CEMETERIES AND STATEMENTS...
"The cemetery really isn't a place to make a statement."
- Mary Elizabeth Baker
Ms. Baker made this statement about a tombstone in Concord, MA located near those of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau which read "Who the hell is Sheila Shea," so her remarks may or may not be entirely germane to the issue that is now troubling me, but I had to start somewhere, folks.
Our cemetery board asked me and my fellow town council members tonight to use our cemetery to make a statement of sorts, you see, and it's one that I'm not entirely comfortable with, namely that preventing vandalism is more important than allowing the public to have access to a treasured and emotionally important facility.
Now, I can understand the Saratoga Cemetery Board's point of view, I really can. A lot of work and money has been put into making our cemetery a beautiful and thoughtful place; the pavilion built there has lent dignity to many a memorial – and Memorial Day – service, the grounds are well-kept, and in general it's a place of which we can be very proud. Even visitors to our town have noticed how nice this place is, and have remarked to me and to others on how much that says about our town (to those who judge a town by the condition of its cemetery, anyway).
And yeah, it's terrible that kids or whoever go in there after dark sometimes in the summer and make a mess. It's disrespectful and winds up costing money and may cause much alarm to people visiting the cemetery legitimately. And yes, I'd really rather it didn't happen.
And yes, there are ways of dealing with the problem, but instead of first asking for tougher enforcement of our existing 10 p.m. curfew for kids under 16, a curfew that precludes their having much time between sunset and our police sending them home in which to work much mischief and one which it should be much easier to enforce this coming summer now that our police department has five officers instead of two and a very dynamic new police chief, the cemetery board's solution has been to ask the town council to consider drafting and passing an ordinance prohibiting entering the cemetery between the hours of dusk and dawn.
And we voted tonight to draft such an ordinance. It will probably be ready sometime next month, and then it will go through the required three readings, and if it passes all three readings it will become law.
BUT... will it actually solve the problem? Or will it just be another curtailment of everyone's liberties in order to prevent a few people from behaving badly?
Think for a moment about those people who have legitimate business in the cemetery. Is such a measure fair at all to them? Sure, they're free to come during daylight, but what if for whatever reason – their schedules, their emotional needs (I remember well what it's like the first year after losing someone special, that awakening in the middle of the night or the turn after something amazing has happend when you want to see if your companion saw it too only he's not there. And I've felt the need to go to sit with him at his place in the ground in the middle of the night, and was damned glad to be able to do so. Oh yes), a wish for privacy – they are only able, or only need to visit after dark?
So the question I'm posing to all of you is, which is more important: freedom to visit the cemetery when you can and want and need to, or protecting some structures from vandalism?
Me, I value freedom over protection or prevention any day, and am sure this is a surprise to none of you. And if I don't hear some pretty compelling arguments to the contrary during the course of our debates on this ordinance proposal, I'm going to vote against this thing.
But what do YOU want?
Tuesday, February 19, 2002
Monday, February 18, 2002
NOW I'M REALLY BACK
As frequent readers of this webpage know, I've begun a quixotic enterprise: tangling with the almighty U.S. Census Bureau. They came a-knockin' unannounced about two weeks ago and I chased the Bureau's two representatives away with all due alacrity, since the survey they were peddling was one of which I have never heard, I had not received the alleged letter the Bureau had sent me in the mail, I didn't know either of the two rude women who were standing at my door, and I was sick and tired.
Still feeling snarky and more than a little wigged out about the whole enterprise, I called the police on them for good measure, since the more I thought about it (and discussed it with my admittedly slightly paranoid ex-cop father) the less legitimate my surprise visit seemed.
Update time!
Our fair berg's single lady cop devoted much time and energy trying to contact the Bureau over the next few days to find out if this survey was actually the real thing and if it was being done here. After running into lots of disconnected Bureau numbers and interviewing lots of disconnected Bureau employees and spending even more time than I did on the Bureau's stunningly uninformative website, she concluded that my nighttime visitors had contacted me on legitimate business.
Interestingly enough, the Bureau still hasn't made any contact with the Town of Saratoga or any of its agencies to tell us that they're doing something here, what they're doing here, etc. The only contact the Bureau has had with us, in fact, has been with the lady cop!
But, they're still hot on my tail. One of the ladies came by and caught me as I was heading back to work from my lunch break and again asked for 30 minutes of my time and I again told her no. She left me with an envelope containing a cringingly polite letter apologizing for making me mad, demanding my phone number and name, and asking me for "a few minutes of my time" so she can "explain what this new survey is all about."
She also left me an entertainingly vague but very slickly produced brochure purporting to explain what the American Community Survey is all about, but the "Questions and Answers" contained therein are all just about whether or not we are required by law to respond to the survey. Touchingly, close to half of the questions presuppose that the pamphlet reader really really wants to spill his or her guts to the Bureau but is handicapped or uncertain about his or her ability to help, and the answers offer helpful solutions to such people, solutions like "the respondent may designate another person to help complete the questionnaire" (OK, I want Linda Lay to help me).
But that's not all!
The darling lady also provided me with a copy of Title 13, the much-mentioned part of the U.S. Code governing required participation in Census stuff. The paper she gave me lists, I guess, only the most germane portions of the title, including §222, Giving suggestions or information with intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population, §223, Refusal, by owners, proprietors, etc. to assist census employees, and §224, Failure to answer questions affecting companies, businesses, religious bodies and other organizations; false answers.
Now, §222 can't apply to me because I gave out no false information the first time they came around: I informed them truthfully that there is one person living in my apartment, and that I am she.
Nor can §223 apply to me, though at first glance it would appear to (and I'm sure they're counting on this). Once again, though, the devil is in those pesky details. From §223:
Whoever, being the owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent, or agent of any hotel, apartment house, boarding or lodging house, tenement or other building, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary or by any other officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof, acting under the instructions of the Secretary, to furnish the names of the occupants of such premises, or to give free ingress thereto and egress therefrom to any duly accredited representative of such Department or bureau or agency thereof, so as to permit the collection of statistics with respect... blah blah blah I won't bother you with the rest of it, because it's those words I put in boldface that actually matter.
I am neither an owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent or agent of this apartment building. I am a tenant. I did not prevent the Secretary or any other Department of Commerce employee from entering or leaving this building, which features direct street entrances. True, I did not furnish my name or any other tenant's, but then again, since I am neither an owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent or agent, I am not required to.
Nor does §224 apply to this matter, since these people were not asking me about (quoting Title 13 again) any "company, business, institution, establishment, religious body or organization of any nature whatsoever"; they wanted to know about me personally.
Look, I'd not be making a big deal of this if this jackass agency had made any effort at all to tell me, either as a person or as a town council member, that they were coming. The fact that now they have singled me out for frequent propaganda bombs, even resorting to Fed Exing me yet another copy of Title 13 and a letter trying to convince me that these sections of Title 13 with which we have just frolicked somehow compels my compliance makes me less, not more in helping them out.
Yeah, I'm being needlessly stubborn. But they are being needlessly idiotic, discourteous, and now threatening, so someone has to be.
I'll share a final tidbit, from the letter Fed Exed to me over the weekend, before calling it a night:
"Your federal, state and local government depend on your answers to tell them where to build schools, hospitals, roads and community centers." (emphasis mine, of course)
Well gee, that convinced me!
As frequent readers of this webpage know, I've begun a quixotic enterprise: tangling with the almighty U.S. Census Bureau. They came a-knockin' unannounced about two weeks ago and I chased the Bureau's two representatives away with all due alacrity, since the survey they were peddling was one of which I have never heard, I had not received the alleged letter the Bureau had sent me in the mail, I didn't know either of the two rude women who were standing at my door, and I was sick and tired.
Still feeling snarky and more than a little wigged out about the whole enterprise, I called the police on them for good measure, since the more I thought about it (and discussed it with my admittedly slightly paranoid ex-cop father) the less legitimate my surprise visit seemed.
Update time!
Our fair berg's single lady cop devoted much time and energy trying to contact the Bureau over the next few days to find out if this survey was actually the real thing and if it was being done here. After running into lots of disconnected Bureau numbers and interviewing lots of disconnected Bureau employees and spending even more time than I did on the Bureau's stunningly uninformative website, she concluded that my nighttime visitors had contacted me on legitimate business.
Interestingly enough, the Bureau still hasn't made any contact with the Town of Saratoga or any of its agencies to tell us that they're doing something here, what they're doing here, etc. The only contact the Bureau has had with us, in fact, has been with the lady cop!
But, they're still hot on my tail. One of the ladies came by and caught me as I was heading back to work from my lunch break and again asked for 30 minutes of my time and I again told her no. She left me with an envelope containing a cringingly polite letter apologizing for making me mad, demanding my phone number and name, and asking me for "a few minutes of my time" so she can "explain what this new survey is all about."
She also left me an entertainingly vague but very slickly produced brochure purporting to explain what the American Community Survey is all about, but the "Questions and Answers" contained therein are all just about whether or not we are required by law to respond to the survey. Touchingly, close to half of the questions presuppose that the pamphlet reader really really wants to spill his or her guts to the Bureau but is handicapped or uncertain about his or her ability to help, and the answers offer helpful solutions to such people, solutions like "the respondent may designate another person to help complete the questionnaire" (OK, I want Linda Lay to help me).
But that's not all!
The darling lady also provided me with a copy of Title 13, the much-mentioned part of the U.S. Code governing required participation in Census stuff. The paper she gave me lists, I guess, only the most germane portions of the title, including §222, Giving suggestions or information with intent to cause inaccurate enumeration of population, §223, Refusal, by owners, proprietors, etc. to assist census employees, and §224, Failure to answer questions affecting companies, businesses, religious bodies and other organizations; false answers.
Now, §222 can't apply to me because I gave out no false information the first time they came around: I informed them truthfully that there is one person living in my apartment, and that I am she.
Nor can §223 apply to me, though at first glance it would appear to (and I'm sure they're counting on this). Once again, though, the devil is in those pesky details. From §223:
Whoever, being the owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent, or agent of any hotel, apartment house, boarding or lodging house, tenement or other building, refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary or by any other officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof, acting under the instructions of the Secretary, to furnish the names of the occupants of such premises, or to give free ingress thereto and egress therefrom to any duly accredited representative of such Department or bureau or agency thereof, so as to permit the collection of statistics with respect... blah blah blah I won't bother you with the rest of it, because it's those words I put in boldface that actually matter.
I am neither an owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent or agent of this apartment building. I am a tenant. I did not prevent the Secretary or any other Department of Commerce employee from entering or leaving this building, which features direct street entrances. True, I did not furnish my name or any other tenant's, but then again, since I am neither an owner, proprietor, manager, superintendent or agent, I am not required to.
Nor does §224 apply to this matter, since these people were not asking me about (quoting Title 13 again) any "company, business, institution, establishment, religious body or organization of any nature whatsoever"; they wanted to know about me personally.
Look, I'd not be making a big deal of this if this jackass agency had made any effort at all to tell me, either as a person or as a town council member, that they were coming. The fact that now they have singled me out for frequent propaganda bombs, even resorting to Fed Exing me yet another copy of Title 13 and a letter trying to convince me that these sections of Title 13 with which we have just frolicked somehow compels my compliance makes me less, not more in helping them out.
Yeah, I'm being needlessly stubborn. But they are being needlessly idiotic, discourteous, and now threatening, so someone has to be.
I'll share a final tidbit, from the letter Fed Exed to me over the weekend, before calling it a night:
"Your federal, state and local government depend on your answers to tell them where to build schools, hospitals, roads and community centers." (emphasis mine, of course)
Well gee, that convinced me!
OK, OK...
As a certain wag who will go nameless pointed out to me this morning, if that Chris Witty person can win a gold medal with mono, I can certainly write a column, so I guess I'm back, folks... if anyone is still looking in. It seems like it's been months since last I posted here.
And yes, I have been idle! Nothing like a virus for which one's doctor's prescribed remedy is somewhat sizeable doses of liquid opium (OK, OK, codiene cough syrup) and instructions to spend the week "drinking lots of fluids and lolling around in narcotic heaven" (the two aren't quite mutually exclusive, though there are certain consequences to increased fluid intake that make prolonged episodes of lolling somewhat uncomfortable, if not messy) to keep one flat on one's back and thinking about nuthin', which is actually pretty nice. Chariot races? Poof! What chariot races? Septic tank ordinance? Poof! What septic tank ordinance? Fishing derby and winter carnival paperwork? Poof! What paperwork? Joint Powers Board meeting? Poof! What meeting? Etc.
Never in my life has it been so easy to dismiss so much, at least not since it stopped being really fun to take long train rides. I can almost see why some people get addicted to that stuff.
But of course, the problem with making everything go poof! is that it all really only goes poof! inside one's own little head. Meanwhile, the outside world keeps on turning and deadlines keep approaching whether I'm paying attention to these facts or not.
And while I'm back at work more or less full time and while I'm back to coaching starting tomorrow and while I'm heading off to the Wyoming Association of Municipalities' annual Elected Officials Workshop (which I really could have used last year as a newly elected official, but which I wound up missing because I had the flu - Eliot was wrong when he said April is the cruelest month. No way. That would be February), still I feel like someone snuck up on me while I was sleeping, popped open my battery case and slipped in a few spent AAAs in place of the monstrous truck battery on which I am accustomed to running.
On the other hand, I sleep very well, and probably do so for longer and more often than I ever have.
I'll bet you that Witty chick crashed and burned HARD last night after all that skating.
Of course, she's a month ahead of me on the disease thing.
I sure hope I can skate like that when I get over mono!
As a certain wag who will go nameless pointed out to me this morning, if that Chris Witty person can win a gold medal with mono, I can certainly write a column, so I guess I'm back, folks... if anyone is still looking in. It seems like it's been months since last I posted here.
And yes, I have been idle! Nothing like a virus for which one's doctor's prescribed remedy is somewhat sizeable doses of liquid opium (OK, OK, codiene cough syrup) and instructions to spend the week "drinking lots of fluids and lolling around in narcotic heaven" (the two aren't quite mutually exclusive, though there are certain consequences to increased fluid intake that make prolonged episodes of lolling somewhat uncomfortable, if not messy) to keep one flat on one's back and thinking about nuthin', which is actually pretty nice. Chariot races? Poof! What chariot races? Septic tank ordinance? Poof! What septic tank ordinance? Fishing derby and winter carnival paperwork? Poof! What paperwork? Joint Powers Board meeting? Poof! What meeting? Etc.
Never in my life has it been so easy to dismiss so much, at least not since it stopped being really fun to take long train rides. I can almost see why some people get addicted to that stuff.
But of course, the problem with making everything go poof! is that it all really only goes poof! inside one's own little head. Meanwhile, the outside world keeps on turning and deadlines keep approaching whether I'm paying attention to these facts or not.
And while I'm back at work more or less full time and while I'm back to coaching starting tomorrow and while I'm heading off to the Wyoming Association of Municipalities' annual Elected Officials Workshop (which I really could have used last year as a newly elected official, but which I wound up missing because I had the flu - Eliot was wrong when he said April is the cruelest month. No way. That would be February), still I feel like someone snuck up on me while I was sleeping, popped open my battery case and slipped in a few spent AAAs in place of the monstrous truck battery on which I am accustomed to running.
On the other hand, I sleep very well, and probably do so for longer and more often than I ever have.
I'll bet you that Witty chick crashed and burned HARD last night after all that skating.
Of course, she's a month ahead of me on the disease thing.
I sure hope I can skate like that when I get over mono!
Sunday, February 10, 2002
ALL ALONE IN THE NIGHT
I haven't written to this blog for a while because I've been home sick and miserable, having sunk down into that depression that accompanies all illnesses that last more than a few days, having succumbed to those fears – what if I never get better? What if my voice never really comes back? What if my fever does brain damage? Not to mention, will I ever catch up on all the work I'm not doing while I'm home gasping for breath?
It's probably just the drugs talking, but I'm not going to know that for a while yet.
