Ft.Collins--Greeley (facsimilie of Book of Isaiah)---Colorado Eastern Plains---Rocky Ford. Hiking in Comanche National Grasslands---Oklahoma Panhandle---Amarillo cowboy motel---Austin---Ron Paul Rally at LBJ Library---Physics Dept. retirement banquet---Arjendu---to the top of Enchanted Rock finally!---James(!!)---Casey's house and family---Half Price Books to shop for language books like old times---My how Austin has grown.
San Antonio---south Texas---Mexican border--Brownsville. Mouth of the Rio Grande. Palo Alto Battlefield. Corpus Christi (after all these years again---so much the same). Beach camping. Meandering up the Gulf Coast obsessively. Hotel where Rita Hayworth stayed. Galveston (after all these years again---so different!). Port Arthur. Sightseeing amidst the oil refineries. Sabine Pass. The Louisiana coast. Touring many houses on stilts until it seemed normal. Cutting inland into Cajun country. Historical plaques in French and English. The Cathedral in Lafayette. Revisiting Highway 61 (which has been widened, I think). Natchez (again). The Natchez Trace. Finding the speed limit has been raised. Jackson. The state capitol. Vicksburg Battlefield. Taking a business conference call while walking the Confederate lines. Back into Louisiana. Splurging for a Best Western in Monroeville and embarassing myself regarding the tv remote. Visiting (at last) the 4000 year old Indian mounds at Poverty Point (!!!). Up the river in the flat Delta region.
Memphis (!!!!). Harbortown. Seeing Grey, Nate, and Ben again. Dogsitting for Lou for a glorious relaxing week. Miss Cordelia's for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Lunch with good old Martin. Almost winning at Trivia. Hamlet as performed by junior high school students in the basement of an Episcopal cathedral.
Nashville (again). A big new tent. A mad dash through the night across the Great Smoky Mountains. Sleeping in a rest area in Virginia. Manassas. Chantilly. Bilderberg. Living in my new tent. Alex Jones on the bullhorn. Confronting the world's elite. A glorious victory.
Over into Maryland. Two wonderful weeks in Silver Spring with Howard and Mia. Seeing Promethesus and hating it. Watching John Carter and liking it. Learning "I Can See Clearly Now" with Howard (playing guitar) over three hours (in honor of our mutual friend Kelle) and then performing it that very evening in an old farmhouse in rural Maryland with other amateur musicians. Actually having the courage to pick up a guitar, finding I could do barre chords well enough without much practice, and leading the entire group in "The Ballad of John and Yoko" for which I remembered most of the words.
Driving into D.C. at last. Walking around my old campus. Sneaking into my old dorm after almost thirty years and finding in completely changed and unrecognizable.
Father's Day in Baltimore with an air show featuring the Blue Angels. Riding the Baltimore subway for kicks. Camping in Delaware and being awakened by a state trooper for not having put up my tent at my campsite. Meandering along the Delaware river. Getting lost on the backroads in far southern New Jersey (easy to do). Cape May (again, after all these years). Watching the waves of the ocean crash on the beach. Atlantic City. The Boardwalk (which made me feel like I was in NYC again at last). Losing 10 bucks at the Trump Taj Mahal on purpose. Finding the eastern end of U.S. Highway 30. Eating at a real Jersey diner in Egg Harbor City. Hunting the Jersey Devil in the Pine Barrens. Driving crazy on sand roads to find the Carranza Memorial.
Meandering up through Jersey on the Turnpike. An evening from hell trying to find a campsite in northern New Jersey. Revisiting my old neighborhood in Staten Island for the first time in eight years. Having a slice of pizza in the old neighborhood pizza parlor and asking for "Sicilian" like the old days. Over the Verrazano. A night in Brooklyn with my old friends Adam and Marie from Portland who have since become New Yorkers.
Trying to get out of New York. Getting stuck in traffic in the Bronx. Car overheating. On and off the freeway all afternoon. Getting helped by a friendly Galician with coolant on hand. Spending hours in Younkers waiting for car to cool down. Blowing a tire and having to change it as the sun set. Giving up and spending a night in a Younkers motel to find hard core porn on the tv as I flipped it on.
Trying to get across the Tappan Zee to the west side of the Hudson. Realizing something seriously wrong with the car. Giving up in rural New Jersey. Calling around to get my car looked at in a small lake resort town on a Friday afternoon. Finding out I need a new radiator. Enjoying three nights in comfort at a Day's Inn watching classic movies and eating at the diner right next door. Almost wishing that they needed another day to fix my car.
Finally getting out of New Jersey. Revisiting the Poconos. Across Pennsylvania. Checking in late to a private campground in the Wilds and leaving twenty bucks with a note in the morning when I left. Looking unsuccessfully for my great granfather's grave in Drums, Pa. Getting stopped by a Pa. state trooper for nothing at all and then being let go (?). Into Ohio. Wishing I could tour the car factory near Youngstown but being in a hurry. Getting stuck on the Ohio turnpike and detouring up to sit in the shade along Lake Erie. Scrambling to find wifi in Toledo. Crossing southern Michigan then down into Indiana. Thinking I lost my camera in Fort Wayne but then finding it under my water container.
Finally visiting Hartford City and seeing where my grandfather grew up. Spending an incredible afternoon with Great Uncle Clayton and hearing stories about my great-grandmother and my great-great grandparents, and seeing the houses where they lived. Seeing my great-grandfather's grave (a different one). Seeing all the memento's of my astronaut cousin on Clayton's wall.
Driving across Indiana on a very, very, very hot afternoon. Touring Purdue in West Lafayette. Cooking camp meal in Illinois state forest in Danville. A morning spent touring Univ. of Illinois campus. Seeing the buildings where the web browser and web server where invented. Passing pleasantly through Peoria. An impromptu visit to Carl Sandburg's house in Galesburg in 100 degree heat. Finding Sandburg's current neighbors are not impressed by living next to his old house. Crossing the Mississippi. Finally visiting the University of Iowa campus. Taking refuge from the oppressive heat in the air conditioned buildings on a campus. Driving across Iowa without stopping. Rushing to get to Omaha in time for dinner. Finding the restaurant just in time for a beer and a meal with my friends.
Four nights in a motel in the incredible heat. Watching fireworks right above our heads while Huey Lewis played nearby. An awesome wedding. Seeing old friends and making new ones. Staring up at the Union Pacific Building on the 150th birthday of the old railroad (as it happens). Seeing the aforementioned Kelle again after a year and getting an awesome pep talk about life in the Cheesecake Factory next to the Westroads Mall.
Leaving Omaha and driving up the Missouri. Rediscovering my love of historic sites while following the Lewis and Clark signs. Buying water in a pathetic convenience store on an Indian reservation. Camping along Lake Lewis and Clark on the night before the Fourth and being invited to partake of beer and brats by my neighbors while watching the fireworks across the river.
Crossing up into South Dakota. Yankton. Vermillion. Sioux Falls. Incredible heat. The falls of Sioux Falls. Trying to find a campsite. Finding a cool air conditioned motel in Madison. Mitchell. The Corn Palace. Huron. Laura Ingalls' hometown. Brookings, where I tourned the SDSU campus and ate delicious ice cream at the campus dairy bar next to the dairy science building. A street fair in downtown Watertown where I bought a gyros and listened to a medley of pop songs. Sunset as I drove into the lakes region on the Coteau des Prairies. Lakes that looked like a sea coast. Beautiful rolling hills. The taste of water at Fort Sisseton State Park.
Crossing into Minnesota along the Laurentian divide. Following the Minnesota River from its headwaters downstream on backroads. Taking refuge from the heat in New Ulm watching the new Spiderman movie. Swimming by myself at sunset in the pool below the falls at Minneola State Park near Mankato. Visiting the Maud Hart Lovelace house in honor of my sister who is a huge Betsy-Tacy fan. Continuing down the Minnesota. Walking the entire Mall of America and spending only fifty one cents (on a souvenir smashed penny for my collection). Finding the mouth of the Minnesota and watching the sun on the sparkling water of the fast-flowing Mississippi.
Racing down the Mississippi at sunset to find a campsite. Lake Pepin (!). Across the Mississippi. Up the Chippewa River in Wisconsin. A night at Moose Lake in Chequamegon National Forest. Returning to the tiny town of Moose Junction after four decades. Pattison State Park. Being devoured by mosquitoes there. Into Duluth. Seeing Lake Superior again. Up Highway 61 along the north shore of the lake for the first time since 1972. The magic coming back. A night (again) at Gooseberry Falls State Park at a campsite shared with two lesbian college students. Grand Marais (!). Meeting an awesome group of canoers from the the Twin Cities who were traveling down the lake. Hiking up to the highest point in Minnesota in the Boundary Waters camping area. Grand Portage. Camping in the Indian Reservation. A three hour ferry ride. Isle Royale (!!!!!!!!!!). Incredible hiking. Incredible experience. Intense wilderness experience. Discovering the strengths and weaknesses of my current gear. Making some friends from Kentucky. Wishing I could stay longer.
Inland through the Superior National Forest. Ely by night. Stopped by the cops for not having headlights on. Finally finding a campground that evening along Lake Vermillion. Virginia in the morning. The Mesabi Range. Up to International Falls. The Canadian border. Down to Bemidji, where I had an awesome time (as previously mentioned).
Up to the Red River. Crossing at Grand Forks and being in North Dakota for the first time ever. Splurging for a motel. Hearing about theater massacre in the morning on my smartphone. Touring U of ND campus. Camping on island in the middle of Devil's Lake and watching Japanese guys trying to fish there. On Highway 2 westward, just like old times from 2004. Having an omelette at the geographical center of North America in Rugby. Arriving in Minot to find myself in the midst of the parade for the state fair. Buying a ticket and touring the livestock barns. Watching a horse shoe in the air conditioned pavilion.
An intense experience at the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park. Getting lost on buffalo trails in the badlands. Sliding down a mountain where I reached a dead end. Wading across the Little Missouri River twice with the aid of my trusty trekking poles. Impressing the park ranger with my adventure.
Crossing down into South Dakota on the high plains. Three nights in the Black Hills. Camping next to Mount Rushmore. Commuting into Rapid City to work with the wifi. Sneaking into Mount Rushmore the back way so that I was nearly even with the faces. Deadwood. Lead. Keystone. Custer. Hunting souvenir shops for gifts for my family. Getting crappy service at biker-themed restaurants and learning to avoid them.
Down across Nebraska. Finding the old auto shop in Chadron where Howard and I were once stranded in 1986. Finding the old motel in Crawford outside of which Cara and I tried to sleep in the car one cold night in 1982. Being pleased at how things have changed over the years in my own life. Scottsbluff. Kimball. Looking for the old Beef and Brunch in honor of James. Into Colorado. Splurging for a motel in Fort Morgan, my favorite town on the plains.
Into Denver and up to Westminster in time for my niece's birthday. Spending three nights hear relaxing before...?
Total: 23 states. Three months and three days. Broke my personal record of continuous days in travel that I've held since 1985. Thirty nights camping. Stayed with friends in Austin, Memphis, Silver Spring, and Brooklyn. All this while working from the road (at Starbucks and other coffee shops in Austin, Galveston, Lafayette, La., suburban Virginia, suburban Maryland, Baltimore, Atlantic City, Yonkers, N.Y., Toledo, Fort Wayne, Peoria, Omaha, Duluth, Bemidji, Grand Forks, N.D., Minot, Rapid City among other places) and having almost as much in the bank as when I left three months ago.
And now? Well it's not even over. Just a pause. The loop goes on.
Monday, July 30, 2012
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Dixie Swim Club@Paul Bunyan Playhouse
It had been ages since I'd actually seen any live theater---over six months by my reckoning. I was wondering when I might get around to actually seeing anything on the stage again, probably, I figured at some time during this big loop around the country I've been making.
As it turns out, it was here in this little town of Bemidji in northern Minnesota that I was finally motivated to buy a ticket. Last night I'd been here a couple days, resting after after a successful wilderness trip to the far North Woods, which itself followed the whole Maryland funtime, the New York/New Jersey adventure, the mad dash across the country in extreme heat, and the wedding in Omaha, etc.
Bemidji is a charming little college town beside this wonderful lake that sits near the headwaters of the Mississippi River, which trickles in and out of the lake at either end. The state park that has been my home for the last couple days sits astride the north end. It's the kind of place I could stay for weeks, especially given this nice little coffee shop from which I can work, and where I can plug in my electronic devices (big revelation: Caribou Coffee is as good as Starbucks as a work place).
After putting in a day's remote work, I went into downtown yesterday afternoon to finally do laundry after the wilderness trip. While my clothes were going through the cycles, I wandered around the small grid nearby and saw a classic movie theater (the Chief Theatre) that turned out to be a converted playhouse, home to the Paul Bunyan Playhouse, which bills itself as "one of the oldest stock theater companies in the upper Midwest."
When I see something like this, I usually make a dare to myself: if there is something showing that evening, I will go. Turns out that last night was opening night for their production of The Dixie Swim Club, about the ongoing reunion of a women's college swim team.
It was about four o'clock when I encountered the theater. The showing was an eight. That gave me plenty of time to finish my laundry, return to my campsite, build and campfire, and to cook and eat the filet mignon that I had just bought at the local Wal-Mart (the filet mignon cooked very well on the skillet).
I got back to downtown all showered and in clean clothes just before showtime and bought a ticket in the back row. The theater itself was rather quaint and antique with huge decorative statues of Chief Bemidji flanking the back of the auditorium.
The auditorium was about two-thirds full and production itself was well done and fairly well acted. I wasn't too impressed by the play itself, which seems a rather trite rehash of Sex and the City-esque female empowermentfest set in the North Carolina Outer Banks. Often during the production, I would do my trick of closing my eyes and imagine the script being typed out onto the page as I hear the dialog. The number of cliches was amazing. Not much to be impressed by. The whole message was basically: "you go girl! break free! you're never to old! do your own thing! celebrate yourself while you do it!" Yawn.
Nevertheless I was well pleased by the experience of attending. It was worth the twenty-two bucks, which is only three dollars less than the per-night cost of my camp site.
