originally feared.
Quite the contrary; those pumpkins, decorated with business logos, expressive cartoons, caricatures or nature scenes as the customer requested, became something of a status symbol, coveted and much prized.
My own pumpkin, some two months later, still sits proudly in my office window, still sound, not stinking at all, and still proudly sporting the chamber’s logofish for all to see.
Foreshadowing? Certainly.
Less delicately decorated, less carefully kept pumpkins were scarcely rotting in pieces in the post-Halloween streets before our artist had planned out his next venture.
When first he came bursting into my office with the news, I thought he’d already lost his mind as he waved around his first rock, which he presented to me as a token of thanks for helping him launch himself in Saratoga.
But what a rock! I’m holding it now as I write (a few minutes’ interruption here, the artist himself came in for a chat, and he can’t know yet that I’m writing about him. He’ll see it soon enough. That’ll teach him to bug me about when I’m publishing next!). It’s small and smooth and dark, and on its flattest surface is an exquisite small painting of a brown trout. On the reverse is his signature along with a note that both the rock and the water used in the painting came from our very own beloved North Platte River.
Little did I know at the time that I was holding this year’s Hot Christmas Gift in my hand.
Word about these rocks spread quickly, and soon all sorts of people were engaging my friend to paint all sorts of things on them - elk, rams, deer, pets, scenery, and of course trout. Lots of trout.
My own dear personal mother started joking about rainbow rocks and brown rocks and brook rocks.
Then the subterfuge started.
My poor friend found himself engaged in just about every Christmas conspiracy going on in town (well, except for the primary one, about which more in another column - believe me, the traditional Christmas Passing of the Poultry is something worthy of an entire book and not just a column). As he busily painted rock after rock after rock, he had to be constantly on his guard in his downtown studio lest the intended recipient of one rock get an early peek at his present whilst ordering one for the giver, and so on.
At this time I have to express my personal admiration for this artist, into whose studio I tended to come crashing several times a day throughout the holiday season, plotting this, planning that, making suggestions, inviting him and his wife to parties, arranging fishing excursions... while he worked, in fits and starts, on my own fabulous Christmas present: a set of river rock bookends emblazoned with an authentic image of an Athenian warrior in battle dress, one celebrating the Odyssey and the other the Iliad.
I never saw it coming.
How many times did he have to duck and cover? How many times did he have to rush and hide his work over the last month? My ice fishing buddy, for whom I commissioned a rocky cartoon depicting him standing eagerly on the shore of an unfrozen lake, his auger and pole and jigs in hand, eyeing a thermometer reading 70 degrees under a blazing hot sun, exhorting the water to “freeze, come on, freeze!”, nearly saw his own gift several times in the course of a single week.
Before December was even half gone, our artist was feverishly at work nearly every time I saw him, all the while wondering when he was ever going to get his Christmas presents made – for he had planned long ago to bestow trout rocks on all of his family and friends this year.
But as each rock was completed, it was sold. The faster he churned them out, the faster they moved (and without, let me add, any decline in quality; his latest rocks are just as beautiful as mine).
Towards the end it became quite entertaining as he worked ever harder, scrambling for more rocks, more paint, more TIME!
At least the guy who invented Cabbage Patch Dolls wisely farmed them out to a big manufacturing firm before that craze hit.
But of course, were my friend to have done so, the whole point of the thing would be missed; these are unique, beautiful, hand-made things that celebrate a specific place and specific personalities, things that all of us who know him now, and certainly the many who will know him in the future, will treasure always both as tokens of our new artist friend and the people who seized on his work and gave it as gifts this holiday season.
My own father had two rocks in his stocking this Christmas, one from me decorated with a buffalo (my friend saw the buffalo in the rock before anyone asked him to paint it; the rock was shaped just so, and his eyes lit up when I told him what my dad would really like was a buffalo), and a rainbow rock as a gift from the artist himself.
I could almost hear his delighted laughter here in Saratoga as he pulled out his prizes in faraway Portland, where he was visiting my sister.
As for me, I still have a big, stupid grin on my face every time I look at my new bookends, which are like nothing else in the entire world and will certainly confuse archaeologists someday when I am long gone.
Yes, my artist friend is well-launched here in Saratoga, and is still filling orders for late gifts. He is discovering, though, that one should indeed be careful what he wishes for.
For the ice fishing derby is coming soon, and with it visitors, all of whom, I am sure, will want to take home a brookie rock.
Brace yourself, Kevin.
“I got some gumdrops!”
“I got a caramel apple!”
“I got chocolate!”
“I got a rock..”
- paraphrasing of typical trick-or-treat dialog in “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”
As the above quoted-from-less-than-perfect-memory passage from an old cartoon might indicate, not too many people out in the wide world would be too thrilled to receive a rock in their Halloween goodie bags, or, for that matter in their Christmas stockings or wrapped up as a gift under their Christmas trees.
But we in Saratoga do not live in the wide world. We live in Saratoga. And this Christmas, the hot gift, the most coveted keepsake, the most memorable mathom it was possible to exchange as a token of affection, friendship or just as a jolly good joke, was a rock.
To explain why, I suppose I should hearken back a few months to Halloween, when a new artist-about-town (with a little help from his new reprobate friends, the chamber director/town councilman and the town recreation director) set out to introduce himself in the valley by the most creative means at his disposal: selling custom-painted pumpkins to area businesses and individuals.
It was a merry trio indeed who took a spooky Friday afternoon off to wander about Saratoga hawking pumpkins and introducing the new artist. It is perhaps a pity said artist met the movers and shakers of Saratoga’s business community while in such company, but it can’t be helped now, and doesn’t seem to have done quite as much harm as was originally feared.
Quite the contrary; those pumpkins, decorated with business logos, expressive cartoons, caricatures or nature scenes as the customer requested, became something of a status symbol, coveted and much prized.
My own pumpkin, some two months later, still sits proudly in my office window, still sound, not stinking at all, and still proudly sporting the chamber’s logofish for all to see.
Foreshadowing? Certainly.
Less delicately decorated, less carefully kept pumpkins were scarcely rotting in pieces in the post-Halloween streets before our artist had planned out his next venture.
When first he came bursting into my office with the news, I thought he’d already lost his mind as he waved around his first rock, which he presented to me as a token of thanks for helping him launch himself in Saratoga.
But what a rock! I’m holding it now as I write (a few minutes’ interruption here, the artist himself came in for a chat, and he can’t know yet that I’m writing about him. He’ll see it soon enough. That’ll teach him to bug me about when I’m publishing next!). It’s small and smooth and dark, and on its flattest surface is an exquisite small painting of a brown trout. On the reverse is his signature along with a note that both the rock and the water used in the painting came from our very own beloved North Platte River.
Little did I know at the time that I was holding this year’s Hot Christmas Gift in my hand.
Word about these rocks spread quickly, and soon all sorts of people were engaging my friend to paint all sorts of things on them - elk, rams, deer, pets, scenery, and of course trout. Lots of trout.
My own dear personal mother started joking about rainbow rocks and brown rocks and brook rocks.
Then the subterfuge started.
My poor friend found himself engaged in just about every Christmas conspiracy going on in town (well, except for the primary one, about which more in another column - believe me, the traditional Christmas Passing of the Poultry is something worthy of an entire book and not just a column). As he busily painted rock after rock after rock, he had to be constantly on his guard in his downtown studio lest the intended recipient of one rock get an early peek at his present whilst ordering one for the giver, and so on.
At this time I have to express my personal admiration for this artist, into whose studio I tended to come crashing several times a day throughout the holiday season, plotting this, planning that, making suggestions, inviting him and his wife to parties, arranging fishing excursions... while he worked, in fits and starts, on my own fabulous Christmas present: a set of river rock bookends emblazoned with an authentic image of an Athenian warrior in battle dress, one celebrating the Odyssey and the other the Iliad.
I never saw it coming.
How many times did he have to duck and cover? How many times did he have to rush and hide his work over the last month? My ice fishing buddy, for whom I commissioned a rocky cartoon depicting him standing eagerly on the shore of an unfrozen lake, his auger and pole and jigs in hand, eyeing a thermometer reading 70 degrees under a blazing hot sun, exhorting the water to “freeze, come on, freeze!”, nearly saw his own gift several times in the course of a single week.
Before December was even half gone, our artist was feverishly at work nearly every time I saw him, all the while wondering when he was ever going to get his Christmas presents made – for he had planned long ago to bestow trout rocks on all of his family and friends this year.
But as each rock was completed, it was sold. The faster he churned them out, the faster they moved (and without, let me add, any decline in quality; his latest rocks are just as beautiful as mine).
Towards the end it became quite entertaining as he worked ever harder, scrambling for more rocks, more paint, more TIME!
At least the guy who invented Cabbage Patch Dolls wisely farmed them out to a big manufacturing firm before that craze hit.
But of course, were my friend to have done so, the whole point of the thing would be missed; these are unique, beautiful, hand-made things that celebrate a specific place and specific personalities, things that all of us who know him now, and certainly the many who will know him in the future, will treasure always both as tokens of our new artist friend and the people who seized on his work and gave it as gifts this holiday season.
My own father had two rocks in his stocking this Christmas, one from me decorated with a buffalo (my friend saw the buffalo in the rock before anyone asked him to paint it; the rock was shaped just so, and his eyes lit up when I told him what my dad would really like was a buffalo), and a rainbow rock as a gift from the artist himself.
I could almost hear his delighted laughter here in Saratoga as he pulled out his prizes in faraway Portland, where he was visiting my sister.
As for me, I still have a big, stupid grin on my face every time I look at my new bookends, which are like nothing else in the entire world and will certainly confuse archaeologists someday when I am long gone.
Yes, my artist friend is well-launched here in Saratoga, and is still filling orders for late gifts. He is discovering, though, that one should indeed be careful what he wishes for.
For the ice fishing derby is coming soon, and with it visitors, all of whom, I am sure, will want to take home a brookie rock.
Brace yourself, Kevin.
Thursday, December 20, 2001
A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS
(CAVEAT LECTOR: I tried really hard, but I wound up putting in some spoilers. But only people who know the books I'm talking about will understand any of this entry anyway, so I suppose I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about that too much)
I'm having trouble even getting started on this column, which of course is going to be about the new Lord of the Rings movie that premiered today (technically, looking at the clock, I should now say "yesterday" but it's still today to me, as it always is). I wanted to go to sleep and take up the subject tomorrow, but impressions, phrases, points continue to come over me and they will not let me sleep until they're down and shared in some fashion.
Uber-nerd that I am, of course I went to see this film today, the very first day it came out, even though doing so entailed an 80-mile round trip with an uncertain end, to wit, the movie theater in Rawlins has no advance ticket sales policy and no real way of dealing with a high-demand premiere like this (I remember, years ago, nearly getting shut out of the very first Batman movie there and winding up in the Picasso section, front row center, stuck craning my neck to watch a nearly cubist Joker nearly win the day).
Like many a Middle Earth maniac, like many a Dungeons and Dragons (or, in my mother's parlance, "Dragons and Dum-Dums") devotee, like many a silly sword and sorcery seeker, I've been waiting for this film pretty much my entire conscious life and damned if I was going to wait one more day, even if it snowed and blowed and ran me off the road.
With all of the advance reviews and publicity, and with my utter faith in director Peter Jackson (whose earlier "Heavenly Creatures" I love), and with my crowing delight at the casting of Viggo Mortensen (the devil in the first of those silly "Prophecy" movies) as the future king, I went pretty sure that I was going to enjoy the thing a lot – which certainty threatened my objectivity profoundly.
So, both in the interests of cross cultural exchange and of borrowing a Tolkien tabula rasa, I dragged along my ice fishing buddy (who drove into the bargain, knowing me too well and wisely suspecting that were transportation left to me we'd end up in a ditch somewhere as I channeled my inner Italian and tried to talk with my hands AND drive in my excitement). He is aware of the general plot and storyline from his own years as a talk jock (competitive speech and debate at the high school level is rife with, well, with younger versions of me) but has never read any of the books, not even The Hobbit, so he was my perfect foil; his reactions would gauge the movie qua movie while my own could be used solely to examine its relationship to the book.