So, things haven't been pretty chez moi and so I have chosen not to inflict it on you. It's not that I haven't had anything to day during this epic-length downtime; it's just that most of the time I'm too doped up to say it coherently (and I don't think the world needs another William S. Burroughs wannabe). And when I come out of my hydrocodone haze I'm too acutely uncomfortable and unhappy to do anything but whine, which nobody likes to hear or read about.
For instance, right now, just at midnight (a midnight that put an official end to the very worst weekend of my entire life), I'm having trouble breathing again, or rather doing entirely too much breathing, so much breathing so fast that it's making me tired, but not tired enough to sleep so mostly I'm sitting here breathing and typing between breaths. You didn't really want to hear about that, did you?
But please don't desert me, dear readers, just because it's been a few days since I've put up something new here. I promise, I'll make up for the lost time when I get better.
There's a lot more stuff going on that we need to consider.
I haven't written to this blog for a while because I've been home sick and miserable, having sunk down into that depression that accompanies all illnesses that last more than a few days, having succumbed to those fears – what if I never get better? What if my voice never really comes back? What if my fever does brain damage? Not to mention, will I ever catch up on all the work I'm not doing while I'm home gasping for breath?
It's probably just the drugs talking, but I'm not going to know that for a while yet.
So, things haven't been pretty chez moi and so I have chosen not to inflict it on you. It's not that I haven't had anything to day during this epic-length downtime; it's just that most of the time I'm too doped up to say it coherently (and I don't think the world needs another William S. Burroughs wannabe). And when I come out of my hydrocodone haze I'm too acutely uncomfortable and unhappy to do anything but whine, which nobody likes to hear or read about.
For instance, right now, just at midnight (a midnight that put an official end to the very worst weekend of my entire life), I'm having trouble breathing again, or rather doing entirely too much breathing, so much breathing so fast that it's making me tired, but not tired enough to sleep so mostly I'm sitting here breathing and typing between breaths. You didn't really want to hear about that, did you?
But please don't desert me, dear readers, just because it's been a few days since I've put up something new here. I promise, I'll make up for the lost time when I get better.
There's a lot more stuff going on that we need to consider.
Thursday, February 07, 2002
THE WACKINESS CONTINUES
I guess I finally made it into valley lore today, to judge from the way the story I'm about to relate spread around town.
My evening visitors from yesterday were still very much on my mind and even followed me into my dreams, which featured a severe Secular Johnson problem in the form of some deadly piece of system-destroying e-mail that had allegedly originated with us and was now on its way to wreaking worldwide havoc and everyone in the world was calling for our heads even though nobody knew who we were. The dream went on and on and into the morning and I woke up in a most unusual state of mind that I carried with me into my morning ablutions.
Just before I'd gone to bed last night, I had taken my worried father's advice and propped a kitchen chair under my front door's knob to prevent unwanted intrusion, as the lock on said door has not been working properly for several months. I checked before I went to shower to see that it was still there, and remember puzzling over how that was supposed to work, anyway as I went about my business.
Just as I had a head full of shampoo, I heard an ominous sound. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.
Groggy, annoyed, vulnerable and still lingeringly angry from last night's visit, I immediately screamed in rage at the sound (thus trashing once again a throat still only barely capable of making speech-like sounds) but sensibly continued to wash. Whoever was at the door, it can't have been one of my friends who all know better than to bug me at home on a workday morning, that was for certain - and for anyone else, well that's what the notepad on the door is for.
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.
Cranky, irritated, wet and now a little tripped out – must be those "Census" ladies come to pick on me again, I remember thinking – I leaned out my bathroom door and screamed out rudely that I was in the shower and could whoever it was please buzz off (except I used a term other than "buzz").
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM CRASH!!
So... however it is the chair under the doorknob is supposed to work, I have not mastered it. Someone had gotten inside!!!
I jumped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around me, and quickly cased the bathroom for something, anything with which to defend myself. All there was, was a toilet plunger.
A toilet plunger.
A toilet plunger! With a viscously chewed-up handle, looks like the devil's own Doberman has been gnawing on it, the wood a mass of splinters and slivers waiting to happen. Just the thing some random jackass would not want shoved up his fundament.
Howling obscenities I came hurtling out of the bathroom, ready to turn that toilet plunger into a weapon the Geneva convention surely would ban.
I came very near to using it, too, because it's been a long time since I've seen my father's friend, the Bard of Booger County himself, who was calmly getting ready to set to work on fixing my doorknob.
"Hi sweetie, your dad just asked me to drop by," he said as though a screaming wet redhead howling for his blood and inches from murder were a commonplace in his world.
I finally recognized him and regained my composure and told him to carry on. Actually, I wasn't nearly that calm. I was still cursing and wet and waving my weapon around.
"Go finish your shower, it's all right."
("Away put your weapon, I mean you no harm" Yoda said when Luke Skywalker first menaced him. Star Wars moments occur to me at the weirdest times)
Nonplused, but vowing to have a little chat with my father about giving a girl a little warning before sending early morning visitors her way the very day after she has her very own X-Files incident, I put down the plunger and finished my shower, dressed and sat down to check my e-mail before work.
My dad's friend had already tried three times to fix the doorknob with disappointing results.
It was his turn to cuss.
But I'm the one who's now famous for it.
C'est la guerre...
Oh, and to follow up: Nobody, not our mayor, not our police force, not any of my coffee buddies, NO ONE had any kind of encounter with any kind of "Census" ladies of any stripe last night, nor, apparently, was there any trace of them today.
Thank goodness I have a witness.
I guess I finally made it into valley lore today, to judge from the way the story I'm about to relate spread around town.
My evening visitors from yesterday were still very much on my mind and even followed me into my dreams, which featured a severe Secular Johnson problem in the form of some deadly piece of system-destroying e-mail that had allegedly originated with us and was now on its way to wreaking worldwide havoc and everyone in the world was calling for our heads even though nobody knew who we were. The dream went on and on and into the morning and I woke up in a most unusual state of mind that I carried with me into my morning ablutions.
Just before I'd gone to bed last night, I had taken my worried father's advice and propped a kitchen chair under my front door's knob to prevent unwanted intrusion, as the lock on said door has not been working properly for several months. I checked before I went to shower to see that it was still there, and remember puzzling over how that was supposed to work, anyway as I went about my business.
Just as I had a head full of shampoo, I heard an ominous sound. BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.
Groggy, annoyed, vulnerable and still lingeringly angry from last night's visit, I immediately screamed in rage at the sound (thus trashing once again a throat still only barely capable of making speech-like sounds) but sensibly continued to wash. Whoever was at the door, it can't have been one of my friends who all know better than to bug me at home on a workday morning, that was for certain - and for anyone else, well that's what the notepad on the door is for.
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM.
Cranky, irritated, wet and now a little tripped out – must be those "Census" ladies come to pick on me again, I remember thinking – I leaned out my bathroom door and screamed out rudely that I was in the shower and could whoever it was please buzz off (except I used a term other than "buzz").
BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM CRASH!!
So... however it is the chair under the doorknob is supposed to work, I have not mastered it. Someone had gotten inside!!!
I jumped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around me, and quickly cased the bathroom for something, anything with which to defend myself. All there was, was a toilet plunger.
A toilet plunger.
A toilet plunger! With a viscously chewed-up handle, looks like the devil's own Doberman has been gnawing on it, the wood a mass of splinters and slivers waiting to happen. Just the thing some random jackass would not want shoved up his fundament.
Howling obscenities I came hurtling out of the bathroom, ready to turn that toilet plunger into a weapon the Geneva convention surely would ban.
I came very near to using it, too, because it's been a long time since I've seen my father's friend, the Bard of Booger County himself, who was calmly getting ready to set to work on fixing my doorknob.
"Hi sweetie, your dad just asked me to drop by," he said as though a screaming wet redhead howling for his blood and inches from murder were a commonplace in his world.
I finally recognized him and regained my composure and told him to carry on. Actually, I wasn't nearly that calm. I was still cursing and wet and waving my weapon around.
"Go finish your shower, it's all right."
("Away put your weapon, I mean you no harm" Yoda said when Luke Skywalker first menaced him. Star Wars moments occur to me at the weirdest times)
Nonplused, but vowing to have a little chat with my father about giving a girl a little warning before sending early morning visitors her way the very day after she has her very own X-Files incident, I put down the plunger and finished my shower, dressed and sat down to check my e-mail before work.
My dad's friend had already tried three times to fix the doorknob with disappointing results.
It was his turn to cuss.
But I'm the one who's now famous for it.
C'est la guerre...
Oh, and to follow up: Nobody, not our mayor, not our police force, not any of my coffee buddies, NO ONE had any kind of encounter with any kind of "Census" ladies of any stripe last night, nor, apparently, was there any trace of them today.
Thank goodness I have a witness.
Wednesday, February 06, 2002
GOOSED BY THE GOVERNMENT, OR...?
OK, guys, it's late, I'm still very sick, and now I'm grouchy and completely pissed off, so I can tell you right now this is not going to be up to even my very uneven standards. But something happened tonight that disturbs me greatly, and disturbs me more the more I think about it.
You see, I had a very weird and suspicious visit a few hours ago that's left me feeling thoroughly goosed and even a little bit scared. I thought I'd share it with you all, if for no other reason than to prepare you if you, too, have been selected for the kind of special attention which I received tonight!
It was about 7:30 p.m. I was thoroughly flaked out, watching a movie with a friend and almost asleep (still trying to get over many varieties of crud, and just for the record no, I don't know for sure if it's mono but thank you all very much for your concern!) when there came a surprising pounding on my chamber door.
Since over the last few days I've had many kind visitors, including my own dear personal parents delivering tomato soup and movies for me to watch, I assumed it was another one of these. We paused the movie and I tried my best to sort myself and not look like I'd just been dozing because that is very discomposing even when it's just a pal who's stopping by.
It was no pal of mine, to be certain.
What it was was two strange women (strange in that they are unknown to me and people I've never seen before, not, necessarily, strange as in "weird" though perhaps that remains to be seen) flashing fancy looking IDs claiming to be from the Census Bureau and trying to push their way into my apartment for "30 minutes of my time."
In 2002?
"You received our letter in the mail, miss."
"Um, no I didn't, and the census was two years ago."
The women handed me a photocopied letter purportedly FROM THE ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU that read, in part, as follows:
"The Census Bureau is taking a survey in your community. Decisions about child care, jobs, health care and more will be based on the answers.
The American Community Survey is not a census of all Americans. That census is taken every ten years. This survey will provide local and national leaders with more timely information between censuses. Because your address has been specifically chosen for this survey, your replay is very important to us."
The letter goes on to remind me that my response is required by Federal law and so on, to assure me that my privacy will be protected, blah blah blah boogeda boogeda boogeda.
Nonetheless, I sent these ladies packing, finally having to get quite rude to do so. But that's not all, of course (when is it ever all with me?)
I did some checking later this evening, and while there is such a thing as the American Community Survey, nothing on the Census Bureau's website says anything about one being conducted this year, except HERE where appears a list of communities being in some way looked at between 1999 and 2002. Note that there is nothing indicated for anywhere in Wyoming.
So far it's only slightly fishy and creepy. But of course, if you're me, it gets worse.
As most of my readers know, I am a local leader, duly elected to the Saratoga Town Council. If this survey is being conducted in part, therefore, to provide me with more timely information between censuses, wouldn't logic and common sense dictate that I would have been previously informed that it was going on in the community for which I am responsible?
Furthermore, I am something of a news junkie. As frequent readers of these screeds of mine know, I have a pretty heavy and varied media diet of local, regional and national newspapers, political and cultural magazines, foreign periodicals, and the Weekly World News. Not to mention that the entertainment of choice at my morning coffee klatsch (aside from the antics of two shaggy brown boys named Gunnar and Whiskey) is CNN Headline news.
Surely I am not the only one to be somewhat skeptical that I've managed to completely miss the news that this survey was being conducted somewhere at least?
Even if it is "legitimate," however, it still strikes me as freaky. As I told my parents, whom I called a little while after the visit, I don't know which creeps me out more, the thought that it was real census people harassing me, or that it was something else.
Full disclosure time: When it comes to the Federal government, I am suspicious as hell just as a matter of principle. And I am very vocal about this, and take pride in being regarded as something of a rabble rouser on the subject of the rights and duties we enjoy as citizens.
When I got the Census Bureau's loooooooooooooong form two years or so ago, therefore, I threw it away. And when Census employees came to visit me to follow up, I gave them only the short form information: my address, which they already knew, how many people lived here (just lil' ol me), period.
Of course I was a little suspicious, then, when two strangers showed up unannounced wanting to take 30 minutes of my time because "my address has been specifically chosen for this survey."
Maybe it's just paranoia on my part, but I don't care. I don't appreciate being disturbed this way, don't appreciate this kind of prying from anybody, and I won't stand for it, and neither should you.
And besides – what if they aren't with the Census, something that still seems to me very likely given the fact that their coming to me, of all people, was such a surprise.
They really wanted to come inside, and got more pushy and hostile by the minute when I kept them standing out in the cold and told them that all they needed to know was that I was one person, living here. I repeated to them several times that this was the only information they were going to receive, the only information that the Constitution allows them to demand (and that only when the actual Census is being conducted) and they got more unpleasant until finally I just came out and told them to please leave.
Then, on the urging of my retired cop father, I called the police on them, gave full descriptions, etc. The dispatcher to whom I spoke was equally surprised at the thought of the Census Bureau conducting any kind of survey in Saratoga.
So, I think this is deeply, deeply bogus. These people are up to something, and it smells. At least that's the way it looks right now.
Just remember – you don't have to tell anybody anything. Even if you're arrested for something: you have the right to remain silent.
ADDENDUM - HOURS LATER:
I still can't sleep, and in my continued pique I ran a Google search on "Census" and "sucks" and found a page for someone who may be my new hero. Check out a man who burnt his Census looooooong form on the steps of the Missouri State Supreme Court. Check it out RIGHT HERE
OK, guys, it's late, I'm still very sick, and now I'm grouchy and completely pissed off, so I can tell you right now this is not going to be up to even my very uneven standards. But something happened tonight that disturbs me greatly, and disturbs me more the more I think about it.
You see, I had a very weird and suspicious visit a few hours ago that's left me feeling thoroughly goosed and even a little bit scared. I thought I'd share it with you all, if for no other reason than to prepare you if you, too, have been selected for the kind of special attention which I received tonight!
It was about 7:30 p.m. I was thoroughly flaked out, watching a movie with a friend and almost asleep (still trying to get over many varieties of crud, and just for the record no, I don't know for sure if it's mono but thank you all very much for your concern!) when there came a surprising pounding on my chamber door.
Since over the last few days I've had many kind visitors, including my own dear personal parents delivering tomato soup and movies for me to watch, I assumed it was another one of these. We paused the movie and I tried my best to sort myself and not look like I'd just been dozing because that is very discomposing even when it's just a pal who's stopping by.
It was no pal of mine, to be certain.
What it was was two strange women (strange in that they are unknown to me and people I've never seen before, not, necessarily, strange as in "weird" though perhaps that remains to be seen) flashing fancy looking IDs claiming to be from the Census Bureau and trying to push their way into my apartment for "30 minutes of my time."
In 2002?
"You received our letter in the mail, miss."
"Um, no I didn't, and the census was two years ago."
The women handed me a photocopied letter purportedly FROM THE ACTING DIRECTOR, U.S. CENSUS BUREAU that read, in part, as follows:
"The Census Bureau is taking a survey in your community. Decisions about child care, jobs, health care and more will be based on the answers.
The American Community Survey is not a census of all Americans. That census is taken every ten years. This survey will provide local and national leaders with more timely information between censuses. Because your address has been specifically chosen for this survey, your replay is very important to us."
The letter goes on to remind me that my response is required by Federal law and so on, to assure me that my privacy will be protected, blah blah blah boogeda boogeda boogeda.
Nonetheless, I sent these ladies packing, finally having to get quite rude to do so. But that's not all, of course (when is it ever all with me?)
