jockeystreet

Feasting, Fasting, Fox

2012-01-22T12:04:00.002-05:00

I got on the laptop because I wanted to link to a nice piece by Sister Miriam McGillis called "Feasting and Fasting at the Table of Abraham."

I read it in the most recent NEA Bulletin. But I couldn't find it.

So instead I'll link to something altogether different, another post from the always-good Slacktivist.

It's called "Fox News: trust, distrust, and control."

Disappointed In Dinty Moore (Food Of Boddhisattvas)

2012-01-16T12:08:00.002-05:00

Not the food.

"Food," rather.

Not that.

How can one be disappointed in heavily processed, heavily preserved dead animals in a can? "Disappointed" implies expectations. I would never expect to hear or experience anything positive from Dinty Moore, the "food."

W.

Dinty W. Moore.

The author.

Last week, I read his 1997 book The Accidental Buddhist.

To be fair, The Accidental Buddhist isn't a terrible book. Not even really a bad book. At times, I enjoyed it. I even picked up a couple of nice little nuggets-- like the metaphor of there being nothing wrong with the ocean, but you shouldn't expect it to quench your thirst.

The Accidental Buddhist is about Dinty W. Moore's "project" in the mid-nineties, his quest to find the face and flavor or what-have-you of American Buddhism. It is a sometimes funny, generally well-written of his early experiments and dabblings in Buddhist thought and practice. Throughout the course of the book, he attends a retreat at a Zen Center in NY State, attends a series of lectures with a Tibetan teacher, spends a week at a Theravadan monastery, gets a chance to ask some questions of the Dalai Lama, attends a Buddhist festival or two, interviews the head of Tricycle magazine, meets some simple-living folks who pay the bills by making zafus (meditation cushions), reads some books, goes back to that Zen Center, and so on.

It's okay. It's not bad. But I didn't love it. I had some complaints.

I had some complaints, not all of them fair.

For instance, my Monkey Mind (if you will) kept saying "Dinty Moore, huh huh" in a terrible Beavis and Butthead knock-off voice. I mean, that's not fair. But Dinty Moore? Dinty Moore? Sorry. I just kept going back to that, flipping to the cover, looking at his picture, and thinking "this guy's name is Dinty Moore."

Which I suppose I might not have done, if the book had had maybe a little more... substance.

Maybe I'm not the intended reader. I get the feeling that maybe this was written for people in the mid-nineties who were saying to themselves "what's all this 'Boo-dism' I've been hearing about?" The book is sometimes interesting, but it's... shallow. It doesn't really get beneath the surface. Moore bounces from experience to experience, meditates, interviews, has insights, but he never really gets to any discussion of what it is that this is really all about. I mean, beyond the robes. Beyond the sitting still. You get the impression that the difference between the Zen guys and the Theravadan guys and the Tibetan guys is the color of the robes, and maybe that the Zen people are stern and quiet, the Theravadans are laid back, and the Tibetans like to do a lot of talking. Anything deeper than that just really isn't gotten into. At all. Which I find disappointing. Even if this was intended for people who had never heard a thing about Buddhism, it seems it could have gone just a little bit deeper, even while keeping it funny and light.

But okay, whatever, the book is what it is, and my wanting it to have been something else isn't really a criticism.

What really did annoy me, though-- what I found more than a little disappointing-- was his discussion of food. Of meat.

He could have just left that chapter out.

But no, he tackled the "what do Buddhists eat?" question, and he did it poorly.

He's not the only one who has disappointed me here. Other writers-- better writers, deeper writers-- have handled this poorly before him, since him. Always, I groan. Always, I think (especially if I'm really clicking with the rest of what they're saying) that they should have just left this out, they should have just stayed away from it.

The deal is, Dinty W. Moore likes to eat meat.

Buddhism has some pretty clear teachings on killing, on animals.

Not all Buddhists adhere to those teachings. But those teachings are there.

Sometimes, they choose not to adhere to the teachings, but they want to say "hey, I'm being a good Buddhist," and so they kind of twist the words, twist the teachings, decide to believe they say something else.

It's not just meat, either. The basic five precepts of the various traditions include "not to misuse sex" and "not to use intoxicants." I've read the porn-star Buddhist Nina Hartley explaining why making porn is not a misuse of sexuality (and is in fact Right Livelihood), and I've read a number of Buddhists explaining why getting drunk, smoking weed, eating LSD is not a violation of the prohibition on intoxicants. Takes some clever word play, and of course it always rings a little hollow, but they do it, they say, they seem to almost believe it.

I wish writers like Dinty W. Moore would get to the meat issue and say "I know that there's really no defense for this, I know that it is pretty much prohibited in Buddhist teachings, but I really like eating meat, and I'm not going to stop." That would at least be honest.

Instead, Dinty tells us that lots of Buddhists eat me (true), and that the whole vegetarian thing is just a "shallow" reading of the precept (which really bugs me, because it's not, and this book for the most part is). He explains that a deeper understanding of the precept to not take life would require us to look at the whole picture-- the life of plants, for instance, is also very important, just as important to a "deeper" understanding of Buddhism as the life of animals. And also, you know, clearing fields to grown broccoli kills lots of field mice and moles, which is worse than just killing one cow. Hence, the whole vegetarian thing is kind of hypocritical and silly. Plus, the Buddha ate meat (even died from eating bad pork, according to some traditions).

All of which, of course, is kind of silly.

The Buddha and his followers did sometimes eat meat. But it's a little more complicated than that. The Buddha and his monks were sort of the equivalent of today's freegans. They were wandering monks and teachers. They were homeless, and they stood with their begging bowls to receive whatever people were willing to give them. The teachings on not killing animals (and not asking others to kill for them) were pretty clear, but there were exceptions to the rule. One exception had to do with begging-- if you were begging, you didn't ask for meat, you didn't choose meat, the animal wasn't killed on your behalf. If that was the scrap you got, you ate it. If you ever had the choice to make, you chose something else. A far cry from today's American Buddhist stopping at the grocery store and picking up a steak when there are plenty of other options available.

And that whole "field mice" thing is nonsense. Nonsense that I've heard too many times before.

It's true, of course. Any kind of agriculture has the potential to kill animals. Growing corn and beans will certainly result (unintentionally) in the deaths of some animals.

But let's say my daily meals combined came at the cost of one mole. One mole to give me breakfast, lunch, and dinner (not going for an accurate number here, just making a point). One dead mole. Sad.

The vast majority of crops grown in this country go into animal feed. In the ballpark of 90-95% of soybeans and corn are grown simply to feed animals. On average, it takes seven times as much vegetable matter to produce a calorie of meat than if we were just eating plant calories straight.

So my meals equal a dead mole. But if I added meat to my diet, I'd have seven dead moles. Plus a dead pig at breakfast, a dead chicken at lunch, a dead cow at dinner. Not to mention the methane, the run-off into water supplies, the treatment of the animals raised (a harsher life and death than the inadvertantly killed mole, to be sure), and so on.

Which makes Dinty's point a cop-out. Bullshit, more or less. Nonsense.

Dinty W. Moore says that the precept really should lead us to be like the Native Americans, "appreciating" the life that has been given for us, enjoying it, respecting it, etc. It should lead to some sort of inner understanding, not to any sort of action.

Bullshit. Weak.

Just say "I like hamburgers, and I don't care." Just go ahead and say that. It's more respectable.

Anyway, reading Moore's book sort of irked me. It wasn't bad, exactly. There were high points. But it wasn't what I hoped, and that whole veggie chapter just bugged me.

Bugged me enough to immediately pick up Shadkar's Food of Boddhisattvas when I put The Accidental Buddhist down.

Food of Boddhisattvas was written by an 18th/19th century Tibetan Buddhist teacher and monk. I'm not much into the Tibetan tradition, and there was a lot here that didn't click with me at all (they're way into all the Hell realms and whatnot, very very different from other traditions), but I give this guy credit for being a crazy, hardcore animal rights guy, for having some pretty heated things to say on the issue. And this was a guy living in the mountains of Tibet, where crops didn't grow, where being vegetarian meant eating nothing but butter, sweet potatoes and clumps of dough for years and years and years.

Rock And Roll Killing Machine (Waiting For The Mail To Come)

2012-01-06T17:36:00.002-05:00

I pulled into the driveway the other night, and there it was.

Behind the snow-covered landscaping, leaning against the garage.

I turned off the headlights, unbuckled my seat belt, a little gasp escaping me, hands flexing and stretching in nervous anticipation.

The package.

The package had arrived.

I calmly brought the garbage can and recycling bins back to the house from the side of the road, checked the mail box for bills and the like, shouldered my work bags, then snatched up that big brown box, ran into the house, up to the coffee table, and tore into it.

Oh, these little bits and pieces of heaven!

Drowningman. Ignite. Himsa. Blood For Blood. Bright Eyes split with Neva Devina. Battery. Terror. The Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower. Gracer. End of a Year.

Some of the cases were cracked (not just cracked, really, but obliterated), and that was disappointing. But it only took a few minutes in the basement to do some surgery, to replace them, to find some blanks with good cases and make the switch.

And then it was just a matter of going through that stack, one beautiful anthem at a time.

Oh, how I do love mail order music.

The whole big bundle came from Revelation Records.

Revelation, for those who don't know, was a powerhouse of awesome, world-class hardcore in the late eighties and early nineties. I mean the really, really good stuff. If a band was great, there was a good chance they put out at least a record or two with Revelation. Legendary bands like Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Sick of It All, Inside Out, Judge, Bold, Quicksand. Even Rage Against the Machine did a vinyl release. And Vision of Disorder. There were releases from Sensefield and Shelter and Better Than A Thousand and Burn and Orange 9mm.

The label isn't quite what it once was-- hell, hardcore isn't quite what it once was-- but it's still a good label. And their distro arm is still fantastic.

Sitting there at the coffee table, going through the pile, finding the little freebies (a cd from This Time Next Year, which I discovered that I don't like at all, and a bunch of stickers), I couldn't help but be nostalgic.

As wonderful as it was to paw through those great discs, the memories of mail order past were even stronger.

When I was younger. When enthusiasm-- for just about anything-- was boiling over.

When there was no internet. When payment was made with a check. When the order was made on a paper form. When bands were discovered by poring over catalogs with a couple of buddies, or sitting in my apartment alone with a glossy distro book, listening to music, trying to figure out how far I could make that twenty dollars stretch.

Because it was hardcore, because it was punk, that twenty dollars could usually go a long way.

And then waiting. And waiting. Wondering when the package might arrive. There was no email to notify you of shipment. There was no instant gratification. No advance copy of your receipt. No notice that something was out of stock. If something was out of stock, you hoped that you got some of your money back-- just as likely, you'd get a promise ("hey, that's out of print, but next time we run some new copies, we'll mail one to you," then a month later the company goes under-- Striving For Togetherness owes me $4! So does New Eden!). Or you'd get something else entirely ("hey man, all out of that, but check these guys out, you'll love 'em.") And that was okay. That was totally fine.

And, always, the freebies. The stickers. The updated catalog. Once, a hat. Usually (especially from Revelation) a few extra cds, things that were lying around (that's how I discovered the band Sevens; I love that disc-- they sing the best song you've ever heard about Vitamin D).

And the letters. The notes.

Because most of these distro places and little labels were run by young punk and hardcore people, just getting by, in it for something other than money. I remember being thrilled that "Amy" at Dischord Records (home of the legendary bands Fugazi, Minor Threat, Embrace, etc) wrote a quick little note every time she put stuff in the mail to me. That the guy who ran Immigrant Sun told me, after my first order, that in the future he'd appreciate hearing a little bit about where I was from and what I was into, then proceeded to take a few pages to tell me about his own life, how the label was started, where he lived.

Victory Records (best hardcore label of the late nineties, with Earth Crisis, Strife, Snapcase, and others, now a bit of a cheese factory with lots of glossy emo pop). Immigrant Sun (Homesick for Space, Joshua, Elad Love Affair, Cable Car Theory; now out of business, or at least no longer anywhere on the web or my local record store). Revelation Records. Trustkill (gone now, though the owner has a new label). Very Distribution (the absolute best distro, fantastic in the days before you could click a button to get whatever you wanted; sadly no longer out there).

I sort of wish I'd saved those catalogs. Those quirky books with pictures of album covers, long lists of bands, and something to set them apart from the others (I remember one distro had two categories that everything in their collection fell into: Q= "sounds like Quicksand," S= "sounds like Slayer") (and Victory Records used to sell hot sauce!) (and Striving For Togetherness featured a vegetarian recipe). I'd love to curl up now, flip through them, daydream.

While listening to Battery.

While listening to Blood For Blood.

Ron Paul

2012-01-05T21:45:00.002-05:00

Maybe it's easy to make freedom an issue of "property rights" when you have never been the property.

That's my favorite line from this column by Leonard Pitts, Jr.

Here's more:

Paul has long argued... that the act, which liberated untold millions of African-Americans from the tyranny of Jim Crow, "destroyed the principle of private property and private choices."

But the column's not really about racism. Ron Paul enjoys the support of white supremacist groups, but that's not his fault. And his claims that he didn't know what was being said for decades in the newsletters he founded and that bore his name ring a little hollow...

But the column's really not about racism. It's about some of the many other things that are wrong with Ron Paul.