It worked beautifully; we were still raving about the thing together 45 minutes after leaving the theater while we topped off the night with a pint of Murphy's Stout at a local pub (Guiness, alas, only now being available on tap in Encampment, and while on an ordinary night a mere 20 miles would never be permitted to stand between either of us and a proper pint, we'd already driven 80 and were jazzed to the eyeballs to boot).
Yup, he liked it, too, but that's not the extraordinary thing. The extraordinary thing, people, is that the pair of us loved for the most the same things about the film!
Oh, I got more into it than he did, of course. At times I became so absorbed that I forgot he was there, while he was at least at times able to take note of my competition for the title of Biggest Nerd in Saratoga (i.e. we weren't the only folks who made the journey for the premiere) (I won't say who else was there lest I blow their cover, natch).
What's so great about it?
Oh!
Adaptations often suffer by comparison with their original sources because of the problem of translating imagination and making its appeal universal. Frequently readers of a book will complain about the movie because, e.g., actors chosen to play key characters didn't fit the reader's own very personal mental picture of what those characters looked like or sounded like or moved like. Key elements of a big novel might get left out in the interests of time or clarity or comprehensibility for the uninitiated (for instance, the Missionaria Protectiva has yet to be mentioned in any adaptation of DUNE, and my best friend's beloved power suits made nary an appearance in the film version of STARSHIP TROOPERS).
On the whole, I'm as guilty of such complaining as anyone, guys, I really am!
BUT... While there is next to nothing in this movie that really looks or sounds or acts the way I imagined it when first I read Tolkien's books at the tender age of eight or so, or when god-knows-how-many-timeseth I read it again about a month ago, THAT'S GREAT!
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that with a book as deeply loved and deeply felt and vividly recalled as this one, it's actually pretty cool to see what someone else imagined while reading it.
Especially when that someone else, those someone elses, is/are as incredibly imaginative, fastidious and all-around brilliant as Peter Jackson, his production designers, his screenwriting team, and his cast, all of whom, I now suspect, had at least in purely visual and aesthetic terms a better vision of the world Tolkien created than I have had in all my years of loving and reading these books.
Yes, a bold and maybe a weird statement, but hear me out:
I first encountered this stuff in early elementary school. In second grade, I snuck into the older kids' viewing of the Rankin-Bass cartoon of The Hobbit – and, complain about what Rankin-Bass, and later Ralph Bakshi, did with these books in translating them to cel animation as some might, for every griping purist, animation snob or general sad sack, there is a person like me who used to be a kid whose entire world was opened to Tolkien and his ilk by exposure to these admittedly pretty crummy cartoons (though no one will ever convince me that John Huston was not a born Gandalf; it's still his voice I hear in my head when I read the wizard's dialog and I found myself superimposing it, if that would be the correct verb, on Ian McKellen's as I took in the movie. Had Huston still been alive, he would have been the ONLY choice for this role. End of story and if you disagree start your own double-damned blog).
I had devoured the whole mess, even the Silmarilion by the time I hit third or fourth grade. And I was in love.
But I've never been to England, see. And at the time of these first readings, I'd never seen much in the way of industrial blight or land laid waste. My Misty Mountains were the Snowy Range (and still are; they do very nicely in that imaginary role); my Great River Anduin the North Platte (and still is even now, though I've seen the Mississippi); Long Lake, Saratoga Lake. Weathertop looks a lot like Libby Flats in my head, and I've never been able to stop conflating Orthanc, Saruman's tower at Isengard, with the fire lookout station at Kennaday Peak.
And of course, the Shire was a lot like Saratoga, or later, places like Annandale-on-Hudson, New York or Montague, Massachusetts.
Intellectually I knew Tolkien had locales more familiar to HIM in mind - English villages and countryside (why else call the Hobbits' home the Shire?), Germany, etc. as he wrote. But in my mind's eye that's not what I saw. How could I?
But now, through Peter Jackson's movie, I feel I have seen a much better approximation of what Tolkien was trying to invoke. My mountains are beautiful and in the right situations quite forbidding, but there is no equivalent to the horror of Caradhras as depicted in the film. The North Platte makes for a great boat trip, and goes through some spectacular canyons while it's still very small, but it is not the majestic waterway J.R.R. had in mind. Orthanc is huge and dark and angular and not at all the friendly, austere quarters from which my friend Judi watches over the forest every summer (though because of this connection in my mind it was especially shocking to watch Orcs cutting down gorgeous deciduous trees the likes of which I only came to know while living in the northeast U.S. from the vantage point of the top of Orthanc in the film).
Oddly enough, Weathertop did look a lot like Libby Flats. But I digress as usual.
Another thing that makes this film truer than true to the original is what Jackson has done with the storyline. True, I'm as annoyed as anyone could be at the absence of Tom Bombadil – he was far and away my favorite character in Fellowship of the Ring, the one I wished I could know in real life, the one I admired and still seek to emulate, the one even today I love author Tom Robbins for in some way resembling – and the particularly cynical among us will doubtless needle the rest of us for weeks in a manner befitting the comic book salesman on the Simpsons for not boycotting the film because the characters of Arwen Undomiel and Glorfindel have been combined in what is obviously a ploy just to beef up the cheesecake factor. In a perfect world neither of these things would have happened, and Fatty Bolger and Bill Ferny would still be there to enjoy and non-readers would know the name of Galadriel's gigolo... but these are really petty quibbles in the face of what Jackson pulled off that Tolkien didn't – which really is one of the most triumphant transfers from one medium to another I've ever seen.
Think back, those of you who know the books well, to how much of the serious and foreboding, important action seems to take place outside the confines of the actual narrative. How much of the second book, The Two Towers, actually refers to things indirectly, as mere backstory, at the expense of a lot of excitement, emotion and impact?
I'm talking particularly about most of the Saruman backstory. From Gandalf's imprisonment in Orthanc to Saruman's breeding of the Uruk-Hai, his razing of the forest and his establishment of a rival Mordor in the realm of Isengard – all that takes place offstage, as it were, in the books. By the time any of our protagonist reach Isengard, it's all just an ugly fait accompli.
In the film, however, we get to see it and fear it properly as a beautiful forest that sports one elegant tower as its only sign of habitation is gradually transformed into an industrial hellpit. We even get an excursis from Saruman on how orcs came to be, something we only get in the appendices of the novels.
The novels would have been twice as long if Tolkien had tried to use this fine cinematic device, the cut between simultaneously occurring scenes, to any good effect in his books, especially when the real impact of the Saruman storyline is so very, very visual. Which is why Tolkien resorted to, for instance, Treebeard raging in The Two Towers about Saruman's destruction of the forest instead of trying to write a long, probably turgid description of that forest.
There is more that I could point out. Other critics have noticed the loving attention to detail and craft that have made even the brooches of Lothlorien – not even mentioned in dialogue, as the whole leave taking of Lorien is omitted from the film – something eye catching enough to make the seasoned Tolkien toker anticipate their importance in the upcoming sequel. The satisfaction of seeing Hugo Weaving – who has looked like he was born to play an elf in every film he's made from Priscilla Queen of the Desert to The Matrix – being the elf he should always have been. Sean Bean as Boromir, not given much screen time or dialogue, but still playing out that poor man's entire tragedy fully enough to allow even my ice fishing buddy to understand what the guy is going through.
I will end on one other note: this movie is deeply satisfying also because of its evocation of emotions that are only sort of there for the long-time Rings reader in the books. The books contain many declarative sentences indicating that the characters are grieving or fearful or puzzled.
The movie shows stricken Hobbits collapsing in tears in the snow outside Moria, handles the merely scary in the books in such a way that I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares tonight.
Truly it's a marvel.
In Saratoga life, it's a rare movie that I dub an 80-mile movie. How many films are really worth the effort to get to Rawlins to see them, when soon they'll be available on video and soon after that, available used off of websites to own for a lower price than the initial movie ticket?
I'm going to have to call this movie about a 240-mile movie.
Good thing I had my car tuned up recently.
(CAVEAT LECTOR: I tried really hard, but I wound up putting in some spoilers. But only people who know the books I'm talking about will understand any of this entry anyway, so I suppose I shouldn't worry my pretty little head about that too much)
I'm having trouble even getting started on this column, which of course is going to be about the new Lord of the Rings movie that premiered today (technically, looking at the clock, I should now say "yesterday" but it's still today to me, as it always is). I wanted to go to sleep and take up the subject tomorrow, but impressions, phrases, points continue to come over me and they will not let me sleep until they're down and shared in some fashion.
Uber-nerd that I am, of course I went to see this film today, the very first day it came out, even though doing so entailed an 80-mile round trip with an uncertain end, to wit, the movie theater in Rawlins has no advance ticket sales policy and no real way of dealing with a high-demand premiere like this (I remember, years ago, nearly getting shut out of the very first Batman movie there and winding up in the Picasso section, front row center, stuck craning my neck to watch a nearly cubist Joker nearly win the day).
Like many a Middle Earth maniac, like many a Dungeons and Dragons (or, in my mother's parlance, "Dragons and Dum-Dums") devotee, like many a silly sword and sorcery seeker, I've been waiting for this film pretty much my entire conscious life and damned if I was going to wait one more day, even if it snowed and blowed and ran me off the road.
With all of the advance reviews and publicity, and with my utter faith in director Peter Jackson (whose earlier "Heavenly Creatures" I love), and with my crowing delight at the casting of Viggo Mortensen (the devil in the first of those silly "Prophecy" movies) as the future king, I went pretty sure that I was going to enjoy the thing a lot – which certainty threatened my objectivity profoundly.
So, both in the interests of cross cultural exchange and of borrowing a Tolkien tabula rasa, I dragged along my ice fishing buddy (who drove into the bargain, knowing me too well and wisely suspecting that were transportation left to me we'd end up in a ditch somewhere as I channeled my inner Italian and tried to talk with my hands AND drive in my excitement). He is aware of the general plot and storyline from his own years as a talk jock (competitive speech and debate at the high school level is rife with, well, with younger versions of me) but has never read any of the books, not even The Hobbit, so he was my perfect foil; his reactions would gauge the movie qua movie while my own could be used solely to examine its relationship to the book.
It worked beautifully; we were still raving about the thing together 45 minutes after leaving the theater while we topped off the night with a pint of Murphy's Stout at a local pub (Guiness, alas, only now being available on tap in Encampment, and while on an ordinary night a mere 20 miles would never be permitted to stand between either of us and a proper pint, we'd already driven 80 and were jazzed to the eyeballs to boot).
Yup, he liked it, too, but that's not the extraordinary thing. The extraordinary thing, people, is that the pair of us loved for the most the same things about the film!
Oh, I got more into it than he did, of course. At times I became so absorbed that I forgot he was there, while he was at least at times able to take note of my competition for the title of Biggest Nerd in Saratoga (i.e. we weren't the only folks who made the journey for the premiere) (I won't say who else was there lest I blow their cover, natch).
What's so great about it?
Oh!
Adaptations often suffer by comparison with their original sources because of the problem of translating imagination and making its appeal universal. Frequently readers of a book will complain about the movie because, e.g., actors chosen to play key characters didn't fit the reader's own very personal mental picture of what those characters looked like or sounded like or moved like. Key elements of a big novel might get left out in the interests of time or clarity or comprehensibility for the uninitiated (for instance, the Missionaria Protectiva has yet to be mentioned in any adaptation of DUNE, and my best friend's beloved power suits made nary an appearance in the film version of STARSHIP TROOPERS).
On the whole, I'm as guilty of such complaining as anyone, guys, I really am!
BUT... While there is next to nothing in this movie that really looks or sounds or acts the way I imagined it when first I read Tolkien's books at the tender age of eight or so, or when god-knows-how-many-timeseth I read it again about a month ago, THAT'S GREAT!
I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that with a book as deeply loved and deeply felt and vividly recalled as this one, it's actually pretty cool to see what someone else imagined while reading it.
Especially when that someone else, those someone elses, is/are as incredibly imaginative, fastidious and all-around brilliant as Peter Jackson, his production designers, his screenwriting team, and his cast, all of whom, I now suspect, had at least in purely visual and aesthetic terms a better vision of the world Tolkien created than I have had in all my years of loving and reading these books.