I did some checking later this evening, and while there is such a thing as the American Community Survey, nothing on the Census Bureau's website says anything about one being conducted this year, except HERE where appears a list of communities being in some way looked at between 1999 and 2002. Note that there is nothing indicated for anywhere in Wyoming.
So far it's only slightly fishy and creepy. But of course, if you're me, it gets worse.
As most of my readers know, I am a local leader, duly elected to the Saratoga Town Council. If this survey is being conducted in part, therefore, to provide me with more timely information between censuses, wouldn't logic and common sense dictate that I would have been previously informed that it was going on in the community for which I am responsible?
Furthermore, I am something of a news junkie. As frequent readers of these screeds of mine know, I have a pretty heavy and varied media diet of local, regional and national newspapers, political and cultural magazines, foreign periodicals, and the Weekly World News. Not to mention that the entertainment of choice at my morning coffee klatsch (aside from the antics of two shaggy brown boys named Gunnar and Whiskey) is CNN Headline news.
Surely I am not the only one to be somewhat skeptical that I've managed to completely miss the news that this survey was being conducted somewhere at least?
Even if it is "legitimate," however, it still strikes me as freaky. As I told my parents, whom I called a little while after the visit, I don't know which creeps me out more, the thought that it was real census people harassing me, or that it was something else.
Full disclosure time: When it comes to the Federal government, I am suspicious as hell just as a matter of principle. And I am very vocal about this, and take pride in being regarded as something of a rabble rouser on the subject of the rights and duties we enjoy as citizens.
When I got the Census Bureau's loooooooooooooong form two years or so ago, therefore, I threw it away. And when Census employees came to visit me to follow up, I gave them only the short form information: my address, which they already knew, how many people lived here (just lil' ol me), period.
Of course I was a little suspicious, then, when two strangers showed up unannounced wanting to take 30 minutes of my time because "my address has been specifically chosen for this survey."
Maybe it's just paranoia on my part, but I don't care. I don't appreciate being disturbed this way, don't appreciate this kind of prying from anybody, and I won't stand for it, and neither should you.
And besides – what if they aren't with the Census, something that still seems to me very likely given the fact that their coming to me, of all people, was such a surprise.
They really wanted to come inside, and got more pushy and hostile by the minute when I kept them standing out in the cold and told them that all they needed to know was that I was one person, living here. I repeated to them several times that this was the only information they were going to receive, the only information that the Constitution allows them to demand (and that only when the actual Census is being conducted) and they got more unpleasant until finally I just came out and told them to please leave.
Then, on the urging of my retired cop father, I called the police on them, gave full descriptions, etc. The dispatcher to whom I spoke was equally surprised at the thought of the Census Bureau conducting any kind of survey in Saratoga.
So, I think this is deeply, deeply bogus. These people are up to something, and it smells. At least that's the way it looks right now.
Just remember – you don't have to tell anybody anything. Even if you're arrested for something: you have the right to remain silent.
ADDENDUM - HOURS LATER:
I still can't sleep, and in my continued pique I ran a Google search on "Census" and "sucks" and found a page for someone who may be my new hero. Check out a man who burnt his Census looooooong form on the steps of the Missouri State Supreme Court. Check it out RIGHT HERE
Monday, February 04, 2002
THROAT CULTURE?
Oh my, I just got another lesson in paying attention to what I say and to whom I say it.
As frequently happens (it's so common I'm sure I don't even have to describe the setting to you, but I'll do so anyway, just to keep in practice) I was sitting around my apartment with a buddy of mine arguing about the finer points of the classic Gnostic poem "The Thunder: Perfect Mind" when I found myself in a most uncomfortable situation – and one that had nothing to do with doctrine or the inherently contradictory message of a line of scripture that declares "I am the saint and the prostitute."
I felt like I was choking. Gagging, actually, and on my tonsils of all things, the last gasp of the bug that wouldn't die.
Distressed, annoyed, sick of taking antibiotics and generally pissed off at the situation, I made some offhand remark to my friend about how great it would be to just be able to rip out said tonsils and never be bothered with them again.
Quite forgetting that said friend has a certain background.
"Sure," he said as I finished delivering my eloquent complaint. "When do you want to do it?"
"Oh, I'd better wait until my health insurance kicks in, don't you think?"
"No, I can take care of it. I've got a pocket knife."
Horrors!
"Ha ha, very funny, but I think that might hurt a bit. I'll wait until I've had general anaesthesia, thanks."
"No, really. I've got some. It works for horses, cows, pretty much any large animal. It'll zone you right out so you won't even care!"
This delivered with a level of enthusiasm that I'll go ahead and characterize as scary.
He then told me a short but amusing tale of how once upon a time he was accidentally dosed with some of this anaesthetic - a horse kicked, a syringe got mis-aimed and he was sent on a surprise trip to la-la land... but all I could focus upon was the eager gleam in his eyes, the opacity of his gaze, the overall earnestness with which he made the offer.
I'm still not entirely sure that he was kidding.
I bet this never happens to my friends in Chicago.
Oh my, I just got another lesson in paying attention to what I say and to whom I say it.
As frequently happens (it's so common I'm sure I don't even have to describe the setting to you, but I'll do so anyway, just to keep in practice) I was sitting around my apartment with a buddy of mine arguing about the finer points of the classic Gnostic poem "The Thunder: Perfect Mind" when I found myself in a most uncomfortable situation – and one that had nothing to do with doctrine or the inherently contradictory message of a line of scripture that declares "I am the saint and the prostitute."
I felt like I was choking. Gagging, actually, and on my tonsils of all things, the last gasp of the bug that wouldn't die.
Distressed, annoyed, sick of taking antibiotics and generally pissed off at the situation, I made some offhand remark to my friend about how great it would be to just be able to rip out said tonsils and never be bothered with them again.
Quite forgetting that said friend has a certain background.
"Sure," he said as I finished delivering my eloquent complaint. "When do you want to do it?"
"Oh, I'd better wait until my health insurance kicks in, don't you think?"
"No, I can take care of it. I've got a pocket knife."
Horrors!
"Ha ha, very funny, but I think that might hurt a bit. I'll wait until I've had general anaesthesia, thanks."
"No, really. I've got some. It works for horses, cows, pretty much any large animal. It'll zone you right out so you won't even care!"
This delivered with a level of enthusiasm that I'll go ahead and characterize as scary.
He then told me a short but amusing tale of how once upon a time he was accidentally dosed with some of this anaesthetic - a horse kicked, a syringe got mis-aimed and he was sent on a surprise trip to la-la land... but all I could focus upon was the eager gleam in his eyes, the opacity of his gaze, the overall earnestness with which he made the offer.
I'm still not entirely sure that he was kidding.
I bet this never happens to my friends in Chicago.
Saturday, February 02, 2002
ANOTHER ADVANTAGE TO HOME TOWN LIVIN'...
...Is residing just blocks away from home cookin'. I probably had no business driving tonight (yup, I'm still down with some bug or other) (and the jokes about how it must be especially rough for me to be unable to talk – at best I manage something that sounds like a half-strangled frog – just keep on getting funnier; thanks everybody!) but it was worth it even though I now feel like complete ass because my own dear personal mom made one of my favorite dishes just for me: linguine with red clam sauce, a dish I always love but tonight, tonight it was even more special.
Because tonight, tonight I could taste it. Schiller's Ode to Joy resounded, fireworks exploded, burqas were ripped from heads and machine guns fired straight into the air (the bullets miraculously evaporating before they could harm anyone on the ground).
So I must be on the mend, at least a little bit.
If only I could tell someone.
Not that I could hear his or her reply...
Anyway, thanks, Mom. That was really, really, really good.
...Is residing just blocks away from home cookin'. I probably had no business driving tonight (yup, I'm still down with some bug or other) (and the jokes about how it must be especially rough for me to be unable to talk – at best I manage something that sounds like a half-strangled frog – just keep on getting funnier; thanks everybody!) but it was worth it even though I now feel like complete ass because my own dear personal mom made one of my favorite dishes just for me: linguine with red clam sauce, a dish I always love but tonight, tonight it was even more special.
Because tonight, tonight I could taste it. Schiller's Ode to Joy resounded, fireworks exploded, burqas were ripped from heads and machine guns fired straight into the air (the bullets miraculously evaporating before they could harm anyone on the ground).
So I must be on the mend, at least a little bit.
If only I could tell someone.
Not that I could hear his or her reply...
Anyway, thanks, Mom. That was really, really, really good.
Friday, February 01, 2002
COMMUNITY CENTER, SCHMOMMUNITY CENTER
The title of this entry should tell a lot of people a lot of things already. But for those of you just joining us...
Supposedly a lot of people here in Saratoga think the absolutely most important thing we could possibly do to assure a viable and prosperous future for this town is to build something called a community center.
Why do I say supposedly?
Because the only evidence we have that any significant number of people want such a thing comes out of the Wyoming Rural Development Council's community assessment of Saratoga (my opinion of which I believe I made clear on Tuesday in this very space); through the initial listening sessions and a follow-up meeting or two in which a large group of Saratogans took a stab at prioritizing the mishmash of ideas that came out of those sessions, the number one priority of the whole project turned out to be a community center.
I'm not sure that I would take these results as gospel, however, as more or less the exact same phrasing has come out of more or less the exact same mouths as a more or less automatic response to the ever-tempting question "What do you want/need in Saratoga?" for something like 30 years.
Nonetheless, a committee was formed to start putting it all together and make it happen. It was going to be the first real achievement to come out of this whole process, a justification for the tax and other money spent to make the WRDC and these assessments go, and of the increasingly great amount of time and effort those of us on the steering committee that grew out of the community assessment were putting in.
The only thing this committee has settled on to date is how this facility is to be paid for, that being out of your pocket and mine through the sixth cent capital facilities tax that will either be up for a vote in November or in May of 2003 (depending upon to whom the Carbon County Commission finally decides to listen), a tax that is already going to be huge and long-lasting because its primary purpose is to build a new county jail that can't help being expensive in principle and is steadily becoming more so in practice. As municipal projects large and small for each of the nine incorporated towns in this county get tacked on, the tax gets bigger and bigger. The bigger the dollar amount, the longer we're all paying it off, and, incidentally, the longer we are prevented from developing any other capital projects in the county.
That's not the only problem dogging this community center, either. Actually, it's not even the biggest or most important.
See, what never was settled in the early or the later stages of this thing (plan? project? these words imply too much order and deliberation for it) is what constitutes a community center. Some say what's really needed is a sports center (i.e., indoor pool, raquetball, dwarf-tossing, whatever.). Some say it's a performing arts center (stage, lights, sound, seating). Some say it's a convention or meeting center, with a banquet hall and break-out rooms, etc.
Of course, nobody agrees, and no one is willing to compromise, not even, it appears, to listen to each other. The committee that was going to make this all happen hasn't even bothered to meet since November because the factions are sick of squabbling over what this center is ultimately going to be.
And while a few very vocal, very wise, very passionate people, the kind we are most fortunate to have living here, the kind that I would wish for every community, are still making known the view that this community center has "just got to be built," I don't see any of these vocal, wise, passionate people stepping up to organize an effort.
Indeed, the most common sentiment I have heard expressed in the days since our last Saratoga 3000 meeting has been "You can't let this die, Kate. It's too important. It's not for me to do, but it has to happen."
News flash. It's not for me to do, either, because I don't think this nebulous fantasy facility is a priority at all, even if somehow it winds up not being paid for with tax dollars (a notion that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone except me and a few of the more realistic members of the Platte Valley Arts Council, who are wisely pursuing their own venture to build a performing arts facility with private donations).
There are a lot of other, more appropriate things to do with the people's money.
Not to beat a dead horse (that I first started whipping in my town council campaign speech in 1999 that none of you were there to hear anyway), but taxes are paid by every citizen, and are paid on a less than voluntary basis. People go along with them, usually grudgingly, because it's better than the alternative (jail, property seizure, having to forgo buying gasoline, food, etc.) and because according to the tacit social contract under which we all live, that money is going to be spent by the government in ways that benefit everyone, to provide things that everyone needs but no one could effectively provide him- or her-self on any other basis: things like roads, police protection, ambulance coverage, water and sewer services, civil and military defense, etc.
A useful nutshell phrase is "protection of citizens from force and fraud" which I would couple with the provision of certain amenities that we in western civilization have come to think of as necessities, like sanitation and running water, roads along which all the goods of our consumer economy can reach us, etc.
Some would make the argument that a sports center or an arts center or a convention center would also benefit everybody, but what they usually mean is "everybody who wants the same things we do." But suppose I don't care for swimming or raquetball or volleyball. Suppose what I really want is a professional grade roller derby arena.
My point is that no facility can satisfy everybody, so inevitably some will get what they want while others will not. Those who don't get what they want will still be forced to pay for the facility – as will those who don't use it at all.
No, when you're getting into something like this, it is a matter for the private sector.
I think there is a niche, a demand for all of these things I have mentioned here. I would love an indoor pool (but, unlike most of those few fellow citizens of mine who are still clamoring for one, I have looked into what it costs to build and maintain one, and have seen that it creates a burden that our present population and tax base cannot currently afford. Not even close! Not even if the indoor pool fairy flew over our town and magically gifted us with one out of thin air. I will provide numbers if anyone who reads me is really interested). I definitely see great potential for a convention center here.
And if some entrepreneur wants to pull it together, raise the capital and build one or more of these wonderful things, more power to him. And since his would be the risk, the effort, the investment, his alone would be the reward – making it worth his while to be absolutely sure he was giving this town's citizens and visitors what they want and would use the most in the long term and the short term (I am leaving alone, for now, what happens down the road when the novelty of the shiny new facility wears off and the tragedy of the commons sets in).
Or, if an individual or group wants to take this on and raise the money privately – if the project you have chosen is truly what the people want, financial support for it will be generous indeed, as the Town of Riverside discovered last year when it put out coin cans to help pay for mosquito spraying and routinely found $20 bills in amongst the spare change. Conversely, if no one is all that interested, raising that money will be proportionately more difficult, perhaps sending a message that something else is wanted.
I would wholeheartedly support either of these ways of getting something built (provided, of course, that there's something in it I like; after all, it's my money, and if someone wants it, they have to persuade me to part with it. That's the way a free society works, folks).
But I will not support some half-assed attempt to build something that only a few noisy people want and a lot of people are going to be forced to pay for. I won't support it and I certainly will not organize or coordinate or spearhead such an effort, as many around town have strongly suggested I do.
If nothing else, folks, shouldn't the person who's leading the troops be someone who believes the battle is one worth fighting?
You wouldn't have put a draft-dodger in charge of the bombing of Kabul, would you?
But I will tell you this: it's going to take someone that actually wants to see this happen, and wants it badly enough to quit flapping his or her jaw and start rolling up his or her sleeves to accomplish anything on this. And if no one steps up, guess what?
Nothing, that's what.
The title of this entry should tell a lot of people a lot of things already. But for those of you just joining us...
Supposedly a lot of people here in Saratoga think the absolutely most important thing we could possibly do to assure a viable and prosperous future for this town is to build something called a community center.
Why do I say supposedly?
Because the only evidence we have that any significant number of people want such a thing comes out of the Wyoming Rural Development Council's community assessment of Saratoga (my opinion of which I believe I made clear on Tuesday in this very space); through the initial listening sessions and a follow-up meeting or two in which a large group of Saratogans took a stab at prioritizing the mishmash of ideas that came out of those sessions, the number one priority of the whole project turned out to be a community center.
I'm not sure that I would take these results as gospel, however, as more or less the exact same phrasing has come out of more or less the exact same mouths as a more or less automatic response to the ever-tempting question "What do you want/need in Saratoga?" for something like 30 years.
Nonetheless, a committee was formed to start putting it all together and make it happen. It was going to be the first real achievement to come out of this whole process, a justification for the tax and other money spent to make the WRDC and these assessments go, and of the increasingly great amount of time and effort those of us on the steering committee that grew out of the community assessment were putting in.