After the production I walked down in the dark to the edge of Lake Bemidji and watched the waves ripple in the night. It was a beautiful end to my restful stay here. I was more than reluctant to pack up my tent this morning (I was able to use my REI Kingdom 6 for the first time since Virginia---my portable hut, as I call it).
Bemidji feels like a little paradise. I could almost live here. But the road calls. I have only a few miles to go to reach the source of the Father of Waters. Then it's onward to the west, to pick up another state on my list of states visited (the 49th, as it happens).
As it turns out, it was here in this little town of Bemidji in northern Minnesota that I was finally motivated to buy a ticket. Last night I'd been here a couple days, resting after after a successful wilderness trip to the far North Woods, which itself followed the whole Maryland funtime, the New York/New Jersey adventure, the mad dash across the country in extreme heat, and the wedding in Omaha, etc.
Bemidji is a charming little college town beside this wonderful lake that sits near the headwaters of the Mississippi River, which trickles in and out of the lake at either end. The state park that has been my home for the last couple days sits astride the north end. It's the kind of place I could stay for weeks, especially given this nice little coffee shop from which I can work, and where I can plug in my electronic devices (big revelation: Caribou Coffee is as good as Starbucks as a work place).
After putting in a day's remote work, I went into downtown yesterday afternoon to finally do laundry after the wilderness trip. While my clothes were going through the cycles, I wandered around the small grid nearby and saw a classic movie theater (the Chief Theatre) that turned out to be a converted playhouse, home to the Paul Bunyan Playhouse, which bills itself as "one of the oldest stock theater companies in the upper Midwest."
When I see something like this, I usually make a dare to myself: if there is something showing that evening, I will go. Turns out that last night was opening night for their production of The Dixie Swim Club, about the ongoing reunion of a women's college swim team.
It was about four o'clock when I encountered the theater. The showing was an eight. That gave me plenty of time to finish my laundry, return to my campsite, build and campfire, and to cook and eat the filet mignon that I had just bought at the local Wal-Mart (the filet mignon cooked very well on the skillet).
I got back to downtown all showered and in clean clothes just before showtime and bought a ticket in the back row. The theater itself was rather quaint and antique with huge decorative statues of Chief Bemidji flanking the back of the auditorium.
The auditorium was about two-thirds full and production itself was well done and fairly well acted. I wasn't too impressed by the play itself, which seems a rather trite rehash of Sex and the City-esque female empowermentfest set in the North Carolina Outer Banks. Often during the production, I would do my trick of closing my eyes and imagine the script being typed out onto the page as I hear the dialog. The number of cliches was amazing. Not much to be impressed by. The whole message was basically: "you go girl! break free! you're never to old! do your own thing! celebrate yourself while you do it!" Yawn.
Nevertheless I was well pleased by the experience of attending. It was worth the twenty-two bucks, which is only three dollars less than the per-night cost of my camp site.
After the production I walked down in the dark to the edge of Lake Bemidji and watched the waves ripple in the night. It was a beautiful end to my restful stay here. I was more than reluctant to pack up my tent this morning (I was able to use my REI Kingdom 6 for the first time since Virginia---my portable hut, as I call it).
Bemidji feels like a little paradise. I could almost live here. But the road calls. I have only a few miles to go to reach the source of the Father of Waters. Then it's onward to the west, to pick up another state on my list of states visited (the 49th, as it happens).
Thursday, June 14, 2012
Against Bilderberg
The reason for this mad dash was that I was determined at all costs to get to get to Chantilly, Virginia---about thirty miles outside of Washington, D.C. in Fairfax Country---before noon. This was easily accomplished, given the hours I had put in the night before. As such I arrived in time to join the two hundred or so other people already gathered there at the entrance to the Westfield Marriot Hotel, yelling and heckling at the attendees of the 2012 Bilderberg Conference (article by Charlie Skelton, whom I saw repeteadly there).
What a time it was. Thursday was the day that most the attendees arrived. Mostly we stood around by the entrance and booed at the black limos with tinted glass as they turned off the main road and rain our gauntlet. It was also the day I got to see most of the celebrities of the freedom movement up close: Alex Jones, Webster Griffin Tarpley, Luke Rudkowski, Adam Kokesh, Stewart Rhodes and Mark Dice. I stayed until the late afternoon and then headed out to set up camp outside the town of Manassas.
The next day (Friday) was the first full day of the conferene. I knew there would lots of protest activity, but I had promised my boss some work hours, so I was holed up in a Starbucks for much of the middle of the day. By the time I got to the Marriot, a storm front and rolled in and was drenching the remaining folk there. Fortunately I had brought my rain coat and umbrella. There was a rumors of big activities in the evening, but by sundown it was clear the rain was going to keep most everyone away.
Saturday was by far the most awesome and incredible day, one of the most intense days of my entire life. The weather was perfect. By the time I got to the Marriot, there were well over five hundred people there. At this point, the attendees beyond the security fence were gathered in conference rooms in a building that was but a few feet beyond the fence. As such, the most intense protests were crowds gathered at this section of the fence, screaming in bullhorns. The word from the spies inside was that we were causing severe disturbance to the attendees. They didn't like us at all and were calling us "cockroaches."
At one point, around five o'clock in the evening on Saturday afternoon, I was perched down by the fence, standing on a concrete pylon, holding as high as possible the sign I had made with the materials I had purchased at a nearby Office Depot in Manassas. The crowd was all gathered around me and were chanting "Nazis!! Nazis!!" in unison across the fence. It was one of the most amazing highs in my life. At that moment, I felt I could feel something about the universe change, like the turning of the tide on a great field of battle. I knew we had won the day. Whatever was going inside, we had beaten them for now. We had shamed the press to cover us, including even the Washington Post.
On Sunday I got back to the hotel around noon. By this time, the attendees were trickling out. Most of the crowd were gathered by the side entrance heckling the limousines as they left. I think I got a good view of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands in her limo, but I don't know if she ever saw my other sign: "Bilderberg: Same Old Beatrix" with the 'x' in her name shaped like a swastiki.
I was actually one of the last five people there. I didn't want to leave. It was so incredible. And we won. The world feels different. Never again will they be able to meet in secret, as they done up until now. We have broken that part of their power.
I feel such an intense comradeship with the people that were there with me, especially the Oath Keepers who I got to hang out with, after they saw my sign. Definitely having a sign is cool. Gotta remember that.
Saturday, June 2, 2012
The Battle of Chantilly
The Washington Post said there were a couple dozen of us. Most people I heard were saying over a thousand. I was down in the thick at this point with my sign held high. More to follow.
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Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Return to Nashville
And now as I write this I'm in a suburb of Nashville, in a Starbucks next to the only REI in Tennessee, where I just bought a new tent. I really like my ultralight double rainbow, but I finally realized that while traveling by car, I might as well get a decent car tent. So I just splurged four hundred and fifty bucks on a REI Kingdom 6 tent. Plenty of room for the metal cot that I bought in Austin, and which I used on the beach when I was in Corpus Christi.
It's very uncanny to be back in Nashville. The last time I was here was in twenty four years ago during a cross country road trip with a friend of mine. We were in a car accident here and I barely escaped with my life.
I'm going to try to get out alive this time.
It's very uncanny to be back in Nashville. The last time I was here was in twenty four years ago during a cross country road trip with a friend of mine. We were in a car accident here and I barely escaped with my life.
I'm going to try to get out alive this time.
Six weeks into the trip
It has been almost six weeks since I left Fort Collins. I've always six weeks is about the time it really takes to get used to being in motion on the road. Maybe it's just hitting me now, how faraway my life before I left on the road now seems.
A month before that, I hadn't even known I was going to take this trip. But a letter arrived one afternoon with the unmistakable return address of the University of Texas. At first I just thought it was an alumni solicitation, but I noticed that below the address was typed the name of the chairman of the physics department, the same chairman as in 1989 when I first went to Austin.
It turned out to be an invitation to a banquet in honor of the recent retirees of the physics department, including my thesis advisor, Dr. William C. Schieve, whom I hadn't even known had retired. That's how out of touch I've been with that part of my life.
I immediately knew I had to go, so with a month's preparation I was back on the road, heading back to Texas for the first time since 2000, and to Austin for the first time since 1999.
I took three days to get down there, crossing the Colorado Eastern Plains just as I did in 1989, when I went down to Texas to flush out the residue of bad experiences in my final year in college in Oregon, and to start a brand new life. In so many ways, that restart was as successful as I could have hoped.
Ironically in recent years I've felt pulled back into the undergraduate experiences, and have felt as if I got stuck in the some of the same old emotions that needed clearning out. As I headed down towards the panhandle across the desolation of the plains, I wondered if I might evoke some of the same kind of renewal.
I went hiking in the Comanche National Grasslands on a hot afternoon, then cut across the tip of the Oklahoma panhandle. The minute I crossed the Texas border and saw the outline of the Lone Star State on the sign, I felt my soul lift and could feel the influence of so many bad emotions that gotten stuck in me begin to melt away, as if they immediately began to have diminishing influence on me. I'm not 24 years old anymore---that kind of abandoned unbounded optimistic renewal is just not something I can muster, I think. There is too much water under the bridge. But it felt as close to it as possible, for where I was at the time.
I stayed in the night in Amarillo and the next evening I was back in Austin. The next day I picked up my friend Arjendu, who shared my same advisor, and who is now a dean at Carleton College in Minnesota, with a ton of real responsibilities. Ironically he's a good friend of the current president of my undergraduate college in Oregon, who is a Carleton alumnus.
That night we went to the banquet at the alumni hall. Upon entering I was flooded with a barrage of memories of faces I'd somewhat forgotten, of the faculty members I used to see day in and day out.
On the front table at the reception were the name badges. I laughed when I saw them, because mine was all by itself in the corner, right next to Steven Weinberg. I told Arjendu it's not every day I see my name right next to Weinberg's. But the petty egotism of that moment was more than balanced by a wry poignancy at how little I've managed to accomplish.
My advisor did not know I was coming and it brought tears to his eyes when he saw me after so many years. It was a splendid occassion. All of us who were his students crowded around one table and we even got to stand up together as a testament to the fidelity of his former students.
I
A month before that, I hadn't even known I was going to take this trip. But a letter arrived one afternoon with the unmistakable return address of the University of Texas. At first I just thought it was an alumni solicitation, but I noticed that below the address was typed the name of the chairman of the physics department, the same chairman as in 1989 when I first went to Austin.
It turned out to be an invitation to a banquet in honor of the recent retirees of the physics department, including my thesis advisor, Dr. William C. Schieve, whom I hadn't even known had retired. That's how out of touch I've been with that part of my life.
I immediately knew I had to go, so with a month's preparation I was back on the road, heading back to Texas for the first time since 2000, and to Austin for the first time since 1999.
I took three days to get down there, crossing the Colorado Eastern Plains just as I did in 1989, when I went down to Texas to flush out the residue of bad experiences in my final year in college in Oregon, and to start a brand new life. In so many ways, that restart was as successful as I could have hoped.
Ironically in recent years I've felt pulled back into the undergraduate experiences, and have felt as if I got stuck in the some of the same old emotions that needed clearning out. As I headed down towards the panhandle across the desolation of the plains, I wondered if I might evoke some of the same kind of renewal.
I went hiking in the Comanche National Grasslands on a hot afternoon, then cut across the tip of the Oklahoma panhandle. The minute I crossed the Texas border and saw the outline of the Lone Star State on the sign, I felt my soul lift and could feel the influence of so many bad emotions that gotten stuck in me begin to melt away, as if they immediately began to have diminishing influence on me. I'm not 24 years old anymore---that kind of abandoned unbounded optimistic renewal is just not something I can muster, I think. There is too much water under the bridge. But it felt as close to it as possible, for where I was at the time.
I stayed in the night in Amarillo and the next evening I was back in Austin. The next day I picked up my friend Arjendu, who shared my same advisor, and who is now a dean at Carleton College in Minnesota, with a ton of real responsibilities. Ironically he's a good friend of the current president of my undergraduate college in Oregon, who is a Carleton alumnus.
That night we went to the banquet at the alumni hall. Upon entering I was flooded with a barrage of memories of faces I'd somewhat forgotten, of the faculty members I used to see day in and day out.
On the front table at the reception were the name badges. I laughed when I saw them, because mine was all by itself in the corner, right next to Steven Weinberg. I told Arjendu it's not every day I see my name right next to Weinberg's. But the petty egotism of that moment was more than balanced by a wry poignancy at how little I've managed to accomplish.
My advisor did not know I was coming and it brought tears to his eyes when he saw me after so many years. It was a splendid occassion. All of us who were his students crowded around one table and we even got to stand up together as a testament to the fidelity of his former students.
I
Goodbye Memphis
I finally left Memphis this morning. It was hard to say good-bye. I'd been there a little over two weeks, including one week all by myself at Greg's townhouse on Mud Island, in the delightful Harbortown development. I dogsitted Lou, walking him twice a day along the Mississippi and being in awe of the flow of the current every time I saw it.
It had been two and half years since I'd last been in Memphis and stayed him Greg and his two boys, of whom he shares custody with his wife. It's like a little male bachelor paradise when I there, and become one of the clan---like some kind of sit-com. But of course it's all coming to an end---or at least changing, at the end of June when Greg gets married to Caitlin, who currently lives in Omaha with her two teenage daughters. The women are all moving down to Memphis later this summer, and they will all live together. The Brady Bunch jokes have been flying around a lot. It will quite a change for them all. And alas, no more bachelor paradise.
Greg is about the most incredible host and friend I could possibly imagine having. I knew him in high school, but ironically he and I were not good friends until a couple years ago, when I had friended him on Facebook, along with half of my graduating class. When I was passing through Memphis in the fall of 2009, I contacted him, and he enthusiastically invited me. It was as if we were long-lost best friends. It was a nice balance to the loss of many old friends I've felt over the last few years.
This time, when I wasn't by myself dog-sitting while Greg was away on business, the four of us spent the time lounging watching television, going to trivia night at the nearby pizza place (we came in second place last night thanks partly to my knowledge of 1980's Country Music and the fact that Wyoming is the least populous state of the union).