Yes, a bold and maybe a weird statement, but hear me out:
I first encountered this stuff in early elementary school. In second grade, I snuck into the older kids' viewing of the Rankin-Bass cartoon of The Hobbit – and, complain about what Rankin-Bass, and later Ralph Bakshi, did with these books in translating them to cel animation as some might, for every griping purist, animation snob or general sad sack, there is a person like me who used to be a kid whose entire world was opened to Tolkien and his ilk by exposure to these admittedly pretty crummy cartoons (though no one will ever convince me that John Huston was not a born Gandalf; it's still his voice I hear in my head when I read the wizard's dialog and I found myself superimposing it, if that would be the correct verb, on Ian McKellen's as I took in the movie. Had Huston still been alive, he would have been the ONLY choice for this role. End of story and if you disagree start your own double-damned blog).
I had devoured the whole mess, even the Silmarilion by the time I hit third or fourth grade. And I was in love.
But I've never been to England, see. And at the time of these first readings, I'd never seen much in the way of industrial blight or land laid waste. My Misty Mountains were the Snowy Range (and still are; they do very nicely in that imaginary role); my Great River Anduin the North Platte (and still is even now, though I've seen the Mississippi); Long Lake, Saratoga Lake. Weathertop looks a lot like Libby Flats in my head, and I've never been able to stop conflating Orthanc, Saruman's tower at Isengard, with the fire lookout station at Kennaday Peak.
And of course, the Shire was a lot like Saratoga, or later, places like Annandale-on-Hudson, New York or Montague, Massachusetts.
Intellectually I knew Tolkien had locales more familiar to HIM in mind - English villages and countryside (why else call the Hobbits' home the Shire?), Germany, etc. as he wrote. But in my mind's eye that's not what I saw. How could I?
But now, through Peter Jackson's movie, I feel I have seen a much better approximation of what Tolkien was trying to invoke. My mountains are beautiful and in the right situations quite forbidding, but there is no equivalent to the horror of Caradhras as depicted in the film. The North Platte makes for a great boat trip, and goes through some spectacular canyons while it's still very small, but it is not the majestic waterway J.R.R. had in mind. Orthanc is huge and dark and angular and not at all the friendly, austere quarters from which my friend Judi watches over the forest every summer (though because of this connection in my mind it was especially shocking to watch Orcs cutting down gorgeous deciduous trees the likes of which I only came to know while living in the northeast U.S. from the vantage point of the top of Orthanc in the film).
Oddly enough, Weathertop did look a lot like Libby Flats. But I digress as usual.
Another thing that makes this film truer than true to the original is what Jackson has done with the storyline. True, I'm as annoyed as anyone could be at the absence of Tom Bombadil – he was far and away my favorite character in Fellowship of the Ring, the one I wished I could know in real life, the one I admired and still seek to emulate, the one even today I love author Tom Robbins for in some way resembling – and the particularly cynical among us will doubtless needle the rest of us for weeks in a manner befitting the comic book salesman on the Simpsons for not boycotting the film because the characters of Arwen Undomiel and Glorfindel have been combined in what is obviously a ploy just to beef up the cheesecake factor. In a perfect world neither of these things would have happened, and Fatty Bolger and Bill Ferny would still be there to enjoy and non-readers would know the name of Galadriel's gigolo... but these are really petty quibbles in the face of what Jackson pulled off that Tolkien didn't – which really is one of the most triumphant transfers from one medium to another I've ever seen.
Think back, those of you who know the books well, to how much of the serious and foreboding, important action seems to take place outside the confines of the actual narrative. How much of the second book, The Two Towers, actually refers to things indirectly, as mere backstory, at the expense of a lot of excitement, emotion and impact?
I'm talking particularly about most of the Saruman backstory. From Gandalf's imprisonment in Orthanc to Saruman's breeding of the Uruk-Hai, his razing of the forest and his establishment of a rival Mordor in the realm of Isengard – all that takes place offstage, as it were, in the books. By the time any of our protagonist reach Isengard, it's all just an ugly fait accompli.
In the film, however, we get to see it and fear it properly as a beautiful forest that sports one elegant tower as its only sign of habitation is gradually transformed into an industrial hellpit. We even get an excursis from Saruman on how orcs came to be, something we only get in the appendices of the novels.
The novels would have been twice as long if Tolkien had tried to use this fine cinematic device, the cut between simultaneously occurring scenes, to any good effect in his books, especially when the real impact of the Saruman storyline is so very, very visual. Which is why Tolkien resorted to, for instance, Treebeard raging in The Two Towers about Saruman's destruction of the forest instead of trying to write a long, probably turgid description of that forest.
There is more that I could point out. Other critics have noticed the loving attention to detail and craft that have made even the brooches of Lothlorien – not even mentioned in dialogue, as the whole leave taking of Lorien is omitted from the film – something eye catching enough to make the seasoned Tolkien toker anticipate their importance in the upcoming sequel. The satisfaction of seeing Hugo Weaving – who has looked like he was born to play an elf in every film he's made from Priscilla Queen of the Desert to The Matrix – being the elf he should always have been. Sean Bean as Boromir, not given much screen time or dialogue, but still playing out that poor man's entire tragedy fully enough to allow even my ice fishing buddy to understand what the guy is going through.
I will end on one other note: this movie is deeply satisfying also because of its evocation of emotions that are only sort of there for the long-time Rings reader in the books. The books contain many declarative sentences indicating that the characters are grieving or fearful or puzzled.
The movie shows stricken Hobbits collapsing in tears in the snow outside Moria, handles the merely scary in the books in such a way that I'm pretty sure I'm going to have nightmares tonight.
Truly it's a marvel.
In Saratoga life, it's a rare movie that I dub an 80-mile movie. How many films are really worth the effort to get to Rawlins to see them, when soon they'll be available on video and soon after that, available used off of websites to own for a lower price than the initial movie ticket?
I'm going to have to call this movie about a 240-mile movie.
Good thing I had my car tuned up recently.
Friday, December 14, 2001
YOU NEED MY WHAT?
At a recent planning commission meeting, the old issue of house numbering came up again – or should I say the somewhat amusing lack thereof. It's been a while since this subject came up in a public meeting, but I wasn't surprised to hear about it.
This is because our brand shiny new police chief issued a warning/plea in one of his newspaper columns earlier this season asking would citizens please attend to this matter with all due haste and diligence so that his three brand shiny new police officers (not to mention the two more seasoned ones, whom I'm sure would be happy to be free of current, ahem, obstacles to finding which house's barking dog is the barking dog that prompted the 911 barking dog call du jour) can find their way around.
He – as does our zoning/streets Superman – backs up this plea with, of course, an ordinance of which most of us living here have been largely ignorant, Chapter 12 of Title 12 on Building Numbering, to wit:
12.12.101 - Conformance with provisions required. It is unlawful for any person to erect or maintain any house or building not numbered in conformity with this chapter.
The chapter then goes on to detail the numbering scheme adopted for Saratoga, in which the highway is the boundary between "East" and "West" X Street, and all numbers of buildings on the east or south side of the street shall bear odd numbers, and all on the west or north side shall bear even numbers.
OK, whatever. Never mind that I see west side houses with odd numbers and south side houses with even numbers. None of my biz!
As I look over the provisions of this tasty tidbit from the Saratoga Municipal Code (and I bet now all of you are wishing you had run for town council so you, too, could have a copy of the Code Saratogae handy whenever you have a burning desire to look up, e.g. the official definition of "alley" which is in use in Saratoga's legal documents!), I have to chuckle, because, sorry as I am to say it, our new chief and his three new cops are probably the only people in town who even care about house numbers, street addresses, what have you.
What about the post office, UPS, FedEx, out-of-towners may ask. Surely they need this vital information in order to function properly within the town, don't they?
Well, no.
Take our much-beloved UPSman. While he doesn't live here, he does pick up a fresh new copy of the local paper every Wednesday, dines here, occasionally hangs out here, and seems to possess a memory for names, faces and other relevant data that would make our much-beloved former U.S. Senator Al Simpson look like the poster boy for Alzheimer's Disease (Simpson hadn't seen me since I was about 14 years old and had a very different hair color, but at this year's annual convention of the Wyoming Press Convention, at which he was the keynote speaker, he caught me after the banquet and yelled from across the room "Hey Kate! How's your dad?").
Indeed, should I ever find myself unaware of to what job an acquaintance of mine might have switched, I need only ask UPSman. He knows our movements, our issues, our hopes, our up-to-the-minute whereabouts better than anyone!
For example - even this summer, when I switched jobs from the newspaper to the chamber of commerce, did I get the pleasure of sharing my news with him? NO! Before my very first day on my new job was over, I ran into him on the street and he said "Hey, Kate - congratulations on the new job! Hey, are you going to be in your office in about ten minutes? I've got a box for you."
Very nonchalantly said, too, I might add. Especially since I was utterly flabbergasted and sputtering.
He didn't even comment on the sputter; he's used to it.
There have been times when he – or the FedEx man – being unable to locate me, has left a package for me in my car. Or my mother's.
It's a good thing, too, because now as I think about it, I have no idea what my street address is. I know what street I live on, only because I'm a block west of the highway. But number? I'm stumped. And it's way too cold to pad outside in my bare feet and examine the front of my apartment to see. I think I live in C. But I'm not sure.
I'd wager that UPSman couldn't tell you either, though on occasion he's made deliveries to me there, too, just to keep me on my toes.
As for the U.S. mail, that too is irrelevant – we have a post office, and the social, intellectual and cultural life of the town would not be what it is without it.
My only issue with the post office is the complete and utter time vortex it poses whenever I'm foolish enough to go in there in the daytime. It's like an ongoing, permanent sewing circle without the sewing; a coffee klatch without the coffee. And it goes on all day long.
I do feel sorry for our new constabulary, though, as I do for all people who move here from bigger, more superficially organized cities. Direction-giving here fulfills every cliched expectation of the transplanted urbanite: when I send someone to the hot pool, I say, "Take a right at the old gas station that used to be a river guide but now has real estate signs out front and keep going down the highway until you get to the bottom of the hill. On your left is Brian's store. Take a left there, pass Uncle Dick's house and keep following that road to the dead end. You can't miss it."
Of course, by saying those four magic words "You can't miss it," I'm virtually guaranteeing that my befuddled visitor or newcomer will. And said visitor/newcomer will come back and demand a street address for the dang thing.
And I will send him to the police department, because they're the only ones who know or care.
At a recent planning commission meeting, the old issue of house numbering came up again – or should I say the somewhat amusing lack thereof. It's been a while since this subject came up in a public meeting, but I wasn't surprised to hear about it.
This is because our brand shiny new police chief issued a warning/plea in one of his newspaper columns earlier this season asking would citizens please attend to this matter with all due haste and diligence so that his three brand shiny new police officers (not to mention the two more seasoned ones, whom I'm sure would be happy to be free of current, ahem, obstacles to finding which house's barking dog is the barking dog that prompted the 911 barking dog call du jour) can find their way around.
He – as does our zoning/streets Superman – backs up this plea with, of course, an ordinance of which most of us living here have been largely ignorant, Chapter 12 of Title 12 on Building Numbering, to wit:
12.12.101 - Conformance with provisions required. It is unlawful for any person to erect or maintain any house or building not numbered in conformity with this chapter.
The chapter then goes on to detail the numbering scheme adopted for Saratoga, in which the highway is the boundary between "East" and "West" X Street, and all numbers of buildings on the east or south side of the street shall bear odd numbers, and all on the west or north side shall bear even numbers.
OK, whatever. Never mind that I see west side houses with odd numbers and south side houses with even numbers. None of my biz!
As I look over the provisions of this tasty tidbit from the Saratoga Municipal Code (and I bet now all of you are wishing you had run for town council so you, too, could have a copy of the Code Saratogae handy whenever you have a burning desire to look up, e.g. the official definition of "alley" which is in use in Saratoga's legal documents!), I have to chuckle, because, sorry as I am to say it, our new chief and his three new cops are probably the only people in town who even care about house numbers, street addresses, what have you.