59 Brief Reviews (The Books of 2011)

2012-01-02T15:45:00.002-05:00

The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon, by John Joseph. By far the best book I read all year. There are a few books I've read that I can honestly say were in some way "life changing." (Karen Armstrong's The Case for God comes to mind, as does Daniel Quinn's My Ishmael, a small handful of others). This one goes on that list. Written by John "Bloodclot" Joseph, the singer of the 80s hardcore band Cro-Mags. It's a beautifully written memoir, full of pain and ugliness and horror, but deeply inspiring. The son of an abusive father and a drug addicted mother, in abusive (physically, psychologically, sexually) foster homes as a child, living on the streets of NYC by the age of 14, in and out of jail, in and endless string of fights, homeless for years and years, often addicted to drugs, occasionally living in Hare Krishna monasteries... the guy had a pretty wild, rough life, but managed to pull it together. Now he's a 47 year old nutritionist, triathlon running vegan, straight edge, feeding the homeless in the park, writing books and screenplays, occasionally doing shows with old bands. The book made me want to get my own life in order-- I mean, the obstacles I face are nothing compared to what you read here, so what's the excuse? This book got me running, lifting weights, and pushed me to join Big Brothers Big Sisters. Excellent read.
Meat is for Pussies, also by John Joseph. His second book. Nothing like the first. If you've heard of the wildly popular book Skinny Bitch, this is sort of Skinny Bitch for guys. Mean guys, maybe. It's a health and fitness book with some vegan recipes, some brutal attacks on the food industry, additives, bullshit diet fads, etc.
Skinny Bitch, by Rory Freedman and Kim Barnouin. So, speaking of Skinny Bitch; yeah, this was written for a female audience, but whatever. I read it, and man, it's a very good book. I've met people who went vegan because of this book, and after reading it myself, I can see why. It's an argument for veganism from a health (and sexiness) perspective, not a lot of the ethical stuff thrown in (though it's in there too). Basically, if you want to be healthy and sexy, stop eating dead animals, drinking from a cows tit, and forcing sugar, caffeine, alcohol, aspertame, and other toxins into your body. Very good stuff.
Jesus Wants to Save Christians, by Rob Bell. I started 2011 not knowing who Rob Bell was, ended it having read four of his books, watched a handful of his NOOMA videos, and seeing him speak in Ithaca. This book, a gift from my Uncle Bill (a Methodist pastor and a big Rob Bell fan) was the first. Wonderful stuff. I could go on and on and on about it, and have in other places. This book presents the Christianity that should be, sadly not quite the message that too many preachers, pundits, politicians, and churches push. Absolutely loved this book.
Love Wins, by Rob Bell. The book that got underwear twisted up in knots in churches all across America. In Love Wins, Bell takes the outrageous position that God might not be an asshole. Evangelical conservatives all across the country (many of them deeply committed assholes themselves) were furious. Give it a read. It's not what people like to say it is.
Sex God, by Rob Bell. Another good one. Not my favorite, but good. And though not my favorite, maybe the one whose message stayed at the front of my mind for the longest, the one that had the most tangible impact on my thinking. It's about sex. And God.
Velvet Elvis, by Rob Bell. Picked this one up at the State Theater in Ithaca after seeing Bell talk. He was there to sign books, but I've never been one to ask for signatures. Makes me feel a little corny and needy. So I read it unsigned. His first book. Quite good.
Little Bee, by Chris Cleave. Another author I'd never heard of before this year, and now I'm dying to read more, wishing he would write faster. My wife got this out of the library and made me read it when she was done. I'm glad she did. It's brutal, tragic, painful, but beautifully done. Told through the eyes of two women (Cleave writes brilliantly from a woman's perspective) whose lives intersect tragically and violently. Makes you angry when you're done, makes you want to shake your fist and maybe even change the world.
Incendiary, by Chris Cleave. His first book. Told as a woman writing a letter to Osama bin Laden. Her husband and their 4 year old son were killed in a London terrorist attack orchestrated by bin Laden, and her long, rambling, often crazed letter tells a painful story, not just about terror and violence, but about the pain of life, of poverty, of loneliness, misused sexuality, and so on. Brutal book, absolutely wonderfully done.
The All New Square Foot Gardening, by Mel Bartholomew. A straight forward how-to sort of book. Followed the directions, planted my gardens, and a damn squirrel ate my corn.
The Runner's Handbook, by Bob Glover, etc. A book about running. I don't know that a book about running needs to clock in at 700+ pages. There were times that it was a little rough. I mean, that's close to War and Peace length, and it's about... running. But, then, it's quite thorough. It's hard to think of a question about running that isn't addressed in this bear of a book. I read it before I started my running routine, and I'm glad I did.
Bossypants, by Tina Fey. Funny stuff. A memoir of sorts. Made me laugh. Out loud. Often.
Eating Animals, by Jonathon Safran Foer. Another beautifully written book, by the author of Everything Is Illuminated. A very different approach to the topic-- Foer doesn't come across as preachy or narrow-minded, doesn't even seem to have his mind solidly made up as he approaches the topic. It's more a series of questions, a slow unfolding of answers. The only veg book I can think of that spends a lot of time talking about a Jewish grandmother surviving in the forests, eating what she could as she fought to escape the Nazis. The writing is just unbelievable, poetic. I strongly recommend this to anyone even remotely interested in the topic. It's just... kind. It is a kind, loving, moral book.
Cinderella Ate My Daughter, by Peg Orenstein. Great book on the "princess" culture, the pink-ization of little girls. I don't have a daughter, but I heard Orenstein talking on NPR, loved what she was saying, and had to read this.
World War Z, by Max Brooks. An oral history of the zombie wars. Written with a straight face. Intelligent, clever, at times suspenseful. Very good book, more so if you love you some zombies.
The Great Hunt, by Robert Jordan. My brother Todd bullied me into reading the "Wheel of Time" series. This is the second installment. Of fifteen. There are fifteen damn books in this series, and none of them are short. It's a roughly 12,000 page fantasy story. That's sort of obnoxious, really. And now I'm sort of hooked on it. It's not great fiction, but it's good, and once you get started, you really want to see how it ends. This is better than the first book-- it picks up quicker, doesn't waste a lot of time setting things up.
The Dragon Reborn, by Robert Jordan. Book three in the series. Not bad.
Grudgebearer, by Gav Thorpe. A "Warhammer" novel. You know what? I don't even have to pretend that this stuff is "good." It is what it is-- low brow, pulpy, canned fantasy. About Dwarfs and Goblins and wizards and the like. And I like it. It's not "good," but it can sometimes be fun.
MYTH-ion Improbable, by Robert Aspirin. When I was in high school, I read one of Aspirin's "MYTH" books. I liked it. Didn't love it, but liked it. A couple of years ago, I found one cheap at a used book sale, and read it in the hammock in my back yard out of nostalgia. And really, really enjoyed it. Since then, I've read a lot of them. Not all of them, but most. Four this year. I can rarely remember the plot of one from another, but they are all well done for what they are. Aspirin was a good writer, and these are generally witty and clever and fun to read through. The adventures of a dimension jumping wizard named Skeeve, his demon mentor Aahz, and their band of friends.
MYTH Conceptions, by Robert Aspirin. See above.
MYTH Directions, by Robert Aspirin. More of the same.
MYTH Inc in Action, by Robert Aspirin. More of the same, but told from the perspective of one of the minor characters, not Skeeve himself, which lets Aspirin write in a slightly different voice.
The Time Machine, by HG Wells. After having read CS Lewis' glowing review of First Men in the Moon, I picked up a copy at a used book store and loved it. I then stocked up on HG Wells books. Finally got around to reading some this year. This wasn't as good as First Men in the Moon, possibly in part because I was already so familiar with the plot, which has become sort of part of the cultural awareness, and so there really weren't any surprises. But it was decent.
The Invisible Man, by HG Wells. The first half of this dragged. I was ready to put it away, but forced myself to continue on... and then it got really, really good. Great book. Right before reading this, though, I read a little bio piece in The New Yorker about HG Wells, and throughout this book I just kept thinking about what an absolutely horrid person Wells was, which was kind of a downer.
Night, by Elie Wiesel. Painful. An account of survival in a Nazi camp. Rough. Brilliantly good book. There's a reason you've heard of this. Awful, but must-read stuff.
The Complete Maus, by Art Spiegelman. The brilliant graphic novels, Maus I and Maus II, detailing Spiegelman's father's life, the rise of Nazism, survival in the concentration camps, life in a new world after the war. Graphic novels, sure, but the material is amazing, and somehow the format makes it easier to process, easier to remember the message.
"Breaking the Silence." More a "tract" than a book, really, maybe 50 pages or so. Testimonials from Israeli soldiers serving in occupied territories. Accounts of brutal treatment of Palestinians, soldiers throwing shock grenades into groups of playing children just because it's funny to watch them stumble and scatter, that sort of thing. Lots of ugly stuff. Strange to read this after reading Night and Maus.
Rules for Radicals, by Saul D. Alinsky. The same uncle who gave me Rob Bell's book gave me two books when I was 17 and leaving for college-- an NIV translation of the Bible, and Alinsky's Rules for Radicals. I loved it when I was a kid, but hadn't read it in twenty years. Then I started seeing bizarre letters to the editor mentioning the book, accusing Obama of being an "Alinsky-ite." It sounded like Glenn Beck's followers doing their homework assignments (clearly they'd never read the book and were parroting someone else's nonsense). Looked online, and sure enough, found some crazily ignorant Beck stuff attacking the book. Which made me want to read it again. And it was exactly as good as I remembered. It's Machiavelli's The Prince, but with more scruples, and for people without power.
Father Mychal Judge, by Michael Ford. The biography of Father Mychal Judge, who died while trying to help victims of the September 11 attacks. Father Mychal Judge was a gay, recovering alcoholic Catholic priest. Interesting guy. A decent book. Interesting. Happened upon it at a table at the Westcott Fair, and the people selling it seemed nice, so I had to support them.
Pigs In Heaven, by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver's just fantastic. If you haven't read her stuff, you should. You need to. Wonderful writer. This is a sequel to The Bean Trees, which was just a fantastic book. I've got lots more Kingsolver novels downstairs, and I really need to read them in 2012.
"Ion," by Euripides. When I was 19 and living in an apartment in Syracuse, barely eating, drinking more than anyone could think was healthy, trying hard to lead the starving artist lifestyle, I stumbled often into the OCC library and borrowed Greek tragedies. I was really, really into Greed tragedies at the time. The one that I remembered the best in later years was "The Bacchae," by Euripides. So this year, almost 20 years later, I decided to read some Euripides again. I haven't read any Greek tragedies at all in at least 15 years, so it was kind of fun getting reacquainted. I started with "Ion." Decent play. Not the best, but decent.
"The Women of Troy," by Euripides. This one is beautiful. The women of Troy gathered together after the war, prisoners of the Greeks, about to be taken away, made into slaves, raped. Mourning the deaths of their husbands and their children. A fantastic piece of anti-war literature.
"Helen," by Euripides. Also terrific. Made me want to write two songs, one from the view of Menelaus, one from the view of Helen. I mean, if I was in a band again. Menelaus, disappointed that Helen isn't as beautiful as he remembered, has aged, isn't the ideal that he came searching for. Later, Helen, basically saying "how dare you, you selfish bastard," knowing that he only ever loved the idealized her, not the real her, telling him that that's why she left with Paris, Paris who continued to love the real thing. Not that that's the message of this play. It's more of a comedy than that. But that's what it got me thinking about.
"The Bacchae," by Euripides. Not as amazing as I remembered it being, but I can see why I once loved it. An anti-prohibition play.
Stuart Little, by EB White. I never read this as a kid, but I've read it to my kid twice now. It's one of his favorite books, and I think it's as enjoyable for adults as for someone his age. Just a nice, sweet book.
The "Geronimo Stilton" series. My boy is really into chapter books these days, and I read him many, many chapter books this year. I won't mention most of them in the list. But the Geronimo Stilton books are stand outs. He loves them. And I have to admit, I really enjoy these too. They're written from the perspective of Geronimo Stilton, a mouse who runs The Rodent's Gazette, and often finds himself sucked into crazy adventures. They're clever, cute, fun. We read about a dozen of them. We have more set for 2012.
Return to the Hundred Acre Wood, by David Benedictus. I don't know the intended audience for this book. Kids? Or adults, who loved the originals when they were kids? I read this to Sam, but I think I enjoyed it far more than he did.
Bunnicula Strikes Again, by James Howe. I'm going to admit it: I didn't read this to Sam. I'm James Howe's #1 fan. Having read this (I found it at a used bookstore, cheap), I can now say that I've read all of the "Bunnicual" books. Some of them more than once.
It, by Stephen King. Read a lot of Stephen King when I was a teenager, recently started getting into his stuff again. It is terrific (as I'm sure most people are already aware). The best stuff has nothing to do with the murderous clown-monster, though. The scariest stuff is the bullies, the childhood traumas, the distant parents, the social tribulations of youth.
'salem's Lot, by Stephen King. Just finished this one on New Year's Eve. Stayed up way too late more than once. The book sort of pulls you right in. And there's a brilliant scene on faith. Father Callahan's faith, his frustration with a church that has turned into a "social justice" club, that has lost the awe and mysticism of religion. That's just some fantastic stuff there.
True Love, by Thich Nhat Hanh. I've read a lot of Thich Nhat Hanh's stuff over the years, and a lot of it's very similar. It's kind of like going to church. Same message week in week out, maybe a different spin. True Love was okay. Not amazing. Not different from a number of his books. A refresher on the topics he writes on again and again.
For a Future to be Possible, also by Thich Nhat Hanh. This one, on the other hand, is a stand out book. It's a long discussion on the Five Precepts. There are responses from other Buddhist teachers and writers, different perspectives on the topic. One of his best books. I read it during my little "retreat" at the Farm Sanctuary, and was glad to have it there with me.
Awakening Loving-Kindness, by Pema Chodron. Another book that accompanied me on my brief retreat. Writings on "metta," the loving-kindness of Buddhism, by Pema Chodron. Compiled from a month long series of her teachings.
Buddha, by Karen Armstrong. Karen Armstrong's The Case for God is one of the most important books I've ever read. This doesn't rise to that level, but it's good. A life of the Buddha. Pretty straight forward, essentially a biography.
Dharma Road, by Brian Haycock. A nice book on Buddhism, as practiced by a busy cab driver. I liked this a lot.
The Heart of the Revolution, by Noah Levine. Good book by the author of Dharma Punx. I have a ton of respect for Noah Levine, the things that he's doing. This is his third book. All are good. In my opinion, Noah Levine and Brad Warner are the future of Buddhism. (Along with John Joseph and Rob Bell, they're the four most inspiring "spiritual" guys out there right now, people that we should be listening to.)
The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind, by DT Suzuki. The only book I picked up this year and couldn't finish. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I don't know if it was his writing style, or the topic. I've read him before, liked what I read. But this was god-awful horrible.
Writing Down the Bones, by Natalie Goldberg. A writer's book, with exercises and commentaries meant to inspire, make the writing process easier. Writing from a Buddhist perspective. It didn't work for me. I read the book, but I still didn't write my novel.
Sit Down and Shut Up, by Brad Warner. Author of Hardcore Zen. All of his stuff is good, but this is my least favorite of the four books I've read. Still worthwhile. A little more "scholarly," for lack of better words (and really, that's not a great word for it). It's a conversation on Dogen's Shobogenzo (Dogen being the guy who put Soto Zen on the map a long, long time ago).
Zen Wrapped in Karma Dipped in Chocolate, by Brad Warner. This book, on the other hand, was great, almost as good as Hardcore Zen. Warner is at his best when he's personal, teaching Zen from his own life experiences. This book is full of that.
Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. I've read this before, and read bits and pieces often. A collection of parables and koans that I read this year as sort of a devotional.
The Dhammapada. One of the great Buddhist classics, meant for lay practitioners. Again, I've read through this often, read it again this year as a devotional.
The Little Zen Companion, by David Schiller. Sort of a silly book. I bought it twenty years ago when I didn't really know for sure what Zen was. A collection of quotes and brief (very brief) essays. I read this as a devotional, too.
Teachings of the Buddha, compiled by Jack Kornfield. I've read this a few times. A nice devotional book.
Gandhi on Non-Violence, compiled by Thomas Merton. I love Thomas Merton. I love Gandhi. I hated this book. There just wasn't much to it.
Voluntary Simplicity, compiled by the Northwest Earth Institute. I used this book for a study group I organized and lead. Honestly, not nearly as good as the earlier version they put out, but it still had some nice material in it.
Sober Living for the Revolution, by Gabriel Kuhn. I've always been sort of into the whole straight edge scene in hardcore (no drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol, no casual sex, etc). I was never straight edge myself when I was young-- I really liked ladies, and cigarettes, and beer, and the occasional adventure with contraband goodies. A couple of years ago, I gave up alcohol and caffeine. I'd grown out of recreational drugs prior to that, and quit smoking almost 10 years ago (around the time I met my wife, which meant I quit chasing after ladies 10 years ago too). So now I'm basically the vegan straight edge guy, sort of by accident. This book is a nice study of straight edge living combined with radical politics. It's a collection of interviews and articles with or by people in the leftist straight edge scene. By design, it avoids a lot of the straight edge bands I loved the most, as they are not "progressive" or "leftist" enough. It's a good book, but it has a lot of faults. It's too narrow, too dismissive of bands and thinkers that don't share every point of the writer's ideology. It's hypocritical at times (complaining about scenes that excluded women to some degree, while this book is almost entirely about and by men itself). I'd love to go on and on about it, but won't. It was basically a fun book to read. And it started off with Ian MacKaye, one of my heroes, so there you go. That makes it good stuff.
My Baby Rides the Short Bus, by Yantra Bertelli, Jennifer Silverman, and Sarah Talbot. A collection of writings from dozens of authors, most of them women, dealing with the difficulties (and sometimes the joys) of raising children with developmental disabilities. This is from a left perspective-- it's the stories of mothers who were already "different" (gay, or punk, or tattooed, or living on a commune, etc), and who then found themselves different in a new way when their kids were diagnosed. It's a topic that's dear to me given the work I do, and I enjoyed the (often painful) opportunity to see things from the side of the parents.
Animal Farm, by George Orwell. Would you believe I never had to read this in school? What a very good book this was. Glad to have finally read it.