I even got to get in some theater-going. Greg's older son Nate, who is in middle school at the Montessori school just across the street from their townhouse, was in a production of Shakespeare that was performed in the basement of St. Mary's (Episcopal) Cathedral (which has incredible stained glass, by the way). The production was performed by the middle schoolers and was called "Hamlet in their own words." It was essentially Hamlet but with the dialog transcribed into phrases and sentences by the kids themselves, interpreting it in modern language.
Ironically it was the second such highly adapted Hamlet performance I've seen in the past year, the other one being a spoofish repetoire of all of Shakespeare's plays performed in one night, in Forest Grove, Oregon.
Before the show in Memphis, I assumed it would be an abridged production of Hamlet, since it was done without scenery or costumes on a small stage. To my surprise, I induced from the first scene that there would little abridgement of the story.
In all fairness, the kids did a great job for this type of production. It was amazing on many levels, in fact, that they could pull it off. But in all fairness, it's hard to compete with the original poetic wording of the bard.
It had been two and half years since I'd last been in Memphis and stayed him Greg and his two boys, of whom he shares custody with his wife. It's like a little male bachelor paradise when I there, and become one of the clan---like some kind of sit-com. But of course it's all coming to an end---or at least changing, at the end of June when Greg gets married to Caitlin, who currently lives in Omaha with her two teenage daughters. The women are all moving down to Memphis later this summer, and they will all live together. The Brady Bunch jokes have been flying around a lot. It will quite a change for them all. And alas, no more bachelor paradise.
Greg is about the most incredible host and friend I could possibly imagine having. I knew him in high school, but ironically he and I were not good friends until a couple years ago, when I had friended him on Facebook, along with half of my graduating class. When I was passing through Memphis in the fall of 2009, I contacted him, and he enthusiastically invited me. It was as if we were long-lost best friends. It was a nice balance to the loss of many old friends I've felt over the last few years.
This time, when I wasn't by myself dog-sitting while Greg was away on business, the four of us spent the time lounging watching television, going to trivia night at the nearby pizza place (we came in second place last night thanks partly to my knowledge of 1980's Country Music and the fact that Wyoming is the least populous state of the union).
I even got to get in some theater-going. Greg's older son Nate, who is in middle school at the Montessori school just across the street from their townhouse, was in a production of Shakespeare that was performed in the basement of St. Mary's (Episcopal) Cathedral (which has incredible stained glass, by the way). The production was performed by the middle schoolers and was called "Hamlet in their own words." It was essentially Hamlet but with the dialog transcribed into phrases and sentences by the kids themselves, interpreting it in modern language.
Ironically it was the second such highly adapted Hamlet performance I've seen in the past year, the other one being a spoofish repetoire of all of Shakespeare's plays performed in one night, in Forest Grove, Oregon.
Before the show in Memphis, I assumed it would be an abridged production of Hamlet, since it was done without scenery or costumes on a small stage. To my surprise, I induced from the first scene that there would little abridgement of the story.
In all fairness, the kids did a great job for this type of production. It was amazing on many levels, in fact, that they could pull it off. But in all fairness, it's hard to compete with the original poetic wording of the bard.
Friday, May 25, 2012
St. Mary's Cathedral, Memphis
At Nate's graduation. I love stained glass.
Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.4
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Success in the dunes
Now let's see if she lasts the night in the wind off the Gulf---Mustang Island State Park.
Published with Blogger-droid v2.0.4
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
The Age of Somersaults
As I sit here, poised on another phase of life change, I like to think back on something that happened last week when I was down in Westminster visiting my sister's family.
In the late afternoon, I was in the park across the street playing with my twin nieces, who will turn seven this summer. They were running across the grass and I was watching them run. As they ran, they spontaneously bent down and turned several forward somersaults with all of their forward momentum. It was joyful and spontaneous.
It occurred to me that I could not remember the last time I had turned a somersault. How many years, decades, had it been? Could I even do one anymore.
I decided I had to try. So I walked out onto the lush grass and bent down to put my head on the ground, bracing with my hands. It was immediately clear to me that I would probably break my neck if I tried to do a somersault while standing in place, let alone while running.
It made me wonder at what age---what year, what day---did I lose the ability to do a somersault? Sometime in my life there must have been a "last day" for that, but it passed unnoticed. I wouldn't have cared at the time, no doubt. Only later does it occur to me how nice it is to be able to do somersaults. Of course I could probably train myself to be able to do them again. I'm still spry enough for that. But it is no longer something that I can just do.
After a few moments of sitting on the grass, and having my nieces laugh at me, I was successful at turning a backwards somersault. It turns out you don't have to worry about injury as much with those.
My sister really got a kick out of watching me. "Now how about a cartwheel?" she asked me.
"Only girls do cartwheels!" I replied.
In the late afternoon, I was in the park across the street playing with my twin nieces, who will turn seven this summer. They were running across the grass and I was watching them run. As they ran, they spontaneously bent down and turned several forward somersaults with all of their forward momentum. It was joyful and spontaneous.
It occurred to me that I could not remember the last time I had turned a somersault. How many years, decades, had it been? Could I even do one anymore.
I decided I had to try. So I walked out onto the lush grass and bent down to put my head on the ground, bracing with my hands. It was immediately clear to me that I would probably break my neck if I tried to do a somersault while standing in place, let alone while running.
It made me wonder at what age---what year, what day---did I lose the ability to do a somersault? Sometime in my life there must have been a "last day" for that, but it passed unnoticed. I wouldn't have cared at the time, no doubt. Only later does it occur to me how nice it is to be able to do somersaults. Of course I could probably train myself to be able to do them again. I'm still spry enough for that. But it is no longer something that I can just do.
After a few moments of sitting on the grass, and having my nieces laugh at me, I was successful at turning a backwards somersault. It turns out you don't have to worry about injury as much with those.
My sister really got a kick out of watching me. "Now how about a cartwheel?" she asked me.
"Only girls do cartwheels!" I replied.
Monday, March 26, 2012
Passing Through Perga
A couple weeks I got an email out of the blue from an administrator at Wikipedia, someone I didn't know. The email was a semi-automated communication informing that because of my longstanding absence from any participation in the project, my account would formally de-sysoped (i.e. removed from administrator privileges) within thirty days if there were no further edits made from my account.
Ironically I had assumed that I had long-since been stripped of my sysop privileges (which for the uninitiated include such privileges as banning users, locking pages, and rolling back changes by other uses). Other than a minor edit to my own user page, I hadn't made any real edits since 2006.
Reading the email brought a flood of memories. I had joined Wikipedia in January 2004 right after a rather traumatic personal episode had left me hollowed out and nearly unable to function. For the next six months living in New York, I went crazy with Wikipedia, spending nearly every waking minute editing and adding pages. I thought it was keeping me sane, although my wife (now ex-wife) thought I was going nuts. I probably was.
Back then Wikipedia was much smaller than it is now, so there were many fundamental topics that didn't have pages yet. When I noticed this, I went on a page-adding binge. When I last counted, I had started over a thousand new pages, many of them having to do with American rivers, a topic that became my specialty of sorts. I also researched and wrote a lot of articles on American history, including the history of the various territories, and how their borders changed. As part of the fun of it all, I organized my created articles into a cascading list, a tree of sorts, showing how each one linked to another.
Later that year when I left New York and drove across the country to Oregon, I traveled back roads and stopped at every river and in every little town to take a photograph with Nikon Coolpix 990. I later added these photos to Wikipedia in the appropriate article for that place. At one point I reckoned I was one of the most widely published photographers on the web.
Being an admin had come early. I had been nominated in the Spring of 2004 by a "Wiki-friend," a woman named Jennifer who lived in Los Angeles and who wrote for an online entertainment magazine, and who had just been on the game show Jeopardy. She was one of the most widely known and respected admins at the time. We had run across each other while editing articles on American history. Ironically it was the Golden Spike article about the completion of the transcontinental railroad. As a Stanford grad, she had been interested in the article because of Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific Railroad, whereas I had been editing the Union Pacific article (I can't tell you how ironic that would become in later years, but that's a whole different story).
Jennifer had particularly liked the way I organized my articles into a tree. She nicknamed it the "Decumanus tree" (after my user name) and made one for herself.
We eventually met up in Los Angeles a couple years later, although by that time she had gotten married, so nothing "came" of it (she was sort of wistful at that). Nevertheless we had a good time sharing martinis at Musso and Franks on Hollywood Boulevard.
All this seems like ancient history now. In the summer of 2006, for various other reasons, including general fatigue, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and just quit Wikipedia for good. I became one of those legendary admins who just disappears one day and is never heard from again. My user name went into some list of long-lost admins.
Almost instantly, as abruptly as it all had begun, I went from being a Wikipedia power user to simply being a regular user. I still used Wikipedia as anyone did, but only to read it, and never to edit it. It was like that whole phase of my life just stopped in an instant.
I never thought of going back. I knew it was over completely. But then I got that email a couple weeks ago, and it occurred to me that some part of me didn't want to relinguish my admin privileges. It was like a badge of honor, especially considering how longstanding they were, and how popular Wikipedia had become in the meantime.
So after having my forgotten password reset, I logged back into my old account for the first time in years. It was like coming back into a room in one's house that has been sealed off. It felt eerie to see the Wikipedia page with all my user details and options in the menu across the top again.
But I had no desire to go back to the kind of editing I used to do. Instead I figured I just become one of those obscure admins that contributes random minor fixes. My first edit was simply to fix a typo, and then one night a couple weeks ago, I actually made several edits to expand the plot description of a Star Trek episode as I watched on Channel 3 ("Errand of Mercy", to be exact).
It was tremendous fun, but it did not inspire me to want to edit more than occassionally. In any case, the notice about my pending de-sysoping was removed from user page, so I guess I'm safe for now.
Nevertheless I guess it will a small part of my life again for now. Back in 2004, I had used Wikipedia as a leverage to learn about American geography and history in preparation for what would be a series of road trips across America. Now I have other interests. Over the last year I've been reading through the entire Bible rather slowly, and doing my own Bible study of sorts.
This week I was reading through Acts and thinking about of the voyages of Paul, trying to map them out in my mind while reading the text. I had read about Paul and Barnabus visiting Perga and wondered where it was in modern-day Turkey, so I looked it up in a search engine and read the Wikipedia article about. I noticed that the article mentioned Paul's visit, but did not provide a proper citation to the passage in Acts. Back in my day, we didn't have citations in the pages, so I took the opportunity to learn how to make the minor edit to include the citation.
It made the knowledge of that passage more concrete in my mind. It occurred to me that maybe this will be my own form of Bible study, to add scriptural citations to Wikipedia page. Maybe I'll even go back to Turkey, as I did in 1985, when I stood on a pillar in Ephesus and recited Ozymandias from memory, to the delight of the Episcopal priest who had become my traveling companion for the day. I could so many more places to visit now!
I also enjoy thinking how after I make my small edits, there is some eagle-eyed admin or power user coming the ever-changing Recent Changes log on Wikipedia, scouting for vandalism, as many users do, in order to roll it back. I enjoy the idea that they see my user name and wonder "who is this?" and then go to my user page and realize that they stumbled upon an obscure long-long admin who came and went from the project years before they created their own account.
And of course I learn about things I wouldn't have known about it. When hitting the front page of Wikipedia, as one does while editing, I get to see the list of obscure news items that I wouldn't never have known about. For example, today I read that "Hungarian mathematician Endre Szemerédi wins the Abel Prize for his contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science." Now that's news I can use!
Ironically I had assumed that I had long-since been stripped of my sysop privileges (which for the uninitiated include such privileges as banning users, locking pages, and rolling back changes by other uses). Other than a minor edit to my own user page, I hadn't made any real edits since 2006.
Reading the email brought a flood of memories. I had joined Wikipedia in January 2004 right after a rather traumatic personal episode had left me hollowed out and nearly unable to function. For the next six months living in New York, I went crazy with Wikipedia, spending nearly every waking minute editing and adding pages. I thought it was keeping me sane, although my wife (now ex-wife) thought I was going nuts. I probably was.
Back then Wikipedia was much smaller than it is now, so there were many fundamental topics that didn't have pages yet. When I noticed this, I went on a page-adding binge. When I last counted, I had started over a thousand new pages, many of them having to do with American rivers, a topic that became my specialty of sorts. I also researched and wrote a lot of articles on American history, including the history of the various territories, and how their borders changed. As part of the fun of it all, I organized my created articles into a cascading list, a tree of sorts, showing how each one linked to another.
Later that year when I left New York and drove across the country to Oregon, I traveled back roads and stopped at every river and in every little town to take a photograph with Nikon Coolpix 990. I later added these photos to Wikipedia in the appropriate article for that place. At one point I reckoned I was one of the most widely published photographers on the web.
Being an admin had come early. I had been nominated in the Spring of 2004 by a "Wiki-friend," a woman named Jennifer who lived in Los Angeles and who wrote for an online entertainment magazine, and who had just been on the game show Jeopardy. She was one of the most widely known and respected admins at the time. We had run across each other while editing articles on American history. Ironically it was the Golden Spike article about the completion of the transcontinental railroad. As a Stanford grad, she had been interested in the article because of Leland Stanford of the Central Pacific Railroad, whereas I had been editing the Union Pacific article (I can't tell you how ironic that would become in later years, but that's a whole different story).
Jennifer had particularly liked the way I organized my articles into a tree. She nicknamed it the "Decumanus tree" (after my user name) and made one for herself.
We eventually met up in Los Angeles a couple years later, although by that time she had gotten married, so nothing "came" of it (she was sort of wistful at that). Nevertheless we had a good time sharing martinis at Musso and Franks on Hollywood Boulevard.
All this seems like ancient history now. In the summer of 2006, for various other reasons, including general fatigue, I decided I couldn't take it anymore and just quit Wikipedia for good. I became one of those legendary admins who just disappears one day and is never heard from again. My user name went into some list of long-lost admins.
Almost instantly, as abruptly as it all had begun, I went from being a Wikipedia power user to simply being a regular user. I still used Wikipedia as anyone did, but only to read it, and never to edit it. It was like that whole phase of my life just stopped in an instant.
I never thought of going back. I knew it was over completely. But then I got that email a couple weeks ago, and it occurred to me that some part of me didn't want to relinguish my admin privileges. It was like a badge of honor, especially considering how longstanding they were, and how popular Wikipedia had become in the meantime.