What about the post office, UPS, FedEx, out-of-towners may ask. Surely they need this vital information in order to function properly within the town, don't they?
Well, no.
Take our much-beloved UPSman. While he doesn't live here, he does pick up a fresh new copy of the local paper every Wednesday, dines here, occasionally hangs out here, and seems to possess a memory for names, faces and other relevant data that would make our much-beloved former U.S. Senator Al Simpson look like the poster boy for Alzheimer's Disease (Simpson hadn't seen me since I was about 14 years old and had a very different hair color, but at this year's annual convention of the Wyoming Press Convention, at which he was the keynote speaker, he caught me after the banquet and yelled from across the room "Hey Kate! How's your dad?").
Indeed, should I ever find myself unaware of to what job an acquaintance of mine might have switched, I need only ask UPSman. He knows our movements, our issues, our hopes, our up-to-the-minute whereabouts better than anyone!
For example - even this summer, when I switched jobs from the newspaper to the chamber of commerce, did I get the pleasure of sharing my news with him? NO! Before my very first day on my new job was over, I ran into him on the street and he said "Hey, Kate - congratulations on the new job! Hey, are you going to be in your office in about ten minutes? I've got a box for you."
Very nonchalantly said, too, I might add. Especially since I was utterly flabbergasted and sputtering.
He didn't even comment on the sputter; he's used to it.
There have been times when he – or the FedEx man – being unable to locate me, has left a package for me in my car. Or my mother's.
It's a good thing, too, because now as I think about it, I have no idea what my street address is. I know what street I live on, only because I'm a block west of the highway. But number? I'm stumped. And it's way too cold to pad outside in my bare feet and examine the front of my apartment to see. I think I live in C. But I'm not sure.
I'd wager that UPSman couldn't tell you either, though on occasion he's made deliveries to me there, too, just to keep me on my toes.
As for the U.S. mail, that too is irrelevant – we have a post office, and the social, intellectual and cultural life of the town would not be what it is without it.
My only issue with the post office is the complete and utter time vortex it poses whenever I'm foolish enough to go in there in the daytime. It's like an ongoing, permanent sewing circle without the sewing; a coffee klatch without the coffee. And it goes on all day long.
I do feel sorry for our new constabulary, though, as I do for all people who move here from bigger, more superficially organized cities. Direction-giving here fulfills every cliched expectation of the transplanted urbanite: when I send someone to the hot pool, I say, "Take a right at the old gas station that used to be a river guide but now has real estate signs out front and keep going down the highway until you get to the bottom of the hill. On your left is Brian's store. Take a left there, pass Uncle Dick's house and keep following that road to the dead end. You can't miss it."
Of course, by saying those four magic words "You can't miss it," I'm virtually guaranteeing that my befuddled visitor or newcomer will. And said visitor/newcomer will come back and demand a street address for the dang thing.
And I will send him to the police department, because they're the only ones who know or care.
Wednesday, December 12, 2001
I GUESS I'VE BEEN DISCOVERED
I just received notification that one of the moderators at a site called Backwash.com somehow found this web page and liked what I have to say enough to recommend it as some of the best content on the web. Well!
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what people out in the wide world think of it. We can all take a look at what they have to say on Backwash's Discuss This Content message board.
Whattaya know?
More later... off soon to a meeting to plan the Platte Valley Festival of Birds, then choir practice. No rest for the wicked.
I just received notification that one of the moderators at a site called Backwash.com somehow found this web page and liked what I have to say enough to recommend it as some of the best content on the web. Well!
Anyway, it will be interesting to see what people out in the wide world think of it. We can all take a look at what they have to say on Backwash's Discuss This Content message board.
Whattaya know?
More later... off soon to a meeting to plan the Platte Valley Festival of Birds, then choir practice. No rest for the wicked.
Monday, December 10, 2001
NO DAY IS A DULL DAY
"I read a little book once about the top of the soil, just the first six inches under the grass, and everything that happens in it. If you have a ten-power microscope and if you take the time and care, you could spend all day every day for more than a year seeing and understanding all the things that are happening in just one square foot of topsoil. There are plants and animals and chemicals growing and changing all the time in a tiny world like that. There is a fungus which makes a noose with a trigger, and when small creatures come into it, bang!, the noose closes and catches them and the fungus eats the animals. There are eggs that hatch and insects that make certain scents to call other insects to love or to die and much more, so much more – all in one square foot of dirt. So how can anyone with eyes to see and a heart to question say he is bored, there is nothing to do?"
-- Theodore Sturgeon, Godbody, 1986
It is not news to anyone with even just a smattering of a scientific education that there are entire little worlds in a square of topsoil, on an inch of human skin or at the bottom of a lake. But isn't it nice to be reminded once in a while?
I didn't have a microscope with me Sunday when I hit Saratoga Lake for a bout of ice fishing, but I didn't need one. I got a show anyway, livening up considerably an outing that I still suspected, despite my fishing buddy's assurances to the contrary, would be a bit on the dull side.
I should have known better!
Now, I did a spot of ice fishing as a little girl when my grandfather (a native of Wisconsin) was still alive, and found it a pursuit best left to grandfathers. Being exposed on a frozen expanse of water, enduring the wind and my frozen hair whipping at my face, huddling and peering down a boring little hole in the ice and listening to Grandpa curse held small amusement.
And under those circumstances, it still would.
This time, however, I was in a hut, which in addition to shelter, warmth and privacy, transformed utterly the whole ice fishing thing forever.
In a dark hut the ice and the holes in it glow – my partner calls it the movie screen, and indeed the sight draws and holds the eye like a movie would even on pain of neck cricks and other discomforts. And in clear, clean water like we have in Saratoga Lake, even the very bottom (or at least the tops of the seaweed forest) is visible.
Between the hole and the weedtops there's a lot going on.
First, of course, there are the fish themselves, ostensible point of the entire exercise that they are, that coyly approach, start away from, flirt with, sample, and finally bite on the technicolor jig and bait rig one is working before them like a tiny marionette. To one who has grown up shore fishing or messing about with spinners alongside streams (we'll save my short and rather pitiful fly-fishing prowess for another entry) it's a brand new spectacle that might do for TV but is certainly never possible to see oneself! But there it is.
And there... as one bows over the holes in the ice and giggles at the partner's cursing of the propane heater (shades of Grandpa there)... the fish aren't the only movie stars. Tiny little water fleas, cilia spinning, dart around just under the water's surface. Minnows fart around in the seaweed and are fun to scare witless with the bait rig.
And water boatmen, surely among the cutest of the hemipterae with their big black eyes and furiously whirling feet whiz crazily by now and then. These bugs can stay underwater for incredibly long lengths of time because they dress themselves in a silvery suit of tiny air bubbles, I remember from my old textbooks, and indeed those swimming in my ice hole are silvery, though on a pin in my collection they are black.
Forgetting as I watch them swim that these bubbles can absorb oxygen from the water, I resolve to wait a bug out and see how long it would take before he comes up to the surface for air. My books tell me that boatmen take on air through little tubes on their shoulders but have never seen this actually happen. Chances should be good; where else in an ice-covered lake can a boatman surface but at my ice hole?
Alas, it's not to be. But that's OK because I see everything else. I become exhausted on the bugs' behalf as they fight their own buoyancy with powerful strokes of their oar-like back legs (I remember having to identify sub-species by counting the tarsi – foot segments – at the ends of these legs), struggling downward to where the food is. Their movements are jerky, with sudden bursts of speed and changes of direction that remind me of a friend's pair of Jack Russell terriers caroming around my office when they come to visit. I find myself laughing down into my ice hole as my fishing buddy laughs at me.
He's probably amused that I'm so fascinated by fish food, I think. And so he is, because he's done the same thing, watched boatmen and water striders and water scorpions. We have matching scars from trying to catch and play with predaceous diving beetles.
He has never forgotten what I'm just again remembering: No day is a dull day.
Next time I'm bringing popcorn (Should taste good with the schnapps!).
Oh, and for those who are interested: Yes, Saratoga Lake is fine for fishing, and the fishing – and catching – are pretty good. Go for it, if you've a mind to!
"I read a little book once about the top of the soil, just the first six inches under the grass, and everything that happens in it. If you have a ten-power microscope and if you take the time and care, you could spend all day every day for more than a year seeing and understanding all the things that are happening in just one square foot of topsoil. There are plants and animals and chemicals growing and changing all the time in a tiny world like that. There is a fungus which makes a noose with a trigger, and when small creatures come into it, bang!, the noose closes and catches them and the fungus eats the animals. There are eggs that hatch and insects that make certain scents to call other insects to love or to die and much more, so much more – all in one square foot of dirt. So how can anyone with eyes to see and a heart to question say he is bored, there is nothing to do?"
-- Theodore Sturgeon, Godbody, 1986
It is not news to anyone with even just a smattering of a scientific education that there are entire little worlds in a square of topsoil, on an inch of human skin or at the bottom of a lake. But isn't it nice to be reminded once in a while?
I didn't have a microscope with me Sunday when I hit Saratoga Lake for a bout of ice fishing, but I didn't need one. I got a show anyway, livening up considerably an outing that I still suspected, despite my fishing buddy's assurances to the contrary, would be a bit on the dull side.
I should have known better!
Now, I did a spot of ice fishing as a little girl when my grandfather (a native of Wisconsin) was still alive, and found it a pursuit best left to grandfathers. Being exposed on a frozen expanse of water, enduring the wind and my frozen hair whipping at my face, huddling and peering down a boring little hole in the ice and listening to Grandpa curse held small amusement.
And under those circumstances, it still would.
This time, however, I was in a hut, which in addition to shelter, warmth and privacy, transformed utterly the whole ice fishing thing forever.
In a dark hut the ice and the holes in it glow – my partner calls it the movie screen, and indeed the sight draws and holds the eye like a movie would even on pain of neck cricks and other discomforts. And in clear, clean water like we have in Saratoga Lake, even the very bottom (or at least the tops of the seaweed forest) is visible.
Between the hole and the weedtops there's a lot going on.
First, of course, there are the fish themselves, ostensible point of the entire exercise that they are, that coyly approach, start away from, flirt with, sample, and finally bite on the technicolor jig and bait rig one is working before them like a tiny marionette. To one who has grown up shore fishing or messing about with spinners alongside streams (we'll save my short and rather pitiful fly-fishing prowess for another entry) it's a brand new spectacle that might do for TV but is certainly never possible to see oneself! But there it is.
And there... as one bows over the holes in the ice and giggles at the partner's cursing of the propane heater (shades of Grandpa there)... the fish aren't the only movie stars. Tiny little water fleas, cilia spinning, dart around just under the water's surface. Minnows fart around in the seaweed and are fun to scare witless with the bait rig.
And water boatmen, surely among the cutest of the hemipterae with their big black eyes and furiously whirling feet whiz crazily by now and then. These bugs can stay underwater for incredibly long lengths of time because they dress themselves in a silvery suit of tiny air bubbles, I remember from my old textbooks, and indeed those swimming in my ice hole are silvery, though on a pin in my collection they are black.
Forgetting as I watch them swim that these bubbles can absorb oxygen from the water, I resolve to wait a bug out and see how long it would take before he comes up to the surface for air. My books tell me that boatmen take on air through little tubes on their shoulders but have never seen this actually happen. Chances should be good; where else in an ice-covered lake can a boatman surface but at my ice hole?
Alas, it's not to be. But that's OK because I see everything else. I become exhausted on the bugs' behalf as they fight their own buoyancy with powerful strokes of their oar-like back legs (I remember having to identify sub-species by counting the tarsi – foot segments – at the ends of these legs), struggling downward to where the food is. Their movements are jerky, with sudden bursts of speed and changes of direction that remind me of a friend's pair of Jack Russell terriers caroming around my office when they come to visit. I find myself laughing down into my ice hole as my fishing buddy laughs at me.
He's probably amused that I'm so fascinated by fish food, I think. And so he is, because he's done the same thing, watched boatmen and water striders and water scorpions. We have matching scars from trying to catch and play with predaceous diving beetles.