The only thing this committee has settled on to date is how this facility is to be paid for, that being out of your pocket and mine through the sixth cent capital facilities tax that will either be up for a vote in November or in May of 2003 (depending upon to whom the Carbon County Commission finally decides to listen), a tax that is already going to be huge and long-lasting because its primary purpose is to build a new county jail that can't help being expensive in principle and is steadily becoming more so in practice. As municipal projects large and small for each of the nine incorporated towns in this county get tacked on, the tax gets bigger and bigger. The bigger the dollar amount, the longer we're all paying it off, and, incidentally, the longer we are prevented from developing any other capital projects in the county.
That's not the only problem dogging this community center, either. Actually, it's not even the biggest or most important.
See, what never was settled in the early or the later stages of this thing (plan? project? these words imply too much order and deliberation for it) is what constitutes a community center. Some say what's really needed is a sports center (i.e., indoor pool, raquetball, dwarf-tossing, whatever.). Some say it's a performing arts center (stage, lights, sound, seating). Some say it's a convention or meeting center, with a banquet hall and break-out rooms, etc.
Of course, nobody agrees, and no one is willing to compromise, not even, it appears, to listen to each other. The committee that was going to make this all happen hasn't even bothered to meet since November because the factions are sick of squabbling over what this center is ultimately going to be.
And while a few very vocal, very wise, very passionate people, the kind we are most fortunate to have living here, the kind that I would wish for every community, are still making known the view that this community center has "just got to be built," I don't see any of these vocal, wise, passionate people stepping up to organize an effort.
Indeed, the most common sentiment I have heard expressed in the days since our last Saratoga 3000 meeting has been "You can't let this die, Kate. It's too important. It's not for me to do, but it has to happen."
News flash. It's not for me to do, either, because I don't think this nebulous fantasy facility is a priority at all, even if somehow it winds up not being paid for with tax dollars (a notion that doesn't seem to have occurred to anyone except me and a few of the more realistic members of the Platte Valley Arts Council, who are wisely pursuing their own venture to build a performing arts facility with private donations).
There are a lot of other, more appropriate things to do with the people's money.
Not to beat a dead horse (that I first started whipping in my town council campaign speech in 1999 that none of you were there to hear anyway), but taxes are paid by every citizen, and are paid on a less than voluntary basis. People go along with them, usually grudgingly, because it's better than the alternative (jail, property seizure, having to forgo buying gasoline, food, etc.) and because according to the tacit social contract under which we all live, that money is going to be spent by the government in ways that benefit everyone, to provide things that everyone needs but no one could effectively provide him- or her-self on any other basis: things like roads, police protection, ambulance coverage, water and sewer services, civil and military defense, etc.
A useful nutshell phrase is "protection of citizens from force and fraud" which I would couple with the provision of certain amenities that we in western civilization have come to think of as necessities, like sanitation and running water, roads along which all the goods of our consumer economy can reach us, etc.
Some would make the argument that a sports center or an arts center or a convention center would also benefit everybody, but what they usually mean is "everybody who wants the same things we do." But suppose I don't care for swimming or raquetball or volleyball. Suppose what I really want is a professional grade roller derby arena.
My point is that no facility can satisfy everybody, so inevitably some will get what they want while others will not. Those who don't get what they want will still be forced to pay for the facility – as will those who don't use it at all.
No, when you're getting into something like this, it is a matter for the private sector.
I think there is a niche, a demand for all of these things I have mentioned here. I would love an indoor pool (but, unlike most of those few fellow citizens of mine who are still clamoring for one, I have looked into what it costs to build and maintain one, and have seen that it creates a burden that our present population and tax base cannot currently afford. Not even close! Not even if the indoor pool fairy flew over our town and magically gifted us with one out of thin air. I will provide numbers if anyone who reads me is really interested). I definitely see great potential for a convention center here.
And if some entrepreneur wants to pull it together, raise the capital and build one or more of these wonderful things, more power to him. And since his would be the risk, the effort, the investment, his alone would be the reward – making it worth his while to be absolutely sure he was giving this town's citizens and visitors what they want and would use the most in the long term and the short term (I am leaving alone, for now, what happens down the road when the novelty of the shiny new facility wears off and the tragedy of the commons sets in).
Or, if an individual or group wants to take this on and raise the money privately – if the project you have chosen is truly what the people want, financial support for it will be generous indeed, as the Town of Riverside discovered last year when it put out coin cans to help pay for mosquito spraying and routinely found $20 bills in amongst the spare change. Conversely, if no one is all that interested, raising that money will be proportionately more difficult, perhaps sending a message that something else is wanted.
I would wholeheartedly support either of these ways of getting something built (provided, of course, that there's something in it I like; after all, it's my money, and if someone wants it, they have to persuade me to part with it. That's the way a free society works, folks).
But I will not support some half-assed attempt to build something that only a few noisy people want and a lot of people are going to be forced to pay for. I won't support it and I certainly will not organize or coordinate or spearhead such an effort, as many around town have strongly suggested I do.
If nothing else, folks, shouldn't the person who's leading the troops be someone who believes the battle is one worth fighting?
You wouldn't have put a draft-dodger in charge of the bombing of Kabul, would you?
But I will tell you this: it's going to take someone that actually wants to see this happen, and wants it badly enough to quit flapping his or her jaw and start rolling up his or her sleeves to accomplish anything on this. And if no one steps up, guess what?
Nothing, that's what.
Wednesday, January 30, 2002
WHAT ISIN A TITLE?
A recent discussion on National Review Online about the policies of the New York Times and other papers as to who does and does not get cited as "Dr. So-and-So" provoked one great reader response from a guy who is just learning the pleasures of working closely with young enthusiasts:
“I’ve always thought that the coolest honorific one can have is ‘Coach.’ It was just bestowed on me this year, as I’m coaching my four-year-old’s T-ball team. When you have a bunch of kids and parents calling you ‘Coach [Smith]’ or just ‘Coach,’ it makes you feel pretty good. Forget all that ‘Dr.’ bunk; ‘Coach’ is where it’s at!”
I bet that's true, not that I would really know, of course. While for the first time in my life I am officially an assistant speech and debate coach for my alma mater, Saratoga High School (it's even in the minutes of the January meeting of the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees! They formally ratified my hire along with an assistant middle school basketball coach or something. And I'm getting paid to do it! Wough!), I have yet to be addressed by that title. Nor do I get the expected (stuffy, politically correct) "Ms. Sherrod" or the less-expected (stuffy, old-fashioned) (but what I actually prefer, curmudgeon that I am) "Miss Sherrod."
No, what I usually get is "Kate," as in "Oh jeez, we'd better knock it off or we're going to kill Kate" – an actual remark one of my kids made during yesterday's practice.
I still haven't shaken the fishing derby flu entirely, you see, so it's been a little dangerous to make me laugh, as I tend first to wheeze, then to gasp, then to cough, then to choke, all the while making barely audible laugh-like noises and shaking my shoulders while my eyes water and my face turns purple... which is of course a very funny sight and one that is bound to produce further witticisms, which make me laugh more, which produces more choking, etc. on and on ad infinitum until one of my more compassionate charges makes an observation like the one quoted above.
But in the context of speech practice, it's pretty much impossible not to make me laugh!
Those of you who enjoy blooper shows on TV or the outtakes that sometimes run at the end of movies nowadays would really, really love speech practice, the barely controlled chaos of which is like a two hour-long blooper reel every single day.
It takes a certain kind of person to get up and do an oral interpretation, repeating eight or nine minutes worth of the exact same words every day, accompanied with the right tones of voice, character placements, gestures and facial expressions – and invariably, the kind of person who can do all that is a) not going to get it perfect every time, b) going to flub in some wildly amusing, frequently Freudian way, and c) going to react wildly amusingly to said flub.
It's then my job as coach to get that person back on track, which is not easy when said person is still bouncing around in front of me, launched into a five-minute riff on whatever mistake he or she made, its background in the day's events, a plea for cutting out the source of the flub (usually a strange word or a corny phrase), or just a weird little dance... I have one student who sort of hops every time she blows a line, another who trips off in to weird rhymes on whatever word she mispronounced, another who I cured of looking at the floor by means of a note I placed on the floor in front of him that reads "Don't look at the floor, dummy" so now he looks at his duet partner (a no-no in the rules for duet interpretation), still another who starts giggling sort of freakishly whenever I look at him...
Usually the performer rights him- or herself, eventually and we wander back on track, but not before sharing some funky moments for which I would trade nothing in the world.
I can see in their faces that they think I'm the dorkiest thing they've ever encountered, and they're not far from wrong – man, when did speech kids get so cool, so fashionable, so knowing? When I was in high school, my mother rightly referred to my teammates and I as "the nerd herd," and for the most part, it was painfully awkward, out-of-it things that we were, living for the weekends when we could slip into the phonebooth (Okay, a school bus), do our quick change (Okay, drive for six or seven hours to places like Powell or Jackson or Gilette) and be Superman for a day before having to go back to plain ordinary school on Monday – but they indulge me and listen to me and occasionally put my suggestions into practice, which is of course incredibly gratifying.
James Hillman has observed that the reason a lot of people dislike or avoid being around adolescents is because their own adolescences were so painful, and I think that's true. It's a horrible, awkward, scary time for most people and it's natural to want to forget about it or at least avoid any reminders of it more concrete than a nostalgic song. Raising a teenager or being a high school teacher and putting up with all of it all over again at close range is considered heroic largely for this reason.
BUT, there's a lot to be gained for those who put this instinct to avoid aside as I have. Yes, it's really weird to be wandering again the very same halls I hated at age 16, to see on one wall my 18-year-old face peering out of a composite of senior pictures (my hair short and badly cut, my frame shrouded in a huge baggy sweater, my eyes rimmed with smeared eye make-up because I insisted the photo be taken outdoors and I had not yet, at 18, found any real cure for my rampaging pollen allergies... god, I hate that picture, but there it is, for all time) and to see roaming those halls the kids and grandkids of people I've known my whole life as rough contemporaries and friends. It's hard to watch the kids struggling as I struggled, making mistakes I made, expressing opinions I once had but have since outgrown (oh, how many of them tell me how they can't wait to get out of Saratoga! And they don't really see the irony of this at all).
BUT, it's also, as I've already illustrated, really, really fun. There's a lot of good stuff that happens then, too, and it's mostly the good stuff that I get to share as a speech coach. School is out but they're not yet home with mom and dad; they're in a zone in between, semi-autonomous, with room to experiment. And so am I.
And... it gives me a new perspective on my own time within those halls. I see a lot of me, then and now, in a lot of them, and that rekindles my fellow feeling in general, which is always a very good thing.
Yup, coaching is great, with or without the title.
(Of course, I have yet to make a road trip with this crew, so, so... well... all of the above sentiments are probably subject to change. Especially since the head coach, who was once upon a time my coach, still has a lot of bad habits like shopping and McDonalds, two things I still hate. But time will tell on that one. Time will tell. Stay tuned.)
A recent discussion on National Review Online about the policies of the New York Times and other papers as to who does and does not get cited as "Dr. So-and-So" provoked one great reader response from a guy who is just learning the pleasures of working closely with young enthusiasts:
“I’ve always thought that the coolest honorific one can have is ‘Coach.’ It was just bestowed on me this year, as I’m coaching my four-year-old’s T-ball team. When you have a bunch of kids and parents calling you ‘Coach [Smith]’ or just ‘Coach,’ it makes you feel pretty good. Forget all that ‘Dr.’ bunk; ‘Coach’ is where it’s at!”
I bet that's true, not that I would really know, of course. While for the first time in my life I am officially an assistant speech and debate coach for my alma mater, Saratoga High School (it's even in the minutes of the January meeting of the Carbon County School District No. 2 Board of Trustees! They formally ratified my hire along with an assistant middle school basketball coach or something. And I'm getting paid to do it! Wough!), I have yet to be addressed by that title. Nor do I get the expected (stuffy, politically correct) "Ms. Sherrod" or the less-expected (stuffy, old-fashioned) (but what I actually prefer, curmudgeon that I am) "Miss Sherrod."
No, what I usually get is "Kate," as in "Oh jeez, we'd better knock it off or we're going to kill Kate" – an actual remark one of my kids made during yesterday's practice.
I still haven't shaken the fishing derby flu entirely, you see, so it's been a little dangerous to make me laugh, as I tend first to wheeze, then to gasp, then to cough, then to choke, all the while making barely audible laugh-like noises and shaking my shoulders while my eyes water and my face turns purple... which is of course a very funny sight and one that is bound to produce further witticisms, which make me laugh more, which produces more choking, etc. on and on ad infinitum until one of my more compassionate charges makes an observation like the one quoted above.
But in the context of speech practice, it's pretty much impossible not to make me laugh!
Those of you who enjoy blooper shows on TV or the outtakes that sometimes run at the end of movies nowadays would really, really love speech practice, the barely controlled chaos of which is like a two hour-long blooper reel every single day.
It takes a certain kind of person to get up and do an oral interpretation, repeating eight or nine minutes worth of the exact same words every day, accompanied with the right tones of voice, character placements, gestures and facial expressions – and invariably, the kind of person who can do all that is a) not going to get it perfect every time, b) going to flub in some wildly amusing, frequently Freudian way, and c) going to react wildly amusingly to said flub.
It's then my job as coach to get that person back on track, which is not easy when said person is still bouncing around in front of me, launched into a five-minute riff on whatever mistake he or she made, its background in the day's events, a plea for cutting out the source of the flub (usually a strange word or a corny phrase), or just a weird little dance... I have one student who sort of hops every time she blows a line, another who trips off in to weird rhymes on whatever word she mispronounced, another who I cured of looking at the floor by means of a note I placed on the floor in front of him that reads "Don't look at the floor, dummy" so now he looks at his duet partner (a no-no in the rules for duet interpretation), still another who starts giggling sort of freakishly whenever I look at him...
Usually the performer rights him- or herself, eventually and we wander back on track, but not before sharing some funky moments for which I would trade nothing in the world.
I can see in their faces that they think I'm the dorkiest thing they've ever encountered, and they're not far from wrong – man, when did speech kids get so cool, so fashionable, so knowing? When I was in high school, my mother rightly referred to my teammates and I as "the nerd herd," and for the most part, it was painfully awkward, out-of-it things that we were, living for the weekends when we could slip into the phonebooth (Okay, a school bus), do our quick change (Okay, drive for six or seven hours to places like Powell or Jackson or Gilette) and be Superman for a day before having to go back to plain ordinary school on Monday – but they indulge me and listen to me and occasionally put my suggestions into practice, which is of course incredibly gratifying.
James Hillman has observed that the reason a lot of people dislike or avoid being around adolescents is because their own adolescences were so painful, and I think that's true. It's a horrible, awkward, scary time for most people and it's natural to want to forget about it or at least avoid any reminders of it more concrete than a nostalgic song. Raising a teenager or being a high school teacher and putting up with all of it all over again at close range is considered heroic largely for this reason.
BUT, there's a lot to be gained for those who put this instinct to avoid aside as I have. Yes, it's really weird to be wandering again the very same halls I hated at age 16, to see on one wall my 18-year-old face peering out of a composite of senior pictures (my hair short and badly cut, my frame shrouded in a huge baggy sweater, my eyes rimmed with smeared eye make-up because I insisted the photo be taken outdoors and I had not yet, at 18, found any real cure for my rampaging pollen allergies... god, I hate that picture, but there it is, for all time) and to see roaming those halls the kids and grandkids of people I've known my whole life as rough contemporaries and friends. It's hard to watch the kids struggling as I struggled, making mistakes I made, expressing opinions I once had but have since outgrown (oh, how many of them tell me how they can't wait to get out of Saratoga! And they don't really see the irony of this at all).
BUT, it's also, as I've already illustrated, really, really fun. There's a lot of good stuff that happens then, too, and it's mostly the good stuff that I get to share as a speech coach. School is out but they're not yet home with mom and dad; they're in a zone in between, semi-autonomous, with room to experiment. And so am I.
And... it gives me a new perspective on my own time within those halls. I see a lot of me, then and now, in a lot of them, and that rekindles my fellow feeling in general, which is always a very good thing.