So after having my forgotten password reset, I logged back into my old account for the first time in years. It was like coming back into a room in one's house that has been sealed off. It felt eerie to see the Wikipedia page with all my user details and options in the menu across the top again.
But I had no desire to go back to the kind of editing I used to do. Instead I figured I just become one of those obscure admins that contributes random minor fixes. My first edit was simply to fix a typo, and then one night a couple weeks ago, I actually made several edits to expand the plot description of a Star Trek episode as I watched on Channel 3 ("Errand of Mercy", to be exact).
It was tremendous fun, but it did not inspire me to want to edit more than occassionally. In any case, the notice about my pending de-sysoping was removed from user page, so I guess I'm safe for now.
Nevertheless I guess it will a small part of my life again for now. Back in 2004, I had used Wikipedia as a leverage to learn about American geography and history in preparation for what would be a series of road trips across America. Now I have other interests. Over the last year I've been reading through the entire Bible rather slowly, and doing my own Bible study of sorts.
This week I was reading through Acts and thinking about of the voyages of Paul, trying to map them out in my mind while reading the text. I had read about Paul and Barnabus visiting Perga and wondered where it was in modern-day Turkey, so I looked it up in a search engine and read the Wikipedia article about. I noticed that the article mentioned Paul's visit, but did not provide a proper citation to the passage in Acts. Back in my day, we didn't have citations in the pages, so I took the opportunity to learn how to make the minor edit to include the citation.
It made the knowledge of that passage more concrete in my mind. It occurred to me that maybe this will be my own form of Bible study, to add scriptural citations to Wikipedia page. Maybe I'll even go back to Turkey, as I did in 1985, when I stood on a pillar in Ephesus and recited Ozymandias from memory, to the delight of the Episcopal priest who had become my traveling companion for the day. I could so many more places to visit now!
I also enjoy thinking how after I make my small edits, there is some eagle-eyed admin or power user coming the ever-changing Recent Changes log on Wikipedia, scouting for vandalism, as many users do, in order to roll it back. I enjoy the idea that they see my user name and wonder "who is this?" and then go to my user page and realize that they stumbled upon an obscure long-long admin who came and went from the project years before they created their own account.
And of course I learn about things I wouldn't have known about it. When hitting the front page of Wikipedia, as one does while editing, I get to see the list of obscure news items that I wouldn't never have known about. For example, today I read that "Hungarian mathematician Endre Szemerédi wins the Abel Prize for his contributions to discrete mathematics and theoretical computer science." Now that's news I can use!
Saturday, March 24, 2012
The Hunger Games
The days of the pre-apocalypse are upon it. I know it for sure now.
Like many people, for the past several years, I have been watching as things have been falling apart---civility, liberty, democracy, the rule of the law. Along the way I have felt a deep need to share my alarm with other people, as if to warn them, to spread an awareness, as if somehow the trend could be stopped or reversed.
But I know now that it cannot be reversed. I know that things must get must worse before they get better. There are dark times ahead for all of us. There is nothing that can be done to stop it now.
This profound sad awareness has been growing in me steeply over the last six months. But tonight I think it hit full force. I can't pretend anymore.
I hadn't even heard of The Hunger Games until two weeks ago. I had a vague consciousness of it from walking through Barnes and Noble. Then I started to see it mentioned everywhere on the Internet. I learned that it was a book series. It was a movie, I learned, about to premiere.
So about two weeks ago I sought out a plot synopsis of the series. Nothing prepared me for what I read. Sure, it was post-apocalypse, a brutal dystopia.
But nothing so brutal and bleak had ever been as popular as this, as popular as the Twilight or Harry Potter series, which seem so tame and innocent by comparison.
The parking lot of the Cinemark was packed full. The movie was showing in six auditoriums. There were lines outside the theater organized by showtime by the staff, the demand was so large. When I drove up, there were probably two hundred people waiting for the five o'clock show.
The auditorium was packed. I sat crammed in the third row between a teenage girl with her mother, and a group of three college women. Behind me was a row of high school students.
I won't belabor the movie. Go see it for yourself if you want to know. As a sci-fi movie, it was certainly very good. I have nothing against it as a production. It certainly as a good story. It kept me interested from the start to the end.
But none of that matters. What matters is that this is the most popular movie in the country, and will be the most popular movie of the year.
Afterwards I sat in my car in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes just staring off through the windshield.
At least I don't have to deal anymore with the manic feeling of having to tell people what I see. There is no point in it.
So this is 2012, I thought. This is where we are right now...
Like many people, for the past several years, I have been watching as things have been falling apart---civility, liberty, democracy, the rule of the law. Along the way I have felt a deep need to share my alarm with other people, as if to warn them, to spread an awareness, as if somehow the trend could be stopped or reversed.
But I know now that it cannot be reversed. I know that things must get must worse before they get better. There are dark times ahead for all of us. There is nothing that can be done to stop it now.
This profound sad awareness has been growing in me steeply over the last six months. But tonight I think it hit full force. I can't pretend anymore.
I hadn't even heard of The Hunger Games until two weeks ago. I had a vague consciousness of it from walking through Barnes and Noble. Then I started to see it mentioned everywhere on the Internet. I learned that it was a book series. It was a movie, I learned, about to premiere.
So about two weeks ago I sought out a plot synopsis of the series. Nothing prepared me for what I read. Sure, it was post-apocalypse, a brutal dystopia.
But nothing so brutal and bleak had ever been as popular as this, as popular as the Twilight or Harry Potter series, which seem so tame and innocent by comparison.
The parking lot of the Cinemark was packed full. The movie was showing in six auditoriums. There were lines outside the theater organized by showtime by the staff, the demand was so large. When I drove up, there were probably two hundred people waiting for the five o'clock show.
The auditorium was packed. I sat crammed in the third row between a teenage girl with her mother, and a group of three college women. Behind me was a row of high school students.
I won't belabor the movie. Go see it for yourself if you want to know. As a sci-fi movie, it was certainly very good. I have nothing against it as a production. It certainly as a good story. It kept me interested from the start to the end.
But none of that matters. What matters is that this is the most popular movie in the country, and will be the most popular movie of the year.
Afterwards I sat in my car in the parking lot for about fifteen minutes just staring off through the windshield.
At least I don't have to deal anymore with the manic feeling of having to tell people what I see. There is no point in it.
So this is 2012, I thought. This is where we are right now...
Thursday, March 22, 2012
The Walking Dead (AMC)
A couple months ago I had been saying that I was done following any new television shows. The last new show I tried to watch was Kings a couple years ago on ABC, and LOST had really left me feeling empty. I had picked up Mad Men for a while, but I hadn't seen any of the last season, which was a year and half ago.
But then last Sunday night I'm sitting in front of the television counting down the minutes on the screen until the season finale of The Walking Dead on AMC. I'd been discussing it on Facebook with a friend who watches it, and had been following the subreddit dedicated to the show like a groupie. So what happened?
It was purely a whim, I suppose. About a month ago, AMC announced a marathon of The Walking Dead, starting with the first episode of Season One. Having nothing better to do that weekend, I sat down and watched the whole run of the marathon in two segments over two days. Fortunately there wasn't that much to catch up on, since there had only been one and half seasons so far, and the AMC seasons are only thirteen episodes long.
But a zombie show? That was the surprising part to me. I really had no interest in seeing any more zombie stuff. During my run of seeing all the movies that came out, I truly got sick of zombies. They seem to have taken over our culture, and are everywhere.
Last Halloween it really hit me how far we've come. In mid-October I went downtown one evening and encountered the modern day phenomenon of "the zombie crawl," which is, I learned, an open-air spontaneous Halloween parade/walkabout where everyone is dressed as a zombie of some kind.
It caught me off guard and was quite horrifying. There were zombies of all kinds, including an Alice in Wonderland zombie with her throat cut walking with a Mad Hatter zombie also with his throat cut. There were political figure zombies. There were monster zombies. There were adult zombies. There were little children zombies. There were every people zombies. By far the most common type of zombie were the women dressed in wedding gowns, usually blood splattered.
"What the hell has happened to our country?" I thought, staggering away to drive home. Later I spoke to my friends Agnes and Thor about this. They were equally disturbed when I described the parade.
"Why would I want to volunteer to be an extra in Satan's Army of the Damned?" I said. That got a laugh out of them.
"All Halloween costumes have to be zombie costumes now," said Agnes. "My niece wanted to a cheerleader for Christmas," she explained. Then she said her sister suggested a "zombie cheerleader" costume.
"Why does everything have to be undead now?" Agnes complained.
Why indeed. Using the premise that Halloween costumes reflect the "shadow" nature of personalities and cultural sensibilities, then idea that we all must be walking dead figures now has an obvious cultural message, one that dovetails with nearly every observation I've made about America lately.
We are a Zombie Nation, we seem to be saying. And by zombie, we mean naturally the canonical zombie as introduced by George Romero in Night of the Living Dead in 1968. All zombies follow that pattern of cannibalistic, rotting corpse types who can kill people with their bite and turn them into zombies of the same kind.
So we are all braindead cannibals now, corpse-like representations of the human beings we once were? Yup, that sounds like America in 2012.
That being said, I've really enjoyed The Walking Dead more than I thought, perhaps because it acknowledges how far deep into the baroque phase of zombie culture we are. In many ways, it does not try to be original. It uses all sorts of zombie tropes and shorthand of recent zombie culture, including things borrowed from not only the Romero movies, but quite obviously from the British movie 28 Days Later and even from LOST, which was not about zombies, but had similar themes as a science fiction work. This makes it very accessible in a way, and allows it to skip to themes behind simple zombiedoom.
In fact the zombies often fade into the background of the post-apocalyptic world of the show. This indicates how normalized zombie culture is. We all know what it is by now, and we are all living it, to some degree, in shadow form.
Instead, as I wrote about in a friends Facebook post:
That's why the show is refreshing. This is especially true concerning the male characters, and many of the Internet discussions are about whether the male characters are sufficiently "men" considering the demands being made on them (LOST had this as well, to a high degree). These are discussions that one is simply not allowed to have about most male characters on television these days, who buy and large are depicted as irrelevant man-boys who are mostly obsessed with boobs and beer. Or they act manly but they work as enforcers for the Police State in some form. Even then there power is challenged and equalled by strong female characers and thus it is no longer considered to be "masculine" in nature.
The post-apocalypse scenario of The Walking Dead cuts right to the chase: men need to be men. They need to be strong and decisive. They need to protect the women and children. There is no arguing about this. The women can be strong too, but for them it is an option. If they want, they can choose to be feminine. For the men, it is not an option. It is mandatory. There is no dicussion. It is simply known and assumed by all the characers.
It's very caveman level in some ways. I think this is why the show is so popular.
In any case, I'm hooked. But shucks, now that I'm caught up, I have to wait six months or more for the next season, like all the rest of the poor suckers for follow the show.
In the meantime, there's a new season of Mad Men coming up. Hmmm....
But then last Sunday night I'm sitting in front of the television counting down the minutes on the screen until the season finale of The Walking Dead on AMC. I'd been discussing it on Facebook with a friend who watches it, and had been following the subreddit dedicated to the show like a groupie. So what happened?
It was purely a whim, I suppose. About a month ago, AMC announced a marathon of The Walking Dead, starting with the first episode of Season One. Having nothing better to do that weekend, I sat down and watched the whole run of the marathon in two segments over two days. Fortunately there wasn't that much to catch up on, since there had only been one and half seasons so far, and the AMC seasons are only thirteen episodes long.
But a zombie show? That was the surprising part to me. I really had no interest in seeing any more zombie stuff. During my run of seeing all the movies that came out, I truly got sick of zombies. They seem to have taken over our culture, and are everywhere.
Last Halloween it really hit me how far we've come. In mid-October I went downtown one evening and encountered the modern day phenomenon of "the zombie crawl," which is, I learned, an open-air spontaneous Halloween parade/walkabout where everyone is dressed as a zombie of some kind.
It caught me off guard and was quite horrifying. There were zombies of all kinds, including an Alice in Wonderland zombie with her throat cut walking with a Mad Hatter zombie also with his throat cut. There were political figure zombies. There were monster zombies. There were adult zombies. There were little children zombies. There were every people zombies. By far the most common type of zombie were the women dressed in wedding gowns, usually blood splattered.
"What the hell has happened to our country?" I thought, staggering away to drive home. Later I spoke to my friends Agnes and Thor about this. They were equally disturbed when I described the parade.
"Why would I want to volunteer to be an extra in Satan's Army of the Damned?" I said. That got a laugh out of them.
"All Halloween costumes have to be zombie costumes now," said Agnes. "My niece wanted to a cheerleader for Christmas," she explained. Then she said her sister suggested a "zombie cheerleader" costume.
"Why does everything have to be undead now?" Agnes complained.
Why indeed. Using the premise that Halloween costumes reflect the "shadow" nature of personalities and cultural sensibilities, then idea that we all must be walking dead figures now has an obvious cultural message, one that dovetails with nearly every observation I've made about America lately.
We are a Zombie Nation, we seem to be saying. And by zombie, we mean naturally the canonical zombie as introduced by George Romero in Night of the Living Dead in 1968. All zombies follow that pattern of cannibalistic, rotting corpse types who can kill people with their bite and turn them into zombies of the same kind.
So we are all braindead cannibals now, corpse-like representations of the human beings we once were? Yup, that sounds like America in 2012.
That being said, I've really enjoyed The Walking Dead more than I thought, perhaps because it acknowledges how far deep into the baroque phase of zombie culture we are. In many ways, it does not try to be original. It uses all sorts of zombie tropes and shorthand of recent zombie culture, including things borrowed from not only the Romero movies, but quite obviously from the British movie 28 Days Later and even from LOST, which was not about zombies, but had similar themes as a science fiction work. This makes it very accessible in a way, and allows it to skip to themes behind simple zombiedoom.
In fact the zombies often fade into the background of the post-apocalyptic world of the show. This indicates how normalized zombie culture is. We all know what it is by now, and we are all living it, to some degree, in shadow form.
Instead, as I wrote about in a friends Facebook post:
Yes, the show is really about manhood and womanhood. The main discussions on the Internet are about the characters living up to, or not living up, various demands on them as men and women in a very traditional sense.