He has never forgotten what I'm just again remembering: No day is a dull day.
Next time I'm bringing popcorn (Should taste good with the schnapps!).
Oh, and for those who are interested: Yes, Saratoga Lake is fine for fishing, and the fishing – and catching – are pretty good. Go for it, if you've a mind to!
Thursday, December 06, 2001
MORE ON ROUNDBALL, SORT OF
I deliberately avoided a basketball game tonight, and it shouldn't surprise anyone why.
Tonight was Saratoga High's first home game, an event in and of itself, and everybody who was anybody and had some spare time and liked basketball and didn't have anything better to do or had children playing on the teams or in the band or in the concession stand was there (which is why the turn-out at Laura M's open house tonight was not what it should have been, but that's OK - more wine and gnosh for me).
But I was not.
It's just too hard, my friends, to take in games wherein my two favorite teams by far (and that's saying a lot since they're the only two basketball teams in the entire world about whose fates I care one whit, whose fortunes I follow, whose box scores I notice in the Casper-Star Trombone [as my esteemed former editor used to call it]). Saratoga was playing Encampment.
I almost used the first person plural there, but I had a tremendous and actually ridiculous argument with myself over which team I could honestly and soulfully refer to as "we," even though I am a graduate of only one of those schools.
But really – unless one's very own personal child is playing on one of the teams, how can anyone honestly choose between these two schools? Kids who live in Saratoga go to school in Encampment. Encampment schoolchildren's parents buy groceries, here, get their late-model cars fixed here, even rent post office boxes here because Encampment's tiny little postal station doesn't have enough boxes to support even the currently dwindling population there (I emphasize currently; whether one likes it or doesn't, whatever is going on up on Green Mountain is probably going to lead to a certain amount of growth in Encampment and Riverside... which will help more than it hurts, but that's a subject for another post).
Saratoga residents rent cross-country skis (if they have not yet made the step of buying them) from the father of one Encampment boys team starter and another frequent player. Encampment residents come to the medical clinic in Saratoga for treatment for their colds, their flus, their broken bones and entirely ordinary anthrax infections. If Saratoga residents want a good ol' ice cream soda between January and May, they have to hit the Sugar Bowl in Encampment. If Encampment residents need washers or PVC pipe or lumber or tractor parts, they probably have to hit either the hardware or the lumber store in Saratoga (or Walden, but let's assume that they all at least want their sales tax dollars to benefit the county and the state in which they live).
Just as in common parlance Wyoming is one small town with some very long streets, the Platte Valley is an even smaller town with only slightly shorter streets. Yes, there are three incorporated municipalities involved, yes, there are two schools (but both are in the same school district, subject to the decisions of the same school board, funded through the same funky formulae). But in the larger picture, from the perspective of the rest of the world, these nice distinctions are just that: nice distinctions that have no real bearing on the actual situation.
I won't even try to get into the familial connections between Saratoga, Encampment and Riverside, to say nothing of Walden. I'm not sure that computer software capable of meaningfully describing and diagramming those connections exists, not even in the bigass Mormon geneology database in Provo.
So how, meaningfully, can one pick a side at the Saratoga-Encampment basketball blowouts every year? Both sides comprise the children of dear friends, colleagues, business partners, annoying old bastards that one doesn't like much but one still has to treat well because of that one time he or she used the winch on his pickup to drag your daughter's car out of a snow drift.
Making matters "worse" is football season, when kids from both schools combine at both the middle school and high school level to form teams to take on much larger schools all over the state. At the middle school level especially this year, the Panthers would not have been the Panthers without the formidable efforts of something in the neighborhood of a dozen Encampment kids (some of whom are by far the smallest little gridsters I've ever seen, boys who made the team's diminutive quarterback look like Andre the Giant), who kept the quarterback from harm, caught his passes, and on the defensive side dragged down huge lumbering oafs from huge lumbering schools like Laramie and Rawlins! Try that while fielding a Saratoga-only or Encampment-only team!
Which is why I avoid the Saratoga-Encampment basketball contest altogether, and thank all the gods mankind has ever invented that the two teams play in altogether different leagues the rest of the season. There will be plenty of opportunties to cheer on the cross-country ski guru's two enormous and genial sons, as there will be to scream aloud when my banker's daughter nails another three-pointer.
So tonight, I made haste from speech practice (also a subject for a later post, assuredly) to Laura M's do, and later to the Wolf.
At the Wolf, just before I left, Saratoga's girls basketball coach showed up for a nightcap. Out of politeness, I asked him how his girls had done, though I didn't really want to know; his girls, who are my girls too, were playing my other girls (including one of the daughters of a good friend of mine who endures my pranks and prevarications in the Saratoga Community Choir even though she lives in Encampment). He told me that his girls won. I told him I was glad, though in truth I would have been happy either way.
As for the boys, nobody tell me, please. I will read about it in the Sun or the Daily Times or the Trombone in private, and keep my reactions to myself.
I deliberately avoided a basketball game tonight, and it shouldn't surprise anyone why.
Tonight was Saratoga High's first home game, an event in and of itself, and everybody who was anybody and had some spare time and liked basketball and didn't have anything better to do or had children playing on the teams or in the band or in the concession stand was there (which is why the turn-out at Laura M's open house tonight was not what it should have been, but that's OK - more wine and gnosh for me).
But I was not.
It's just too hard, my friends, to take in games wherein my two favorite teams by far (and that's saying a lot since they're the only two basketball teams in the entire world about whose fates I care one whit, whose fortunes I follow, whose box scores I notice in the Casper-Star Trombone [as my esteemed former editor used to call it]). Saratoga was playing Encampment.
I almost used the first person plural there, but I had a tremendous and actually ridiculous argument with myself over which team I could honestly and soulfully refer to as "we," even though I am a graduate of only one of those schools.
But really – unless one's very own personal child is playing on one of the teams, how can anyone honestly choose between these two schools? Kids who live in Saratoga go to school in Encampment. Encampment schoolchildren's parents buy groceries, here, get their late-model cars fixed here, even rent post office boxes here because Encampment's tiny little postal station doesn't have enough boxes to support even the currently dwindling population there (I emphasize currently; whether one likes it or doesn't, whatever is going on up on Green Mountain is probably going to lead to a certain amount of growth in Encampment and Riverside... which will help more than it hurts, but that's a subject for another post).
Saratoga residents rent cross-country skis (if they have not yet made the step of buying them) from the father of one Encampment boys team starter and another frequent player. Encampment residents come to the medical clinic in Saratoga for treatment for their colds, their flus, their broken bones and entirely ordinary anthrax infections. If Saratoga residents want a good ol' ice cream soda between January and May, they have to hit the Sugar Bowl in Encampment. If Encampment residents need washers or PVC pipe or lumber or tractor parts, they probably have to hit either the hardware or the lumber store in Saratoga (or Walden, but let's assume that they all at least want their sales tax dollars to benefit the county and the state in which they live).
Just as in common parlance Wyoming is one small town with some very long streets, the Platte Valley is an even smaller town with only slightly shorter streets. Yes, there are three incorporated municipalities involved, yes, there are two schools (but both are in the same school district, subject to the decisions of the same school board, funded through the same funky formulae). But in the larger picture, from the perspective of the rest of the world, these nice distinctions are just that: nice distinctions that have no real bearing on the actual situation.
I won't even try to get into the familial connections between Saratoga, Encampment and Riverside, to say nothing of Walden. I'm not sure that computer software capable of meaningfully describing and diagramming those connections exists, not even in the bigass Mormon geneology database in Provo.
So how, meaningfully, can one pick a side at the Saratoga-Encampment basketball blowouts every year? Both sides comprise the children of dear friends, colleagues, business partners, annoying old bastards that one doesn't like much but one still has to treat well because of that one time he or she used the winch on his pickup to drag your daughter's car out of a snow drift.
Making matters "worse" is football season, when kids from both schools combine at both the middle school and high school level to form teams to take on much larger schools all over the state. At the middle school level especially this year, the Panthers would not have been the Panthers without the formidable efforts of something in the neighborhood of a dozen Encampment kids (some of whom are by far the smallest little gridsters I've ever seen, boys who made the team's diminutive quarterback look like Andre the Giant), who kept the quarterback from harm, caught his passes, and on the defensive side dragged down huge lumbering oafs from huge lumbering schools like Laramie and Rawlins! Try that while fielding a Saratoga-only or Encampment-only team!
Which is why I avoid the Saratoga-Encampment basketball contest altogether, and thank all the gods mankind has ever invented that the two teams play in altogether different leagues the rest of the season. There will be plenty of opportunties to cheer on the cross-country ski guru's two enormous and genial sons, as there will be to scream aloud when my banker's daughter nails another three-pointer.
So tonight, I made haste from speech practice (also a subject for a later post, assuredly) to Laura M's do, and later to the Wolf.
At the Wolf, just before I left, Saratoga's girls basketball coach showed up for a nightcap. Out of politeness, I asked him how his girls had done, though I didn't really want to know; his girls, who are my girls too, were playing my other girls (including one of the daughters of a good friend of mine who endures my pranks and prevarications in the Saratoga Community Choir even though she lives in Encampment). He told me that his girls won. I told him I was glad, though in truth I would have been happy either way.
As for the boys, nobody tell me, please. I will read about it in the Sun or the Daily Times or the Trombone in private, and keep my reactions to myself.
Wednesday, December 05, 2001
WRITER'S BLOCK SUCKS
Sorry, folks. It's been two days now since I posted anything here, and while I've already indicated that Tuesdays are going to be a wash for publishing anyway what with council meetings at town hall and the Wolf, well, today was kind of a wash, too.
Let's just say I'm aiming for quality over quantity. Yeah. That sounds good.
Sorry, folks. It's been two days now since I posted anything here, and while I've already indicated that Tuesdays are going to be a wash for publishing anyway what with council meetings at town hall and the Wolf, well, today was kind of a wash, too.
Let's just say I'm aiming for quality over quantity. Yeah. That sounds good.
Monday, December 03, 2001
OH GOD, JUST TURN IT OFF
The following comes from a CNN.com article posted this evening as a follow up to an afternoon featuring endless iterations of a warning that our whiz-bang Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, was going to issue a new alert (which warnings my friends at Secular Johnson quickly predicted were leading up to a highly vague alert from Ridge that had no specific information and would be blown way out of proportion. Damn, it's hell to be right sometimes):
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Citing the "quantity and level" of threats, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced Monday a new security alert, warning of the possibility of another terrorist attack within the United States.
"Be vigilant, be aware," Ridge said. He said there was no information on specific targets or dates, but the level of threats monitored by intelligence and law enforcement agencies had increased to the "threshold" point where the administration felt another warning was warranted.
"The decibel level was higher," Ridge said.
Vague doesn't even begin to cover it, does it? Really worth all the hype and promotion and attempts at inducing hysteria, wasn't it?
I'd laugh if I could be absolutely certain that no one out there took the pre-alert warnings and the alert itself overly seriously, but I can't. And as just by indicating as I have here that I personally do not take this alert terribly seriously, I have probably pissed some people off, I offer the following excerpts from the speech Ridge delivered after being sworn in to clarify why I feel this way (NOTE: For the full text, check out the transcript at National Review Online, and while you're there, check out pretty much any column by Victor Davis Hanson you can randomly click on; his is the best and the sanest perspective on our national predicament I can find, consistently wise, historically grounded, and realistic about human nature, warfare and other team sports):
"And we will operate from a few basic principles. First, candor. No one should be wary of coming forward when they see a problem. It's the only way to define a solution. The urgency of our task dictates candor about our challenges and confidence in our ability to solve them."
This sounds admirable, and at first glance could be seen to be nothing more than rhetoric about how he won't keep secrets from us (unless, presumably, it's for our own good), but look at that third sentence, "No one should be wary of coming forward when they see a problem."
Practically an invitation for every bored nihilist or crazed crackpot or conspiracy theorist to flood his office with "tips."
But he didn't say anything about the sources of his information or the ultimate veracity of the "intelligence" gathered. Just that there have been a lot of reports
"The decibel level is higher."