Yup, coaching is great, with or without the title.
(Of course, I have yet to make a road trip with this crew, so, so... well... all of the above sentiments are probably subject to change. Especially since the head coach, who was once upon a time my coach, still has a lot of bad habits like shopping and McDonalds, two things I still hate. But time will tell on that one. Time will tell. Stay tuned.)
Tuesday, January 29, 2002
THE WRONG WAY, THE RIGHT WAY, AND...
I'm fading fast, so I'm just going to give an executive summary.
I think a bunch of my colleagues and I learned a very important lesson tonight: Big, ambitious, worthy projects don't happen because a bunch of people got together and then said "Hey, this is a great group, bet we could really do something with a group like this, uh huh, uh huh" and then said "Okay, so what are we going to do?"
NO. Big, ambitious, worthy projects happen because a need or is perceived for something in particular, and a few people decide that fulfilling that need is so important that it's worth a sacrifice of time and effort (sacrifice in that, in order to do one thing, one is always sacrificing the opportunity, the possibility, to do a hundred other things) to do it, and those people make a plan, and start gathering resources and help and more people, and they do it.
There is nothing more useless than solvers in search of a problem, which is, I'm afraid, what was created when a certain state-level bureaucracy came to town and sold us a top-down bottle of snake oil.
I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people in saying this, but then again, I think a lot of the people who are going to be pissed off are people who weren't at that meeting.
Look, ordinary, dedicated, busy, intelligent, caring people just like (and pretty much including) those in Saratoga 3000 have done some really amazing things here recently. A good example is the Saratoga Community Playground Project, in which a bunch of busy parents put coin cans all over town and had funky little nickel and dime fundraisers and taught themselves to write rather impressive grants and put in a rather impressive brand new playground structure smack in the middle of a local park.
The difference between that group and Saratoga 3000? The problem came first! Not the solvers. Did the Playground Ladies sit around for months and months and stare at each other and say "what should we do with all this abundant free time we have?" No. They knew what they wanted FIRST, decided they wanted it badly enough to roll up their sleeves and do something about it, and then the went out and did it.
Anyway, I challenge any of my readers to tell me one true life success story that started out with a bunch of do-gooders who assembled first and then tried to think of some good to do second. It seems to me, more and more, that such an approach leads at best to some pretty half-assed good, and at worst to a pantload of wasted energy and time.
Certainly, it looks like a very poor method for polis-building.
But I'm trying to keep an open mind about this. So really, dear readers, if you have an example to share, please E-mail it to me.
(Note to my out of town readers: Saratoga 3000 is an ad hoc organization formed after the Wyoming Rural Development Council came to town in November of 1999 and conducted a "community assessment" for Saratoga, an exercise in which WRDC experts of one stripe or another conducted "listening sessions" with various segments of the population in order to "identify" our town's strengths, weaknesses and possibilities, as well as develop some kind of picture of "what people want to see happen here". The WRDC presented the town council and the chamber with a thick, steaming report summarizing what they had learned about us. The report included suggestions for "where to go next" now that we know ourselves, and of course strongly recommended that a committee be formed to act on those suggestions [yes, we're all still getting over the shock of the notion that a government agency recommended forming a committee]. The committee came to be known as Saratoga 3000 about a year later [the name was my idea, and there are still those who mock me for it] after the group finally hashed out that the overall goal would be to get Saratoga's population up to 3000, a figure that research suggests might be a good critical mass for sustainability but is not above what our current infrastructure can support])
I'm fading fast, so I'm just going to give an executive summary.
I think a bunch of my colleagues and I learned a very important lesson tonight: Big, ambitious, worthy projects don't happen because a bunch of people got together and then said "Hey, this is a great group, bet we could really do something with a group like this, uh huh, uh huh" and then said "Okay, so what are we going to do?"
NO. Big, ambitious, worthy projects happen because a need or is perceived for something in particular, and a few people decide that fulfilling that need is so important that it's worth a sacrifice of time and effort (sacrifice in that, in order to do one thing, one is always sacrificing the opportunity, the possibility, to do a hundred other things) to do it, and those people make a plan, and start gathering resources and help and more people, and they do it.
There is nothing more useless than solvers in search of a problem, which is, I'm afraid, what was created when a certain state-level bureaucracy came to town and sold us a top-down bottle of snake oil.
I'm probably going to piss off a lot of people in saying this, but then again, I think a lot of the people who are going to be pissed off are people who weren't at that meeting.
Look, ordinary, dedicated, busy, intelligent, caring people just like (and pretty much including) those in Saratoga 3000 have done some really amazing things here recently. A good example is the Saratoga Community Playground Project, in which a bunch of busy parents put coin cans all over town and had funky little nickel and dime fundraisers and taught themselves to write rather impressive grants and put in a rather impressive brand new playground structure smack in the middle of a local park.
The difference between that group and Saratoga 3000? The problem came first! Not the solvers. Did the Playground Ladies sit around for months and months and stare at each other and say "what should we do with all this abundant free time we have?" No. They knew what they wanted FIRST, decided they wanted it badly enough to roll up their sleeves and do something about it, and then the went out and did it.
Anyway, I challenge any of my readers to tell me one true life success story that started out with a bunch of do-gooders who assembled first and then tried to think of some good to do second. It seems to me, more and more, that such an approach leads at best to some pretty half-assed good, and at worst to a pantload of wasted energy and time.
Certainly, it looks like a very poor method for polis-building.
But I'm trying to keep an open mind about this. So really, dear readers, if you have an example to share, please E-mail it to me.
(Note to my out of town readers: Saratoga 3000 is an ad hoc organization formed after the Wyoming Rural Development Council came to town in November of 1999 and conducted a "community assessment" for Saratoga, an exercise in which WRDC experts of one stripe or another conducted "listening sessions" with various segments of the population in order to "identify" our town's strengths, weaknesses and possibilities, as well as develop some kind of picture of "what people want to see happen here". The WRDC presented the town council and the chamber with a thick, steaming report summarizing what they had learned about us. The report included suggestions for "where to go next" now that we know ourselves, and of course strongly recommended that a committee be formed to act on those suggestions [yes, we're all still getting over the shock of the notion that a government agency recommended forming a committee]. The committee came to be known as Saratoga 3000 about a year later [the name was my idea, and there are still those who mock me for it] after the group finally hashed out that the overall goal would be to get Saratoga's population up to 3000, a figure that research suggests might be a good critical mass for sustainability but is not above what our current infrastructure can support])
Monday, January 28, 2002
DANGEROUS READING...
...And in the constant reading of orators, historians and poets his intellect took increasing delight in observing between the remotest matters ties that bound them together in some common relation. It is these ties that are the beautiful ornaments of eloquence which make subtleties delightful.
- Giambattista Vico in his Autobiography, Fisch & Bergin translation
...There are three planets... that are extremely favorable to contemplation and eloquence: the Sun, Venus and Mercury. Moving together with equal steps, they leave us when night is coming on and only when the day begins do they rise and revisit us...Thus, those people who study at night when these planets leave us, or who get up in the daytime after sunrise, when these planets are entering into the prison-house of darkness, lose out. On the other hand, those people who at sunrise are there seeking, rising, to contemplate and to write when these planets also rise – only these people think with sharpness, only they can write and compose their work eloquently.
- Marsilio Ficino, Book of Life, Boer translation
One can never serve two masters, and this early morning finds me caught between two formidable ones, my two favorite Italians ever (Vico wrote in the 1720s, Ficino in the 1480s or so). And they're both right. So I'm pretty much screwed.
Most of you who read me know the experience I'm caught in right now: you borrow or buy or steal a new book, dip into it at an odd moment, are intrigued but think you can save it for later, take it easy, let it dissolve slowly into your brain... but then something in it grabs you and won't let you go, and even when you put the book down and away still a part of you is reading it, fully engaged in it instead of what you should be doing, whether that's running a meeting or measuring a fish or sleeping.
A really good book, like either of those from which I've quoted or like the one I'm almost finished reading now at 4:46 a.m. of a Monday morning, makes me see "between the remotest matters ties that bind them." Making connections between what I am reading and have read or watched or seen or written about is more fun than anything; when I really get going I can hardly believe it is my brain at work as the ideas and connections mimic the oysters in "The Walrus and the Carpenter": "thick and fast/they came at last/and more and more and more." Damn! There went another one! Won't they stop?
But of course, I don't really want them to stop. As I've observed before, it's our capacity to be distracted that makes us who we are, keeps our lives interesting and worth the living.
It would be nice, though, to have at some point gone to sleep tonight – not that I didn't try. The book I've been reading, however – I won't go into detail over it now lest this become my most bloated blog entry ever, but it's a nifty new discourse on military history and the rise of Western civilization – went to bed with me and I kept reading it, arguing with it, drawing connections from it to everything from my beloved Ajax (I now have yet another interpretation of him to play with) to the singular phenomenon about a year and a half ago when a group of about 30 untrained and inexperienced Saratoga volunteers spontaneously and without leadership assembled a large and complex array of playground equipment in two days flat.
All that went on in my head at about 2 a.m.
By 2:30 I'd gotten up, taken a shower, gotten dressed, made some coffee, and taken up my book again. I know myself: I'll read right through until I'm late for work (how fortunate that my commute is less than a block!), so I'd best get everything else done before – including, as I realized at about 4 a.m., this blog entry, for I have a very, very busy day today, one in which I have planned to do my very best to catch up on all that didn't get done last week because I was home tripping out on cold medicine. Which means that when my day, at the office and then up at the school (speech practice! I've not even seen my kids in over a week! I'm going straight to coaching hell!), is finally over I'm going to collapse right at my doorstep and luck alone will steer me towards the couch or (less likely) my bed.
And until then I'm going to be a wreck. All because of a new book.
It's unhealthy, so unhealthy to proceed in this fashion, even if you don't believe Ficino (on either a literal or metaphorical basis – either way, it is wisdom). My friends around town who will be getting up in an hour or so will be well equipped to handle whatever this Monday throws at them (and at least a few of them will be annoyingly smug about this fact when I stumble blearily in for coffee in, oh, five hours to see their smiling, perky faces, the jerks) while I'm going to be a complete wreck by lunchtime (though, for once, my hair will be dry at lunchtime) (hey, we take our boons where they're granted).
I'll make it through, though. I always do – this happens rather a lot, I'm afraid. You'd think I'd have learned to deal with it, or prevent it, or minimize it, but I haven't. I just muddle through and trust in all of you to indulge me if I look a little bleary-eyed and occasionally mutter about something not even remotely germane to what we've been talking about.
It just means I've observed another tie between the remotest matters, and am going to lose out because of it.
...And in the constant reading of orators, historians and poets his intellect took increasing delight in observing between the remotest matters ties that bound them together in some common relation. It is these ties that are the beautiful ornaments of eloquence which make subtleties delightful.
- Giambattista Vico in his Autobiography, Fisch & Bergin translation
...There are three planets... that are extremely favorable to contemplation and eloquence: the Sun, Venus and Mercury. Moving together with equal steps, they leave us when night is coming on and only when the day begins do they rise and revisit us...Thus, those people who study at night when these planets leave us, or who get up in the daytime after sunrise, when these planets are entering into the prison-house of darkness, lose out. On the other hand, those people who at sunrise are there seeking, rising, to contemplate and to write when these planets also rise – only these people think with sharpness, only they can write and compose their work eloquently.
- Marsilio Ficino, Book of Life, Boer translation
One can never serve two masters, and this early morning finds me caught between two formidable ones, my two favorite Italians ever (Vico wrote in the 1720s, Ficino in the 1480s or so). And they're both right. So I'm pretty much screwed.
Most of you who read me know the experience I'm caught in right now: you borrow or buy or steal a new book, dip into it at an odd moment, are intrigued but think you can save it for later, take it easy, let it dissolve slowly into your brain... but then something in it grabs you and won't let you go, and even when you put the book down and away still a part of you is reading it, fully engaged in it instead of what you should be doing, whether that's running a meeting or measuring a fish or sleeping.
A really good book, like either of those from which I've quoted or like the one I'm almost finished reading now at 4:46 a.m. of a Monday morning, makes me see "between the remotest matters ties that bind them." Making connections between what I am reading and have read or watched or seen or written about is more fun than anything; when I really get going I can hardly believe it is my brain at work as the ideas and connections mimic the oysters in "The Walrus and the Carpenter": "thick and fast/they came at last/and more and more and more." Damn! There went another one! Won't they stop?
But of course, I don't really want them to stop. As I've observed before, it's our capacity to be distracted that makes us who we are, keeps our lives interesting and worth the living.
It would be nice, though, to have at some point gone to sleep tonight – not that I didn't try. The book I've been reading, however – I won't go into detail over it now lest this become my most bloated blog entry ever, but it's a nifty new discourse on military history and the rise of Western civilization – went to bed with me and I kept reading it, arguing with it, drawing connections from it to everything from my beloved Ajax (I now have yet another interpretation of him to play with) to the singular phenomenon about a year and a half ago when a group of about 30 untrained and inexperienced Saratoga volunteers spontaneously and without leadership assembled a large and complex array of playground equipment in two days flat.
All that went on in my head at about 2 a.m.
By 2:30 I'd gotten up, taken a shower, gotten dressed, made some coffee, and taken up my book again. I know myself: I'll read right through until I'm late for work (how fortunate that my commute is less than a block!), so I'd best get everything else done before – including, as I realized at about 4 a.m., this blog entry, for I have a very, very busy day today, one in which I have planned to do my very best to catch up on all that didn't get done last week because I was home tripping out on cold medicine. Which means that when my day, at the office and then up at the school (speech practice! I've not even seen my kids in over a week! I'm going straight to coaching hell!), is finally over I'm going to collapse right at my doorstep and luck alone will steer me towards the couch or (less likely) my bed.
And until then I'm going to be a wreck. All because of a new book.
It's unhealthy, so unhealthy to proceed in this fashion, even if you don't believe Ficino (on either a literal or metaphorical basis – either way, it is wisdom). My friends around town who will be getting up in an hour or so will be well equipped to handle whatever this Monday throws at them (and at least a few of them will be annoyingly smug about this fact when I stumble blearily in for coffee in, oh, five hours to see their smiling, perky faces, the jerks) while I'm going to be a complete wreck by lunchtime (though, for once, my hair will be dry at lunchtime) (hey, we take our boons where they're granted).
I'll make it through, though. I always do – this happens rather a lot, I'm afraid. You'd think I'd have learned to deal with it, or prevent it, or minimize it, but I haven't. I just muddle through and trust in all of you to indulge me if I look a little bleary-eyed and occasionally mutter about something not even remotely germane to what we've been talking about.
It just means I've observed another tie between the remotest matters, and am going to lose out because of it.
Sunday, January 27, 2002
WAITING TO CATCH A STAR
Bucking yet another major trend of my generation, recently I took the plunge and actually subscribed to a newspaper. Not a web edition or an e-mail digest, either: an actual, physical, stain-your-fingers, clutter-your-living-room, wrap-your-fish newspaper.
I did that a week ago today.
I started getting it on Wednesday.
Now it's Sunday morning, just past 7 a.m., and I just caught myself pacing and peering out my window and wondering "Where the %#@$& is my newspaper?"
I've been up since 4 a.m. (wages of sin and cold medicine and a wildly irregular schedule) and I've spent most of that time online. I've read most of the New York Times, El Pais (very informative little cartoon there detailing the accommodations at the Gitmo Hilton, where the Taliban/Al Quaeda prisoners are enjoying their surprise vacation HERE, the Washington Post, the Singapore Straits-Times and National Review Online, and Atlantic Unbound (The Atlantic Monthly online), so you could say I'm about as up on current events as anyone without cable TV could wish to be (only thing I miss about cable is C-SPAN. Well, C-SPAN and the Sci-Fi Channel, but C-SPAN was my real addiction; I lost entire weekends to that weird little portal on Washington and other wonk stuff).