*******

There you go. The books of 2011. Surprisingly, not a lot of the classic literature that I usually love-- no Hemingway, no Tolstoy, no Camus, no Hesse, no Burgess, no Kerouac, no Dostoevsky. Not much philosophy-- didn't touch that pile of Nietzsche sitting in my office. And no civil rights stuff, not a lot of anything political. Not many books by women. Or by people of color. Lots of stuff by white men. Go figure.

I've got a lot of books waiting for me in 2012. Things I've been dying to read. Can't wait to get started. Never quite know where to begin.

New Year

2012-01-01T12:11:00.004-05:00

A little after noon, New Year's Day.

In the past, I would have felt this way due to a wild night out, a hangover. Aversion to light, the desire to sleep till dinner time, sensitivity to noise. Good memories, those.

This time around, it's just a sense of being completely worn out. No wild New Year's Eve party-- Jen and Sam and I grabbed food from Moe's, then played a round of Life, and I stayed up a while and finished reading 'salem's Lot while they drifted off to sleep. But still, worn out. A cold helps it along (my-- fifth? sixth?-- cold of the year), but it's just the busy-ness and the doing-ness of life mostly, the hustle and bustle and jostle and trying to remember what you had on that list you've lost, those things that needed being done.

Anyway. It's the New Year.

Hooray for that.

I've always loved New Year's Eve, New Year's Day.

I've got an agenda for 2012.

Pretty much everybody's agenda, I guess. Nothing surprising. Pretty much last year's agenda. Still, it's a New Year, so you can't help but have the hope-y feeling.

Lose weight. Run faster, run farther. Get some nice new tattoos. Write more. Write better. Oh, and be nicer to people (that one always falls to the wayside a few days in).

Get in some good concerts if I can.

But anyway.

2011 was good. A nice year.

A crazy year, really, if you look around the world. Crazy with crazy things happening in Egypt and Tunisia and Libya and Syria and all of the world and crazy with pepper spray and Occupy here at home. Crazy with weather and earthquakes and nuclear disasters and other biblical nuttiness. Crazy that it's close to 50 degrees here on New Year's Day. No snow in CNY. No ice to scrape off of anything. Shovel still where I left it in the garage this Spring.

Crazy GOP. Out of their mind crazy nutty oh-my-god-they're-going-to-hurt-somebody GOP. A year where Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Ron Paul, Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry have all been, at one point or another, front-runners, have all been the person that a substantial portion of the conservatives in this country have thought best represented their ideals, their spirit, the direction the country should go. That's some scary kind of crazy. Worse than the weather. (And, yeah, Mitt Romney has been a front-runner too, but that's not scary crazy.)

Me?

Yeah, sure, okay. It's been a year. A nice year. Another year. The good, the bad, all that, but I guess a lot less bad than good.

I caught some good shows. That's always nice. Michael Franti and Spearhead. Iron and Wine. Bright Eyes. The Mountain Goats. The Jeremy Wallace Trio. Nine Ball. The Rusty Doves. Ohde-ka the Burning River. Not much heavy stuff, no great hardcore shows, and I admit, I really would have liked to throw in a couple of those upbeat shows, those gritty shows; but still, it was nice. Michael Franti and Spearhead especially.

And Rob Bell. A Rob Bell talk in Ithaca. That was good. Quite good.

It was a year with lots of books. More than 50, less than 100. I'll add them up later, maybe. Some were crap, but most weren't. Some were very, very, very, very good, like Rob Bell's Jesus Wants to Save Christians and John Joseph's The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon and Jonathon Safran Foer's Eating Animals and Chris Cleave's Incendiary and many others.

I started the year sure I would attend a sesshin through the Zen Center, a week long silent Zen retreat. I didn't do that. I did, however, block out a couple of days and stay at the Farm Sanctuary, alone, in the quiet, with my cushions and my books and my incense. It was a very good thing.

I wrote a book. I didn't really write a book. But I compiled a book for my mom for Christmas. Took the best of all these posts from the past six years or so, lightly edited them, rearranged them into chapters, through in some snarky Facebook stuff, and made a book. That was fun. That was a lot of fun, actually. I'll sell you a copy for $40. I'll sell you a PDF for $20.

I quit the New Environment Association board. That was tough, because I really like those guys. But I had reasons. Among them was time, and the lack of it, and wanting to use it better, and wanting to not feel over-extended all the time.

I helped organize and run a Voluntary Simplicity study group. Which was of course a good thing. Not as overwhelmingly powerful as the first one I attended years back, in part because of the newness that first time, in part because the materials weren't quite as good. But still, it was a very good thing.

I saw my brother and my sister go vegan. Hooray for that.

And attended the Westcott Fair, which is always fantastic. And the NYS Fair, which has become fantastic since I've been able to see it through a kid's eyes again.

Our dog Yoko died. That was sad. There were other deaths. A close friend's wife, a close member of the family. My son has become sort of fascinated with death. Not in a bad way, I think. But there's been death, and he's felt it, and he's working with it.

There were three trips to the Farm Sanctuary, including that solo retreat. They were all good.

And lots of trips to the zoo. Always lots of trips to the zoo.

I became a Big Brother. Not just a big brother, but a Big Brother. Officially. I have a Little Brother. We get together a few times per month. His name is Jimmy. He's 11. He's... intense, sometimes. But it's a fun thing.

I went bowling for the first time in almost twenty years. I went ice skating for the first time in thirty-four years. I did better with the bowling than with the skating.

I saw some good movies, I'm sure, but I can't remember them. I can remember some of the cheesier ones, like "Thor" and "Iron Man" and "Captain America," but none of the really, truly good stuff. I learned that the new "Conan the Barbarian" is not very good. I could have guessed that, but I watched it anyway.

I started running. And going to the gym. I made a lot of progress there. I lost a little weight. Not a lot, but at least a little (15 pounds, about half of which I gained back during the Christmas season). But I made a lot of progress in that I couldn't even run a quarter of a mile when I started, and now I'm doing a couple of miles a day and would be doing more except that I worry about pushing a bum ankle too far too fast. And I can lift more than when I started. Not Herculean, but progress. And my blood pressure has gotten freakishly healthily low. That's all good stuff. Happy stuff.

I bought a bike from my brother but forgot that he's a gargantuan freak, so now I've got a bike that's too big for me. If you're freakishly tall, and you need a bike, and you've got $250, I've got a really nice deal for you.

I committed myself to running a triathlon next year. As I still have no bike to ride and can only swim a lap or two in the pool, I feel a little foolish, and am looking into ways to back out of this. That, or maybe improve my swimming and buy a bike. We'll see.

Watched my boy go from three to four. Read him countless "chapter books." Hung out with him in coffee shops and vegan cafes and biker bars. Had lots of fun together.

Celebrated my 6th wedding anniversary. And my 38th birthday.

Planted my Square Foot Garden beds. Lost most of my corn to a son-of-a-bitch squirrel, but ate lots of onions, garlic, kale, tomatoes, and such out of my back yard, which was nice.

Worked. Work was tough. Huge cuts. Lay-offs (none in my department). Reorganization. Doing more with less. State bureaucrats making huge budget cuts, but then sending in auditors who demand more and more and more, but no way to pay for it. And the occasional state bureaucrat with a power hard-on, loving the control they have in their petty little kingdom... but no, I shouldn't get going down that road. I'll sound petty and bitter. A tough year at work, but good things have happened. Somehow, I still really like my job. There a lot of mornings that I don't want to go there, but if I've got to go somewhere, I can't think of a better place to be, I guess, so that's gotta be a good thing, right?

And that's 2011, more or less.

Happy New Year.

Best Ever

2011-12-15T00:03:00.002-05:00

I spent some time going through some old posts tonight, and I have to give the Best Comment Ever award to John (previously of Locusts and Honey, and The Zeray Gazette, and now at Neatobambino).

"...if you don't like watching people masturbate, don't get a job at a public library." (Sept 2006)

Though we often disagree on the small stuff, I've taken those words to heart.

Thanks, John.

Rules For Radicals

2011-11-22T18:33:00.002-05:00

I suppose I should thank Glenn Beck.

20 years ago, as I was just starting out my first year of college, my Uncle Bill (a Methodist pastor) gave me a copy of Saul D. Alinsky's Rules For Radicals. It had been given to him by an uncle on the other side of the family (also a Methodist pastor).

I loved that book. I mean, just loved it.

There wasn't a lot of activism going down on my campus at the time. And what activism there was certainly wasn't "radical" in nature. Houghton was a pretty conservative place-- activism was usually more "counter-activism" if you will.

I didn't get a whole lot of hands on opportunities to apply the rules for radicals right then, but man, I loved that book.

Lately, here and there, I've been seeing Alinsky's name and Rules for Radicals popping up. In the local paper's letters to the editor, in the comments sections on various news sites.

Lots of short little diatribes condemning the book for being, as near as I can tell, vaguely "bad," and condemning Barack Obama for having read it once.

And so I should thank Glenn Beck for getting that name out there again, reminding me how much I loved that book.

The brevity and the vagueness of those little diatribes make it pretty obvious that most of those letter writers have never cracked the book open, have no idea what the book says. They are, as is so often the case (sad, that), parroting one of Glenn's lunatic rants.

But seeing the book attacked here and there got me all nostalgic, and I finally got around to taking out my copy of it again this week.

It's been twenty years since I've read it. Sure, I've pulled it out to find some underlined quote now and then, but it's been twenty years since I sat with it, read the whole thing.

And, man, that's still a great book.

Funny thing, the opening chapters read like they'd been written a week ago, seem to capture the spirit of the times perfectly.

The book is full of great stuff. I can't resist pulling out a few bits and pieces.

"Dogma is the enemy of human freedom. Dogma must be watched for and apprehended at every turn and twist of the revolutionary movement. The human spirit glows from that small inner light of doubt whether we are right, while those who believe with complete certainty that they possess the right are dark inside and darken the world outside with cruelty, pain, and injustice. Those who enshrine the poor or Have-Nots are as guilty as other dogmatists and just as dangerous."

"We learn, when we respect the dignity of the people, that they cannot be denied the elementary right to participate fully in the solutions to their own problems. Self-respect arises only out of people who play an active role in solving their own crises and who are not helpless, passive, puppet-like recipients of private or public service."

"... America's corporations are a spiritual slum, and their arrogance is the major threat to our future as a free society."

And here's a longer bit, demonstrating his point that people can only work within their own experience, cannot communicate outside their experience:

"In a similar situation in Los Angeles four staff members and I were talking in front of the Biltmore Hotel when I demonstrated the same point, saying: 'Look, I am holding a ten-dollar bill in my hand. I propose to walk around the Biltmore Hotel, a total of four blocks, and try to give it away. This will certainly be outside of everyone's experience. You four walk behind me and watch the faces of the people I'll approach. I am going to go up to them holding out this ten-dollar bill and say, 'Here, take this.' My guess is that everyone will back off, look confused, insulted, or fearful, and want to get away from this nut fast. From their experience when someone approaches them he is either out to ask for instructions or to panhandle-- particularly the way I'm dressed, no coat or tie.

"I walked around, trying to give the ten-dollar bill away. The reactions were all 'within the experiences of the people.' About three of them, seeing the ten-dollar bill, spoke first-- 'I'm sorry, I don't have any change.' Others hurried past saying, 'I'm sorry, I don't have any money on me right now,' as though I had been trying to get money from them instead of trying to give them money. One young woman flared up, almost screaming, 'I'm not that kind of a girl and if you don't get away from here, I'll call a cop!' Another woman in her thirties snarled, 'I don't come that cheap!' There was one man who stopped and said, 'What kind of a con game is this?' and then walked away. Most of the people responded with shock, confusion, and silence, and they quickened their pace and sort of walked around me.

"After approximately fourteen people, I found myself back at the front entrance of the Biltmore Hotel, still holding my ten-dollar bill. My four companions had, then, a clearer understanding of the concept that people react strictly on the basis of their own experience."

Love it.

Thanks, Glenn.

Those Damn Lucky Slaves

2011-11-22T08:59:00.002-05:00

I don't know, many.

I don't know where to even begin.

As soon as I open my mouth, I sound like I'm just launching into another hyper-partisan rant.

But, I mean, really?

So far, I don't have much of anything bad to say about Mitt Romney. I certainly wouldn't want him to be my President, but as far as Presidents that I don't agree with go, I don't think he'd be an especially bad one.

But beyond that, I mean, come on, holy shit. Are you paying attention to this stuff?

Does it bother you that Rick Perry and Herman Cain both claim that God told them to run? Me, I'm getting a little tired of the "God told me" stuff. We just got out of eight years of that. I have to assume that God's just screwing with them, that this is just meant to be funny.

The question arises: did God tell Herman to grab his coworker's crotch? And if God really wants Rick Perry in office, why doesn't he give him any debate tips? I mean, Moses was a bad public speaker, so God gave him Aaron to do the talking, right? So, why nothing for poor Rick Perry?

Which brings me to items two and three: I mean, come on, really, do we need another inarticulate buffoon (and I say that with as much love as possible) representing this nation? And isn't there any "ick" factor at all in the Cain stuff, here? I mean, shouldn't this stuff be turning people off a little? Media bias, liberals in the media, blah, blah, blah... except that the liberal media didn't make those "please be quiet about this" payments way back when. It's a real, true story, not purely a media fantasy.

And really... I mean, come on... "if you're poor, it's your own fault." In an economy that's just been falling apart, with jobs fleeing the country, businesses shutting down, lay offs, foreclosures, etc, etc, etc, is "it's your own fault" really the message we want from a potential leader of this country? I mean, first, it's not really factual-- there are currently 4.3 job seekers for every job opening, so the reality is, if every single person not working right now was super motivated, busted his or her ass, did everything possible to achieve the dream, 75% of that group would still be unemployed. "It's your own fault" doesn't quite address the realities here. Beyond that, though, beyond just the factual stuff... calling people in need a bunch of lazy scumbags doesn't strike me as particularly helpful or inspiring leadership. Again, I had eight years of a President who quite obviously didn't like a large portion of the people he was elected to represent. We don't need that again to the nth power (W. at least tried to fake it).