(Granted: later in the CNN story it is indicated that "U.S. intelligence sources said the threats came from members of the al Qaeda network against U.S. targets." But... um... how do we know these people were actually al Qaeda and not hoaxsters again? And if there's proof that they're not hoaxsters... why are they still loose to make threats? Why are you trying to scare me with these threats instead of just following up on them and nabbing the kooks making them, as you are so proud of having done in "December of 1999 [when] authorities in Jordan, Canada and the United States uncovered and prevented plans for a series of attacks related to the dawn of the millennium. Those plans were thwarted when intelligence learned about them and law enforcement arrested the suspected terrorists." Without, I might add, much in the way of hoopla or wannabe scary "alerts" like this one.)
Good grief. Crap like this makes me very glad that the television in my apartment is only hooked up to a VCR.
Confession time: I've been less than thrilled about this whole Homeland Security thang from the very start – even the name given the operation, "Homeland Security" sounds like something straight out of Philip K. Dick's most terrifying, paranoid riffs on the "Friends of the American People" – see the first few chapters of his posthumous masterpiece Radio Free Albemuth or the justly ominous-sounding Night Watch on Babylon 5.
When he issued an alert on Nov. 16 that nuclear weapons documents had been found in an Al Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan, I was similarly annoyed by both his tone and that of the media coverage around it. It is 2001, people. Nuclear weapons documents are everywhere. A simple Google search I did just now turned up a pretty complete FAQ (acronym for Frequently Asked Questions) on nuclear weapons that, while it made my math-and-physics-impaired head hurt a bit, could well be more than enough information to allow anyone with a non-math-and-physics-impaired brain to wreak considerable havoc provided he or she had access to the right materials. And this is a perfectly legal, First Amendment protected document that simply compiles all of the open (i.e. not classified) literature on the topic.
I point this out not to alarm anyone (I'll leave that to Ridge, Christine Amapour and the like) but simply to point out that this particular genie is so out of the bottle that it's basically pointless to lose sleep over it.
And for all we know from the statements made by Ridge et alia, what was found in the safehouse might be nothing more than a print-out from this FAQ.
I'm ranting like this only because I hate the idea of anyone losing sleep over the kind of alerts and warnings issued by this utterly unnecessary new bureaucracy, folks.
Yes, bin Laden and his buddies are talking tough and scary right now - what do you expect; we've been bombing the Koran-misreading crap out of them. Their behavior and dark hints about greater power and more terrifying forces yet to be brought to bear against us isn't all that different from that of the kid knocked over on the playground making tremendous threats about what his eight foot tall, 500-pound bodybuilder dad is going to do to the bully who gave him a black eye.
Do yourselves a favor. Turn off your TV for a while and go play outside. It's perfect skiing weather, and there's plenty of snow on the ground. There's Christmas shopping to be done, and even Uncle Tom has encouraged Americans to show their patriotism, their faith in America by racking up credit card debt just like it was any old year. Don't go panicking just because Homeland Insecurity says something bad might happen to you.
It only increases the chances that something will.
P.S. For the record, I don't think too many of the people who read my weblog here are the type who are going to freak over anything any bureaucrat says (unless maybe it's Gale Norton). But you might know somebody who does, and maybe this rant can help with that. Or something.
P.P.S. Aren't you glad I got over my writer's block for the night?
P.P.P.S. If you disagree or want to remark on this or any of my posts, remember you can send comments to me at my e-mail address.
Good night!
The following comes from a CNN.com article posted this evening as a follow up to an afternoon featuring endless iterations of a warning that our whiz-bang Director of Homeland Security, Tom Ridge, was going to issue a new alert (which warnings my friends at Secular Johnson quickly predicted were leading up to a highly vague alert from Ridge that had no specific information and would be blown way out of proportion. Damn, it's hell to be right sometimes):
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Citing the "quantity and level" of threats, Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge announced Monday a new security alert, warning of the possibility of another terrorist attack within the United States.
"Be vigilant, be aware," Ridge said. He said there was no information on specific targets or dates, but the level of threats monitored by intelligence and law enforcement agencies had increased to the "threshold" point where the administration felt another warning was warranted.
"The decibel level was higher," Ridge said.
Vague doesn't even begin to cover it, does it? Really worth all the hype and promotion and attempts at inducing hysteria, wasn't it?
I'd laugh if I could be absolutely certain that no one out there took the pre-alert warnings and the alert itself overly seriously, but I can't. And as just by indicating as I have here that I personally do not take this alert terribly seriously, I have probably pissed some people off, I offer the following excerpts from the speech Ridge delivered after being sworn in to clarify why I feel this way (NOTE: For the full text, check out the transcript at National Review Online, and while you're there, check out pretty much any column by Victor Davis Hanson you can randomly click on; his is the best and the sanest perspective on our national predicament I can find, consistently wise, historically grounded, and realistic about human nature, warfare and other team sports):
"And we will operate from a few basic principles. First, candor. No one should be wary of coming forward when they see a problem. It's the only way to define a solution. The urgency of our task dictates candor about our challenges and confidence in our ability to solve them."
This sounds admirable, and at first glance could be seen to be nothing more than rhetoric about how he won't keep secrets from us (unless, presumably, it's for our own good), but look at that third sentence, "No one should be wary of coming forward when they see a problem."
Practically an invitation for every bored nihilist or crazed crackpot or conspiracy theorist to flood his office with "tips."
But he didn't say anything about the sources of his information or the ultimate veracity of the "intelligence" gathered. Just that there have been a lot of reports
"The decibel level is higher."
(Granted: later in the CNN story it is indicated that "U.S. intelligence sources said the threats came from members of the al Qaeda network against U.S. targets." But... um... how do we know these people were actually al Qaeda and not hoaxsters again? And if there's proof that they're not hoaxsters... why are they still loose to make threats? Why are you trying to scare me with these threats instead of just following up on them and nabbing the kooks making them, as you are so proud of having done in "December of 1999 [when] authorities in Jordan, Canada and the United States uncovered and prevented plans for a series of attacks related to the dawn of the millennium. Those plans were thwarted when intelligence learned about them and law enforcement arrested the suspected terrorists." Without, I might add, much in the way of hoopla or wannabe scary "alerts" like this one.)
Good grief. Crap like this makes me very glad that the television in my apartment is only hooked up to a VCR.
Confession time: I've been less than thrilled about this whole Homeland Security thang from the very start – even the name given the operation, "Homeland Security" sounds like something straight out of Philip K. Dick's most terrifying, paranoid riffs on the "Friends of the American People" – see the first few chapters of his posthumous masterpiece Radio Free Albemuth or the justly ominous-sounding Night Watch on Babylon 5.
When he issued an alert on Nov. 16 that nuclear weapons documents had been found in an Al Qaeda safehouse in Afghanistan, I was similarly annoyed by both his tone and that of the media coverage around it. It is 2001, people. Nuclear weapons documents are everywhere. A simple Google search I did just now turned up a pretty complete FAQ (acronym for Frequently Asked Questions) on nuclear weapons that, while it made my math-and-physics-impaired head hurt a bit, could well be more than enough information to allow anyone with a non-math-and-physics-impaired brain to wreak considerable havoc provided he or she had access to the right materials. And this is a perfectly legal, First Amendment protected document that simply compiles all of the open (i.e. not classified) literature on the topic.
I point this out not to alarm anyone (I'll leave that to Ridge, Christine Amapour and the like) but simply to point out that this particular genie is so out of the bottle that it's basically pointless to lose sleep over it.
And for all we know from the statements made by Ridge et alia, what was found in the safehouse might be nothing more than a print-out from this FAQ.
I'm ranting like this only because I hate the idea of anyone losing sleep over the kind of alerts and warnings issued by this utterly unnecessary new bureaucracy, folks.
Yes, bin Laden and his buddies are talking tough and scary right now - what do you expect; we've been bombing the Koran-misreading crap out of them. Their behavior and dark hints about greater power and more terrifying forces yet to be brought to bear against us isn't all that different from that of the kid knocked over on the playground making tremendous threats about what his eight foot tall, 500-pound bodybuilder dad is going to do to the bully who gave him a black eye.
Do yourselves a favor. Turn off your TV for a while and go play outside. It's perfect skiing weather, and there's plenty of snow on the ground. There's Christmas shopping to be done, and even Uncle Tom has encouraged Americans to show their patriotism, their faith in America by racking up credit card debt just like it was any old year. Don't go panicking just because Homeland Insecurity says something bad might happen to you.
It only increases the chances that something will.
P.S. For the record, I don't think too many of the people who read my weblog here are the type who are going to freak over anything any bureaucrat says (unless maybe it's Gale Norton). But you might know somebody who does, and maybe this rant can help with that. Or something.
P.P.S. Aren't you glad I got over my writer's block for the night?
P.P.P.S. If you disagree or want to remark on this or any of my posts, remember you can send comments to me at my e-mail address.
Good night!
Sunday, December 02, 2001
A WHIFF OF BRIMSTONE
I love the smell of sulfur in the evening – evenings like this one, anyway.
My hometown has many characteristic smells to savor as one wanders through it at night: sawdust, woodsmoke, burning charcoal (even in the dead of winter this is present; true Saratogans do not let a few feet of snow prevent them from barbecuing a good steak of a Sunday evening),once I caught a strong whiff of fish off the river. But on an evening like this, the most comforting smell of all is of sulfur, a scent that clings to me even now as I type, despite a shower with a powerful peppermint soap and a vigorous towelling...
Tonight was not a classic winter's dip in our beloved Hobo Pool – while the wind tonight is gusty and cold, the air when still is well above freezing and so there is no opportunity to marvel at how quickly the droplets clinging to my eyebrows and lashes freeze even while the rest of my face and body is toasty warm. Indeed; it was warm enough tonight that I might otherwise have felt silly seeking out the hot pool, which I only really enjoy when it is really and truly cold out, when I can savor the shocking contrast between the air as I pull myself out of the water (as a visitor to the pool tonight observed as he heaved himself up onto the sides for a spell, there's only so long you can sit in hot water) and the water itself. It is important to stay out in the cold long enough for the body to re-adjust itself so one can re-create the all-over tingle of the first, quick immersion after a long chilly bike ride to the pool when one plunges back in.
No, the conditions for this best of all hot pool trips did not prevail, but I sought out the waters that can't cure smallpox anyway, because I knew they'd be good for me.
(By way of explanation for that, I'll just share with you one image that a carload of tourists seem to have found extremely shocking: me in a baggy pair of men's swimming trunks and a t-shirt, tooling around the Saratoga Inn golf course at a decent rate of speed. Oh, did I mention I was on cross-country skis?)
(Yes, I even ski in shorts, if I'm not too far from home and the weather is as pleasant as it was today)
I've been riding a bicycle instead of using my car all summer, so my first foray into winter sport for the season did not leave me quite as sore as it usually would, but feet and shoulders get little use on a bike and were loudly protesting the hard use they saw today by the time I was hauling my bones up the sidewalk past the municipal pool to the ever holy Hobo Pool.
As the sulfurous vapors enveloped me, however, even my screaming plantar fasciae (damaged last March as I was climbing around on rocks whose location my physician has forbidden me to divulge if I ever want medical care again in my lifetime) (OK, mild exaggeration; I'm sure she'd at least apply some ice to the black eye she would give me if I told) (OK, that was an exaggeration, too. She wouldn't risk her own highly trained and skilled hands clobbering me. She'd have her new physcian's assistant do it) calmed down and agreed that maybe everything would be all right for a while.
Off with the sweats as I greet the regulars and the tourists – tonight consisting of a German man and his son paddling around the water with masks and snorkels (why? why on earth?) and a few kids from UW. Stretch and smile and into the water as quickly as possible.
Thousands of little pins and needles attack my frozen extremities (the air isn't freezing, no, but the wind was strong and gusty and biting and all kinds of no-fun to pedal against – yes, on my bike. The ritual requires I use my bike, get nice and cold on the way there so I appreciate the heat all the more on arrival at the pool and again at home and I'm sure you have some funky hot pool-related rituals I would find comical as well, so phooey!) as I sink into the water. My eyes roll back in my head and I fumble around along the bottom with my fingers until I find my sitting rock. Then and only then do I lean back against the furry wall and take my true ease...