So why am I so annoyed that I don't have my Casper Star-Tribune? It's Sunday, for crying out loud! The legislature isn't in session yet (for which we should all give thanks), I don't care about sports particularly (my interest pretty much tops out at the Saratoga and Encampment High School level – except for every four years when I pretty much disappear for the entire month of June to watch the FIFA World Cup) (might have to get cable or something for that. Hmm. Do they offer just one-month subscriptions?), and I've read about all I care to about the state's budget for now. What else will be in there? A follow-up to the alleged Enron suicide? More European protests about our stuffing Koran misreaders into cages in Cuba? Maybe something more about the mostly bad alternatives to just letting people snowmobile in Yellowstone?
Bah!
No, what's really at issue here has nothing to do with current events and everything to do with basic psychology: one's demands always adjust upwards.
I've gotten used to having that paper right at my doorstep every morning already. It only took four days for newspaper delivery to go from pleasing novelty to basic human right in my head.
Of course, now that the sun is up, another possibility bears investigating: maybe my paper is here and I just couldn't see it in the dark. I'd better go look. Of course, in looking, I know that if I find it the last two hours I've spent reading other material and stewing over its absence will be rendered pretty damned silly... but much of the rest of my life is pretty damned silly anyway, so what's one more morning.
Here I go.
And there it is. Way out on the sidewalk. Almost under my car. I'm going to have to put on a robe and slippers and pad out there in the frost to go get it.
MOST dissatisfying.
There'd better be something good to read.
Bucking yet another major trend of my generation, recently I took the plunge and actually subscribed to a newspaper. Not a web edition or an e-mail digest, either: an actual, physical, stain-your-fingers, clutter-your-living-room, wrap-your-fish newspaper.
I did that a week ago today.
I started getting it on Wednesday.
Now it's Sunday morning, just past 7 a.m., and I just caught myself pacing and peering out my window and wondering "Where the %#@$& is my newspaper?"
I've been up since 4 a.m. (wages of sin and cold medicine and a wildly irregular schedule) and I've spent most of that time online. I've read most of the New York Times, El Pais (very informative little cartoon there detailing the accommodations at the Gitmo Hilton, where the Taliban/Al Quaeda prisoners are enjoying their surprise vacation HERE, the Washington Post, the Singapore Straits-Times and National Review Online, and Atlantic Unbound (The Atlantic Monthly online), so you could say I'm about as up on current events as anyone without cable TV could wish to be (only thing I miss about cable is C-SPAN. Well, C-SPAN and the Sci-Fi Channel, but C-SPAN was my real addiction; I lost entire weekends to that weird little portal on Washington and other wonk stuff).
So why am I so annoyed that I don't have my Casper Star-Tribune? It's Sunday, for crying out loud! The legislature isn't in session yet (for which we should all give thanks), I don't care about sports particularly (my interest pretty much tops out at the Saratoga and Encampment High School level – except for every four years when I pretty much disappear for the entire month of June to watch the FIFA World Cup) (might have to get cable or something for that. Hmm. Do they offer just one-month subscriptions?), and I've read about all I care to about the state's budget for now. What else will be in there? A follow-up to the alleged Enron suicide? More European protests about our stuffing Koran misreaders into cages in Cuba? Maybe something more about the mostly bad alternatives to just letting people snowmobile in Yellowstone?
Bah!
No, what's really at issue here has nothing to do with current events and everything to do with basic psychology: one's demands always adjust upwards.
I've gotten used to having that paper right at my doorstep every morning already. It only took four days for newspaper delivery to go from pleasing novelty to basic human right in my head.
Of course, now that the sun is up, another possibility bears investigating: maybe my paper is here and I just couldn't see it in the dark. I'd better go look. Of course, in looking, I know that if I find it the last two hours I've spent reading other material and stewing over its absence will be rendered pretty damned silly... but much of the rest of my life is pretty damned silly anyway, so what's one more morning.
Here I go.
And there it is. Way out on the sidewalk. Almost under my car. I'm going to have to put on a robe and slippers and pad out there in the frost to go get it.
MOST dissatisfying.
There'd better be something good to read.
Thursday, January 24, 2002
IF OPRAH CAN DO IT...
OK! Just what all of you have been clamoring for! For all of you LIANT fans who can't get enough of this blog or who have too much time on their hands or who just want to know with what kind of stuff I fill my head each day that makes me the babbling blogger I am, I bring you...
The Life In a Northern Town Book Club! Sponsored by, well, nobody! This is not a marketing stunt! I don't care whether you buy these books or check them out of your fine local library (if you can ever find it open! Ho ho!)! Actually, I don't care if you read them at all! But I guarantee that at least once a month from now on (and possibly more often if Writer's Block again rears his ugly head), I will write an essay of some length about a book I think should be more widely known – if not by my readers, at least by somebody out there.
For my first entry, I am shamelessly promoting a fellow Bard graduate. Matt Taibbi ('92, just like me) took off to Russia after some ambling about the world and joined his equally twisted friend Mark Ames to bring Ames' paper The eXile to new heights of obnoxious journalistic "emperor-has-no-clothes-ing" and new depths of depravity and death porn.
Then they wrote a book about how they pulled it off. And it's a dandy.
The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia
by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi
(New York: Grove Press, 2000)
As the subtitle might indicate, this is not a book for the faint of heart, nor is it a straight-up history, though the portrait it paints of post-Soviet Russia from the early '90s to 1998 is pretty vivid in all its pornographic, bloody, vomitous, sexist glory, making it a pretty damned good history anyway.
The book is divided into eight chapters, four written by Ames and four by Taibbi. Many readers have complained that Ames' sections of the book are Warhollianly dull, too petty, personal, splenous, what have you, while praising Taibbi's sections for their directness, adherence to and expressed admiration for basic journalistic principles and (false, false, false) relative modesty. But I will go on the record as admiring both.
Ames... poor Ames. Poor, poor Ames. After reading this book I really want to meet this guy and tell him he's not alone, that he's no more an epic loser than are most of the people who have walked this earth (though his Chapter One case of scabies in which the mites had transformed into "the Albert Speers of the arachnid world," constructing "about thirty or so bunkers on my ass: hardened, red modules which rendered the Kewell lotion and Elimite lotion useless" might argue for at least minor epic-loser status). But were I to do so, I would be subject to invective on a grand scale; this guy has clearly read Dostoyevsky's Notes From the Underground too many times.
(Not that I think that's a bad thing.)
But that's okay. For every self-pitying narrative about scabies or his inability to get laid in Prague or his dependence on speed whenever left to get an issue of the eXile out by himself, there are still gems of hilarious realism like the following:
"What people forget in every article ever written about drugs is one simple, basic fact. PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS BECAUSE THEY'RE FUN. That's it. There's no mystery to the drug thing. Peiople drink water to quench their thirst, they have sex because it feels good, and they do drugs because they're fun...
Even Hunter S. and William Burroughs couldn't state it that plainly;: they elevated drugs to the mythical level, keeping mum on the single most obvious, dangerous fact. So I'll repeat: PEOPLE DO DRUGS BECAUSE THEY'RE FUN. It's no different from alcohol or roller coasters except that drugs are A LOT BETTER."
Co-author Taibbi observes later in this book, after a brief reflection on his childhood growing up in the newsrooms of Boston and New York, that "If, as a consumer, you want good newspapers, you're not going to get them if the reporters are people who only reluctantly tell you the truth. Ideally, you have a bunch of people who are outcasts, even sociopaths, who get off on telling people the whole truth because that's the point: The other parts of society – government, business, etc. – have to be able to function while trusting the public to know the worst."
In these two quotes we can find the eXile and this book in a nutshell. Ames and Taibbi are two people who get off on telling the truth, and make no bones about the fact that they do get off on it. Hence their infamous "Death Porn" section, their version of a police blotter, in which the goriest crimes they could find in Russia that week (the eXile is a bi-weekly paper, for the most part, though the dummies occasionally convince themselves to try to be weekly with hilariously disastrous results) are recounted with mocking slapstick horror, in true tabloid fashion, complete with cartoons illustrating basic, recurring story elements, i.e. a little Thanksgiving turkey to indicate the victim was "carved up like a turkey", a piece of Swiss cheese to indicate "riddled with bullets," a hamburger bun with a human haand sticking out of it to indicate cannibalism (quite prevalent out in the provinces where people, still waiting lo these many years for the goverment to pay their back wages, have little to do but hack each other to pieces and eat each other) and, my favorite, a squad cap next to a vodka bottle to indicate an "investigation ongoing."
But Death Porn and little drug and scabies excursi notwithstanding, why should you, my comfortable, mostly middle-class and American readers read this book? Because it also tells the story of a newspaper that has been a huge pain in the ass to an expatriate community in Moscow that has done little to actually help convert Russia to a free-market economy or to prepare its citizenry to live in such an economy. Those whom Ames and Taibbi have skewered over the years in their paper have been both highly-placed Russian oligarchs who have taken state corruption to unbelievable new levels (I would refer readers especially to Taibbi's in-depth look at Anatoly Chubais and his loans-for-shares program which should have been a global scandal but was deemed "too complicated" to cover in the western press), and American and British consultants who lived the high life spending foreign aid money on luxuries for themselves, investing it with each other's mutual funds, and creating scandals like the Investor Protection Fund, meant to bail out poor Russians whose first forays into private investing led to their being defrauded (to date the IPF has not paid out one rouble to any bilked investors – but it made one mutual fund manager a lot of money for many years!).
But this book is not to be read as an exercise in schadenfreude: most of the worst villains in the eXile's hall of shame are Americans, and it is a theme throughout the book that once Americans are in any way freed from the usual constraints on their behavior, they are the most corrupt, scaly lizard-beasts one can find anywhere. Even an ordinary suburbanite, once she lands in Russia, winds up threatening gangland hits on the authors once they piss her off with one too many dick jokes.
And it could happen here, if we ever cease to keep an eye on each other, on our elected officials, and on our press. For, as Taibbi notes with dismay, the age of those outcast sociopaths is gone; today's "reporters," at least in the western press in Moscow, have become "a bunch of corrupt, cheerleading patsies," largely because there is no longer any competition between papers, magazines, networks, what have you, and thus there's no one paying attention to the accuracy, fairness, or relevance of what is coming out of those Moscow bureaus - and thus no reason for western journalists in Moscow to work very hard at all.
The authors leave open the question of whether this might not be true in other parts of the world or back home, but it does make me wonder about what I'm reading about what's going on in Kabul, in Israel, and in Cheyenne.
I know too many Wyoming reporters to be able, truthfully, to say that nothing like that can happen or has happened here. I've done it myself, run stories without double-checking facts, accepted sources' words as gospel because of my personal fondness or respect for those sources, left out story elements I didn't think my readers would understand... I just never got called on it.
I fervently wish that there could be more papers like the eXile in the world, while knowing that there can't be: it is only Ames and Taibbi's unique position – out of the reach of American libel laws and unread by the officials whose corruption they expose in Russia because they print in English – that makes the eXile possible. But in a perfect world, there would be an eXile in every city, Death Porn, pornographic club reviews and all.
By the way – you can read the newspaper itself online! Every few weeks, surf on over to www.eXile.ru and see what they have to say. They've been especially entertaining in the many creative ways they've called for Osama bin Laden's blood since 9/11 – while also, in one of their less tasteful running columns, using him as the mock-voice of their weekly NFL picks column.
OK! Just what all of you have been clamoring for! For all of you LIANT fans who can't get enough of this blog or who have too much time on their hands or who just want to know with what kind of stuff I fill my head each day that makes me the babbling blogger I am, I bring you...
The Life In a Northern Town Book Club! Sponsored by, well, nobody! This is not a marketing stunt! I don't care whether you buy these books or check them out of your fine local library (if you can ever find it open! Ho ho!)! Actually, I don't care if you read them at all! But I guarantee that at least once a month from now on (and possibly more often if Writer's Block again rears his ugly head), I will write an essay of some length about a book I think should be more widely known – if not by my readers, at least by somebody out there.
For my first entry, I am shamelessly promoting a fellow Bard graduate. Matt Taibbi ('92, just like me) took off to Russia after some ambling about the world and joined his equally twisted friend Mark Ames to bring Ames' paper The eXile to new heights of obnoxious journalistic "emperor-has-no-clothes-ing" and new depths of depravity and death porn.
Then they wrote a book about how they pulled it off. And it's a dandy.
The eXile: Sex, Drugs and Libel in the New Russia
by Mark Ames and Matt Taibbi
(New York: Grove Press, 2000)
As the subtitle might indicate, this is not a book for the faint of heart, nor is it a straight-up history, though the portrait it paints of post-Soviet Russia from the early '90s to 1998 is pretty vivid in all its pornographic, bloody, vomitous, sexist glory, making it a pretty damned good history anyway.
The book is divided into eight chapters, four written by Ames and four by Taibbi. Many readers have complained that Ames' sections of the book are Warhollianly dull, too petty, personal, splenous, what have you, while praising Taibbi's sections for their directness, adherence to and expressed admiration for basic journalistic principles and (false, false, false) relative modesty. But I will go on the record as admiring both.
Ames... poor Ames. Poor, poor Ames. After reading this book I really want to meet this guy and tell him he's not alone, that he's no more an epic loser than are most of the people who have walked this earth (though his Chapter One case of scabies in which the mites had transformed into "the Albert Speers of the arachnid world," constructing "about thirty or so bunkers on my ass: hardened, red modules which rendered the Kewell lotion and Elimite lotion useless" might argue for at least minor epic-loser status). But were I to do so, I would be subject to invective on a grand scale; this guy has clearly read Dostoyevsky's Notes From the Underground too many times.
(Not that I think that's a bad thing.)
But that's okay. For every self-pitying narrative about scabies or his inability to get laid in Prague or his dependence on speed whenever left to get an issue of the eXile out by himself, there are still gems of hilarious realism like the following:
"What people forget in every article ever written about drugs is one simple, basic fact. PEOPLE TAKE DRUGS BECAUSE THEY'RE FUN. That's it. There's no mystery to the drug thing. Peiople drink water to quench their thirst, they have sex because it feels good, and they do drugs because they're fun...
Even Hunter S. and William Burroughs couldn't state it that plainly;: they elevated drugs to the mythical level, keeping mum on the single most obvious, dangerous fact. So I'll repeat: PEOPLE DO DRUGS BECAUSE THEY'RE FUN. It's no different from alcohol or roller coasters except that drugs are A LOT BETTER."
Co-author Taibbi observes later in this book, after a brief reflection on his childhood growing up in the newsrooms of Boston and New York, that "If, as a consumer, you want good newspapers, you're not going to get them if the reporters are people who only reluctantly tell you the truth. Ideally, you have a bunch of people who are outcasts, even sociopaths, who get off on telling people the whole truth because that's the point: The other parts of society – government, business, etc. – have to be able to function while trusting the public to know the worst."
In these two quotes we can find the eXile and this book in a nutshell. Ames and Taibbi are two people who get off on telling the truth, and make no bones about the fact that they do get off on it. Hence their infamous "Death Porn" section, their version of a police blotter, in which the goriest crimes they could find in Russia that week (the eXile is a bi-weekly paper, for the most part, though the dummies occasionally convince themselves to try to be weekly with hilariously disastrous results) are recounted with mocking slapstick horror, in true tabloid fashion, complete with cartoons illustrating basic, recurring story elements, i.e. a little Thanksgiving turkey to indicate the victim was "carved up like a turkey", a piece of Swiss cheese to indicate "riddled with bullets," a hamburger bun with a human haand sticking out of it to indicate cannibalism (quite prevalent out in the provinces where people, still waiting lo these many years for the goverment to pay their back wages, have little to do but hack each other to pieces and eat each other) and, my favorite, a squad cap next to a vodka bottle to indicate an "investigation ongoing."