Buffoonery, mean spiritedness, sexual predation, inarticulate muttering, chest thumping. That seems to sum up the GOP these days. That's kind of sad.

But no. It doesn't sum it up. I'm leaving some things out.

I'm leaving out "we hate them gay people."

I guess that pretty much goes without saying. "We hate us some fags" is the party line again.

But it gets better (worse? sadder? more pathetic? hilarious?).

Grover Norquist's tax pledge irks me. I'm not big on elected representatives making "pledges" to third parties (well, at least not pledges that could conflict with the job responsibilities, that tie their hands in office).

But that pledge pales to this one.

Read this morning about the Family Leader pledge.

This is the pledge that Rick Perry just signed, full of all the standard "one man/one woman," "I hate them queers," "I won't cheat on my wife" stuff. (That last point's actually a good one... but did he really need a pledge other than his wedding vows to tell him that?)

The pledge Rick Perry signed was sort of kind of "watered down." It was just a bunch of anti-gay rhetoric from what I understand.

Rick Santorum (the word "santorum" makes me laugh every damn time I hear it) and Michele Bachman (nothing about that psychopath makes me laugh) signed an earlier version of it.

The earlier version of the pledged also stated that black kids had it nice under slavery.

Those damn lucky negroes, living high on the hog. No job, no bills. Just pick a little cotton, wile away the hours. They had it way, waaaay better than kids today.

You know what?

Disqualified.

Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman should be disqualified.

And fully ashamed of themselves.

Deer Dance

2011-11-22T08:54:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite System of a Down songs. Ten years old, but I think it expresses the (worldwide) sentiment of 2011 pretty well. Somebody with a YouTube account did a nice job of putting images to it.

Here's Another Picture

2011-11-12T23:38:00.002-05:00

Civil Disobedience

2011-11-12T23:32:00.003-05:00

Read Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience" again tonight. Haven't read it in a couple of years, pick it up now and then. What a great essay.

"There are thousands who are in opinion opposed to slavery and to the war, who yet in effect do nothing to put an end to them... They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most, they give only a cheap vote, and a feeble countenance and God-speed, to the right, as it goes by them. There are nine hundred and ninety-nine patrons of virtue to one virtuous man."

"Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn."

"[T]he rich man... is always sold to the institution which makes him rich."

"Cast your whole vote, not a strip of paper merely, but your whole influence. A minority is powerless while it conforms to the majority; it is not even a minority then; but it is irresistible when it clogs by its whole weight."

Ah. You have to love that. Completely.

All The Money In America

2011-11-12T23:31:00.001-05:00

Cool little pie chart.

Just saying.

Stand Up

2011-11-06T16:46:00.001-05:00

Video by local guys Nine Ball.

They were big around here in the 90s, then disbanded, got back together a couple of years ago and did a cd. Nice guys. I played for a while in a band called Alterfiction with the drummer. Cool to see them doing this.

Sick Day

2011-11-03T11:19:00.003-04:00

My family has been pretty battered by this whatever the hell it is we've got for more than two weeks now. Even during my peaceful stay at Farm Sanctuary, it hurt a little to breathe, and I was hacking, hacking, hacking.

So I stayed home today. Again. Took some codeine cough syrup (oh, sweet delights), crawled into bed, and finished reading The Complete Maus.

Here's my opinion of The Complete Maus:

Holy crap. Better, even, than codeine cough syrup.

If you're not familiar (and I wasn't, really, until I heard Art Spiegelman on NPR a few weeks back and thought "damn, I have to read that"), it's Art Spiegelman's graphic novels (Maus I, Maus II) telling his father's story. His father grew up in Poland, got married, had a kid, was moved to the ghetto, sent to Auschwitz, later to Dachau, survived, moved to NY, and told his story to his son's tape recorder in the late 70s, early 80s.

Touching book. Beautiful.

A better way to spend my morning that sitting at my office and hacking at my staff.

Much, much better.

Good Words

2011-10-30T12:00:00.002-04:00

"We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be beaten and robbed as they make their journey through life. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it understands that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring."

Martin Luther King, Jr., Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community?

(Fantastic book, by the way. Really good stuff.)

Revival

2011-10-30T11:56:00.002-04:00

Nice commentary on the Occupy movement from Pam Hogeweide.

Like many Christians, I have prayed and fasted for revival to come to America. I have cried out to God more times than I can count for a spirit of repentance to visit our land. I never imagined it would look this way. The revival of my prayers I imagined was behind the four walls of steepled buildings, packed pews of the contrite with heads hung low, weeping guilt-driven prayers for sins to be washed away. I did not envision grandmothers, baristas, hippies and hipsters taking to the city streets to decry the sins of the nation.

And:

Economic injustice and disparity is the prevailing theme of this movement. It’s not anti-government, nor anti-wealth. It is decidedly anti-greed and anti-injustice. Occupiers across America and beyond are calling for a time out from business as usual. This is the job description of prophets, those Old Testament figures that admonished the people to forsake their sins and return to a path of righteousness. The role of the prophet is to recalibrate a people, to set the captives free from lies and indulgence that have overrun the image of God each person bears.

Occupy, Occupy

2011-10-29T16:49:00.002-04:00

So, on my way out of town yesterday, I parked my car in Armory Square and walked down to the Occupy Syracuse site.

They’ve been there for about three weeks now, a bunch of protestors camping out, standing in the rain, handing out flyers, organizing meetings. They’re set up next to the downtown bus station.

They’ve been there three weeks and I’ve been meaning to go down and see what’s going on, get out of the car, not just drive by. See if this is something that I might want to be a part of.
But excuses come up.

Time, mostly. I’ve been busy. Always busy. It’s hard to find the time. Hard to find the time to fit anything more in at all, whatever it might be.

And not just time.

Sort of, the hope. The hope that this could be exactly the sort of thing I’ve been waiting for. The flip side of that hope. The fear that it could be something else entirely, and that I’d walk away disappointed, maybe bitter. My experiences with the Syracuse activist community have been mixed. There are some awesome people out there doing some very good things. And then there are people who greatest desire seems not to be to create change, but to sigh and be misunderstood and complain about the mainstream media and feel somehow above it all. I’ve gone to things with a lot of hope in me, and have watched that second group sort of take over, and it has been disappointing.

So, time, mostly. Because that’s really the biggest factor, always.

But that hope part too, that fear of disappointment part.

But on my way out of town, I parked the car, I walked a couple of blocks in the rain, and I talked to some of the people helping to lead events.

And I was impressed with it. Very much so.

And now I want to be a part of it.

In some way. Because time is still tight. I can’t pitch my tent and camp there for the next few weeks. And I can’t be there every single night passing out flyers and talking to people. I’ve got a four year old that I already feel like I don’t spend enough time with. I’ve got a job that expects me to be there; a good job, doing good things that I believe in. And a wife that I like to see now and then. And dishes to be done. Lots of dishes. And a mom living in my rec room while she recovers from surgery. And an eleven year old kid that I hang out with on the weekends. And and and.

But I want to be a part of it.

I want to be a part of it for the very reason some people are blowing it off.

“How can you take these people seriously,” some people mutter, in office conversations or in letters to the editor or on right wing radio, “when they don’t even know what they want? No agenda, no list of demands, no idea why they’re even standing there.”

No agenda? No demands?

That’s kind of perfect.

I’m a couple of hours from home. I didn’t bring my pile of Daniel Quinn books with me, so I can’t give you quotes, I can’t put it as well as he has put it from time to time.

Vision, Not Programs.

That’s one of the things I most love about Quinn’s ideas for change, one of the most important things I’ve taken from his books. It’s also what had me heavily involved with the New Environment Association for a few years (they called it “process thinking,” but it’s the same thing really).

Vision, Not Programs.

The idea is, when Everything Is Wrong, when the whole damn thing is just a big tightly wound ball of All Screwed Up, there’s no “program” that’s going to fix it. There are no “demands,” there is no “agenda” that can undo the big mess.

What is needed isn’t a specific plan. Not now, not yet. Maybe not even later, but that’ll come or it won’t.

What’s needed is a new way of thinking.

What’s needed is to abandon the current way of thinking.

And so when I hear about Occupy Wall Street, when I hear about the smaller offshoot movements around the country, when I hear that there’s no 12 point agenda, I think “fantastic.” Because what I do hear is a dissatisfaction. A “no more of this.” A desire for a new way. A desire to simply change. Not this policy or that policy, not this tax rate or that regulation. A desire to approach the whole damn thing from a whole new angle.

And that excites me.

When I stopped in the other day, that sense that I’d had of it was confirmed. There wasn’t a program. There was the desire to get this “it’s not working” idea out there. There was the desire to get the “we’re operating under the wrong values system” idea out there.

That’s stuff I’m on board with. What we need isn’t a new law, a new tax, a new policy, a new advisory committee. What we need are changed values, a new vision, a better way of relating to each other and our world. We need to dump the things that have not been working. We need to go way deeper than than tweaking the system.

Exciting stuff. Very, very cool.

During that brief visit, I took heart in some other things.

Always, with any movement, you hear the whole “whiny liberals” thing. The whole “spoiled rich kids who don’t know about real suffering” crap. You get the “environmentalism is a movement for the privileged white kids” or “must be nice to be so wealthy you can choose to be vegan” and the like. The offhand dismissals. That irks me.

I was glad, when I went down, to see that this wasn’t just a bunch of college kids standing around. There were young people and old people, seasoned activists and people newer to the ideas.

They were all white. But there was a self-awareness there.

“I’ve been frustrated by the lack of diversity,” I was told. “I mean, look around, it’s all a bunch of white people. But then an African American guy was talking to me the other day and he said something that made me think. ‘Now you’re pissed?’ he said. ‘Now you want to protest and talk about equality? Where have you been all this time? Other communities have been putting up with this shit for years.’ Maybe people from other communities aren’t coming out because we’re so late in the game and they’ve been doing it all along.”

And there was a bit of a solidarity thing going on with the poor.

Downtown, Armory Square, the bus station. That’s an area I don’t generally walk through without loading my pockets with ones and change. Because you can’t go a block without someone asking for money. And I can’t walk by a homeless guy without at least giving a quarter, a dollar, something. There’s some real poverty down there, some people who have it hard.

I was glad to hear that the Occupy crew is welcoming the truly, truly down and out crew into their midst. Homeless guys sleeping in Occupy tents. Food being shared. That sort of thing.
I felt good stopping in there, and now I want to be a bigger part of it.

That might mean showing up for a General Assembly now and then. It might mean taking activists’ laundry to my house and running a few loads for them.

I think, maybe, it will mean cooking.

I love to feed people. I love it. I love potlucks. I have a fantasy of opening up my own little vegan catering business, going to shows and selling sandwiches, maybe opening up a little downtown food cart. And I’ve wanted for a while to get involved with something like Food Not Bombs, but haven’t known quite where to start, haven’t had the sustained focus to figure it out.

I can see myself cooking up big batches of vegan stew. Rustic Tomato Lentil Soup. Black beans and rice. Tofu enchiladas. Going downtown and serving it up. Enjoying that.

So we’ll see. We’ll see exactly how it works out. But I want to be a part of this. I think that this has the potential to be something very good.

I’ll leave you with a couple of things here.

First, Charles Eisenstein’s comments on the Occupy Wall Street movement. The guy has a way with words.

And then, a few of my favorite words of all time, spoken by Eugene Debs at his sentencing a long time ago. Beautiful words.

"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind then that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; and while there is a criminal element, I am of it; and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free."

*****

Go here to read Charles Eisenstein's comments on the Occupy Wall Street movement. The man has an incredible way with words.

And here a couple of clips. Make of them what you will. The first is of 22 people being arrested for trying to close their CitiBank accounts. Of course, yes, they were protestors, and they meant to make a point by going in and closing their accounts together. And got arrested. Having a hard time finding anything in the news about this, which disturbs me a little. CitiBank has their "response" online, and then there are clips like this, but that's about all I can find.

Here are bits and pieces from Oakland, where things have gotten bad.

The Five Freedoms (The Five Wonderful Precepts)

2011-10-28T19:46:00.000-04:00

THE FIRST PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by the destruction of life, I vow to cultivate compassion and learn ways to protect the lives of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I am determined not to kill, not to let others kill, and not to condone any act of killing in the world, in my thinking, and in my way of life.

THE SECOND PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by exploitation, social injustice, stealing, and oppression, I vow to cultivate loving-kindness and learn ways to work for the well-being of people, animals, plants, and minerals. I vow to practice generosity by sharing my time, energy and material resources with those who are in real need. I am determined not to steal and not to possess anything that should belong to others. I will respect the property of others, but I will prevent others from profiting from human suffering or the suffering of other species on Earth.

THE THIRD PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by sexual misconduct, I vow to cultivate responsibility and learn ways to protect the safety and integrity of individuals, couples, families, and society. I am determined not to engage in sexual relations without love and a long-term commitment. To preserve the happiness of myself and others, I am determined to respect my commitments and the commitments of others. I will do everything in my power to protect children from sexual abuse and to prevent couples and families from being broken by sexual misconduct.

THE FOURTH PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful speech and the inability to listen to others, I vow to cultivate loving speech and deep listening in order to bring joy and happiness to others and relieve others of their suffering. Knowing that words can create happiness or suffering, I vow to learn to speak truthfully, with words that inspire self-confidence, joy, and hope. I am determined not to spread news that I do not know to be certain and not to criticize or condemn things of which I am not sure. I will refrain from uttering words that can cause division or discord, or that can cause the family or the community to break. I will make all efforts to reconcile and resolve all conflicts, however small.

THE FIFTH PRECEPT
Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest food or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society.

That’s Thich Nhat Hanh’s wording/interpretation of what he calls The Five Wonderful Precepts, as found in For a Future to be Possible and elsewhere.

The more basic version goes like this:

1. Not to kill
2. Not to steal
3. Not to misuse sexuality
4. Not to lie
5. Not cloud the mind with intoxicants

Thich Nhat Hanh’s version goes into the heart of the precepts. What do you mean “not to misuse sexuality?” What do you mean “not to steal?”

One of my reasons for coming out here for these few days was to sit with these precepts, to read a bit, to write a bit, to work them into myself.

About a year and a half ago, when I really started practicing meditation on a much more regular basis, I decided I wanted to live according to these precepts. Specifically, according to Nhat Hanh’s wording of them.

I called them then, and still call them now, The Five Freedoms.

“The Five Freedoms.” Because this stuff isn’t about “thou shalt not.” It’s not about rules, it’s not about avoiding judgment, but rather about living a fuller, better, freer life. A life free from entanglements, snares.

I was sitting meditation night after night, trying to be present, trying to be clear, trying to really know what was going on inside of me… and then I’d wrap it up, pour myself a couple of glasses of wine, and get all cloudy again. It didn’t make much sense. And so I realized that even though I was “free” to have a glass of wine whenever I wanted, without judgment, without guilt, I could be even freer by saying I didn’t need it, didn’t want it, didn’t have to cloud myself again.