The fur on the wall is a constant source of anxiety for me now that this pool is my personal responsiblity. While the never-ending battle against the algae for which this water is the ideal, the only habitat, has always been in part mine to fight (I remember whole Saturdays when I was a child when, decked out in a bathing suit and stocking cap I lined up against the walls with other members of my Brownie troop scrubbing away at the stuff with a brush), now it is my own partner in crime (also known as our redoubtable recreation director, a.k.a. the "Minister of Fun") who has to monitor the water's chemistry and report it to the state, which in effect has very strict standards on how furry our walls may get lest these wonderful waters be deemed a public health hazard. And it is he, and, by extension, me (since there is in effect no recreation board in place for him to report to) who has to schedule and execute the modern day equivalent of Brownie Troop 381's scrubbing parties.
Said parties take much less time and real effort than those of yore, now that the pool can be drained with ease and that most remarkable of inventions, the pressure washer, is an indispensible tool in the fight against the fur. Now the procedure consists of putting a notice up that the pool will be closed on such-and-such a morning, draining the pool most of the way, and firing up those pressure washers (the town has one which is mighty impressive as it blasts away at the algae, knocking it right off the wall like the water pik of the gods, yes, impressive indeed, until a local painting contractor and hot pool fan shows up with the water pik of the Titans, surely Prometheus' follow-up gift bestowed right after fire, so powerful it makes a the town's washer look like something I would use to fill a bird bath). The algae comes off in satisfying stripes, a Calvinist triumph, like painting in reverse... and then one looks down into what is left of the Hobo pool's waters, turgid and green with algae corpses that don't realize they've been defeated. No problem, though – just turn on an ordinary garden hose and gently persuade them all to head for the drain and out they go!
All this early in the morning, just as the sun is rising. By the time the sun is all the way up, the job is nearly done and the pool is clean. Did someone plan it that way, this marvelous effect? It makes of the cleaning project an almost pagan ritual; we toil and scrub so the first rays of the sun that reach the water may shine on a Hobo Pool renewed...
So while the ever-thickening fur on the wall feels a little funky, still I welcome the sliminess for the reminder it delivers about the requirements and rewards of stewardship. Because a few volunteers do a few hours of work a few mornings a year, we all have this amazing thing to enjoy.
And enjoy I - lots of us - do: All who drain and scrub and spray, all who soak and splash and play, all can make the same observation: You know you're in a special place when the scent of heaven is the smell of brimstone.
I love the smell of sulfur in the evening – evenings like this one, anyway.
My hometown has many characteristic smells to savor as one wanders through it at night: sawdust, woodsmoke, burning charcoal (even in the dead of winter this is present; true Saratogans do not let a few feet of snow prevent them from barbecuing a good steak of a Sunday evening),once I caught a strong whiff of fish off the river. But on an evening like this, the most comforting smell of all is of sulfur, a scent that clings to me even now as I type, despite a shower with a powerful peppermint soap and a vigorous towelling...
Tonight was not a classic winter's dip in our beloved Hobo Pool – while the wind tonight is gusty and cold, the air when still is well above freezing and so there is no opportunity to marvel at how quickly the droplets clinging to my eyebrows and lashes freeze even while the rest of my face and body is toasty warm. Indeed; it was warm enough tonight that I might otherwise have felt silly seeking out the hot pool, which I only really enjoy when it is really and truly cold out, when I can savor the shocking contrast between the air as I pull myself out of the water (as a visitor to the pool tonight observed as he heaved himself up onto the sides for a spell, there's only so long you can sit in hot water) and the water itself. It is important to stay out in the cold long enough for the body to re-adjust itself so one can re-create the all-over tingle of the first, quick immersion after a long chilly bike ride to the pool when one plunges back in.
No, the conditions for this best of all hot pool trips did not prevail, but I sought out the waters that can't cure smallpox anyway, because I knew they'd be good for me.
(By way of explanation for that, I'll just share with you one image that a carload of tourists seem to have found extremely shocking: me in a baggy pair of men's swimming trunks and a t-shirt, tooling around the Saratoga Inn golf course at a decent rate of speed. Oh, did I mention I was on cross-country skis?)
(Yes, I even ski in shorts, if I'm not too far from home and the weather is as pleasant as it was today)
I've been riding a bicycle instead of using my car all summer, so my first foray into winter sport for the season did not leave me quite as sore as it usually would, but feet and shoulders get little use on a bike and were loudly protesting the hard use they saw today by the time I was hauling my bones up the sidewalk past the municipal pool to the ever holy Hobo Pool.
As the sulfurous vapors enveloped me, however, even my screaming plantar fasciae (damaged last March as I was climbing around on rocks whose location my physician has forbidden me to divulge if I ever want medical care again in my lifetime) (OK, mild exaggeration; I'm sure she'd at least apply some ice to the black eye she would give me if I told) (OK, that was an exaggeration, too. She wouldn't risk her own highly trained and skilled hands clobbering me. She'd have her new physcian's assistant do it) calmed down and agreed that maybe everything would be all right for a while.
Off with the sweats as I greet the regulars and the tourists – tonight consisting of a German man and his son paddling around the water with masks and snorkels (why? why on earth?) and a few kids from UW. Stretch and smile and into the water as quickly as possible.
Thousands of little pins and needles attack my frozen extremities (the air isn't freezing, no, but the wind was strong and gusty and biting and all kinds of no-fun to pedal against – yes, on my bike. The ritual requires I use my bike, get nice and cold on the way there so I appreciate the heat all the more on arrival at the pool and again at home and I'm sure you have some funky hot pool-related rituals I would find comical as well, so phooey!) as I sink into the water. My eyes roll back in my head and I fumble around along the bottom with my fingers until I find my sitting rock. Then and only then do I lean back against the furry wall and take my true ease...
The fur on the wall is a constant source of anxiety for me now that this pool is my personal responsiblity. While the never-ending battle against the algae for which this water is the ideal, the only habitat, has always been in part mine to fight (I remember whole Saturdays when I was a child when, decked out in a bathing suit and stocking cap I lined up against the walls with other members of my Brownie troop scrubbing away at the stuff with a brush), now it is my own partner in crime (also known as our redoubtable recreation director, a.k.a. the "Minister of Fun") who has to monitor the water's chemistry and report it to the state, which in effect has very strict standards on how furry our walls may get lest these wonderful waters be deemed a public health hazard. And it is he, and, by extension, me (since there is in effect no recreation board in place for him to report to) who has to schedule and execute the modern day equivalent of Brownie Troop 381's scrubbing parties.
Said parties take much less time and real effort than those of yore, now that the pool can be drained with ease and that most remarkable of inventions, the pressure washer, is an indispensible tool in the fight against the fur. Now the procedure consists of putting a notice up that the pool will be closed on such-and-such a morning, draining the pool most of the way, and firing up those pressure washers (the town has one which is mighty impressive as it blasts away at the algae, knocking it right off the wall like the water pik of the gods, yes, impressive indeed, until a local painting contractor and hot pool fan shows up with the water pik of the Titans, surely Prometheus' follow-up gift bestowed right after fire, so powerful it makes a the town's washer look like something I would use to fill a bird bath). The algae comes off in satisfying stripes, a Calvinist triumph, like painting in reverse... and then one looks down into what is left of the Hobo pool's waters, turgid and green with algae corpses that don't realize they've been defeated. No problem, though – just turn on an ordinary garden hose and gently persuade them all to head for the drain and out they go!
All this early in the morning, just as the sun is rising. By the time the sun is all the way up, the job is nearly done and the pool is clean. Did someone plan it that way, this marvelous effect? It makes of the cleaning project an almost pagan ritual; we toil and scrub so the first rays of the sun that reach the water may shine on a Hobo Pool renewed...
So while the ever-thickening fur on the wall feels a little funky, still I welcome the sliminess for the reminder it delivers about the requirements and rewards of stewardship. Because a few volunteers do a few hours of work a few mornings a year, we all have this amazing thing to enjoy.
And enjoy I - lots of us - do: All who drain and scrub and spray, all who soak and splash and play, all can make the same observation: You know you're in a special place when the scent of heaven is the smell of brimstone.
Saturday, December 01, 2001
A NEW PERSPECTIVE
Ever have one of those experiences that cause you, belatedly, to realize that absolutely every aspect of your understanding of something has been wrong, wrong, wrong?
I've just taken in my first high school basketball of the season, and as I watched a good four hours or so of ball-bouncin' fun, I noticed certain, shall we say... inaccuracies in my general apprehension of the workings of the game, its aims and procedures and ultimate goals.
I have also, at 31 contracted my first real case of bleacher butt.
Many who know me will probably be surprised, if not flabbergasted, if not wildly skeptical about my claim to bleacher butt immunity for 31 years. After all, over the last two years there was hardly a Saratoga or Encampment junior high or high school basketball competition at which I wasn't present.
Well... Even at the height of my sports reporting career, I actually spent next to no time on the bleachers. Instead I was the only pin in an eternal game of photographer bowling, in which ten burly young men or reedy young women or flailing youths attempted every 40 seconds or so to knock me on my arse under the guise of trying to put a big rubber ball through a metal hoop hanging ominously over my head.
The rules went something like this: Maximum points and prestige to the player or players who actually physcially clobbered me, knocked me over, made me drop my camera or in some other way caused physical or economic trauma to my person. Less desirable but still admirable was success in causing me to jump, shreik or haul ass out of the way, either by nearly missing me with a limb or fingernail or by launching the ball in my direction, in which cases the trauma was purely psychological as I knelt powerless with a camera pressed to my face, watching the sharpness of detail in my view of the ball's pebbled surface rapidly increase until my muscles unfroze and I ducked or leapt out of the way.
Howls of laughter all around in such events, because objects in the lens are not as close as they appear - I was essentially dodging hallucinations.
Wisely, I put my photographer bowling pin career behind me before I suffered permanent damage. While the months of PB season served to keep my joints limber and my muscles toned, not to mention maintaining my astonishing alertness, hanging up my camera has vastly reduced the stress in my life.
There's an amusing coda to my career change, however, because now when I go to games I sit in the stands with everybody else - and find the game transformed!
First of all, those kids really are trying to put that ball through the hoop. I realize this now because I noticed today that they keep charging up and down what I now know is called the "court" (and not, as I thought, the "alley") whether or not there is a photographer waiting under said hoop.
And all that flailing of limb which I had for two years been interpreting as merely amusing attempts at freestyle action to liven up what would otherwise devolve into just a series of relentless charges? They're just trying to get the ball away from each other.
And all those times when the guys in stripes blow the whistle and make everything stop? It's not to allow the photographer to get up and stretch and enjoy a few moments blissfully free of attack. It's because one of the kids whacked one of the other kids while trying to hard to get the ball! And the whacker is punished and, get this, the whackee gets to take a special shot at putting the ball through the hoop while everyone else stands around and watches.
(Me, I had thought these so-called "free throws" were just an extra psychological tool to keep the photographer/target unsettled and make him or her cringe in anticipation of an especially powerful and well-aimed blow!).
I've noticed another thing, too, as I learn a new way to interpret these basketball games (and the name makes so much more sense now, especially after I've discovered that hoop is called a "basket!"). It's much harder for me to anticipate the players' moves from the stands, because I can't see their faces!
Before, I could always tell when I could expect a body blow or an embarrassing near miss by the look in a player's eye and his or her subtle, largely unconscious movements of finger, foot, shoulder... Having watched the same 20 or so children engaging in this sport for over two years, and always from up close and from the mindset that I was a participant in and not just a spectator of the action, I have learned, largely unconsciously, to read these signals, to anticipate which side of the "court" towards which a particular player tends to drift, to see in a particular player's wide eyes and gaping mouth and his arm position (reminiscent, so often, of that of a perfect swan dive) my own immediate future as a grease spot against the wall.
Yes, it's a different game now - but not as exciting, I'm sorry to say. No longer feeling that special, personal threat to life and limb that once I took for granted, I find my attention wanders a bit. There are infants and toddlers in the bleachers, for instance, and for a certain female contingent of the crowd the alternate sport of baby passing seems to be more important than watching the movements of the ball. There is also a great deal of gossip to be exchanged, plans to be made, colorful insults to be hurled at the men in stripes whom I still catch myself regarding as my personal protectors, and a great deal of shouting and clapping just in general.