But Death Porn and little drug and scabies excursi notwithstanding, why should you, my comfortable, mostly middle-class and American readers read this book? Because it also tells the story of a newspaper that has been a huge pain in the ass to an expatriate community in Moscow that has done little to actually help convert Russia to a free-market economy or to prepare its citizenry to live in such an economy. Those whom Ames and Taibbi have skewered over the years in their paper have been both highly-placed Russian oligarchs who have taken state corruption to unbelievable new levels (I would refer readers especially to Taibbi's in-depth look at Anatoly Chubais and his loans-for-shares program which should have been a global scandal but was deemed "too complicated" to cover in the western press), and American and British consultants who lived the high life spending foreign aid money on luxuries for themselves, investing it with each other's mutual funds, and creating scandals like the Investor Protection Fund, meant to bail out poor Russians whose first forays into private investing led to their being defrauded (to date the IPF has not paid out one rouble to any bilked investors – but it made one mutual fund manager a lot of money for many years!).
But this book is not to be read as an exercise in schadenfreude: most of the worst villains in the eXile's hall of shame are Americans, and it is a theme throughout the book that once Americans are in any way freed from the usual constraints on their behavior, they are the most corrupt, scaly lizard-beasts one can find anywhere. Even an ordinary suburbanite, once she lands in Russia, winds up threatening gangland hits on the authors once they piss her off with one too many dick jokes.
And it could happen here, if we ever cease to keep an eye on each other, on our elected officials, and on our press. For, as Taibbi notes with dismay, the age of those outcast sociopaths is gone; today's "reporters," at least in the western press in Moscow, have become "a bunch of corrupt, cheerleading patsies," largely because there is no longer any competition between papers, magazines, networks, what have you, and thus there's no one paying attention to the accuracy, fairness, or relevance of what is coming out of those Moscow bureaus - and thus no reason for western journalists in Moscow to work very hard at all.
The authors leave open the question of whether this might not be true in other parts of the world or back home, but it does make me wonder about what I'm reading about what's going on in Kabul, in Israel, and in Cheyenne.
I know too many Wyoming reporters to be able, truthfully, to say that nothing like that can happen or has happened here. I've done it myself, run stories without double-checking facts, accepted sources' words as gospel because of my personal fondness or respect for those sources, left out story elements I didn't think my readers would understand... I just never got called on it.
I fervently wish that there could be more papers like the eXile in the world, while knowing that there can't be: it is only Ames and Taibbi's unique position – out of the reach of American libel laws and unread by the officials whose corruption they expose in Russia because they print in English – that makes the eXile possible. But in a perfect world, there would be an eXile in every city, Death Porn, pornographic club reviews and all.
By the way – you can read the newspaper itself online! Every few weeks, surf on over to www.eXile.ru and see what they have to say. They've been especially entertaining in the many creative ways they've called for Osama bin Laden's blood since 9/11 – while also, in one of their less tasteful running columns, using him as the mock-voice of their weekly NFL picks column.
Wednesday, January 23, 2002
MY TWO FAVORITE FOODS
OR - Cold Medicine 2, Electric Boogaloo
As I knew would happen since I was home today hacking up a lung and trying to wake up from my drug-induced coma, I appear to have missed another memorable, epic-level debate at my mid-morning coffee klatsch.
Thank goodness I have my dear friend the Sewer King (I have to call him that or he doesn't realize I'm writing about him) (at least I think this will work, since he gave himself that name, unprompted by any of us – but he claims to have a poor memory) (but he should at least recognize himself now by the predicate to this sentence I have now parenthetically interrupted three times) (make that a gratuitous four times) (how about five) (or even... but I'll knock this off now and finish my thought) to fill me in on the good stuff I missed.
Sad but true, my coffee hour is probably the best hour of a typical day (at least of a typical day that doesn't end with the Artist or the IFB or my New Darts Partner or the Minister of Fun knocking back Guiness with me somewhere downtown), and it is largely because I never know what the guys there are going to be talking about on a given morning – or to what flights of fancy, foolishness or philosophizing they will fly in response to a stupid remark of mine.
Today, I am told, the argument centered around which of two businesses, the hardware store or the bank, has the best popcorn, the best popcorn machine, and the best popcorn servers.
I feel I may safely weigh in on this subject because, apart from coffee, popcorn is my favorite food. I can also approach the matter with an unbiased judgment and a clear conscience for having missed the banker's and the hardware man's no doubt very entertaining but quite possibly damagingly biased arguments.
I must first, however, lay all my cards on the table. I am a girl, and, moreover, a girl who does a lot of accounting and bookkeeping and general mucking about with money. I am therefore in the bank much more often than I am in the hardware store and so have had greater exposure to the bank's than to the hardware store's popcorn. It is simply the way of things; especially this time of year, I am in the bank most every day, while I am in the hardware store only occasionally, and that usually to discuss the sewer system and pending ordinances and other actions pertaining thereto with its king.
Some might argue that these facts might prejudice me somewhat in the bank's favor, already demolishing my supposed objectivity on the matter. BUT, there are more disclosures to be made.
Outweighing any bias toward familiarity is a little matter of long-dormant childhood fears that wholly distract me from the quality of the popcorn at the bank.
You see, one of the primary popcorn ladies at the bank is an old enemy of mine, one whose very voice once filled me with such fear as to keep me, Kate Sherrod, perhaps the most deeply addicted bookworm ever to stroll the halls of Saratoga Elementary School, right out of the Saratoga Elementary School Library.
She knows this of course, and we laugh about it from time to time as I nervously accept a sack of popcorn from her hand, but as I do so, my own hand shakes in memory of years of fear that bordered on hatred from back in the day when this sweet old lady towered over me.
She terrorized me in the library, where fear of her kept me from having the temerity to check out the "big kid" books my teacher had encouraged me to read – after one attempt to check out The Hobbit in first grade I meekly darted into the little kid stacks whenever the Aide was present (and felt very foxy one morning when I came into the library before class started and the true librarian let me have it without a remark).
Fear of her also has left me with a distinct gustatory and olfactory memory shared only by my immediate contemporaries at SES. It was a guarantee that if the lunchroom was serving spinach, the library aide would be the lunchroom monitor – and she was a firm believer in Cleaning Up Your Plate, and never mind that the spinach on that plate was boiled, swimming in vinegar, looking like the devil himself had thrown up a little pile of nori and left it rotting there about six months ago.
We tried everything to get away with not eating that spinach, but six-year-olds are not that cunning, and she was wily and experienced, could nose out where we'd hid our spinach on our plates without fail.
And that is why, to this particular refined and educated palate, the popcorn served up by the bank, while in and of itself very fine popcorn, fluffy white and warm and cheerfully served, has unpleasant notes to its flavor, notes of spinach, vinegar and sour milk that no amount of liberal applications of popcorn salt, no assiduous cleaning s of the gleaming metal of the machine, no trips to the therapist could ever really remove or disguise. It's unfortunate, but true.
The hardware store's popcorn, on the other hand, just tastes like popcorn, though perhaps not quite as salty as I like it. That is a point on which the hardware store does deserve praise, however, for it is far easier to add a little extra salt to one's own bag than to take away too much salt from the bag.
On all other points, I would have to declare them more or less equal. Both are offered in a spirit of customer appreciation and generosity and are an effective appeal to customer loyalty in a way that nugatory rulers or calendars are not.
So I applaud both parties, and encourage them to keep up the good work.
And keep on cranking out those groovy free pens. They really cut down on my office supply expenditures at the chamber.
(Though the ones I acquired for use at the fishing derby proved considerable disappointments, as not being able to stand up to the cold at all! Fortunately, I also stole, quite by accident I assure you all, a somewhat pricey gel pen from the Hotel Wolf the night before the derby. It proved our precious savior, a pen that wrote when all others choked up, and I would have returned it to the Hotel with gratitude after the derby had not some goofy fisherman walked off with it after signing his prize affadavit late Sunday afternoon)
But I digress. As usual. Must be the Nyquil.
OR - Cold Medicine 2, Electric Boogaloo
As I knew would happen since I was home today hacking up a lung and trying to wake up from my drug-induced coma, I appear to have missed another memorable, epic-level debate at my mid-morning coffee klatsch.
Thank goodness I have my dear friend the Sewer King (I have to call him that or he doesn't realize I'm writing about him) (at least I think this will work, since he gave himself that name, unprompted by any of us – but he claims to have a poor memory) (but he should at least recognize himself now by the predicate to this sentence I have now parenthetically interrupted three times) (make that a gratuitous four times) (how about five) (or even... but I'll knock this off now and finish my thought) to fill me in on the good stuff I missed.
Sad but true, my coffee hour is probably the best hour of a typical day (at least of a typical day that doesn't end with the Artist or the IFB or my New Darts Partner or the Minister of Fun knocking back Guiness with me somewhere downtown), and it is largely because I never know what the guys there are going to be talking about on a given morning – or to what flights of fancy, foolishness or philosophizing they will fly in response to a stupid remark of mine.
Today, I am told, the argument centered around which of two businesses, the hardware store or the bank, has the best popcorn, the best popcorn machine, and the best popcorn servers.
I feel I may safely weigh in on this subject because, apart from coffee, popcorn is my favorite food. I can also approach the matter with an unbiased judgment and a clear conscience for having missed the banker's and the hardware man's no doubt very entertaining but quite possibly damagingly biased arguments.
I must first, however, lay all my cards on the table. I am a girl, and, moreover, a girl who does a lot of accounting and bookkeeping and general mucking about with money. I am therefore in the bank much more often than I am in the hardware store and so have had greater exposure to the bank's than to the hardware store's popcorn. It is simply the way of things; especially this time of year, I am in the bank most every day, while I am in the hardware store only occasionally, and that usually to discuss the sewer system and pending ordinances and other actions pertaining thereto with its king.
Some might argue that these facts might prejudice me somewhat in the bank's favor, already demolishing my supposed objectivity on the matter. BUT, there are more disclosures to be made.
Outweighing any bias toward familiarity is a little matter of long-dormant childhood fears that wholly distract me from the quality of the popcorn at the bank.
You see, one of the primary popcorn ladies at the bank is an old enemy of mine, one whose very voice once filled me with such fear as to keep me, Kate Sherrod, perhaps the most deeply addicted bookworm ever to stroll the halls of Saratoga Elementary School, right out of the Saratoga Elementary School Library.
She knows this of course, and we laugh about it from time to time as I nervously accept a sack of popcorn from her hand, but as I do so, my own hand shakes in memory of years of fear that bordered on hatred from back in the day when this sweet old lady towered over me.
She terrorized me in the library, where fear of her kept me from having the temerity to check out the "big kid" books my teacher had encouraged me to read – after one attempt to check out The Hobbit in first grade I meekly darted into the little kid stacks whenever the Aide was present (and felt very foxy one morning when I came into the library before class started and the true librarian let me have it without a remark).
Fear of her also has left me with a distinct gustatory and olfactory memory shared only by my immediate contemporaries at SES. It was a guarantee that if the lunchroom was serving spinach, the library aide would be the lunchroom monitor – and she was a firm believer in Cleaning Up Your Plate, and never mind that the spinach on that plate was boiled, swimming in vinegar, looking like the devil himself had thrown up a little pile of nori and left it rotting there about six months ago.
We tried everything to get away with not eating that spinach, but six-year-olds are not that cunning, and she was wily and experienced, could nose out where we'd hid our spinach on our plates without fail.
And that is why, to this particular refined and educated palate, the popcorn served up by the bank, while in and of itself very fine popcorn, fluffy white and warm and cheerfully served, has unpleasant notes to its flavor, notes of spinach, vinegar and sour milk that no amount of liberal applications of popcorn salt, no assiduous cleaning s of the gleaming metal of the machine, no trips to the therapist could ever really remove or disguise. It's unfortunate, but true.
The hardware store's popcorn, on the other hand, just tastes like popcorn, though perhaps not quite as salty as I like it. That is a point on which the hardware store does deserve praise, however, for it is far easier to add a little extra salt to one's own bag than to take away too much salt from the bag.
On all other points, I would have to declare them more or less equal. Both are offered in a spirit of customer appreciation and generosity and are an effective appeal to customer loyalty in a way that nugatory rulers or calendars are not.
So I applaud both parties, and encourage them to keep up the good work.
And keep on cranking out those groovy free pens. They really cut down on my office supply expenditures at the chamber.
(Though the ones I acquired for use at the fishing derby proved considerable disappointments, as not being able to stand up to the cold at all! Fortunately, I also stole, quite by accident I assure you all, a somewhat pricey gel pen from the Hotel Wolf the night before the derby. It proved our precious savior, a pen that wrote when all others choked up, and I would have returned it to the Hotel with gratitude after the derby had not some goofy fisherman walked off with it after signing his prize affadavit late Sunday afternoon)
But I digress. As usual. Must be the Nyquil.
Tuesday, January 22, 2002
NOW I KNOW IT'S JANUARY
Ladies and gentlemen, my first ever Blog post on cold medicine!
Yup, the wage of derby dame-dom is apparently a visciously virulent virus (the old-fashioned, semi-living kind, not the kind about which hoaxes are spread via e-mail every week). One hour I'm running all over town rejoicing at getting the last huge wad of disgusting, grimy, oily, smelly money (a possible vector for my current troubles... but more likely it was one of "my" kids on the speech team, several of whom trooped on valiantly through their symptoms trying to get ready for their first varsity tournament of the year) (or maybe I got it from one of the fish we measured. Maybe I'm the first case of whirling disease in humans! Certainly I'm a little off balance as I type...) out of my keeping and into the bank where it belongs, the next I'm feeling a little tired at my desk as I write tons of press releases (which can be read at the chamber's blog site,) and the next my assistant is commenting on how I sound a little wheezy and look a little stoned and did I maybe have something funky with my lunch?
Then this bug came down on me HARD AND FAST.
I barely made it up to the grocery store to buy a box of Nyquil gel caps (and all hail the inventor of the gel cap, which allows me a full dosage of Nyquil's floor-hugging, drool-spreading, coma-inducing goodness without my having to choke down that horrible, viscous semiliquid) and a gallon or two of OJ. I'm lucky traffic was light and there was enough snowfall to force everyone to turn on their headlights or I might have involved myself in a spectacularly silly crash of some kind the likes of which no car of mine has seen since I was 16 and decided to try to beat up a fence post with my daddy's pickup truck whilst exiting the airport.
And that's BEFORE I drugged myself.
Now I'm home and waiting for the Nyquil to kick in. I think I only have a few more minutes of what now passes for lucidity before I sink into blissful semiconsciousness, the weight of my head pulling me down, my head so dense it might implode or at least permanently deform my pillow as the force of it actually rearranges the pillow's component molecules... and my arms turn into useless, flapping appendages dangling loosely off the side of my futon... my legs disappear... my eyes melt... God I love Nyquil.
And so, though it's not yet 4 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, though the sun is still in the sky, though time and tide wait for no man and a day's, a year's, a life's work still waits uncompleted before me, though many in the world suffer far greater pains each day than I do with my little viral aches, for today, I surrender. Today I let the fever and the dextromethorphan hydrobromide (ah, bromide! by my side! which like a tide! carries off pain and dulls my pride! takes me for a sleepy ride! with thee always I'll abide! as off to dreamland now I glide! ah, bromide!) carry me off, not caring anymore what becomes of anything. Others will be there to push up the sun in the morning, and as for everything else, well, it will still be there when I return.
And since I caught this early and had the luxury of tackling it in this proactive manner, ready to wrestle this bug down with vitamin C, zinc and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, that return should be tomorrow.
Good afternoon, evening, and night!
Ladies and gentlemen, my first ever Blog post on cold medicine!
Yup, the wage of derby dame-dom is apparently a visciously virulent virus (the old-fashioned, semi-living kind, not the kind about which hoaxes are spread via e-mail every week). One hour I'm running all over town rejoicing at getting the last huge wad of disgusting, grimy, oily, smelly money (a possible vector for my current troubles... but more likely it was one of "my" kids on the speech team, several of whom trooped on valiantly through their symptoms trying to get ready for their first varsity tournament of the year) (or maybe I got it from one of the fish we measured. Maybe I'm the first case of whirling disease in humans! Certainly I'm a little off balance as I type...) out of my keeping and into the bank where it belongs, the next I'm feeling a little tired at my desk as I write tons of press releases (which can be read at the chamber's blog site,) and the next my assistant is commenting on how I sound a little wheezy and look a little stoned and did I maybe have something funky with my lunch?