I agree about the writing, Betty. It has dawned on me that the show isn't really about zombies, or a post-apocalypse society. From my view, a lot of the show seems an exploration of male-female roles and relationships outside of the evolved canons of contemporary post-feminist society. What does it really mean to be a man or a woman? The apocalypse scenario largely forces contemporary men and women into "traditional" roles and contemplates how they cope with that. In a sense, it truly is the same show as Mad Men, which has much of the same underlying theme, but uses the lens of the pre-feminist past instead of an apocalyptic future.
That's why the show is refreshing. This is especially true concerning the male characters, and many of the Internet discussions are about whether the male characters are sufficiently "men" considering the demands being made on them (LOST had this as well, to a high degree). These are discussions that one is simply not allowed to have about most male characters on television these days, who buy and large are depicted as irrelevant man-boys who are mostly obsessed with boobs and beer. Or they act manly but they work as enforcers for the Police State in some form. Even then there power is challenged and equalled by strong female characers and thus it is no longer considered to be "masculine" in nature.
The post-apocalypse scenario of The Walking Dead cuts right to the chase: men need to be men. They need to be strong and decisive. They need to protect the women and children. There is no arguing about this. The women can be strong too, but for them it is an option. If they want, they can choose to be feminine. For the men, it is not an option. It is mandatory. There is no dicussion. It is simply known and assumed by all the characers.
It's very caveman level in some ways. I think this is why the show is so popular.
In any case, I'm hooked. But shucks, now that I'm caught up, I have to wait six months or more for the next season, like all the rest of the poor suckers for follow the show.
In the meantime, there's a new season of Mad Men coming up. Hmmm....
Monday, March 12, 2012
The Last Cruise of the Enterprise
"We have the right---"
"To wage war on a planetary scale, captain? To slaughter millions of innocent lives?"
Sometimes a weird theme will take over my life in some coincidental way for a while. Lately it seems to revolve around the old television show Star Trek.
It started a couple weeks ago when, finding myself bored one evening, I was flipping through the television (something I don't do much anymore) and landed an old rerun of the original series of Star Trek, showing on Channel 3. I hadn't watched an episode of that old show in years, but all of a sudden it seemed like exactly what I wanted to see.
Partly it was the fact that it was showing on Channel 3, which is an old station that used to broadcast out of Sterling, a town far out on the Eastern plains of Colorado. Back in the old days, one could pick the Sterling channel with the right antenna orientation. These days, the channel now broadcasts from Denver (I guess) but it retains the format of an old-time independent tv station that just shows old reruns, game shows, and infomercials. It's sort of like what Channel 2 (KWGN) used to be like in Denver in the old days, for folks that remember that.
Thus watching Star Trek on Channel 3 has almost the same campy old-time t.v. feeling as watching it back in the late seventies. They even show the closing credits all the way through, like they used to for old reruns.
Almost immediately it became a staple of my evening routine. Shortly before eight, I could turn on the tv to Channel 3 and catch the last few minutes of a rerun of Magnum P.I. before Star Trek would come on. The opening few minutes of the teaser felt like sinking into a warm bath---a rational world of the crew of the USS Enterprise in outer space, as imagined in the years 1966-1967 (all the episodes I've seen so far have been from the first season).
I'm particularly enjoying the episodes that revolve around the idea of war and peace. For example, a couple days ago they showed "A Taste of Armageddon," which is one of my all-time favorite episodes (Season 1, Episode 24 link). In that episode, two planets are at war with each other, but it is a "fake war," with all of the action generated by computers in a virtual reality which calculates the casualties. The population of both planets must voluntarily submit to execution chambers in order to satisfy the death calculations. They believe it is more humane to do this, because there is no actual physical damage. When Kirk puts a stop to the process by destroying their computers and their execution chambers, the inhabitants of the planet realize to their horror that they are going to have confront the idea of staging an actual real war with other planet. Suddenly peace seems like it might be a good idea after all.
I've long meditated on this episode in relation to our current state of war in the U.S., which is so "clean" in that with the exception of those actually involved in th e military, we don't suffer any apparent damages our casualties. It is all happening elsewhere, to other people. This is why we can keep doing it year after year, without any apparent effects.
But there are always effects of war. I believe that we suffer from it collectively in some deep psychological way, despite our believe that we don't. Somehow the "casualties" will be taken, here at home, despite our belief that we are far removed and immune.
Tonight's episode was "Errand of Mercy," which is about an impeding war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire (Season 1 Episode 26 link). The two sides about are about to start a galactic-sized conflict over a small planet on the edge of the space territories, but they are stopped and forced to negotiate peace by a super race of ethereal thought beings, who have been masquerading as helpless primitive humanoids. The super beings disable all the weapons of both sides, leaving them no choice but to make peace. The quote on the top of this post is from the leader of the super beings, refuting Kirk's attempts to assert his right to wage war.
In a way, thus, it's the same concept as "Taste of Armageddon," but on a much bigger scale, with the humans now cast as the race in need of schooling in the ways of peace.
Both episodes, as well as so many other in the original series, reflect the "enlightened" American values of the late 1960's. We saw ourselves as a muscular, masculine culture, unafraid to fight when it was called for, but we sought peace whenever possible, and always strove to fight with honor and a code of fairness.
How much more complicated it would be now. How much darker we would be. So many of the values of the old Star Trek now seem like quaint relics of another era. Now we torture. We bend the rules. Codes of honor are for idiots. Peace is elusive and never really possible. Is it even desirable?
We make one war after another. Even as one war fails, we go on to the next one, as if this time "we'll surely get it right." Our failures only seem to make us want to feed our addiction.
You might say "it's a different world," but 1967 wasn't exactly the cleanest and most noble year of American history. In fact the reality of the Vietnam War was as messy and disgusting as anything happening right now in Central Asia. Yet nevertheless we could assert cultural values that expressed our desire for fairness, justice, and honor. We could strive for the higher ground of our souls. What is honor now? It seems to be nothing more than reflexive bravery in combat. How debased we are.
Like I said, I like when a theme of my life unfolds with a certain degree of coincidence. For example, I wasn't surprised when Nick, the guy whom I gave a ride up to Nederland a couple weeks ago, patted the the dashboard of my BMW sedan and reminisced about his old family car, saying they called it "Captain Kirk." It felt like a blessing somehow.
Just today I was reading how the real-life USS Enterprise (link), the first and oldest nuclear air craft carrier in the US fleet, first launched in 1961, just set sail on what will be its last ever cruise. Back in 1967, when my uncle Dick was serving aboard that ship as a radio operator while it operated off the coast of Vietnam sending bombing sorties. My father once said that his brother made a vow that if he were ever supposed to relay orders for deploying a nuclear weapon, that he would personally refuse and accept whatever consequences it meant. Thankfully he didn't have to do that. He was honorably discharged and went on to own a chain of recording studios in the upper Midwest.
Yesterday the Big E, as those in the Navy call it, left Norfolk on its way across the Atlantic to a mission in the Persian Gulf. It's part of the American fleet that is being assembled there in possible preparation for the coming war with Iran, the war that everyone in the media seems to think is inevitable. We keep hearing how it just has to happen. Some think it could be the start of World War III (or IV, depending on how you're counting). Or maybe it will all just blow over, like it has before, and we'll be talking about the same things a couple years from now.
It goes without saying that I hope that Enterprise comes back home safely, without having to fire a shot in anger. I wish I could say that I believe that this view is being shared by the powerful people who are moving these chess pieces around the world. I wish I could say that they believe in honor, fairness, and justice. I wish there were a little more of 1967 left alive in our culture.
But heck, I'd settle for a 1984.
Hielten sich für Captain Kirk...
"To wage war on a planetary scale, captain? To slaughter millions of innocent lives?"
Sometimes a weird theme will take over my life in some coincidental way for a while. Lately it seems to revolve around the old television show Star Trek.
It started a couple weeks ago when, finding myself bored one evening, I was flipping through the television (something I don't do much anymore) and landed an old rerun of the original series of Star Trek, showing on Channel 3. I hadn't watched an episode of that old show in years, but all of a sudden it seemed like exactly what I wanted to see.
Partly it was the fact that it was showing on Channel 3, which is an old station that used to broadcast out of Sterling, a town far out on the Eastern plains of Colorado. Back in the old days, one could pick the Sterling channel with the right antenna orientation. These days, the channel now broadcasts from Denver (I guess) but it retains the format of an old-time independent tv station that just shows old reruns, game shows, and infomercials. It's sort of like what Channel 2 (KWGN) used to be like in Denver in the old days, for folks that remember that.
Thus watching Star Trek on Channel 3 has almost the same campy old-time t.v. feeling as watching it back in the late seventies. They even show the closing credits all the way through, like they used to for old reruns.
Almost immediately it became a staple of my evening routine. Shortly before eight, I could turn on the tv to Channel 3 and catch the last few minutes of a rerun of Magnum P.I. before Star Trek would come on. The opening few minutes of the teaser felt like sinking into a warm bath---a rational world of the crew of the USS Enterprise in outer space, as imagined in the years 1966-1967 (all the episodes I've seen so far have been from the first season).
I'm particularly enjoying the episodes that revolve around the idea of war and peace. For example, a couple days ago they showed "A Taste of Armageddon," which is one of my all-time favorite episodes (Season 1, Episode 24 link). In that episode, two planets are at war with each other, but it is a "fake war," with all of the action generated by computers in a virtual reality which calculates the casualties. The population of both planets must voluntarily submit to execution chambers in order to satisfy the death calculations. They believe it is more humane to do this, because there is no actual physical damage. When Kirk puts a stop to the process by destroying their computers and their execution chambers, the inhabitants of the planet realize to their horror that they are going to have confront the idea of staging an actual real war with other planet. Suddenly peace seems like it might be a good idea after all.
I've long meditated on this episode in relation to our current state of war in the U.S., which is so "clean" in that with the exception of those actually involved in th e military, we don't suffer any apparent damages our casualties. It is all happening elsewhere, to other people. This is why we can keep doing it year after year, without any apparent effects.
But there are always effects of war. I believe that we suffer from it collectively in some deep psychological way, despite our believe that we don't. Somehow the "casualties" will be taken, here at home, despite our belief that we are far removed and immune.
Tonight's episode was "Errand of Mercy," which is about an impeding war between the Federation and the Klingon Empire (Season 1 Episode 26 link). The two sides about are about to start a galactic-sized conflict over a small planet on the edge of the space territories, but they are stopped and forced to negotiate peace by a super race of ethereal thought beings, who have been masquerading as helpless primitive humanoids. The super beings disable all the weapons of both sides, leaving them no choice but to make peace. The quote on the top of this post is from the leader of the super beings, refuting Kirk's attempts to assert his right to wage war.
In a way, thus, it's the same concept as "Taste of Armageddon," but on a much bigger scale, with the humans now cast as the race in need of schooling in the ways of peace.
Both episodes, as well as so many other in the original series, reflect the "enlightened" American values of the late 1960's. We saw ourselves as a muscular, masculine culture, unafraid to fight when it was called for, but we sought peace whenever possible, and always strove to fight with honor and a code of fairness.
How much more complicated it would be now. How much darker we would be. So many of the values of the old Star Trek now seem like quaint relics of another era. Now we torture. We bend the rules. Codes of honor are for idiots. Peace is elusive and never really possible. Is it even desirable?
We make one war after another. Even as one war fails, we go on to the next one, as if this time "we'll surely get it right." Our failures only seem to make us want to feed our addiction.
You might say "it's a different world," but 1967 wasn't exactly the cleanest and most noble year of American history. In fact the reality of the Vietnam War was as messy and disgusting as anything happening right now in Central Asia. Yet nevertheless we could assert cultural values that expressed our desire for fairness, justice, and honor. We could strive for the higher ground of our souls. What is honor now? It seems to be nothing more than reflexive bravery in combat. How debased we are.
Like I said, I like when a theme of my life unfolds with a certain degree of coincidence. For example, I wasn't surprised when Nick, the guy whom I gave a ride up to Nederland a couple weeks ago, patted the the dashboard of my BMW sedan and reminisced about his old family car, saying they called it "Captain Kirk." It felt like a blessing somehow.
Just today I was reading how the real-life USS Enterprise (link), the first and oldest nuclear air craft carrier in the US fleet, first launched in 1961, just set sail on what will be its last ever cruise. Back in 1967, when my uncle Dick was serving aboard that ship as a radio operator while it operated off the coast of Vietnam sending bombing sorties. My father once said that his brother made a vow that if he were ever supposed to relay orders for deploying a nuclear weapon, that he would personally refuse and accept whatever consequences it meant. Thankfully he didn't have to do that. He was honorably discharged and went on to own a chain of recording studios in the upper Midwest.
Yesterday the Big E, as those in the Navy call it, left Norfolk on its way across the Atlantic to a mission in the Persian Gulf. It's part of the American fleet that is being assembled there in possible preparation for the coming war with Iran, the war that everyone in the media seems to think is inevitable. We keep hearing how it just has to happen. Some think it could be the start of World War III (or IV, depending on how you're counting). Or maybe it will all just blow over, like it has before, and we'll be talking about the same things a couple years from now.
It goes without saying that I hope that Enterprise comes back home safely, without having to fire a shot in anger. I wish I could say that I believe that this view is being shared by the powerful people who are moving these chess pieces around the world. I wish I could say that they believe in honor, fairness, and justice. I wish there were a little more of 1967 left alive in our culture.
But heck, I'd settle for a 1984.
Hielten sich für Captain Kirk...
Thursday, March 8, 2012
The Truth about Orkans
Let me explain: last summer when I was living on the Hill I sometimes cut across campus on the way home from work and noticed that the Psych building was right next to the CU football stadium, Folsom Field.
It made me remember, in a humorous way, the old ABC television show Mork and Mindy (link), which is the only network sitcom ever to be set in Boulder, and which debuted right at the time that my family moved to Colorado in the late 1970s.
The premise of the show, as you may recall, is that an extraterrestrial alien being Mork (Robin Williams) travels from the planet Ork to Earth to study the habits of Earth people. Mindy (Pam Dawber) is a young woman in Boulder who finds him and takes him in. They live together in her apartment (I always remember the Jackson Browne album on the wall of Mindy's apartment in the show---that was the epitome of Bohemian living to me back then).