Perhaps I'm not the sports fan I thought I was, but I have to confess I do find all of this a lot more interesting than what's going on down on the "court." Am I alone in thinking so?
I kind of doubt it.
I always knew there had to be a better reason for all of those people to come to these things than just the fun of watching me go splat! Why else endure the pangs of bleacher butt, if this is what they are like (though I have to say, alliteratively amusing though the term might be, "bleacher butt" is a misnomer; my butt is fine, but my hip joints and leg and back muscles are still objecting strongly to the four or so hours of rigid inactivity through which I put them in the name of spectatorship.)
"Basketball" fans are not as mean-spirited and bloodthirsty as I had been thinking, it would seem.
I wonder what else I've been wrong about.
Ever have one of those experiences that cause you, belatedly, to realize that absolutely every aspect of your understanding of something has been wrong, wrong, wrong?
I've just taken in my first high school basketball of the season, and as I watched a good four hours or so of ball-bouncin' fun, I noticed certain, shall we say... inaccuracies in my general apprehension of the workings of the game, its aims and procedures and ultimate goals.
I have also, at 31 contracted my first real case of bleacher butt.
Many who know me will probably be surprised, if not flabbergasted, if not wildly skeptical about my claim to bleacher butt immunity for 31 years. After all, over the last two years there was hardly a Saratoga or Encampment junior high or high school basketball competition at which I wasn't present.
Well... Even at the height of my sports reporting career, I actually spent next to no time on the bleachers. Instead I was the only pin in an eternal game of photographer bowling, in which ten burly young men or reedy young women or flailing youths attempted every 40 seconds or so to knock me on my arse under the guise of trying to put a big rubber ball through a metal hoop hanging ominously over my head.
The rules went something like this: Maximum points and prestige to the player or players who actually physcially clobbered me, knocked me over, made me drop my camera or in some other way caused physical or economic trauma to my person. Less desirable but still admirable was success in causing me to jump, shreik or haul ass out of the way, either by nearly missing me with a limb or fingernail or by launching the ball in my direction, in which cases the trauma was purely psychological as I knelt powerless with a camera pressed to my face, watching the sharpness of detail in my view of the ball's pebbled surface rapidly increase until my muscles unfroze and I ducked or leapt out of the way.
Howls of laughter all around in such events, because objects in the lens are not as close as they appear - I was essentially dodging hallucinations.
Wisely, I put my photographer bowling pin career behind me before I suffered permanent damage. While the months of PB season served to keep my joints limber and my muscles toned, not to mention maintaining my astonishing alertness, hanging up my camera has vastly reduced the stress in my life.
There's an amusing coda to my career change, however, because now when I go to games I sit in the stands with everybody else - and find the game transformed!
First of all, those kids really are trying to put that ball through the hoop. I realize this now because I noticed today that they keep charging up and down what I now know is called the "court" (and not, as I thought, the "alley") whether or not there is a photographer waiting under said hoop.
And all that flailing of limb which I had for two years been interpreting as merely amusing attempts at freestyle action to liven up what would otherwise devolve into just a series of relentless charges? They're just trying to get the ball away from each other.
And all those times when the guys in stripes blow the whistle and make everything stop? It's not to allow the photographer to get up and stretch and enjoy a few moments blissfully free of attack. It's because one of the kids whacked one of the other kids while trying to hard to get the ball! And the whacker is punished and, get this, the whackee gets to take a special shot at putting the ball through the hoop while everyone else stands around and watches.
(Me, I had thought these so-called "free throws" were just an extra psychological tool to keep the photographer/target unsettled and make him or her cringe in anticipation of an especially powerful and well-aimed blow!).
I've noticed another thing, too, as I learn a new way to interpret these basketball games (and the name makes so much more sense now, especially after I've discovered that hoop is called a "basket!"). It's much harder for me to anticipate the players' moves from the stands, because I can't see their faces!
Before, I could always tell when I could expect a body blow or an embarrassing near miss by the look in a player's eye and his or her subtle, largely unconscious movements of finger, foot, shoulder... Having watched the same 20 or so children engaging in this sport for over two years, and always from up close and from the mindset that I was a participant in and not just a spectator of the action, I have learned, largely unconsciously, to read these signals, to anticipate which side of the "court" towards which a particular player tends to drift, to see in a particular player's wide eyes and gaping mouth and his arm position (reminiscent, so often, of that of a perfect swan dive) my own immediate future as a grease spot against the wall.
Yes, it's a different game now - but not as exciting, I'm sorry to say. No longer feeling that special, personal threat to life and limb that once I took for granted, I find my attention wanders a bit. There are infants and toddlers in the bleachers, for instance, and for a certain female contingent of the crowd the alternate sport of baby passing seems to be more important than watching the movements of the ball. There is also a great deal of gossip to be exchanged, plans to be made, colorful insults to be hurled at the men in stripes whom I still catch myself regarding as my personal protectors, and a great deal of shouting and clapping just in general.
Perhaps I'm not the sports fan I thought I was, but I have to confess I do find all of this a lot more interesting than what's going on down on the "court." Am I alone in thinking so?
I kind of doubt it.
I always knew there had to be a better reason for all of those people to come to these things than just the fun of watching me go splat! Why else endure the pangs of bleacher butt, if this is what they are like (though I have to say, alliteratively amusing though the term might be, "bleacher butt" is a misnomer; my butt is fine, but my hip joints and leg and back muscles are still objecting strongly to the four or so hours of rigid inactivity through which I put them in the name of spectatorship.)
"Basketball" fans are not as mean-spirited and bloodthirsty as I had been thinking, it would seem.
I wonder what else I've been wrong about.
Friday, November 30, 2001
(Drat it, I swear the first iteration of this was better, but my wine-palsied hands muffed the crucial "publish" click and the text disappeared into oblivion. This is a reconstruction of what I wrote before. You'll see soon why it matters to me that this catastrophe occurred this time!)
HAPPINESS AND ISLANDS...
It has been another heavy-duty day, so I'm going to cop out again and rely mostly on a passage from someone else's book as a peg from which to hang tonight's essay. These lines come from Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva OR The Bomb Party, and are lines that have dwelt in my head for coming on 16 years, lines that resonated with me long before my personal experience had given me any real reason to empathize so with the narrator's plight. Perhaps it was a form of foreshadowing:
"But how does one convey happiness? Unhappiness we can so easily describe – I was unhappy, we say, because... We remember this and that, giving good reasons, but happiness is like one of those islands far out in the Pacific which has been reported by sailors when it emerges from the haze where no cartographer has ever marked it. The island disappears again for a generation, but no navigator can be quite certain that it only existed in the imagination of some long-dead lookout."
On the surface this looks like just an ordinary writer's problem: it is much easier to describe what is wrong than what is right. How much of the extant body of lyric poetry focuses on the author's bliss, contentment, fulfillment of wishes, versus what expresses his dejection, loss or melancholy?
The narrator here, though, has gained a particular appreciation for the happiness he once knew because it has been unexpectedly and brutally taken from him, and he is left with only parodic reminders of it. At the time he here describes in hindsight he was taking for granted the prospect of years together with his new, young, remarkable, grave and beautiful wife. But it wasn't to be. What seemed a mere prologue turned out to be the whole story for the pair of them.
That kind of happiness, which this man only discovered after the fact, is something that only can be discovered after the fact. Only after the events of it have been fixed in time can they be appreciated, can their beauty be savored (as in a related vein James Hillman once observed "You are never really married until you are divorced"). Once the experience can be pinned to the board like a butterfly, its every aspect, including those previously overlooked, can be examined in detail.
Not that this is the only kind of happiness. There are plenty of happy marriages, happy careers, happy progresses towards a goal. But this kind is both rare and wonderful... and crippling and poisonous, for it can easily keep the sailor standing ever at the prow of his ship, looking backwards, hoping for another glimpse of an island that has been rendered by memory and fantasy as a Platonic perfection that can never really be. His voyage may take him past other, perhaps even better, islands, but they pass by unnoticed because he's still watching for that one.
I have been such a sailor. Such happiness as described here has been mine, and it is gone with the person who made it possible. I had thought that I had gotten over this loss long ago, but tonight I realized that I've been standing there in the prow of the ship for too many years. I have let one moment define my entire subsequent life – which is madness.
Time to move toward the stern and start looking in a new direction. That island is lost to me, but it's not the only island.
How much easier it is to realize this when there is someone close at hand who has made the mighty effort to look in that new direction, and has found another island. How much better it is to find that someone one has known his entire life understands why it is a mighty effort and can explain why it is worth making.
That person will read this soon and may cry again as we both cried tonight, realizing we both have known this same happiness, which only assumes its full importance for being lost. But the tears shed this time will, I hope, be easier to bear for his knowing that I have let go my hold on the rail of the stern – and that it is because of him that I noticed I still had a white-knuckled grip on that rail.
And so to him I have to say:
Thank you.
HAPPINESS AND ISLANDS...
It has been another heavy-duty day, so I'm going to cop out again and rely mostly on a passage from someone else's book as a peg from which to hang tonight's essay. These lines come from Graham Greene's Doctor Fischer of Geneva OR The Bomb Party, and are lines that have dwelt in my head for coming on 16 years, lines that resonated with me long before my personal experience had given me any real reason to empathize so with the narrator's plight. Perhaps it was a form of foreshadowing:
"But how does one convey happiness? Unhappiness we can so easily describe – I was unhappy, we say, because... We remember this and that, giving good reasons, but happiness is like one of those islands far out in the Pacific which has been reported by sailors when it emerges from the haze where no cartographer has ever marked it. The island disappears again for a generation, but no navigator can be quite certain that it only existed in the imagination of some long-dead lookout."
On the surface this looks like just an ordinary writer's problem: it is much easier to describe what is wrong than what is right. How much of the extant body of lyric poetry focuses on the author's bliss, contentment, fulfillment of wishes, versus what expresses his dejection, loss or melancholy?
The narrator here, though, has gained a particular appreciation for the happiness he once knew because it has been unexpectedly and brutally taken from him, and he is left with only parodic reminders of it. At the time he here describes in hindsight he was taking for granted the prospect of years together with his new, young, remarkable, grave and beautiful wife. But it wasn't to be. What seemed a mere prologue turned out to be the whole story for the pair of them.
That kind of happiness, which this man only discovered after the fact, is something that only can be discovered after the fact. Only after the events of it have been fixed in time can they be appreciated, can their beauty be savored (as in a related vein James Hillman once observed "You are never really married until you are divorced"). Once the experience can be pinned to the board like a butterfly, its every aspect, including those previously overlooked, can be examined in detail.
Not that this is the only kind of happiness. There are plenty of happy marriages, happy careers, happy progresses towards a goal. But this kind is both rare and wonderful... and crippling and poisonous, for it can easily keep the sailor standing ever at the prow of his ship, looking backwards, hoping for another glimpse of an island that has been rendered by memory and fantasy as a Platonic perfection that can never really be. His voyage may take him past other, perhaps even better, islands, but they pass by unnoticed because he's still watching for that one.
I have been such a sailor. Such happiness as described here has been mine, and it is gone with the person who made it possible. I had thought that I had gotten over this loss long ago, but tonight I realized that I've been standing there in the prow of the ship for too many years. I have let one moment define my entire subsequent life – which is madness.
Time to move toward the stern and start looking in a new direction. That island is lost to me, but it's not the only island.
How much easier it is to realize this when there is someone close at hand who has made the mighty effort to look in that new direction, and has found another island. How much better it is to find that someone one has known his entire life understands why it is a mighty effort and can explain why it is worth making.
That person will read this soon and may cry again as we both cried tonight, realizing we both have known this same happiness, which only assumes its full importance for being lost. But the tears shed this time will, I hope, be easier to bear for his knowing that I have let go my hold on the rail of the stern – and that it is because of him that I noticed I still had a white-knuckled grip on that rail.
And so to him I have to say:
Thank you.
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