And so on.

This is good stuff here. A good way of living. And part of my reason for being here right now, for coming out to sit in this cabin for a couple of days, is to recommit myself to these precepts, these freedoms, this way of being.

It isn’t always easy.

I’m not particularly good at it.

Not having a glass of wine is pretty simple.

Not stealing money from the till is no problem.

Not killing animals for my dinner is old hat.

Not cheating on my wife is a no-brainer.

But what does it mean to not condone killing in my thinking? To not possess that which should belong to someone else? Why is it sometimes so hard to speak only with words that inspire self-confidence and joy? Why is it so hard to take in only that which is good for me and those around me?

Tough stuff, sometimes. Still, I want right now to make that commitment, to make that effort. Not in some formal ceremony with a Roshi and incense. But in my heart. My only little ceremony, my own little promises.

Three Not-So-Little Pigs And Their Big Bad Mama

2011-10-28T16:43:00.000-04:00

I had company in my cabin last night. A lovely young raven-haired lady named Cirilla. Cirilla the Cat.

Cirilla the Cat is a beauty. I feel kind of honored that she chose me. I’ve seen her up here, hanging around, many times over the years. Sometimes she’s been gracious enough to let me pet her. One year, she played with my son Sam, running up ahead of him on the path, then hiding, waiting for him to catch up, jumping out to surprise him. That same year she decided that my wife’s lap was the perfect place for a nap, toilet be damned.

My wife doesn’t much like cats. She’s allergic.

But I love them. And I love Cirilla.

It was bitterly cold last night, and though she had plenty of warm places to go (there are heated sections in The People Barn, with cat doors for access), she decided to hang out in my cabin. She followed me in as I ran in out of the cold from a trip to the bathroom. For a while, she let me pet her. She got bored with that before I did, gave me a couple of warning bites, then hopped over to the other bed and made herself comfortable in a pile of my clothes, slept there for a few hours before demanding I let her back out into the cold night.

Beautiful cat.

This morning, around 10:00, I did the rounds of the Sanctuary, got the guest tour. I was the only one on the tour (apparently the only one still staying in a cabin—it’s awfully, awfully dark and quiet out there right now). The tour guide and I trudged through the (melting, thank God) snow and visited some pigs, some goats, a few turkeys and chickens, a lot of cows.

I got to see Blitzen. Blitzen was here when I visited this summer. He’s grown. Then, he was a big calf. Beautiful, brown and white, with big, playful eyes. Playful everything. Blitzen was one of three young males who had recently moved in, and he was definitely the most energetic animal in the field. Blitzen liked to get everybody else going. He’d run up and head butt older cows, then dance around them, trying to get a reaction. He wasn’t violent. Just playful. Blitzen head butted me quite a few times. It didn’t hurt, but even as a calf, he was pretty enormous, and it’s a little odd to have something that size head butting you. But it was cool. Fun. This summer, one of his two buddies tried to eat my shorts. Got one leg of my shorts in his mouth from my knee all the way up to the hip.

Blitzen is a big boy now. Looks like he’s almost a grown up. He reminded me of one of those polite teenagers that still has a bit of a gleam in his eye, could be up to something at any minute, but is mostly happy to sit at the table and have an intelligent conversation with the adults. In that field, my guide pointed out another, older cow. A dairy cow that had been recently rescued. She told me that this new dairy cow had taken an instance liking to the three young males, the teenagers. She looked out for them, tried to take care of them, followed them around like a mom. Which I find sweet and sad. As an older dairy cow, she must have had several calves taken from her. People don’t get that, sometimes—they forget that milk is for babies, that cows make milk only after they give birth, and that people drink that milk only when the calf is taken away (usually to be killed and sold as veal). So it was sweet and sad to see this mama cow who had had her kids taken away again and again now sweetly devoted to these three teenagers, finally able to act on those instincts, that emotion.

Later, I got to hang out with a whole little gang of very, very young calves. They were gorgeous. Unbelievable. Only a month or two old, still being bottle fed. They’d been owned by a guy who decided he couldn’t afford to raise them anymore. He started shooting them, killing them one by one, when someone intervened and got him to give them to Farm Sanctuary. These babies are just amazing. When I got into their field, two immediately came to my and put their heads on my shoulder, practically tried to get into my lap to snuggle. The biggest, brownest puppy dog eyes, the softest fur. They had those not-quite-filled out faces that you see on tiny kittens, puppies, that sweet awkwardness. And, like I said, they’re still bottle feeding, so they tried to nurse on me. Nothing quite like two big bovine babies sucking on your jacket while gazing into your eyes. Made me almost want to cry. Very, very cool.

Then there was Violet. I didn’t pet Violet. Every time I come out here, people remind me not to pet Violet. They don’t need to tell me. I’m afraid of Violet.

Violet is a very big, very old, very cranky pig. She’s kind of the top pig in the barn. A curmudgeon. She wants to be left alone. If another pig bothers her, she gives them hell. If people bother her, she gives them hell. Violet doesn’t like anybody or anything as far as I can tell. Whenever I visit, she’s nestled in a big pile of hay, glaring out at the hateful world.

So I don’t bother Violet. I don’t need six or seven hundred pounds of biting porcine fury coming at me. I leave her alone.

I asked my guide why she’s so miserable.

I was told that she’s just old. Which I guess makes sense.

After visiting with a few other pigs (and getting a big, sloppy sweet pig kiss on the leg of my pants), I got to go take a look at the group that touches me maybe the most out of all of the animals here.

Forgive me, I can never remember their names.

In a separate pen, away from all the other pigs, are four pigs who keep to themselves. Visitors don’t go in, but you can hang out by the fence and three out of the four will come up and say hello.

The pigs are a family—three kids and a mama.

The mother had been a breeder pig. On a factory farm in another state, her “job” was to be constantly impregnated, then have her babies taken away so that they could be fattened up and slaughtered. She gave birth to countless children, but never raised them—after a brief time nursing them in a confinement system (where the babies and mothers can barely touch each other, supposedly for the “safety” of the piglets), they were whisked away, she was forced to become pregnant again, and on and on.

About four years ago, theMidwest farm she lived at—the whole region-- was flooded. She had recently given birth, and when the people who worked the farm abandoned it, she somehow managed to escape, taking her three piglets with her. She made a nest at the top of a levee or damn, and she took care of the babies for several days. Eventually, they were all rescued, and they ended up at Farm Sanctuary.

Since then, she has become Super Mama. Her babies aren’t babies anymore. They’re great big pigs, weighing in (I would guess) at 300 or 400 pounds. But they’re still her babies. She’s determined to keep them, to raise them, to be their mother. Visitors can’t go in this pen, because when humans come near her kids, she charges—no one is taking them away this time! She nurtures them, cares for them. When they are taken into another area for routine medical check-ups, she goes ballistic.

And the kids dote on the mother. When she recently had a cold, spent a lot of time in a nest just sort of resting and trying to shake it off, the kids took turns coming into check on her, came to nuzzle her, look at her, spend a little time next to her, keep her company.

There’s something incredibly sweet and inspiring about that. About that little family.

There’s personality there. In all the animals at Farm Sanctuary, really. In pissy, curmudgeony Violet. In playful Blitzen. In those two male turkeys who love everybody and everything but each other, and absolutely hate each other. And certainly in this mother who lost her babies over and over again and is never going to let that happen again, who is going to fight to keep and protect the family she has.

It’s beautiful, and every time that I come here, I feel lucky to witness it, to for a couple of days be a part of it, to know it.

Occup, Loving-Kindness, And Boy, I'm Glad I Brought My Flip Flops

2011-10-27T20:37:00.000-04:00

This time, I came prepared for the rain.

Umbrella? Absolutely.

Two—that’s two—rain ponchos. You know, in case one gets ripped, or stolen by bears, or clashes with my outfit.

Extra shoes. Extra socks. Extra everything. No way I could run out of dry clothes.

Hooded sweatshirt to battle the chill? Uh-huh. Hat? Yup.

This is my third October “retreat” to Farm Sanctuary, and after two windy (I mean cabin-shaking windy), rainy (rainy) (wonderful) trips, I knew what to prepare for.

I came prepared for the cold October rain.

And I brought the flip flops, of course, for those trips to the main building (where the bathrooms are) in the middle of the night.

It’s 8:45 pm right now. I’ve been here for almost five hours. The path to my cabin has been shoveled twice.

I didn’t come prepared for the snow.

Because it doesn’t snow in October.

But it did. It is. And I’m awfully damn cold.

No boots. Because it doesn’t snow in October. No gloves. Because, you know, it doesn’t snow in October. Nothing heavier than that sweat shirt.

And a cabin equipped with The Little Heater That Could(n’t). Although, for the last half hour it’s been making an effort, making some noise, kicking out something akin to warm air; I’ve been able to crawl out from under the pile of blankets, I can feel all my fingers again.

But that’s all: meaningless, nothing, find, good, part of it.

Part of it.

It’s a beautiful day, a beautiful place, a beautiful chance to get my thoughts together, to let some thoughts go, to sit and be and read and write and stretch and have the silence broken only by the noise of my own breathing, my own mind (and now this cat, the cat that followed me into the cabin, who occasionally bites but mostly wants to be loved, who is on the bed purring behind me as I type).

I look forward to this every year now.

Two years ago, my head was swimming. I was busy. I was stressed. I didn’t have time to organize my thoughts. Work was hell. Being a dad was awesome but still sort of new and very, very tiring. I was vaguely dissatisfied. Sometimes unvaguely dissatisfied. But I couldn’t organize my thoughts, I couldn’t say “this is what I think,” I didn’t have the time or the energy at the end of a day to think what I needed or wanted to think, to say what I needed or wanted to say.

And so I asked my wife: “Do you mind if I drive out to Farm Sanctuary myself some weekend, take a solo trip, a retreat?” And she didn’t mind. And so I did. I packed up a notebook and some clothes and some meditation cushions and Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God, and I came out here, and I sat still, and I read, and I let me thoughts come and go, and I wrote them down, and I sat with them some more, and I read some more and read some more and read some more, and I had a really good dinner at The House of Hong, and at the end of it, I wasn’t enlightened. I didn’t transcend. But I’d had time to think. I’d had time to wrestle with some trivial questions and some big questions, some mundane questions and some spiritual questions, I’d had the chance to think those thoughts from beginning to end and occasionally to sit without thoughts and just be be be, and I went home feeling a little different, a little better, and I was glad for that. Very, very glad for that. Hard to put it into words, exactly, but I was glad for it, and I felt that I could make some choices, do some things, choices and things I hadn’t allowed myself before. I started attending the Zen Center. I started sitting at home regularly, hitting the yoga mat. Taking steps in the direction I wanted to go.

Last year, I came out again. October, solo. I brought David Platt’s Radical, thinking (hoping) it was full of the things I most needed to hear at that point (it wasn’t; there are some good things in that book, but I find much of Platt’s theology objectionable, creepy even). But I read, and I sat, and I thought, and it was good.

And so this year, weeks (months) in advance, I started thinking about the third trip, asking myself which questions I’d want to ask, which books I’d want to read, which thoughts I’d want to think. In a vague sort of way, not a script.

Early this afternoon, after a few delays (including a stop to the Occupy Syracuse site; I was extremely impressed with what I saw and heard there, and hope to become a part of that when I return home, even if I can only play a small, supporting role; I’ll have more to say about this later), decaf soy latte in hand, car packed with books (Thich Nhat Hanh’s For a Future to Be Possible and Pema Chodron’s Awakening Loving-Kindness), with magazines (Veg News, Tricycle), with rain gear and clothes and a yoga mat, meditation cushions, candles, notebooks, laptop, a pile of road trip CDs, I left town, drove fast, music loud (The Roots How I Got Over the perfect soundtrack, songs all about transformation, God, letting go), had trouble keeping it under 90, then music off to allow those thoughts, the thinking, the wonder.

Thoughts about love. Love for everybody. Love for the people I can’t stand. Thoughst about The Five Freedoms (something that comes up often for me, but more on that later). Thoughts about writing letters. Real letters, to real people. About feeding hungry people in the cold. About activism, about choices, about saying “no.” About my body, getting older (getting old), being alive, being dad. About a hundred books I want to read and a dozen that I want to write (two urgently, two now).

Drove, drank coffee, thought, listened to The Roots and to Rush and to NPR, and then pulled into the hills behind Watkins Glen, drove up into the snow, the snow that kept coming down and coming down and coming down, not that indecisive “do I really want to do this?” fall snow that tickles your nose and melts again, but real snow, pretty snow if this wasn’t such a cold cabin.
For the last few hours I’ve been reading Pema Chodron, sitting on that cushion, stretching on that mat, scribbling in a thick notebook, occasionally talking to the few people who are hanging around this place when I bump into them on the path (a woman and her young son from Albany, a guy who has worked here for years and years).

Enjoying the quiet.

Even, sort of, enjoying the cold nose, stiff fingers (but happy to let them go if this heater keeps working it’s magic, if this isn’t just another tease).

I’ll be happy in a couple of days, when I get home, to give my son a huge lift-him-off-his-feet hug, to hear him tell me what he did while I was away, to snuggle into bed with him and a book before he goes to sleep. To kiss my wife, give her a hug, make dinner, do dishes. I will tell them both that I missed them and that will absolutely be true.

But in the meantime I will also love this, love this silence, love this chance to just be be be. “Be be be the infinite fertilities of the one mind of infinity.” Or something to that effect.

I Think I Can Just Let This One Speak For Itself

2011-10-18T20:39:00.001-04:00

It Begins (The Economy vs You, Again)

2011-10-18T14:56:00.003-04:00

'Tis the season, I guess.

The other day, I heard the first of what I'm sure will be many "will retailers post big enough holiday season profits to pull us out of this?" new stories on the radio.

Back in 2008, right before everything really went to shit, I was hearing those stories and getting aggravated and wanted to write something right then... but then things just started getting worse and worse and more and more twisted, and it was hard really to find the right thread, the right piece to pull out and look at.

Now, three years later, I just don't much have the energy.

So I'll keep it simple. I'll say this:

Don't you think there's maybe something wrong with a system that depends for it's survival on people spending money they don't have on crap they don't need?

Doesn't that just seem... I don't know... wrong?

Tim DeChristopher

2011-10-16T15:17:00.001-04:00

Here's a short article that touches on the Tim DeChristopher sentencing a bit more.

Ah, this stuff gets me going. Extremely frustrating, it is.

There's Nothing Wrong With Surrender

2011-10-16T15:07:00.002-04:00

This is just beautiful. Caught it on NPR's "All Things Considered" last Monday. 13 minutes, but worth the time. Alex Chadwick's story is touching; Tim DeChristopher's is inspiring. Some people won't much like it. That's okay.

Three Things That Other People Had To Say

2011-10-01T09:11:00.002-04:00

Local paper had two great editorial bits in one issue this past Tuesday. Tore them out and stuck them on my desk, planning to link to them when I had the time.