There's a scene I remembered in the opening credits of the show, in which Robin Williams is standing on the goal posts of Folsom Field. Pam Dawber is standing on the field in the end zone trying to coax him down. Here it is (I love Mork sitting in his rainbow down vest next to Boulder Falls in this clip!):
Last summer when I noticed Muenzinger Hall next to the football stadium, it suddenly hit me: Oh, Mork really wasn't an alien being at all. He was a crazy homeless person from Boulder who was in some observational experiment at Muenzinger Hall in the CU Psych Department. One day he escaped, went off his meds, and Mindy found him on the football field and took him home. Now it all makes sense! OK, I realize that probably doesn't fit with the plot of the show, or that particular episode, but I'm going to keep it as my pet theory.
In any case, just to continue my review of Slacker 2011 briefly, I certainly got a kick out of the fact that 9/11 "conspiracy theories" were mentioned quite copiously in the movie. This was appropriate in many ways, since discussion of the Kennedy assassination was part of the original Slacker in 1990.
The discussion about 9/11 was a bit satiricial in the context of the movie, but I didn't mind at all, or take it personally.
But just for balance, and in tribute to the psychologists of Boulder, I'm including the Youtube video at the top of this post, which I also greatly enjoyed, and which made me feel like I'm in good company with the other "crazies" walking the streets of this town.
Slacker 2011
Has it been thirteen years? I guess it has.
Looking for my next-thing-to-do in Boulder after last week's climate science lecture, I read a notice in the printed version of the Onion, of all things, for a showing the following Wednesday on the CU campus for Slacker 2011, which I immediately discerned must be an updated version of the famous film Slacker by Austin film producer Rick Linklater. Given that I had just been reminiscing about Austin, this seemed like the obvious next step.
Slacker (link) came out in the summer of 1990, at the end of my first year in graduate school in Austin. I remember the guerilla marketing for it all around West Campus and the Drag that spring. It soon became a local cult classic. One of the most notable actors in it was later in a film shot in my own house on Duval Street in the spring of 1992, produced by my roommate James Froeschle as part of his master's thesis at UT (imdb entry).
In the original Slacker, the rambling stream-of-consciousness style that dragged the viewer haphazardly from one conversation to another, following various people who crossed the screen, seemed to be the perfect style for Austin. Say what you want about it, somehow it captured the goofy spontaneity of Austin and its weird inhabitants right on the cusp of the 1990s. I was looking forward to seeing the "update," although I knew there would be a bit of poignancy in that it would remind me that I had not been back to Austin since the spring of 1999, and in most ways, it was no longer my place to call my own, or my home at all anymore.
I noticed the showing would be at the Meuzinger Auditorium on CU. That was just a little bit further up the hill from the Institute for Behavioral Sciences. Could there be anything more perfect for my next step?
I drove to Boulder a bit early and stopped for dinner at a Tibetan take-out place at the corner of Folsom and Arapahoe. What could be more Boulder than a Tibetan take-out place? It was the first time I'd been there. I'd driven by it repeatedly and thought of going. It seemed like the time to start new things. I asked the Tibetan-looking guy at the counter for a recommendation for Tibetan food, and he suggested a spicy beef dish. As I ate it, sitting at the window counter with my back turned, a young couple that had just moved to Boulder from Detroit chatted with the owner about Tibet and Tibetan food. The owner went into a history of Tibetan independence and non-independence. He said Tibetan food was a cross between Indian food and Chinese food, as one might expect. He discussed how he had come to America from India, where Tibetan exiles live these days. He talked about times long past in Boulder---the old days and how they differed from today. It took me a while to realize that he was talking about 1992.
I parked down by the high school and walked up the hill to campus on 17th Street. It's the nicest way to approach campus. Some of the buildings remind me so much of UT at times. I got to the auditorium a few minutes early and killed time staring up at the CU physics building across the street, a mini-high rise that also recalls the physics building in Austin.
The film was being shown as part of CU's international film series (link). The auditorium is in the psychology building, and was a nice place to see a movie for seven bucks. The girl at the table gave me a torn paper ticket from a roll. The auditorium was almost entirely empty. Only about a dozen people were in attendance. All were men in their forties and fifties. With exception of one pair, they all had come alone.
It took me until the end of the movie to realize that Slacker 2011 was not in fact made by Linklater himself. He had gone on to much bigger fame, of course. Rather this sequel is the collaborative product of the Austin Film Society, with different film makers contributing various scenes to the stream-of-consciousness tapestry. The style is true to the original---we follow a character for one scene, and then follow another character randomly into a completely different scene. There were a few distinct homage scenes, including a reprise of the most famous scene from the original where the late John Henry Faulk, an Austin legend, narrates his experiences on the day of the Whitman tower shooting in August 1966. In the updated version, the dialogue is exactly the same, but the roles are played in a humorous inversion by new actors that gives it a surreal flavor.
But most of the material was fresh in content. Right in the first scene, I was pleased to recognize streets I had once walked on years ago. In those same scenes I noticed how cell phones, which did not exist in 1990 in their current from, now played in important part in so many of the mini plots.
It was fun to reminisce and to see places of business that I recognized---old signs---and "have it all come back to me." But there were plenty of new things too, places I didn't recognize at all, but which I knew must have become new well-known hangouts. A new Les Amis!? I was prepared for this kind of zeitgeist shock. Like I said, I knew Austin wouldn't feel like home to me anymore. If I wanted it to be home, I'd have to go back and reclaim it all anew.
But there was more dislocation in my reaction than this personal element. In many of the scenes, I noticed that a strong current of something akin to nihilism, something which was not in the original at all. It made me realize why I don't actually want to live in Austin anymore. It was as if, on the one hand, nothing had really changed there, only that the dysfunctions of the trends of 1990 had been blown up and amplified over the years to the point where the character sketches were no longer whimsical and fun but downright sad.
The characters were mostly young people in their twenties---barely just babies when the original came out. I felt sorry for them. It was as if they were wandering around in anger and confusion looking for the Austin that existed long ago, the Austin they had heard so much about back in Brooklyn, etc., but which had been overrun and tapped out long ago, and now consists of a stream of new arrivals and refugees trying to find "Austin verification" from each other. Many of them expressed the dead-end nature of their lives, a frustration at the apparent meaningless of their existence. There was an undercurrent in many of the stories of a desire to escape their lives. Only a few characters seemed to have the goofy life force of the ones of 1990.
The interactions between the young men and the young women were highly indicative of this ennui among the youth. Repeatedly we saw aimless, weak young men attempting to curry favor with (and hit on) angry, recalcitrant, disdainful young women, who by and large scorned them and rebuffed them with jaundiced eye and flippant phrases. There were only a few strong male characters who seemed to be on anything that could be called a "path" in life (one character ironically expressed a desire to go to Detroit and start anew by urban homesteading amidst the ruins there). Such is the post-millennial generational update of what it means to be a "slacker." And I thought my generation had it bad trying to emulate the hippies of the 1960s!
A few of the characters expressed downright dark apocalyptic visions of life and America, including one by a flamboyant gay man riding a bicycle, who seemed to yearn and look forward to the destruction of our entire culture and way of life. Despite his prophecy, his clarity in expressing this made him one of the most dynamic characters in the movie, and seemed to prove the cultural maxim we have arrived at, that (straight) men, devoid of purpose in their lives, are reduced to sexual beasts enslaved by their craving need for women (who flee from them naturally), and the only path to freedom for a man is to be a homosexual.
In a way this gay character seemed to speak for all the other characters, as if giving voice to the unspoken things in their souls. I felt like I was watching an End Times parade of the damned, a cataloging of a soul-deprived way of life that is no longer sustainable, not because of our material consumptions, but rather because of our inability to connect with each other, and to find meaning in our lives.
It was quite an X-ray. It left me somewhat depressed, despite the humorous and worthy update of the "throwing the camera off Mt. Bonnell" scene that closes the original. Yet artistically it was certainly a success, and thus gave me hope underneath it all. Hope comes from recognition of issues, and there was certainly recognition in this movie, even though the only solution seemed to be darkly apocalyptic.
After the movie, I came back out in to the cold of the CU campus. There was a brilliant full moon in a clear sky above the physics building. As I walked back down towards 17th Street, I passed a parking lot where a young woman was talking on a cell phone. The first words I heard her say, loud and clear, were: "Staten Island...he's a big guy..."
Looking for my next-thing-to-do in Boulder after last week's climate science lecture, I read a notice in the printed version of the Onion, of all things, for a showing the following Wednesday on the CU campus for Slacker 2011, which I immediately discerned must be an updated version of the famous film Slacker by Austin film producer Rick Linklater. Given that I had just been reminiscing about Austin, this seemed like the obvious next step.
Slacker (link) came out in the summer of 1990, at the end of my first year in graduate school in Austin. I remember the guerilla marketing for it all around West Campus and the Drag that spring. It soon became a local cult classic. One of the most notable actors in it was later in a film shot in my own house on Duval Street in the spring of 1992, produced by my roommate James Froeschle as part of his master's thesis at UT (imdb entry).
In the original Slacker, the rambling stream-of-consciousness style that dragged the viewer haphazardly from one conversation to another, following various people who crossed the screen, seemed to be the perfect style for Austin. Say what you want about it, somehow it captured the goofy spontaneity of Austin and its weird inhabitants right on the cusp of the 1990s. I was looking forward to seeing the "update," although I knew there would be a bit of poignancy in that it would remind me that I had not been back to Austin since the spring of 1999, and in most ways, it was no longer my place to call my own, or my home at all anymore.
I noticed the showing would be at the Meuzinger Auditorium on CU. That was just a little bit further up the hill from the Institute for Behavioral Sciences. Could there be anything more perfect for my next step?
I drove to Boulder a bit early and stopped for dinner at a Tibetan take-out place at the corner of Folsom and Arapahoe. What could be more Boulder than a Tibetan take-out place? It was the first time I'd been there. I'd driven by it repeatedly and thought of going. It seemed like the time to start new things. I asked the Tibetan-looking guy at the counter for a recommendation for Tibetan food, and he suggested a spicy beef dish. As I ate it, sitting at the window counter with my back turned, a young couple that had just moved to Boulder from Detroit chatted with the owner about Tibet and Tibetan food. The owner went into a history of Tibetan independence and non-independence. He said Tibetan food was a cross between Indian food and Chinese food, as one might expect. He discussed how he had come to America from India, where Tibetan exiles live these days. He talked about times long past in Boulder---the old days and how they differed from today. It took me a while to realize that he was talking about 1992.
I parked down by the high school and walked up the hill to campus on 17th Street. It's the nicest way to approach campus. Some of the buildings remind me so much of UT at times. I got to the auditorium a few minutes early and killed time staring up at the CU physics building across the street, a mini-high rise that also recalls the physics building in Austin.
The film was being shown as part of CU's international film series (link). The auditorium is in the psychology building, and was a nice place to see a movie for seven bucks. The girl at the table gave me a torn paper ticket from a roll. The auditorium was almost entirely empty. Only about a dozen people were in attendance. All were men in their forties and fifties. With exception of one pair, they all had come alone.
It took me until the end of the movie to realize that Slacker 2011 was not in fact made by Linklater himself. He had gone on to much bigger fame, of course. Rather this sequel is the collaborative product of the Austin Film Society, with different film makers contributing various scenes to the stream-of-consciousness tapestry. The style is true to the original---we follow a character for one scene, and then follow another character randomly into a completely different scene. There were a few distinct homage scenes, including a reprise of the most famous scene from the original where the late John Henry Faulk, an Austin legend, narrates his experiences on the day of the Whitman tower shooting in August 1966. In the updated version, the dialogue is exactly the same, but the roles are played in a humorous inversion by new actors that gives it a surreal flavor.
But most of the material was fresh in content. Right in the first scene, I was pleased to recognize streets I had once walked on years ago. In those same scenes I noticed how cell phones, which did not exist in 1990 in their current from, now played in important part in so many of the mini plots.
It was fun to reminisce and to see places of business that I recognized---old signs---and "have it all come back to me." But there were plenty of new things too, places I didn't recognize at all, but which I knew must have become new well-known hangouts. A new Les Amis!? I was prepared for this kind of zeitgeist shock. Like I said, I knew Austin wouldn't feel like home to me anymore. If I wanted it to be home, I'd have to go back and reclaim it all anew.
But there was more dislocation in my reaction than this personal element. In many of the scenes, I noticed that a strong current of something akin to nihilism, something which was not in the original at all. It made me realize why I don't actually want to live in Austin anymore. It was as if, on the one hand, nothing had really changed there, only that the dysfunctions of the trends of 1990 had been blown up and amplified over the years to the point where the character sketches were no longer whimsical and fun but downright sad.
The characters were mostly young people in their twenties---barely just babies when the original came out. I felt sorry for them. It was as if they were wandering around in anger and confusion looking for the Austin that existed long ago, the Austin they had heard so much about back in Brooklyn, etc., but which had been overrun and tapped out long ago, and now consists of a stream of new arrivals and refugees trying to find "Austin verification" from each other. Many of them expressed the dead-end nature of their lives, a frustration at the apparent meaningless of their existence. There was an undercurrent in many of the stories of a desire to escape their lives. Only a few characters seemed to have the goofy life force of the ones of 1990.
The interactions between the young men and the young women were highly indicative of this ennui among the youth. Repeatedly we saw aimless, weak young men attempting to curry favor with (and hit on) angry, recalcitrant, disdainful young women, who by and large scorned them and rebuffed them with jaundiced eye and flippant phrases. There were only a few strong male characters who seemed to be on anything that could be called a "path" in life (one character ironically expressed a desire to go to Detroit and start anew by urban homesteading amidst the ruins there). Such is the post-millennial generational update of what it means to be a "slacker." And I thought my generation had it bad trying to emulate the hippies of the 1960s!
A few of the characters expressed downright dark apocalyptic visions of life and America, including one by a flamboyant gay man riding a bicycle, who seemed to yearn and look forward to the destruction of our entire culture and way of life. Despite his prophecy, his clarity in expressing this made him one of the most dynamic characters in the movie, and seemed to prove the cultural maxim we have arrived at, that (straight) men, devoid of purpose in their lives, are reduced to sexual beasts enslaved by their craving need for women (who flee from them naturally), and the only path to freedom for a man is to be a homosexual.