Then this bug came down on me HARD AND FAST.
I barely made it up to the grocery store to buy a box of Nyquil gel caps (and all hail the inventor of the gel cap, which allows me a full dosage of Nyquil's floor-hugging, drool-spreading, coma-inducing goodness without my having to choke down that horrible, viscous semiliquid) and a gallon or two of OJ. I'm lucky traffic was light and there was enough snowfall to force everyone to turn on their headlights or I might have involved myself in a spectacularly silly crash of some kind the likes of which no car of mine has seen since I was 16 and decided to try to beat up a fence post with my daddy's pickup truck whilst exiting the airport.
And that's BEFORE I drugged myself.
Now I'm home and waiting for the Nyquil to kick in. I think I only have a few more minutes of what now passes for lucidity before I sink into blissful semiconsciousness, the weight of my head pulling me down, my head so dense it might implode or at least permanently deform my pillow as the force of it actually rearranges the pillow's component molecules... and my arms turn into useless, flapping appendages dangling loosely off the side of my futon... my legs disappear... my eyes melt... God I love Nyquil.
And so, though it's not yet 4 p.m. Mountain Standard Time, though the sun is still in the sky, though time and tide wait for no man and a day's, a year's, a life's work still waits uncompleted before me, though many in the world suffer far greater pains each day than I do with my little viral aches, for today, I surrender. Today I let the fever and the dextromethorphan hydrobromide (ah, bromide! by my side! which like a tide! carries off pain and dulls my pride! takes me for a sleepy ride! with thee always I'll abide! as off to dreamland now I glide! ah, bromide!) carry me off, not caring anymore what becomes of anything. Others will be there to push up the sun in the morning, and as for everything else, well, it will still be there when I return.
And since I caught this early and had the luxury of tackling it in this proactive manner, ready to wrestle this bug down with vitamin C, zinc and pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, that return should be tomorrow.
Good afternoon, evening, and night!
Monday, January 21, 2002
MORE DOINGS OF THE DAME
It's not every day that my ultimate purpose is finding a guy who has reportedly set his ass (arse, to my British readers, who still think an ass is something with long ears that brays) on fire, but it's not every day that I'm in charge of distributing prizes in an ice fishing derby, either.
The time was mid-morning this last Saturday, the place, Saratoga Lake, the occasion, the 23rd mostly annual (we skipped one year when the lake got drained) Saratoga Ice Fishing Derby, and the person in question was, in my opinion, in the lead for the Hard Luck Fisherman Award, a tradition I'd decided on the spot to resurrect when I came into possession of a really dumb board game called "Gone Fishing."
The incident in question had reportedly happened in the predawn chill and may not have happened at all; elements of the story smacked of what passes in Saratoga for urban legend. Our unfortunate angler had had a bandanna sticking out of the back pocket of his Carhartts when he bent over to retrieve something and bumped a little too closely to the flame of his propane heater. The rag, then the seat of his pants caught on fire and it took a while to put it all out; he was reportedly still about on the ice with the ass of his pants burnt out.
I received word of this while huddling in a dark, tiny trailer, hawking derby tickets and cheerleading my crack team of fish measurers. We all agreed it was the best story we'd yet heard in the derby and would be hard to top. I told the fisherman who shared the anecdote with us to keep an eye out for the assless Carhartts and advise their owner he had not suffered in vain...
...But alas, he was never heard from. A pity. It looks like a really fun board game. I'll save it for next year. Unless I hear a better story as I conduct the derby post-mortem.
There were some strong candidates. No fewer than three teams of fishermen told tales of losing their poles down an ice hole, with two of those later recovering said poles when the fish who'd sucked the things down bit again on other bait and earned a trip out of the hole, their earlier prize still attached.
The preponderance of this story or variants thereof has led me to form one conclusion: the fish may be fairer and more honest than those who go after them; no fewer than eight derby contestants approached me during the two-day tournament with plaintive questions - "Has anyone turned in a pole?" "Has anyone seen my folding chair?" "My auger was missing when I came out of my hut; has anyone turned it in?" "I lost my keys; if somebody finds them could you bring them out to the green Shappell over by the dam?"
Nothing at all was turned in during the two days of the tournament, leading me to conclude that the prevailing ethos among ice fishermen may well be an especially harsh form of finders, keepers, or at least a powerful belief that a found pole/auger/bobber/bottle of eau de minnow has come to them in karmic repayment for a pole/auger/bobber/bottle lost many years ago at a fishing derby far, far away.
Fishermen are nothing if not superstitious, of course, witness the locals of my acquaintance who have been fishing this derby every single year in the exact same place, and who would not budge from it even after not even seeing a fish for an entire day.
My cadre of volunteers and I were actually very amused at the concentration of locals on the supposedly "hot" end of the lake and the number of them (ZERO) who were bringing in fish to be measured.
"So much for local knowledge," one fish-measuring wiseacre observed.
"Maybe they just think everyone is bringing in bigger fish and they don't want to get shown up," a more charitable ticket-seller countered.
Actually, I have to doff my hat/scarf/earwarmer to my volunteers, especially those who measured the fish for the big fish contest, who endured the cold touch of alien flesh (even through rubber gloves thoughtfully provided by our valley's medical clinic this was still a funky experience for many of them, most of them non-fishermen even in the warmer months), the oozing and sometimes squirting of fresh Saratoga caviar (brown and rainbow trout eggs), and the determined flopping and flipping of the fish they were trying to measure (indeed, on two occasions the damned things jumped right off the measuring tray, getting lost on the counter, inside the trailer, or in one memorable instance, flying out the window to thump against a neighboring trailer!).
Maybe now said volunteers will believe me next year when I tell them the real fun is out on the ice, as my special guest derby official, the famous Dan Brain of Laramie, and assorted other friends of mine discovered, as they trudged (or in Dan's case, skied) out onto the lake for an afternoon's hob-nobbing.
At his concert at the Cantina that evening, Brain observed that he was the less fortunate of the day's ice judges because while a young friend of mine stumbled across a tent full of fishermen who gave her Crown Royal to drink "All I got was... Watermelon Pucker."
But it was Brain who got to see perhaps the most entertaining tableau of the tournament: several guys who'd managed to get their camper out on the ice and who'd surrounded it with ice holes. In between bouts of jigging, they were ensconced inside said trailer... watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Now that's fishin'!
Nor can I complete an account of this banner weekend without mentioning its crowning moment, its high point, it's incident of maximum greying (for my hair): that time around high noon on Saturday when a guy from Colorado came in to our booth with A TAGGED FISH!!!
Not only a TAGGED FISH but A TAGGED FISH WITH THIS YEAR'S TAG!!!
Honestly, I think I was more excited than he was. I'd been praying for weeks that someone would catch a tagged fish this year. It would be so cool to finally get to give away the big money ($25,000 this year) on my watch.
Unfortunately, when the gods grant prayers, they tend to get annoyingly specific.
I had not prayed that someone catch the $25,000 tagged fish, you see, as was verified some 15 minutes later after I'd navigated our insurance company's hideously involved and code-ridden automated phone verification system. After 15 minutes of punching in and verifying identification codes, a cheery voice informed me "Sorry; that is not the winning fish" and disconnected me without so much as a by-your leave.
Fortunately, the man in question was pretty cool about it all. He was already something of a hero for actually having caught one; a small crowd had been around to watch the proceedings and many of them were heard to express surprise that there were actually tagged fish in the lake.
And he did go home with a decent prize anyway: a nice new ice hut, a really good power auger (recent events have taught me to appreciate the value of a really good, well-behaved power auger. As to why, well I should only have to indicate that my ice fishing buddy's own power auger has manifested such a personality that she [not it, SHE] has earned the name of Bitch) and a sled to pull the rest of his gear in. Not bad for landing a trout with a piece of plastic sticking out of its dorsal fin.
There was more to the weekend, of course... much more... moments of unexpected lyricism (a young angler from Fort Collins emerged from his tent just in time for Brain to hear him observe that Southern Comfort tasted "Like an Angel Pissing on Your Tongue" - an observation that Brain had made into a short country song in time to serenade that angler when he came into the Cantina that night), gustatory glee (our local American Legion Auxiliary really knows how to make fry bread) (and the Knights of Columbus make pretty good pancakes), technological innovation (a good pair of neoprene Cabela's gloves with the rubbery traction grip are damned near perfect for holding down a wiggly fish that doesn't want us to know how long it is), scenic beauty (the only thing prettier than one sunrise seen over Saratoga Lake is two in a row), childish charm (one little girl from Green River one the Small Fry hourly "big fish" prize three times, and her eyes got wider and her smile bigger every time she came up to have a fish measured), and that special funky state of mind that comes with extended sleep deprivation (who needs drugs?).
And then there was that joy, greater than any I have ever known, that came when I staggered into my apartment at 5 p.m. Sunday evening, peeled off my 17 layers of clothing, turned on my electric blanket, crawled into bed, and slept for 16 hours.
Bliss beyond compare.
It's not every day that my ultimate purpose is finding a guy who has reportedly set his ass (arse, to my British readers, who still think an ass is something with long ears that brays) on fire, but it's not every day that I'm in charge of distributing prizes in an ice fishing derby, either.
The time was mid-morning this last Saturday, the place, Saratoga Lake, the occasion, the 23rd mostly annual (we skipped one year when the lake got drained) Saratoga Ice Fishing Derby, and the person in question was, in my opinion, in the lead for the Hard Luck Fisherman Award, a tradition I'd decided on the spot to resurrect when I came into possession of a really dumb board game called "Gone Fishing."
The incident in question had reportedly happened in the predawn chill and may not have happened at all; elements of the story smacked of what passes in Saratoga for urban legend. Our unfortunate angler had had a bandanna sticking out of the back pocket of his Carhartts when he bent over to retrieve something and bumped a little too closely to the flame of his propane heater. The rag, then the seat of his pants caught on fire and it took a while to put it all out; he was reportedly still about on the ice with the ass of his pants burnt out.
I received word of this while huddling in a dark, tiny trailer, hawking derby tickets and cheerleading my crack team of fish measurers. We all agreed it was the best story we'd yet heard in the derby and would be hard to top. I told the fisherman who shared the anecdote with us to keep an eye out for the assless Carhartts and advise their owner he had not suffered in vain...
...But alas, he was never heard from. A pity. It looks like a really fun board game. I'll save it for next year. Unless I hear a better story as I conduct the derby post-mortem.
There were some strong candidates. No fewer than three teams of fishermen told tales of losing their poles down an ice hole, with two of those later recovering said poles when the fish who'd sucked the things down bit again on other bait and earned a trip out of the hole, their earlier prize still attached.
The preponderance of this story or variants thereof has led me to form one conclusion: the fish may be fairer and more honest than those who go after them; no fewer than eight derby contestants approached me during the two-day tournament with plaintive questions - "Has anyone turned in a pole?" "Has anyone seen my folding chair?" "My auger was missing when I came out of my hut; has anyone turned it in?" "I lost my keys; if somebody finds them could you bring them out to the green Shappell over by the dam?"
Nothing at all was turned in during the two days of the tournament, leading me to conclude that the prevailing ethos among ice fishermen may well be an especially harsh form of finders, keepers, or at least a powerful belief that a found pole/auger/bobber/bottle of eau de minnow has come to them in karmic repayment for a pole/auger/bobber/bottle lost many years ago at a fishing derby far, far away.
Fishermen are nothing if not superstitious, of course, witness the locals of my acquaintance who have been fishing this derby every single year in the exact same place, and who would not budge from it even after not even seeing a fish for an entire day.
My cadre of volunteers and I were actually very amused at the concentration of locals on the supposedly "hot" end of the lake and the number of them (ZERO) who were bringing in fish to be measured.
"So much for local knowledge," one fish-measuring wiseacre observed.
"Maybe they just think everyone is bringing in bigger fish and they don't want to get shown up," a more charitable ticket-seller countered.
Actually, I have to doff my hat/scarf/earwarmer to my volunteers, especially those who measured the fish for the big fish contest, who endured the cold touch of alien flesh (even through rubber gloves thoughtfully provided by our valley's medical clinic this was still a funky experience for many of them, most of them non-fishermen even in the warmer months), the oozing and sometimes squirting of fresh Saratoga caviar (brown and rainbow trout eggs), and the determined flopping and flipping of the fish they were trying to measure (indeed, on two occasions the damned things jumped right off the measuring tray, getting lost on the counter, inside the trailer, or in one memorable instance, flying out the window to thump against a neighboring trailer!).
Maybe now said volunteers will believe me next year when I tell them the real fun is out on the ice, as my special guest derby official, the famous Dan Brain of Laramie, and assorted other friends of mine discovered, as they trudged (or in Dan's case, skied) out onto the lake for an afternoon's hob-nobbing.
At his concert at the Cantina that evening, Brain observed that he was the less fortunate of the day's ice judges because while a young friend of mine stumbled across a tent full of fishermen who gave her Crown Royal to drink "All I got was... Watermelon Pucker."
But it was Brain who got to see perhaps the most entertaining tableau of the tournament: several guys who'd managed to get their camper out on the ice and who'd surrounded it with ice holes. In between bouts of jigging, they were ensconced inside said trailer... watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies.
Now that's fishin'!
Nor can I complete an account of this banner weekend without mentioning its crowning moment, its high point, it's incident of maximum greying (for my hair): that time around high noon on Saturday when a guy from Colorado came in to our booth with A TAGGED FISH!!!
Not only a TAGGED FISH but A TAGGED FISH WITH THIS YEAR'S TAG!!!
Honestly, I think I was more excited than he was. I'd been praying for weeks that someone would catch a tagged fish this year. It would be so cool to finally get to give away the big money ($25,000 this year) on my watch.
Unfortunately, when the gods grant prayers, they tend to get annoyingly specific.
I had not prayed that someone catch the $25,000 tagged fish, you see, as was verified some 15 minutes later after I'd navigated our insurance company's hideously involved and code-ridden automated phone verification system. After 15 minutes of punching in and verifying identification codes, a cheery voice informed me "Sorry; that is not the winning fish" and disconnected me without so much as a by-your leave.
Fortunately, the man in question was pretty cool about it all. He was already something of a hero for actually having caught one; a small crowd had been around to watch the proceedings and many of them were heard to express surprise that there were actually tagged fish in the lake.
And he did go home with a decent prize anyway: a nice new ice hut, a really good power auger (recent events have taught me to appreciate the value of a really good, well-behaved power auger. As to why, well I should only have to indicate that my ice fishing buddy's own power auger has manifested such a personality that she [not it, SHE] has earned the name of Bitch) and a sled to pull the rest of his gear in. Not bad for landing a trout with a piece of plastic sticking out of its dorsal fin.
There was more to the weekend, of course... much more... moments of unexpected lyricism (a young angler from Fort Collins emerged from his tent just in time for Brain to hear him observe that Southern Comfort tasted "Like an Angel Pissing on Your Tongue" - an observation that Brain had made into a short country song in time to serenade that angler when he came into the Cantina that night), gustatory glee (our local American Legion Auxiliary really knows how to make fry bread) (and the Knights of Columbus make pretty good pancakes), technological innovation (a good pair of neoprene Cabela's gloves with the rubbery traction grip are damned near perfect for holding down a wiggly fish that doesn't want us to know how long it is), scenic beauty (the only thing prettier than one sunrise seen over Saratoga Lake is two in a row), childish charm (one little girl from Green River one the Small Fry hourly "big fish" prize three times, and her eyes got wider and her smile bigger every time she came up to have a fish measured), and that special funky state of mind that comes with extended sleep deprivation (who needs drugs?).
And then there was that joy, greater than any I have ever known, that came when I staggered into my apartment at 5 p.m. Sunday evening, peeled off my 17 layers of clothing, turned on my electric blanket, crawled into bed, and slept for 16 hours.
Bliss beyond compare.
Friday, January 18, 2002
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.
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.
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!
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