One is from Gail Collins. In "Perry's Bad Night" she laments the fact that we will be stuck with Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee in 2012 ("I don't want to believe I live in a country that would seriously consider the bestowing the nation's highest office on a man who once drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the roof of the car") because Rick Perry seems intent on self-destruction.

She throws out some great Perry quotes from the recent debate (perhaps you've heard them already on NPR?). I like this one:

“I think Americans just don’t know sometimes which Mitt Romney they’re dealing with. Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe versus Wade before he was against first — Roe versus Wade? Him — he was for Race to the Top. He’s for Obamacare and now he’s against it. I mean, we’ll wait until tomorrow and — and — and see which Mitt Romney we’re really talking to tonight."

That's great, isn't it? I mean, that almost takes it to a Palin level.

On the conservative side, there was Michael Gerson's piece on the "end of innocence." It's a good piece on the scary parts of human nature and the answers to overcoming those scary parts, with The Lord of the Flies and To Kill a Mockingbird as reference points, if you will. No funny quotables, but good stuff.

This morning, I pulled out a month old New Yorker that I'd missed. Particularly good was David Remnick's "Talk of the Town" comment, "Behind the Curtain." It's a discussion of Obama's foreign policy, specifically focused on Libya. After some comment on the success of Obama's strategy in Libya (I mean, Qadaffi fell, right? and that without the US again experiencing the scorn of the Muslim world for being "crusaders," without massive loss of American lives and money, etc, etc), and after the obligatory mention that, hey, it was during the Obama presidency that we finally got Bin Laden, there's this quote, which kind of sums it up for me:

"The trouble with so much of the conservative critique of Obama’s foreign policy is that it cares less about outcomes than about the assertion of America’s power and the affirmation of its glory."

Chest-thumping, good. Results, unnecessary. That about says it, right?

Gotta (Wake Me When It Is)

2011-09-20T17:10:00.004-04:00

I mean, the house is a wreck. Look at it; there's no keeping up with this. Garbage has to go out tonight. Dishes won't clean themselves. These dinosaurs have been covering the coffee table for at least three days now. Haven't dusted or cleaned a toilet in way too long.

The outside is worse. Aside from mowing, having done much of anything out there in at least a month. It's all overgrown. I need to trim the weeds and bushes away from the walk. And I need to dig up the garden. Build that protective thing for my blueberry bushes.

And the grapes. I've got to figure out when the grapes will really be "in season." I don't know a thing about grapes and I was supposed to figure this out last year but screwed off until it was too late.

Gotta reschedule that dentist appointment, I'll be out of town for that.

Speaking of which, gotta call Farm Sanctuary and make sure everything is set for my long weekend.

Gotta wrap Molly's wedding present. Get a card, too. Need a card.

Todd's birthday is next week, need to figure out what we're doing exactly. And then tell Jen what I want for my birthday dinner.

Work has been crazy. Too much going on. Budget cuts. Our first lay-offs in just about forever. Gotta pull things together there, submit my voc redesign. That'll help.

And figure out why I'm not losing weight as fast as I thought. I mean, I'm eating healthy and exercising like crazy. Is it the salad dressing? Am I eating too much salad dressing? Maybe if I cut out dressings and oils for a week I'd see a difference.

That'd help save a few bucks too. I really have got to come up with a better budget and really stick to it.

And we need to eat more meals as a family. I mean, we're always around the table together, but we're always eating three different things. I gotta dig through some recipes, make a list of what we all like (or at least the grown ups among us like), and then we can plan meals in advance, do some shopping.

And what about raw? I'm hearing a lot of good things about switching to a primarily raw diet. I definitely should put more raw foods into my diet. I'll have to find some recipes.

And maybe get a juicer. Those fresh green juices are supposed to be amazing.

And at my next doctor's appointment, I should bring up that whole vitamin therapy thing.

And I've got to get to the farmers' market in Oneida on Thursday. There won't be many other chances this season.

And can tomatoes. I promised myself I'd can tomatoes again this year. Running out of time here.

But Saturday has to be apple picking. Pick apples, then make a couple of pies to freeze. And some applesauce. And then just some to have on hand.

Gotta see Jimmy on Saturday too. I like this whole Big Brothers Big Sisters thing a whole lot, but I have to make sure I'm giving it enough time. I feel like I'm already falling a little behind. I'll have to take him to the MOST.

Not fair to Sam, though. I mean, shouldn't I take Sam to that dinosaur thing at the MOST on Saturday? Gotta find out how long that's running and how late they're open and get in there with him soon.

And schedule a date night. Maybe an overnight somewhere for Sam. We could use the relaxation. The romance, even. Gotta call before my mom has that surgery, because then we'll be seriously short on babysitters.

Which reminds me, I really have to get that room ready for my mother if she's going to be staying here. And if I'm going to do that, I might as well do the garage at the same time, make it easier.

Wear can I get sweatshop-free running shorts? Having no luck with that.

And I really have to figure out what I'm going to do about swimming. I need lessons. Or just some time at the YMCA pool when it's not crowded. 5:30 a.m.? I'm not the swimmer I used to be, no way I'm doing a triathlon next summer if I don't get cracking at that.

And I should start shopping for a bike. Spin class starts tomorrow night. I blew it off last week, really need to be there.

All of which makes me feel kind of crummy about ditching yoga and the Zen Center. Haven't been to a yoga class in months and haven't been real consistent with the Zen Center. At least I'm keeping up the practices at home. But that's sort of half-assed and rushed, isn't it? Gotta really give myself to it.

I forgot to take the garbage out. Shit!

This running book is wicked long. So is The Dragon Reborn. I'm stuck in the midst of two really long books. Gotta get cracking on both of those or I'm never going to get to the others on the list. There are 115 books on the shelf in this house that I really want to read soon, not to mention another 50 or so that I'd like to re-read.

Haven't even cracked open the latest issue of Tricycle, and I got that, what, three weeks ago?

Or those Lone Wolf books. 15 of them. And all those Grail Quest and whatnot. Got on this kick on how I was going to collect and read all those fun role-playing books I read as a kid, now they're collecting dust. Gotta find the time for that. That and the NetFlix queue. That's embarrassingly long.

Haven't written that review of Sober Living For the Revolution. Don't post on the blog nearly enough, not to mention all the short stories and magazine pieces I haven't followed up on. Wasn't I going to set up some sort of schedule for that? Gonna have to think that through, find some time.

Maybe if I just picked up my guitar more often I'd be more relaxed. Playing always gets the tension out.

Should I talk to Harry and set up another round of Voluntary Simplicity courses? Or should I offer those at work? We could give Wellness Points.

Don't forget to order those Rob Bell tickets. Soon. Before they sell out.

Pick out a new chapter book to read with Sam. Those Geronimo Stilton books have been working out pretty well.

Fuck, how did I get this way?

How did I get to be Gotta Guy?

How did I gotta the hell out of even the good stuff?

I mean, seriously, what the hell?

Why can't I be more like Pinto.

He wakes up, stretches, pokes his head around the corner.

"Is it time for dinner yet?"

I shake my head.

"Fuck it," he says. "I'm going back to sleep. Wake me when it is."

Little bastard is a genius. A light-hearted genius.

Here I am, the "master," I'm worried about my goddamn NetFlix queue.

When the hell did I make that wrong turn, and how do I get back on track?

Orange 9mm

2011-09-19T09:41:00.001-04:00

All that raving about the might Orange 9mm in a previous post, and I didn't even link to a song.

Corrected. "Pissed." Great song.

And Chaka's earlier band, Burn, with "New Morality." Another great song.

A Couple Hours In The Coffee Shop (Flood)

2011-09-14T20:29:00.003-04:00

Well, I had a little time to myself tonight. A laptop in the coffee shop.

But I didn't make it to the posts I planned to write. The really good, really brilliant, really deep ones.

I'd really like to write a review of sorts of Sober Living For The Revolution. Because it's a good book, but also because it really got me all aggravated and argumentative at points, and I like that.

And I've been trying to find a way to articulate something that I think I'll call "A Kingdom of Priests." But I've had a hard time getting those thoughts organized, finding the right words, and tonight is just not the night.

And there are those bits and pieces of other things worth saying. Just none of it right now.

But I do want to say this.

If you're writing a thesis paper the premise of which is basically just "people suck," you might want to do a lot of your research in the comments section.

I guess we all already know that, except for the people actually living in the comments section.

And I don't mean the comments section here of course. I don't get enough traffic to draw those people. The people who leave the occasional comments here are actually all pretty awesome. Same goes for most of the blogs I take the time to read.

But the people living in the comments section of every newspaper website?

I'm pretty sure God had them in mind when he sent the flood. I think he just didn't look around enough. He was in one of those God-on-a-lazy-day modes, and instead of really doing his research, he glanced at the comments section. "Fuck," said He. "I really botched this batch." And then he killed everybody but Noah and his family. And a few animals. You know the story.

I get where he was coming from.

There are lots of awesome people out there. I've met some. I like most of the ones I've met. Even the ones I don't particularly like have their really good qualities, are lovable and valuable and good (or at least so-so).

People can be pretty awesome.

But not the people in the comments section. Those fuckers suck. I'm pretty sure their mothers don't love them.

Take this story from the local paper: "Census: U.S. poverty rate swells to nearly 1 in 6."

That's sad. It's worrisome. Put it on my signs that Everything Is Wrong list, if you will. One in six people living in poverty is sad. It's not good. (The sadder fact that one in four children are living in poverty is, well... sadder.)

But on my Everything Is Wrong-er list, put the commentors.

In the comments, you don't get "geez, that's sad, how can we come together to fix this?" or even a less thoughtful and inspiring "dude, that sux, glad I'm no poor."

What you do get is "that's what you get from those ReThugLican scumbags" and "the GOP is just sucking up to the rich" and "Obama and his LibLiars should be tried for treason" and similar reactionary mean-spirited fare. And that's just to warm up. That's the nice stuff. Mindless, stupid, devoid of content, full of empty posturing and worn out finger pointing, but better than what follows.

What follows is a bunch of hateful people vomiting ignorance and contempt for the poor. What follows is "must be nice to have an XBOX and get welfare" and "why do they keep breeding?" and "I think I'll quit my job so I can drink on my porch all day too" and similar blame-those-who-are-suffering bullshit.

It's disappointing.

'Cause, like I said, I usually tend to like the people I actually know.

I don't want to think that those people are slinking off to their basements at night and writing this stuff under their silly screen names, but, well, somebody is. A lot of somebodys.

And because of them, God had to kill all the dinosaurs in the flood. Which is awfully, awfully sad.

Everything Is Wrong, Part Too-Many-Times-To-Count

2011-09-14T20:15:00.003-04:00

A version of this article ran in the local newspaper yesterday.

In our paper, the headline reads "Small Bodies, Grown-up Illnesses."

It's a pretty depressing story.

It's just another-- among oh so many-- way that the world seems to be shouting "hey, you're going about this all wrong!"

The gist:

Huge increases in the numbers of children-- really, kids-- suffering from obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, repetitive stress injuries, anxiety, depression, Type 2 diabetes, and eating disorders.

Kids.

With anxiety, depression, and Type 2 diabetes.

Seriously.

I mean, seriously. We are seriously fucking this whole thing up. As in, getting it very, very, very wrong.

You can't be getting it right and having record numbers of kids getting Type 2 diabetes. And depression. And fucking high cholesterol.

As I have said time and time again, Everything Is Wrong.

There is a better way.

We have to cut it out.

We're killing ourselves. Inside and out.

And we're teaching our kids to kill themselves too. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally. To kill themselves.

We need to stop this.

Right away.

Now.

Thank You, Helmet

2011-09-14T19:19:00.002-04:00

That's Helmet. That's Helmet a long, long time ago. An old, old song, and probably still one of their very best.

I've been listening to Helmet a lot this past week or so. Their album Betty, which came out after this (and featured the single "Milquetoast;" anybody remember that one?). And Aftertaste, which came out a little later, and was definitely their "catchiest" album at the time (and maybe still; I don't know, I kind of lost track of them).

I've been listening to those albums quite a bit on my commutes back and forth to work, on my errands to the grocery store and whatnot, and I've been feeling just sort of... appreciative.

I haven't really listened to much Helmet in years-- those discs have been collecting dust-- and they've brought back some memories.

In large part because of Helmet, I got into a whole world of music and ideas that I might have otherwise missed, a world of music and ideas that has been a big part of my life for close to twenty years now.

The first time I heard that song I was 19 years old.

I kind of fancied myself the alternative rock and roll guy. Long hair. Flannels. Second-hand cutoffs. I played bass and had that pensive scowl down. I was just the right amount of idealistic and disillusioned, listening to Tool and Primus and Nine Inch Nails and Dream Theater and Pearl Jam and Alice In Chains and Nirvana. I was in the midst of my first year of really living on my own, broke and hungry most of the time, had had my first tastes of drugs and beer and ladies that weren't my high school sweetheart.

I was staying in my mom's basement on the weekends. It was winter, and the heating had never been routed down there, but there was an old wood stove and I had a fire going. The local radio station had this thing called "the Sunday Six Pack" or something to that effect, where they would take a recently released album and play six songs back to back on Sunday nights. I was sitting there in the basement listening to the radio and being very pensive when "Unsung" and five other songs came on, and I was blown away by it. I couldn't say exactly what it was that I loved about the songs, though that finally came to me in the right words just the other day. At the time, I would have said there was something "cold" in the songs, but then maybe would have sort of dismissed it as projection, being in a cold basement and all. But now... I think that what I love about Helmet at their best is a sort of lack of emotion. A lot of power, a flawless style, but not energy or emotion in the typical sense. Maybe I can't capture it any better than that.

I liked the songs. Not too long after that, I picked up Meantime. All the songs sort of sounded the same ("Unsung" being the obvious standout), and it was honestly hard to listen to at times (the singer/song writer/guitarist just sort of yells and shouts for the most part, and then there's that whole aforementioned lack of emotion to it). But it was somehow very, very awesome.

Later, there was "Milquetoast," which got on the soundtrack to "The Crow," and I suppose that created a few more Helmet fans.

And then, when I was maybe 21 or 22, they rolled through Syracuse on tour, played at The Lost Horizon.

I could go on and on about the epic quest to find The Lost Horizon for the first time. My friend Jerry and I had heard of the place, but had never been there. We lived in Rome, about an hour away. The night we drove out to buy tickets, it took us six hours to get there, what with the getting lost and getting goofy and many little side adventures. But I'll skip most of that.

The night they played, five of us went-- me, Jerry, Chris, Johnny Wad, and Anthony (who has since left us, which is of course sad).

The Lost Horizon was rougher back then than it is now. I remember bouncers trying to sell us shrooms in line. Another bouncer trying to pick a fight with my buddy Chris when Chris accidentally bumped into him. And lots and lots and lots of people packed tightly together. It was cold outside, but about a thousand degrees in the club. Mostly young white guys, some young white ladies. Almost exclusively white, so that it was easy to notice a somehow larger than life black guy with dreds sitting and talking to someone at the bar.

We waited. And then the openers came on. And then it was like a whole new chapter of life.

Helmet was what you might have called at that time an "alternative metal band." I was pretty familiar with that stuff.

Their openers were bands I'd never heard of, and I wasn't really all that terribly interested in learning anything about them.