In a way this gay character seemed to speak for all the other characters, as if giving voice to the unspoken things in their souls. I felt like I was watching an End Times parade of the damned, a cataloging of a soul-deprived way of life that is no longer sustainable, not because of our material consumptions, but rather because of our inability to connect with each other, and to find meaning in our lives.
It was quite an X-ray. It left me somewhat depressed, despite the humorous and worthy update of the "throwing the camera off Mt. Bonnell" scene that closes the original. Yet artistically it was certainly a success, and thus gave me hope underneath it all. Hope comes from recognition of issues, and there was certainly recognition in this movie, even though the only solution seemed to be darkly apocalyptic.
After the movie, I came back out in to the cold of the CU campus. There was a brilliant full moon in a clear sky above the physics building. As I walked back down towards 17th Street, I passed a parking lot where a young woman was talking on a cell phone. The first words I heard her say, loud and clear, were: "Staten Island...he's a big guy..."
Monday, March 5, 2012
Nederland
It was such a fun time going to the lecture at CU that after dinner, I didn't feel like going home quite yet. When I got back to my car I wasn't quite sure where I might go, but after starting it up, I remembered that Nederland, a small town up the canyon of Boulder Creek, was having a festival that weekend, starting on Friday afternoon, and that it might be fun to check it out.
Normally I'm a sucker for smalltown festivals. Driving across the country, I love stumbling upon them by serendipity. If a parade is involved, then it gets an extra bonus.
In this case, however, I had mixed feelings. The name of Nederland's spring festival is "Frozen Dead Guy Days," so called in honor of a specific frozen dead guy (here's the background if you want to know). The logo shows a skeleton wearing a ski cap and holding a popsicle with a frozen corpse inside it.
It's not that I have anything particular against festivals of the dead, especially when they occur around Halloween time, but lately I've come to believe the skull image is way, way overused lately in our culture. A couple years ago, you couldn't go into the mall and buy anything from the casual men's clothing stores that didn't have a skull image on it. Nevertheless, I thought it might be worthwhile checking it out, if nothing else just to wonder around among the musical venues and, of course, see the parade on Saturday, which would no doubt feature lots of death/skull/corpse costumes. I wasn't sure if I wanted to see the "coffin races" that were soon to follow. It seemed like bad luck, all in all.
Since it was still Friday afternoon, I thought I might just skip ahead, and instead of going to the corpse parade, I go up to Nederland on the first night of the festival to see what was happening. All this went through my mind as I came up to the first stoplight on Arapahoe, and in a spontaneous decision, I put on my blinker, headed down to Canyon, then took a left heading up the creek into the canyon itself.
Right as I turned the corner, I saw a young man standing at a bus stop, no doubt waiting for the bus to Nederland. He was wearing a winter coat and a stocking cap, the kind that everyone wears for skiing and hiking, and which the skeleton is wearing in the Frozen Dead Guys Days logo. He was holding out his thumb, begging for a ride.
Without even thinking much, I decided to pull over and offer him a ride. He hopped into my passenger seat and introduced himself as Nick. He looked to be college age.
"Wow, what they said is true about Boulder," he said. "Hitchhiking is easy." Turns out he had just put out his thumb about thirty seconds earlier.
"Where you from?" I asked him.
"New Jersey," he said.
"Ah, the Great Megalopolis of the East," I replied.
He asked me why I was going up to Nederland. "Purely on a whim," I said.
He told me what he knew about Nederland. "They say that if you take Boulder, it's even more Boulder than Boulder is."
"I've heard that too," I said.
As we drove up Boulder Canyon in the last strains of daylight, he told me how much he loved my car.
"We used to have a BMW almost exactly like this when I was a kid," he told me. "Everything looks almost exactly the same."
I told him that it was a solid car, and even though I'd had to put a bunch of money into it last year to get it even in this good of a shape, I was hooked on BMWs and didn't ever want to own anything else, if I could help it.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," he said. "We used to call our car 'Captain Kirk' when I was a kid."
Somehow that made me feel better.
About halfway up the canyon, Nick let it spill that he was the grower and seller of a specific kind of herbal medicine product that is only partially legal in Colorado. He offered me some of his product as compensation for the ride, and being in a whimsical mood, I said yes.
"I've got to pull over though, for safety's sake," I told him. So I parked at a pull-out along the road beside an informative sign about a forest fire in the canyon many years ago. We shared some of his product, something I hadn't done in a while. As usual, whenever I'm in that state, I started running my mouth off about the history and geography of the area. He didn't seem to mind as I paced around. He said he enjoyed looking at my car, because it brought back so many memories.
After a couple minutes we got back in the car and started up the canyon. As I do when I'm in that state, I was super paranoid about driving and could hardly talk because my eyes were riveted on the road. Since I'd nearly lost my life the week before in the Poudre Canyon, all I could think about was how I didn't want to die now.
I told him that I had mixed feelings about going to the festival. "I'm not so into death imagery, I told him. I usually try to avoid anything with skulls." I told him what I knew about the background of the festival, and the real "frozen dead guy" that the festival was named after.
By the time we got to Nederland, the sun had gone down. I had driven the last half of the drive with a horrible cotton mouth, so much that I could barely talk at times. Also I was running low on gas---the reserve light had come on halfway up the canyon. So I pulled over at the gas station as soon as I got into town.
Nick hopped out and thanked me. We shook hands and he walked off to find his destination. I told him I'd remember his face and look for him around Boulder and Fort Collins, where he said he spends lots of time.
After filling up on gas and buying a bottle of Perrier water in the convenience store, I parked in the RTD parking lot and walked around town for a brief time in the dark.
It was thirteen degrees, according to the bank clock by the creek. I didn't want to drive back down the canyon yet, in the state I was in. But I didn't feel like going inside anywhere for very long either.
It turns out there was nothing go on, festival wise. The most interaction I had was buying some hot tea at a diner. With my mind finally calmed down, I thought I was in a state enough to drive again, so I headed back down the canyon. A half hour later I was back in Boulder where I had begun.
So even though I didn't really do anything, I guess I technically had a good time at Frozen Dead Guy Days by the fact that I avoided becoming one.
Normally I'm a sucker for smalltown festivals. Driving across the country, I love stumbling upon them by serendipity. If a parade is involved, then it gets an extra bonus.
In this case, however, I had mixed feelings. The name of Nederland's spring festival is "Frozen Dead Guy Days," so called in honor of a specific frozen dead guy (here's the background if you want to know). The logo shows a skeleton wearing a ski cap and holding a popsicle with a frozen corpse inside it.
It's not that I have anything particular against festivals of the dead, especially when they occur around Halloween time, but lately I've come to believe the skull image is way, way overused lately in our culture. A couple years ago, you couldn't go into the mall and buy anything from the casual men's clothing stores that didn't have a skull image on it. Nevertheless, I thought it might be worthwhile checking it out, if nothing else just to wonder around among the musical venues and, of course, see the parade on Saturday, which would no doubt feature lots of death/skull/corpse costumes. I wasn't sure if I wanted to see the "coffin races" that were soon to follow. It seemed like bad luck, all in all.
Since it was still Friday afternoon, I thought I might just skip ahead, and instead of going to the corpse parade, I go up to Nederland on the first night of the festival to see what was happening. All this went through my mind as I came up to the first stoplight on Arapahoe, and in a spontaneous decision, I put on my blinker, headed down to Canyon, then took a left heading up the creek into the canyon itself.
Right as I turned the corner, I saw a young man standing at a bus stop, no doubt waiting for the bus to Nederland. He was wearing a winter coat and a stocking cap, the kind that everyone wears for skiing and hiking, and which the skeleton is wearing in the Frozen Dead Guys Days logo. He was holding out his thumb, begging for a ride.
Without even thinking much, I decided to pull over and offer him a ride. He hopped into my passenger seat and introduced himself as Nick. He looked to be college age.
"Wow, what they said is true about Boulder," he said. "Hitchhiking is easy." Turns out he had just put out his thumb about thirty seconds earlier.
"Where you from?" I asked him.
"New Jersey," he said.
"Ah, the Great Megalopolis of the East," I replied.
He asked me why I was going up to Nederland. "Purely on a whim," I said.
He told me what he knew about Nederland. "They say that if you take Boulder, it's even more Boulder than Boulder is."
"I've heard that too," I said.
As we drove up Boulder Canyon in the last strains of daylight, he told me how much he loved my car.
"We used to have a BMW almost exactly like this when I was a kid," he told me. "Everything looks almost exactly the same."
I told him that it was a solid car, and even though I'd had to put a bunch of money into it last year to get it even in this good of a shape, I was hooked on BMWs and didn't ever want to own anything else, if I could help it.
"Yeah, I know what you mean," he said. "We used to call our car 'Captain Kirk' when I was a kid."
Somehow that made me feel better.
About halfway up the canyon, Nick let it spill that he was the grower and seller of a specific kind of herbal medicine product that is only partially legal in Colorado. He offered me some of his product as compensation for the ride, and being in a whimsical mood, I said yes.
"I've got to pull over though, for safety's sake," I told him. So I parked at a pull-out along the road beside an informative sign about a forest fire in the canyon many years ago. We shared some of his product, something I hadn't done in a while. As usual, whenever I'm in that state, I started running my mouth off about the history and geography of the area. He didn't seem to mind as I paced around. He said he enjoyed looking at my car, because it brought back so many memories.
After a couple minutes we got back in the car and started up the canyon. As I do when I'm in that state, I was super paranoid about driving and could hardly talk because my eyes were riveted on the road. Since I'd nearly lost my life the week before in the Poudre Canyon, all I could think about was how I didn't want to die now.
I told him that I had mixed feelings about going to the festival. "I'm not so into death imagery, I told him. I usually try to avoid anything with skulls." I told him what I knew about the background of the festival, and the real "frozen dead guy" that the festival was named after.
By the time we got to Nederland, the sun had gone down. I had driven the last half of the drive with a horrible cotton mouth, so much that I could barely talk at times. Also I was running low on gas---the reserve light had come on halfway up the canyon. So I pulled over at the gas station as soon as I got into town.
Nick hopped out and thanked me. We shook hands and he walked off to find his destination. I told him I'd remember his face and look for him around Boulder and Fort Collins, where he said he spends lots of time.
After filling up on gas and buying a bottle of Perrier water in the convenience store, I parked in the RTD parking lot and walked around town for a brief time in the dark.
It was thirteen degrees, according to the bank clock by the creek. I didn't want to drive back down the canyon yet, in the state I was in. But I didn't feel like going inside anywhere for very long either.
It turns out there was nothing go on, festival wise. The most interaction I had was buying some hot tea at a diner. With my mind finally calmed down, I thought I was in a state enough to drive again, so I headed back down the canyon. A half hour later I was back in Boulder where I had begun.
So even though I didn't really do anything, I guess I technically had a good time at Frozen Dead Guy Days by the fact that I avoided becoming one.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
The Science and the Politics of Disasters and Climate Change@CU
Attended: Mar. 2, 3:30 pm at the Institute for Behavioral Sciences, Boulder.
After my visit to the Boulder International Film Festival to see The Big Fix two weeks ago, I wondered what cosmic directions I would receive for my next steps in Boulder. It didn't take long to get my directions, because a couple days later I noticed a web posting for a lecture to be given on the CU campus by Roger Pielke, Jr. on the subject of climate change. It was a perfect transition. Having graduated from Boulder High, so to speak, I could right up to the hill, and continue in the theme of environmentalism as well.
Pielke is rather a famous name in the "climate debate," mostly because of Roger Pielke, Sr., a longtime professor of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State who is now at the CIRES climatology institute in Boulder, as is his son, Roger. Jr. The senior Pielke is one of the most famous "skeptics" of "global warming," and his credentials and career alone should be enough to put to shame anyone who derides as "deniers of science" those of us who refuse to swallow the ideologically-driven "consensus" that ones hear about so often in what passes for news.
The younger Pielke is known more as a "lukewarmer," that is, someone who accepts that man-made carbon emissions are driving climate change, but who is not fully on board with all of the conclusions about what actually will happen.
So I wasn't quite sure how much I'd enjoy the talk, but I thought it would be good to expose myself to the debate. I want to be open to all sides and gather as much information as possible.
The lecture was entitled "The Science and the Politics of Disasters and Climate Change," as was presented as part of the colloquia series of the Geography Department at CU (link). I looked up the location on the map. It turned out to be in the Institute for Behavioral Sciences, on Grandview Avenue, on the lower part of the hill of campus, just a on the other side of the Boulder High School athletic fields. How could it be a more perfect transition from my last Boulder outing?
I hadn't been in that part of campus in a long time, but found the building on Grandview quite easily. The room was quite full by the time I arrived, with over a hundred people in attendance. By the time of the start of the lecture, every seat was taken, and people were lining up alongside the walls.
When Dr. Pielke was introduced, I realized that in fact he is not in atmospheric sciences, but rather received his doctoral in political science, and studies the politics of science as his field of research. Nevertheless he seemed top notch in his work. I could tell by the way he spoke. I thought he was younger than me, until he talked about doing post-doc work at CSU in the early 1990s.
The talk was impeccable and persuasive. Dr. Pielke presented an extremely compelling case for his conclusion, namely the following: the apparent extreme weather events one hears about---be they tornadoes, hurricanes, floods---cannot be ascribed to climate change but rather to societal changes and development of cities.
I was delighted at how sound and persuasive he was. I'm sure it was not a conclusion that many in the audience wanted to hear. It basically put to the sword any attempt to use the recent spate of "bad weather" as proving anything about climate change.
He was especially hard on the IPCC, the United Nations organization that has been spewing the reports about manmade carbon causing the end the world, and driving the politics of climate change. He basically said that they have been lying outright and misrepresenting the science of disasters. He didn't say why they did this. But his detective work was amazing. I was in awe.
Towards the end of the lecture I began to understand his entire approach. Indeed, his is "lukewarmer" and "accepts climate change." As a non-climatologist, he can stand outside the debate. But by taking the stance he does, he can then be free to take the stance he does about the politics of the climate debate without being accused of "denying the science." Like I said, I was in awe.
Overall, it was a splendid way to spend a Friday afternoon. During the talk, it occurred to me that the last time I'd been at a colloquium of any kind was probably 1997 in Austin. It felt like coming back to life, with all kinds of dormant parts of my brain suddenly springing back into action.
There was a nice reception with wine and hors d'ouevres afterwards. I grabbed a salami slice with bread, and thought of sticking around to talk to the lecturer, but decided I could drop by and see him later in his office if I were inspired to do so. Instead I slipped out of the IBS building and walked down the path by the BHS athletic fields, where the girls soccer team was practicing in cold weather gear. I ate an early dinner at Mustard's Last Stand---a double hamburger with a black cherry natural soda, and perused the Colorado Daily for my possible next assignment. Boulder just keeps getting better and better.
After my visit to the Boulder International Film Festival to see The Big Fix two weeks ago, I wondered what cosmic directions I would receive for my next steps in Boulder. It didn't take long to get my directions, because a couple days later I noticed a web posting for a lecture to be given on the CU campus by Roger Pielke, Jr. on the subject of climate change. It was a perfect transition. Having graduated from Boulder High, so to speak, I could right up to the hill, and continue in the theme of environmentalism as well.
Pielke is rather a famous name in the "climate debate," mostly because of Roger Pielke, Sr., a longtime professor of atmospheric sciences at Colorado State who is now at the CIRES climatology institute in Boulder, as is his son, Roger. Jr. The senior Pielke is one of the most famous "skeptics" of "global warming," and his credentials and career alone should be enough to put to shame anyone who derides as "deniers of science" those of us who refuse to swallow the ideologically-driven "consensus" that ones hear about so often in what passes for news.
The younger Pielke is known more as a "lukewarmer," that is, someone who accepts that man-made carbon emissions are driving climate change, but who is not fully on board with all of the conclusions about what actually will happen.
So I wasn't quite sure how much I'd enjoy the talk, but I thought it would be good to expose myself to the debate. I want to be open to all sides and gather as much information as possible.
The lecture was entitled "The Science and the Politics of Disasters and Climate Change," as was presented as part of the colloquia series of the Geography Department at CU (link). I looked up the location on the map. It turned out to be in the Institute for Behavioral Sciences, on Grandview Avenue, on the lower part of the hill of campus, just a on the other side of the Boulder High School athletic fields. How could it be a more perfect transition from my last Boulder outing?
I hadn't been in that part of campus in a long time, but found the building on Grandview quite easily. The room was quite full by the time I arrived, with over a hundred people in attendance. By the time of the start of the lecture, every seat was taken, and people were lining up alongside the walls.
When Dr. Pielke was introduced, I realized that in fact he is not in atmospheric sciences, but rather received his doctoral in political science, and studies the politics of science as his field of research. Nevertheless he seemed top notch in his work. I could tell by the way he spoke. I thought he was younger than me, until he talked about doing post-doc work at CSU in the early 1990s.
The talk was impeccable and persuasive. Dr. Pielke presented an extremely compelling case for his conclusion, namely the following: the apparent extreme weather events one hears about---be they tornadoes, hurricanes, floods---cannot be ascribed to climate change but rather to societal changes and development of cities.
I was delighted at how sound and persuasive he was. I'm sure it was not a conclusion that many in the audience wanted to hear. It basically put to the sword any attempt to use the recent spate of "bad weather" as proving anything about climate change.
He was especially hard on the IPCC, the United Nations organization that has been spewing the reports about manmade carbon causing the end the world, and driving the politics of climate change. He basically said that they have been lying outright and misrepresenting the science of disasters. He didn't say why they did this. But his detective work was amazing. I was in awe.
Towards the end of the lecture I began to understand his entire approach. Indeed, his is "lukewarmer" and "accepts climate change." As a non-climatologist, he can stand outside the debate. But by taking the stance he does, he can then be free to take the stance he does about the politics of the climate debate without being accused of "denying the science." Like I said, I was in awe.
Overall, it was a splendid way to spend a Friday afternoon. During the talk, it occurred to me that the last time I'd been at a colloquium of any kind was probably 1997 in Austin. It felt like coming back to life, with all kinds of dormant parts of my brain suddenly springing back into action.
There was a nice reception with wine and hors d'ouevres afterwards. I grabbed a salami slice with bread, and thought of sticking around to talk to the lecturer, but decided I could drop by and see him later in his office if I were inspired to do so. Instead I slipped out of the IBS building and walked down the path by the BHS athletic fields, where the girls soccer team was practicing in cold weather gear. I ate an early dinner at Mustard's Last Stand---a double hamburger with a black cherry natural soda, and perused the Colorado Daily for my possible next assignment. Boulder just keeps getting better and better.
Friday, March 2, 2012
Ultralighter than me
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Montgomery Pass
Satuday, February 25, 2012---that will be a day I will remember for a long time to come, to be sure.
It began like an ordinary Saturday. I had chosen not to go on the /r/coloradohikers group meetup this week. The organizer had scheduled a second trip up Bear Mountain outside Boulder---by popular demand he said---and although the "bear" theme was of course tempting to follow, I didn't feel like climbing that particular mountain again this week. For one thing, it's quite a steep and long ascent. Although I don't mind strenuous efforts, I was clearly the drag on the group last time and didn't feel like being in that spot again this week.
So I wound up dawdling away the early morning and didn't get out into the sunshine until after ten. All I had was a general inclination that I wanted to go snowshoeing, and my further inclination was to go up the Poudre Canyon to the summit at Cameron Pass. It would be a long drive, probably almost two hours, but driving up the Poudre is almost always a serene and beautiful experience, so I didn't mind how long it would take. Also there would surely be enough snow up there for a good snowshoeing trip.
The destination I had in mind was the Michigan Ditch trail at the very summit of the path. It is nearly flat and goes in for several miles. It would be a nice easy trip in and out, without too much exertion. But the scenery would be beautiful.
The roads in the canyon were almost completely clear, with ice in only a few places. I reached the summit of the pass around noon, parking in the parking lot at the trailhead at the summit. There were only three other cars there. It was indeed beautiful and sunny, but the wind was blowing ferociously in gusts, sending snow in great waves like mini blizzards. I sat there for several minutes contemplating my choices.
While I was there, I had the inevitable flashback that I was always have, when I parked at the summit of Cameron Pass, back to January 1987, when I was driving back to college in Oregon in my red Volkswagen Rabbit, the first car I ever owned. I parked at the summit of the pass on that trip, almost in the same spot, before going westward. It was one of those incredible road trips of my youth, during which so much happened in such a short time, and helped define my college experience. Among the things that happened was that later that day, on that same highway much further west, I spun out in my car for the only time in my life. The car landed in the ditch in the middle of nowhere. I was rescued in only a matter of minutes by pure chance by a passing truck, which pulled me out of the ditch without a scratch on me or the car.
After reminiscing like that for while, I finally decided that the wind was blowing too hard for a decent trip on the Michigan Ditch trail. So I headed back down the pass in the direction I had come, about a half mile, to another trailhead, which was sheltered from the wind. The parking lot was packed with cars.
I took out my Trails Illustrated Map of Cameron Pass and looked at my options. I could take the relatively flat trail on the south side of the road---that's what most people were probably skiing on that day, or I could take a trail across the road that went up a very steep incline a few miles to the summit of Montgomery Pass at the south end of the Medicine Bow Mountains.
My inclination was to take the high road. It would be strenuous, but I could go at my own pace, and it would surely be an awesome view once I got to the top.
So I took my snowshoes across the highway to the trailhead and put them on at the edge of the snow. Then I began marching into the trees and up the hill. It was indeed a beautiful trail, with the sun trickingly through the trees. On the way up, I passed several cross-country skiiers on the way down. One of them, an older gentleman, spontaneously warned me: "It's pretty windy up at the top."
I set a nice slow pace and after about two hours I could tell I was reaching the top. The snow grew very deep and in a few places I began to wonder if my snowshoes would provide enough flotation, but I never sank more than about eight inches downward, even in the powderiest section.
Just when I was wondering if I would ever reach the summit, I saw the tricking edge of the trees and a large snowfield ahead, with a peak behind it. This was surely the summit.
When I came to the edge of the trees, all of a sudden I could understand the warning I'd been given about the wind. It was blowing hard and steadily, with gusts that felt like a gale force coming right down off the top of the pass along the snowfield.
As I rounded the trees and came out onto the snowfield, I thought I was going to be knocked down in my snowshoes. At that point, to reach the top of the pass, I had to walk on the crunchy snowfield upward on the incline, straight into the wind. It was impossible even to keep my face upward. I had to look down at my feet and just keep putting one foot in front of the other, occasionally stealing glances upward to see how far I had to go.
Finally I reached the summit, where a small wooden sign indicating the top of the pass rocked back in forth in the constant wind. To the west, over the top of the pass, was a view over North Park toward the Rawah Range in the distance. It was incredible, but I could not look at it for more than a few seconds at a time because of the wind. I knew I had to get at least one good shot with my camera. My fingers nearly froze in place when I took my gloves off and held my smartphone up into the wind just long enough to attempt to get a shot. I couldn't even tell if I had gotten anything on the display.
At that moment, while putting my gloves back on, I looked around and saw beside me the towering summits of the mountains flanking the saddle of the pass. They were rocky and barren, covered with snow. As the wind blew around me, I had a sudden enormous feeling of the presence of the Creator, and understanding (yet again) of how one can experience the Creator this way so directly in the most barren of places, as Abraham surely did, so long ago. I felt humbled and the same time so lifted up by the presence of God. It made the trek to the top of the pass so completely worth while. Overcome by the emotion of it all, I struggled and knelt in the snow in prayer and thanked God for letting me experience this.
I wanted to linger, and looked for a place to hide from the wind, but the snowdrifts were sculptured so perfectly to provide no wind break. So having received the filling of the Spirit, I headed back down the snow field, now with the wind at my back. I noticed that my snowshoe tracks were almost completely invisible already from the blown snow that had covered them over, like sand at the beach.
In about five minutes I was back into the trees. At that point, my fingers began to warm up almost immediately and I was comfortable and relaxed all the way back down the trail at the road. I noticed when I got to the parking lot that the wind there had picked up quite a bit, and the snow was blowing there with the same force as it had been at the parking lot at the top of Cameron Pass several hours earlier.
I figured it had been a very good trek for the day and looked forward to a good meal. I knew there was a little hamlet called Gould on the other side of Cameron Pass where there was a restaurant, so I drove back up to the summit on the road and down the other side, at one time having to navigate a snow slide that had blocked half of the road.
When I got to Gould, I saw that the restaurant was closed for the winter with snowdrifts in front of it. So I turned around and went back up over Cameron Pass yet again and head down the road back towards home and civilization, thinking I would stop and get a bit to eat at one of the restaurants along the canyon highway.
As I drove down from the pass, I noticed that the wind had picked up even more. It began to feel like driving in a blizzard. Then all at once the wind would cease and it would be a sunny day again.
I was thinking about the day and how nice it had been, when I began to approach the trailhead where I had parked to reach Montgomery Pass. When it was still visible just head, all at once I felt my car begin to slide on the road on a patch of ice. At the same moment that my car began to slide out of control, the wind threw an incredible blast of snow over the road and within a half second, my car was completely shrouded with a whirlwind of blown snow. I could see only a few feet out of the car in front of me. It was as if I were inside a snowglobe.
In the midst of this blindness, I could feel the car sliding to the left, and I knew I was now in the wrong lane, helplessly moving forward down the hill at a fast clip, directly into blind snow without any sense of what might be ahead of me. I knew in an instant that if any car were in the oncoming lane, then I would see it only in a flash of an instant before we hit head on.
I knew there was nothing I could do. I knew that my life could end in an instant, and yet I felt completely at peace about that. Instead all I could think about was how I might be about to ruin someone else's day/month/year/life by my own stupidity, and how ashamed I would be about that.
Then after a few seconds of hurtling in the blindness of the oncoming lane, I felt my car begin to rotate, and to slide further to left. Now I knew that I was spinning off the road. In some ways, it was a relief, because I knew that at least I would be moving out of the way of any oncoming traffic.
Of course the idea of sliding off the road was not much appealing at all, especially since I couldn't see at all where I was going. Yet again I felt no panic---just resignation and a sense of "well, I guess we're going see where this goes."
The car spun completely around, so I could tell I was now facing uphill and moving sideways off the road. Just when I thought I was going to go off the edge of some embankment and was already calculating in my head about having to get my car out of the snow, my vehicle came to a gentle halt, as softly as a lamb lying down, halted by the snow at the edge of the road.
Finally it was over. After another second, the wind suddenly ceased and the snow around me dropped down and everything was clear. I was essentially parked along the road, facing uphill. It was as if I had simply pulled over beside the road, ironically only a few dozen feet from where I had put on my snowshoes a couple hours earlier.
I turned the key and the car started right up. With a glance along the clear road, I pulled out and turned around, to head downward away from the top of the pass.
You would think I would have felt all shaken about it, but I didn't feel anything of the sort, only great peace, and thankfulness above all that I hadn't ruined anyone else's day.
Of course I drove extra slowly as I descended down towards to the Poudre. It took about another minute until a car passed me in the opposite direction---a large pickup truck. I laughed when I saw the license plate---the unmistakable initials of a friend of mine with whom I had been recently corresponding by email.
I drove onwards about a half hour before I reached the first open restaurant, at the Glen Haven resort. After I pulled over into the muddy parking lot beside the highway and walked up to the door I was welcomed by a standing bear carving. Inside there were little bears on every day holding the salt and pepper shakers. I used a bear-shaped honey container to sugar up the hot tea I ordered.
While I waited for my burger and fries to arrive, I took out my smartphone and opened my Bible application. Since there was no connection in the canyon, I knew I wouldn't be able to access the particular translation I had been reading, since I hadn't downloaded it to the phone. I figured the application would simply open to a blank menu of the Bible, but instead, when the screen came up, I found myself looking at a passage that had loaded from the King James version that I downloaded and which was on the card in my phone.
The passage that came up was one I had not read in weeks. It was as if a passage had been selected for me at random. It was Psalm 121, which begins...
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