Until that first note.

There was a little noise. I looked to the stage, saw that black guy with dreds holding the mic. The music started, he threw himself into the crowd, and what they did for the next half hour or so just blew me away, rewrote my concept of music.

The band was Orange 9mm. I didn't know anything about them at the time, but I learned quickly. The singer Chaka Malik had previously been in a band called Burn out of NYC. Burn was a Revelation Records band. Revelation was the going hardcore label. Orange 9mm was touring on their first full length. They'd put out an EP on Revelation but had quickly been signed to a major for the full length.

None of which would have meant anything to me at the time. They were just... incredible. There was an intensity of energy that I'd never heard before. A positivity. A ferociousness.

And then Quicksand came on. Quicksand was different. They came out of the hardcore world as well, with the singer/guitar player having played in both Gorilla Biscuits and Youth of Today (both of them legends in that world), and other members having played with Chaka in Burn.

Again, didn't know it. I just knew that though they were way more mellow (what you might call post-hardcore), they were great. Still upbeat, still energetic, with a couple of songs that just made you want to jump and shout and kick.

And then came Helmet. And though Helmet was good, though I was glad to be there, that huge rush, that amazing intensity of the first two bands just couldn't be met.

I left that show and scrambled to get everything I could find by Quicksand and Orange 9mm. I played the hell out of Orange 9mm's first EP until I finally got my hands on Driver Not Included, which I played even more. I started wanting to play music that sounded like this, that had the same energy. I still didn't know anything about the wider world that was connected to this stuff, but I loved it. Absolutely loved it.

And then, little by little, it dawned on me that there was a scene here, a culture, a something that I hadn't known a damn thing about before.

I'd buy a CD, and in it there'd be a little two page insert catalog for the record label. The next time I'd be in a record store, I'd see one of those advertised bands, I'd take a shot, buy the disc, and I'd be blown away all over. I heard names like Gorilla Biscuits and Shelter (sometimes from my buddy Jerry, who had had a little exposure to this stuff), I'd get the discs, and I'd just sit there, amazed.

I started going to more shows, and I finally got the full reality of it.

This was hardcore.

Though a few very good bands had been signed to major labels (Orange 9mm, Sick Of It All, Quicksand, Downset, Shelter; they were all pretty quickly dropped), this was essentially a DIY (do it yourself) scene, an underground.

It was hundreds of great bands touring on their own networks, kids letting bands crash at their houses, a few hardworking fans putting together fantastic shows, tiny barely-viable record labels distributing music, kids making t-shirts in their basements.

It was great music, and it was more than music.

It was ideas.

Veganism. I was vegetarian already when I sort of stumbled into this stuff, and I was thrilled to find a scene that embraced that, promoted it.

Straight Edge. I never quite could get myself to make the full on straight edge commitment (no drugs, no cigarettes, no alcohol, no illicit sex), but I respected it, thought it was very awesomely counter-cultural.

Spirituality. Environmentalism. Anarchism. Feminism. Just plain old basic thinking.

Sure, there were occasionally thugs in the crowd (see "315" straight edge assholes picking fights, who were really just as bad as neo-nazi skinhead assholes who came in and broke shit). And there were occasionally thugs and assholes in bands (see Embrace Today, among others).

But that stuff was always the exception.

Especially in my early days, every show was like an escape to a little Mecca.

I'd walk into a dimly lit bar (and I loved dimly lit bars). More often than not, there'd be no alcohol for sale so that it could be an all-ages event. I'd grab a couple of Snapples, order a vegan burger and some chips or a big bowl of veggie chili. Half the floor would be packed with heavily tattooed pierced up kids dancing (a loose use of the term; from the outside, I'm sure it just looked like young people beating the shit out of each other, but it wasn't really that at all). The rest of the floor space was distro tables, info tables. Tiny record labels. Bands selling merch. Someone handing out free manifestos. Animal rights activists. Zines and homemade t-shirts. A guy selling books (politics, philosophy).

Over the years, I saw hundreds of great bands. Some of them I saw ten times or more. Most of them were cool people, who were more likely to hang out talking with music nerds like me and my friends than they were to go to an after-party or try to hook up with hardcore ladies.

Strife. Candiria. Earth Crisis. Sick Of It All. Gorilla Biscuits. Figure Four. Terror. Despair. Shai Hulud. Orange 9mm. Downset. Vision Of Disorder. Diecast. Hoods. Cut Throat. Envy. Turmoil. Another Victim. Birthright. Ascension. One To Face. A Day In The Life. Drowning Room. Path Of Resistance. Lamb Of God. Anti-Flag. Blood Has Been Shed. From Autumn To Ashes. Dillinger Escape Plan. Quicksand. Murphy's Law. Burnt By The Sun. Black Sheep Squadron. Madball. Zao. Scarlet. How We Are. Bane. Meshuggah. Fugazi. Branch Manager. Comeback Kid. Thy Will Be Done. Wisdom In Chains. God Forbid. Mastodon. Mouth Of The Architect. The Promise. Founddeadhanging. Sense Field. Element 101. The Rocking Horse Winner. Walls Of Jericho. Hatebreed. Full Blown Chaos.

And on and on and on and on and on.

I never became a "scenester." In my younger years, I lived just a little too far outside the Syracuse hardcore scene to feel I could be fully involved. Later, I just felt too old to jump into it with the enthusiasm of youth, to have bands sleeping at my house or to dump my savings into putting out a record.

But hardcore became sort of a soundtrack of inspiration and motivation. When I was down, I could either throw on some bitter, angry stuff to happily wallow in it, or I could throw on an "I will rise above this" anthem to get going again. When I had moments of self-doubt, I had the music to erase it. Even now, pushing 40, it's hardcore I go to when I need motivation to put those running shoes on in the morning, hardcore I go to when I need motivation to get my ass to the gym. Hardcore that I turn to when I'm disappointed with the world. Or when I just need to hear that it's going to be alright, that I can do it, that there are people out there fighting back, working together, making something beautiful.

So, listening to Helmet this week, I've just felt this gratitude, this need to say "thank you."

Those guys introduced me to a beautiful thing, and I'll always be grateful for that.

Lucid Bacchanalia

2011-09-06T15:49:00.002-04:00

I've been reading Gabriel Kuhn's Sober Living for the Revolution, a bit of a history/overview of leftist hardcore straight edge politics. The sort of thing that mostly appeals to a niche audience, I guess, but I guess I'm part of that niche. It's a decent book. Interviews, mostly, with some manifestos thrown in. Great interview with Ian MacKaye, great interview with Dennis Lyxzen.

And I particularly like the manifesto "Wasted Indeed: Anarchy and Alcohol" by the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective.

Here's a bit:

In this push-button culture, we've become used to conceiving of ourselves as simple machines to be operated: add the appropriate chemical to the equation to get the desired result. In our search for health, happiness, meaning in life, we run from one panacea to the next-- Viagra, vitamin C, vodka-- instead of approaching our lives holistically and addressing our problems at their social and economic roots. This product-oriented mindset is the foundation of our alienated consumer society: without consuming products, we can't live! We try to buy relaxation, community, self-confidence-- now even ecstasy comes in a pill!

And:

These partisans of Rebellious Drunkenness and advocates of Responsible Abstinence are loyal adversaries. The former need the latter to make their dismal rituals look like fun; the latter need the former to make their rigid austerity seem like common sense. An "ecstatic sobriety" which combats the dreariness of the one and the bleariness of the other-- false pleasure and false discretion alike-- is analogous to the anarchism that confronts both the false freedom offered by capitalism and the false community offered by communism.

All Fracked Up

2011-09-06T15:23:00.002-04:00

Here's a site by a couple of people who are really, really not into fracking.

I haven't had a chance to watch their documentary yet, though I did read a good letter-to-the-editor they penned for the local paper not too long ago.

"We have never been arrested," they said in the last paragraph, "and totally respect police officers, although we'll do what we have to do to nonviolently protect our family's health, livelihood, property values and heritage for all our children."

I like that sentiment.

And they have good reason to be really, really not into fracking.

Fracking is kind of a fucked up thing.

It's bad for you. For the world. For everything.

And it kind of pisses me off that, in spite of that, and in spite of the fact that so many people in NY are opposed to it, are vocal about it, are furious about it, the fracking companies keep winning little battles. We live here. We don't want it here. And somehow that doesn't matter.

Makes you want to kind of break something, you know?

Anyway, here's a very short video about the couple who made "All Fracked Up."

And so, yeah, today, I wasn't at work. Long story.

While not at work, I ran a quick errand to a local health food store to get some bread (and some yogurt pretzels for the boy). On the way, I was listening to NPR. The topic for the hour was the out of control fires in Texas. At some point, the point was made that one of many factors leading to the current out of control situation is fracking. Because fracking uses vast amounts of water to break the shale and get to natural gases, there is even less water available to fend off the current drought.

The commentator, a guy I like, then said something that I found just a little disturbing.

"It's tough," he said (and of course, this is a paraphrase), "because you have two competing needs. On the one hand, you have a drought and you need water. But on the other hand, you need energy. And it's hard to say which is more important, which should get priority."

?

?

Really?

Because, here's the thing? No, it's not. No, it's not hard at all.

Energy is important. No kidding. No doubt.

But, the deal is, without water, we die. Everything dies without water. Absolutely no exceptions.

Energy: really important. Can't have AC or movies or lights or mass transit or soap operas without it.

Water: the foundation for all life.

Not hard to prioritize. Seriously. Not hard at all.

Fun At The Fair

2011-09-05T20:11:00.003-04:00

I've been wanting to write some longer posts these past few days, but life has been busy busy busy and I have been a tad lazy lazy lazy, so none of those Big Ideas have made it through my fingers and to the screen.

But there. That's good, right? That's a picture of me and the boy at the NY State Fair. Can't post anything much better than that.

This is the second year of our new tradition. We took him to the Fair for the first time last year. He had a blast. Loved it. Ran himself ragged, and then, on the way out, on our way back to the parking lot, fell sound asleep while sitting on my shoulders.

This year, same thing. He had a great time. Loved seeing the animals, doing that big inflatable-hamster-wheel-in-the-water thing, playing games, drawing blood on the darts guy (what was the guy thinking giving a four year old a dart?), riding the rides, eating the food, watching the acrobats. Loved it. The whole deal. Everything.

Looked exhausted the whole time but kept on going. Then, on our way toward the gates, I kept feeling him sort of "hitching" on my shoulders. He fell very soundly asleep, stayed asleep on the bus back to the parking lot, on the ride home.

I've never loved the Fair, hadn't bothered to go in years, but seeing it through a four year old's eyes makes it very, very cool and exciting again. I enjoy not just his enjoyment, but the experience itself.

That, in spite of being very conflicted by the whole thing.

I mean, the debauchery and immorality of it. To me, it's worse than something like Mardi Gras.

I mean, really? Deep-fried Snickers wrapped in bacon? That's not just unhealthy-- that's belligerent. That's like saying, "fuck my body, I hate this damn body, I'm going to destroy it." Row after row of stands celebrating gluttony and self-loathing with deep fried ice cream, deep fried cookies, deep fried alligator meat. And beer beer beer. And lots and lots of unhealthy people lined up to do themselves just a little more damage.

And don't get me started on the dairy building. The butter sculpture. The celebration of veal (because you know, don't you, that every glass of milk is really just a glass of veal?). The obnoxious multi-billion dollar dairy industry lies...

But anyway. No need to getting going on that right now. Nobody wants to hear me preaching.

Just look at the picture of my cute kid.

We had an awful lot of fun at the Fair.

On Knowing Karma

2011-09-03T23:45:00.002-04:00

The results of karma cannot be known by thought and so should not be speculated about. Thus thinking, one would come to distraction and distress. Therefore, Ananda, do not be the judge of people; do not make assumptions about others. A person is destroyed by holding judgements about others." (from the Anguttura Nikaya)

That whole not being "the judge of people?" That whole not making "assumptions about others?"

Yeah, I've got a long, long, long, long way to go with that.

Maybe it's time to start working on that for real.

Zazen Is Enlightenment

2011-08-25T22:17:00.001-04:00

"Zazen is enlightenment," said the nameless woman in my dream.

And that was it. That was all.

The Parable Of The Mustard Seed

2011-08-22T22:14:00.002-04:00

I've been re-reading Jack Kornfield's Teachings of the Buddha lately, a bit here and there, sort of as a devotional I suppose.

Tonight I read through The Parable of the Mustard Seed. (The version Kornfield includes in the book is better than what you'll read in the link, but it's basically the same story, and I couldn't find the other version online.)

This parable was actually my first encounter with Buddhism. It was covered very quickly in my World History class when I was in 9th grade. Not much else was said about Buddhism-- a few hacked misunderstandings of the concepts of karma and nirvana. And this parable, as an example of Buddhist philosophy.

This story blew me away. Shortly after hearing it, I wrote a fantasy short story called "Death's Riddle," which earned me $100 in a local fiction contest. "Death's Riddle" was really little more than a retailing of the parable, expanded a bit, with some kings and wizards and poisonous fruit.

Hadn't read this in a long, long time. Very glad to have read it tonight.

Impermanence.

Impermanence.

I'll Have To Just Learn To Share, I Guess

2011-08-19T21:28:00.001-04:00

Little dude-- or maybe little dude and his friends-- just took out fully one quarter of the corn I planted. Pulled some of the stalks right down to the ground. Skeletal cobs everywhere.

I guess I'm just going to have to learn to deal with it.

There are still 8 ears out there, not ready to pick yet.

And he didn't touch the eggplant (what little actually grew). That's good, because I always swore there'd be blood if he ruined my eggplant. I brought the last of that in tonight to cook for Sunday's dinner.

Corn

2011-08-18T21:54:00.003-04:00

Tonight's dinner: a fantastic sandwich made from an heirloom tomato and a funky breed of cucumber I'd never heard of before (it grows into a U shape)-- both from Grindstone Farm-- on locally grown/milled pumpernickel, with a bit of Vegenaise. Absolutely fantastic.

Also, some salad greens with locally grown multi-colored grape tomatoes, some local(ish) baked tofu, flax seeds, and vegan Thousand Island dressing. With a dab of guacamole. Really, really good.

And, best of all, corn on the cob.

I have to thank my busy-tailed nemesis. Had he not taunted me with that corn cob last night, I wouldn't have gone out to the garden and realized that quite a bit of corn was ready to be picked.

So tonight, with dinner, four ears of absolutely amazing corn. The best I've ever, ever had.

Four ears, but four ears that sort of add up to one ear. For some reason, all of my corn is about as thick as a typical ear of corn, but really, really short. The longer ear I picked was maybe five inches. The shortest was maybe two and a half.

But man, was it damn good.

Sweet.

But more than sweet.

When I tasted that corn, I could sort of taste everything that went into it. Could sort of see it all.

Could see Sam in his fleece, his hat and his work gloves, pushing his little wheelbarrow, helping me clear out space to lay the garden beds.

I could see and smell the rain that day a couple of months later when we stood under an umbrella, me punching holes in the soil with my finger, Sam dropping two kernels into each hole, both of us getting soaked.

I could see those first shoots coming up, and remember thinking that there was no way I was actually going to get any edible corn out of this garden. Then, not so long ago, those first few signs of good stuff coming, the silk peeking out here and there.

This was good, good corn. Delicious.

And there's more out there waiting for me.

Squirrel Trouble

2011-08-17T22:32:00.001-04:00

That damn squirrel is messing with me again. I'm pretty sure it's the same busy-tailed bastard who was eating my zucchini.

Looking out my kitchen window while making dinner tonight, I couldn't figure out what the hell was hanging on the fence above my garden. Stuck there almost like a trophy, or, more, like the head of a remember on some medieval spear.

I went out and looked.

It was an ear of corn.

I hadn't picked a single ear yet-- they were looking good, but not quite there.

So the squirrel beat me to it.

Picked an ear. Shucked it. Nibbled off a dozen or so kernels. Then left the cob right there, wedged between two pieces of the top of the fence, just taunting me, screwing with me.

The Zucchini Wars are back on.

On the brighter side... I picked a few ears for myself. They're very small, but they look "done." I'll eat them with my dinner tomorrow.

And my tomatoes-- which are fairly abundant, and very, very big-- are finally turning red. I'll be eating them by the end of the week. Ah... tomatoes and cucumber on pumpernickel, add a little mustard and Vegenaise... life can be good.

But, if I see him, not for that rodent. Life won't be good for him at all. I catch him out there, and someone's getting one hell of a talking to...

The Empire Strikes Back

2011-08-10T19:04:00.003-04:00

Do your remember-- and maybe you don't, because for most people I think this wasn't a huge issue or a big story-- but do you remember a few years back when the dairy people started suing the soy people?

It was when vegan dairy alternatives like soy milk, which had all been around for a long, long time, had a big upswing in popularity. All of a sudden, you didn't have to get warm EdenSoy (god bless them for being there when we needed them, but I wouldn't want to go back) from the dusty shelf of the one dimly health food store in town; you could actually go to the dairy case and the super market and choose from a variety of brands and flavors. It was fantastic.

But the dairy industry didn't think so. The people who spend billions telling you that milk does a body good and sputtering nonsense about "happy cows" didn't want a bunch of hippies cutting into their profits, and so they sued.

They sued by redefining the word "milk." "Milk," they insisted, is something that comes from the udders of a cow. Period. Therefore, "soy milk" was misleading. They demanded that the term no longer be used, and that soy milk not be stocked in the dairy case.

Presumably with the very best of intentions, to protect consumers who might be tricked into drinking that stuff.

Never mind that soy milk was a healthier (for bodies, and for the planet) alternative.

And certainly never mind that goat's milk, coconut milk, and countless other milks have been out there for a long, long (long) time.

"Milk" means "from cows." Period.

I don't know exactly how those cases played out, but soy milk is still soy milk, and I can still buy it in whatever section of the store the good people who work there decide to put it in, so I guess Big Dairy lost.

And I'm sure you remember the whole Oprah scandal, right?

Big Beef sued Oprah and Howard Lyman (the Mad Cowboy) for having the nerve to say mean things about beef. In England, McDonald's had successfully shut down criticism from activists who dared to talk about the health problems associated with eating their "food." So, using new agricultural libel laws (ie, laws that say you can't say bad things about big food producers), Big Beef tried to stick it to Oprah and Howard.

Luckily, Oprah is Oprah. They probably would have fared better screwing with someone else.

Or how about a couple of years ago, when the Dept of Health and Human Services changed the content of their Public Service Announcements on breast feeding? They didn't change the content because there was something wrong with the content. Nope. They left out some good information-- they sabotaged their own efforts to promote the extremely healthy choice of breast feeding-- because the drug dealers that make and promote infant formula didn't like that information going around. Breast feeding was getting more popular, and they didn't want to lose any more profits to those damn hippies and activists and feminists.

And then, of course, there's Monsanto. But we've talked about Monsanto before.

Think about all of those old stories after running into some new ones.

If you've been here before, you know that I'm a little bit of a local food junkie. I'm not a perfect locavore-- I don't know where my Vegenaise was made, but it's delicious and I keep on buying it anyway-- but I go for the local as much as I can. I'm big on the farmers' markets, the co-op. I work hard in my back yard garden. I only wash with local soap. I do my canning and my freezing and I know where my tofu comes from.

When I have the choice, I eat Flour City Pasta.

Flour City makes good, good stuff. I've been buying it since before it was Flour City-- for all I know, it was just The-Guy-At-The-Farmers'-Market-Selling-Pasta Pasta. It's locally made (well, Rochester, but local enough). It's locally sourced (to an extent, at least; I don't think they're 100% local ingredients). It's really, really good (lots of cool flavors). It's all vegan. And buying it has always been... well, sort of fun.

They sell this stuff in the co-op and some other local health food places now, but before that I could only get it at the Regional Market. And I really enjoyed getting it at the Regional Market. Sam and I would be meandering through the stalls, picking out pies and veggies and his (local) yogurt. He'd be on my shoulders, holding at least one of the bags for me, and then we'd see a whole bunch of people milling around a big vendor's stall, and I'd think "ah, the Pasta Guy." We'd get to the stall and there'd be all of these boxes set up, under plastic sneeze shields, each box full of a different shape or color. People would be looking through those sneeze shield windows, figuring out what they liked best, what looked the most exciting. The guys working there were always friendly, and I'd often get a comment on how fast Sam was growing since they'd seen him last (I don't know if they really remembered us, or if they were just good enough salespeople to know that moms and dads eat that stuff up like crazy). Anyway, when you were ready to place your order, you told the guy what you wanted, and how much you wanted. Half a pound? A pound? Ten pounds? Half of this, half of that? It was all your choice. The atmosphere was fun. The people (buyers and sellers alike) were friendly. And the pasta was always very, very good.

On my last visit to the Regional Market (I get to that one less often since I've moved to the other side of town, have to resign myself to smaller, closer markets sometimes), the scene was different.

For starters, I was alone. But still enjoying it.

I saw the Pasta Guys, but that vendor's stall wasn't so crowded. It didn't have that happy, street market vibe.

And there were no sneeze shields. No big boxes of bright colors.

There were just some shelves. On the shelves, sealed bags of pasta.

The guy working there-- a different person than I'm used to, but just as friendly-- was talking to a local organic farmer. They were both frustrated. I asked what the deal was.

The deal, apparently, was that someone-- someone wise, someone with all of our best interests in mind-- had decided that in New York State, it's just not acceptable to sell pasta out of big boxes of bright colors under sneeze shields. A regulation or law or what have you had been passed (or perhaps more narrowly enforced, or perhaps "reinterpreted" as often happens in my own field-- more on that later, maybe) which said that any food products prepared off-site must be sold in sealed containers.

Making a sandwich in the open air-- moving the bread to the plate and the veggies and meat to the bread and handing it over uncovered to the paying customer-- was fine.

Selling pasta in the open air-- putting the dry pasta in a bag, handing the bag over to the paying customer-- was not fine. It was just... unhealthy. Had to be stopped.

So all of the pasta was in sealed bags. One size fits all. Want a half pound? Sorry, no half pounds. Want a little of this, a little of that? Sorry, the bags are sealed.

Along with all that clearly very horribly unhealthy disgusting behavior, what the new reg also stopped was what everyone used to show up for. According to the guy working there, business was down at his stall. Not that he needed to say so. For the first time ever, I was the only customer. There was no line.

That whole vibe, that whole wholesome feel, was now against regulations.

For all of our sakes. For our own good. Clearly.

The organic farmer talking to the pasta guy commented on how this was no surprise and that there'd probably be more stuff like this coming down. After all, this whole organic, fresh, local, healthy thing that was going on was cutting into the profits of big chains, and, more importantly, Big Agriculture. I mean, look in the paper-- yes, there's still a massive obesity epidemic, there's still a health crisis, there's still high cholesterol and hear disease, and there's still a surplus of big polluters and food miles and pesticides and what have you-- but there's also this growing movement, this movement of people looking for something better. Better for themselves, better for their communities, better for their world. It makes the back pages every day, these little organic stories, local farms, food movements. If it gets bigger-- hell, that could change the way people behave. So it needs to stop now.

Plastic bags. Sealed. Business down. Who's next?

I was still mulling that over, still annoyed and disgusted and aggravated and not sure what to do about it, who to yell at, when I got home, clicked around the internet, and read a little bit at The Accidental Environmentalist. That's a very cool blog that I very recently discovered.

I landed on this post. It got me riled up all over again.

Way down there in the hot and soggy depths of Florida, some local Republicans sponsored an event "to prove that bicycles are inefficient and impractical for transportation." It involved a "race" between a bicyclist and the driver of a Chevy Avalanche. A race that involved stopping to pick up some groceries, dry cleaning, and lumber from various sites. Without a carrier for the bike.

Because apparently biking is becoming a little more popular in Florida these days (as it is in Syracuse, though sadly not an option for me with my wickedly long, environmentally unfriendly commute).

Can't have that. Can't have obese America seeing those damn hippies making healthy choices. Can't have gas-addled America seeing those damn activists making environmentally sound choices. Must mock. Must ridicule. Must shut it down. Must, must, must. Otherwise, what might happen to the profits? To the game plan? To business as usual?

It depresses me. It makes me angry. It makes me... disappointed?

Again, I don't even know the right words for it (that happens a lot).

It makes me something.

And it makes me feel the need to do something more, to push harder, to find my voice, to say "no" to all this nonsense.

******

As a little update, I'm adding in the link that John Farrier left in the comments.

It's about the SWAT raid on an Amish farmer... for selling raw milk...

With My Life

2011-08-10T18:31:00.003-04:00

In their early days, Shai Hulud was a fantastic band.

Really.

In 1996, when the A Profound Hatred of Man ep came out, I read something that described it as "a few songs short of leaving you an empty husk."

That was exactly right. That was exactly it. Only three songs, but a hell of a cd. Brutal, angry, passionate, and just so damn aggressive. And the kid doing the vocals? He was something like 15 years old at the time.

Then they came out with Hearts Once Nourished With Hope and Compassion. That was pretty damn good too. Nine songs (one of them a remake of something from Profound).

Then there were a bunch of line-up changes, old members out, new members in. But they still managed to put out some good music-- three songs on a split with Another Victim, another three songs on a split with Indecision.

All of that stuff was good.

It was angry, but it was a good kind of angry. It was the kind of angry that the best hardcore bands capture so well, the kind of angry that made me fall in love with Vision of Disorder and Sick Of It All and so many others. A certain sort of righteous anger. Young people disgusted with the world's failure to live up to it's potential, who could see something better possible, and who could no longer accept the less-than that all around them.

Good, good stuff.

There was a long lack of output while the band toured (and toured and toured) and changed members over and over and over again (to the point where there were more ex-members than there were recorded songs in their repertoire).

A few years back, they returned with That Within Blood Ill-Tempered. That was decent. But it wasn't great. It was a little too... self-conscious? It was like Shai Hulud was very aware of themselves, of what they'd been up to that point, and they were sort of trying to be it even more. It was good, but it didn't have the energy or spontaneity or whatever of the earlier stuff.

And then, more recently, they delivered Misanthropy Pure. Hate to say it, don't want to hurt any feelings, but I don't know. I just can't listen to it. I'd love to see them live again (saw them three times, they were always good), but I just can't listen to the disc. Listening to it is sort of like listening to a less-interesting band whose main influence was early Shai Hulud albums (which, with all those new members, is basically the case). I just can't do it.

But, like I say, if they came around Syracuse, I'd go see them again. I'd even buy another album if they put it out. Always the optimist, you know? Always hoping.

Not too long ago, I pulled out Hearts Once Nourished With Hope and Compassion, listened to it a few times on my daily commutes.

It's still a good disc.

Listening to it now, though, there was just something... different about it.

Rather, something different about me.

I didn't quite get it, but then this one line jumped out at me. This one really good line, this one line that I always loved.

It's from the opening track, a song that's kind of about being strong, rising above the crap that lies all around, being moral.

It's toward the end of the song.

"I will serve as an example..." the kid screams.

"By defending those I love with my life."

I used to like that. I thought that that was pretty profound. The whole notion of self-sacrifice. The whole "there is no greater love" aspect. "With my life."

I still like that.

But not so long ago, it stopped being profound.

Four years ago, roughly.

Four years, two months, two and a half weeks ago, a little less roughly.

It's strange, and sort of hard to articulate, but as I was driving along listening and heard that line jump out at me, it occurred to me that that line-- that sentiment-- was no longer profound at all, but rather sort of kind of completely obvious.

Because from that first moment I held Sam in my hands, just staring into his eyes as my wife was wheeled down the hall for emergency surgery, from that first moment of just memorizing his face-- and before that, I think, before we even looked at each other, although that moment is the one my mind always goes back to-- it just seemed that that was a given. A part of the job. Obvious. My responsibility. My whole damn purpose. It was suddenly not profound at all, not poetic, not inspiring, to know, to say, to realize that without hesitation, without fear, without thought, I would place myself in front of anything, any danger, any hurt, and sewer clown (sorry, still reading It), to keep my wife and my son safe and happy and healthy.

It suddenly became obvious that I would stop toward the big barking mean looking dog, not away, when it came barreling toward the little red wagon I was pulling.

That I would step toward the swerving car muttering drunk anything anything anything, not away, when it seemed the least-bit threatening.

Listening to that song the other day, it was like a bit of epiphany.

I suddenly understood my mom's fearlessness when faced with snarling paper route dogs that had me trapped on a porch, in tears (even though she's always been a little scared of other dogs).

I suddenly understood my mom's raised voice and "just go ahead and fuck with me, punk" eyes when facing (adult) bullies in church or school (even though she's always been a little bit afraid to have her voice heard, a little bit reluctant to resist her own bullies).

Something happens that first time you make eye contact.

Everything changes.

I'm Not At All Where I'm Supposed To Be

2011-08-10T18:21:00.002-04:00

And I feel a little bad about that. Guilty, sort of, as silly as that is.

I haven't been to the Zen Center in weeks. Weeks! Enough weeks to be months.

I was going to go last week, get myself back on that cushion for a couple of hours, but then I got distracted after work and I didn't got out of the office in time.

So, today. I had today off. I took Sam to his four-year check up at the doctor's office (the doctor said all the "he's so articulate and funny" stuff that I've come to expect, demand), dropped him off at school, and then had the bulk of the day to myself. A good chunk of time at the gym. A stop into a health food store (to get vegan marshmallows for Sam's S'mores later this week, and some samosas, and, and...). A little time to read. An attempted (failed) nap. A trip to a local organic farm stand (kale and blackberries and corn and sun golds and grape juice and onions... mmm...). Even got a haircut (I swear, twice as handsome as I was yesterday).

The plan was that I'd then get me to the Zen Center. Wednesday nights at the Zen Center are my favorite. And I've oh so been needing it. I mean, I still sit every night, sometimes for just a few minutes, sometimes for a whole lot longer. But the whole group dynamic thing, with someone more experienced leading, with just the whole sense of being there in that room, a certain sort of holiness (wrong word, but the closest I can come up with) about the whole thing-- that's a good thing to have from time to time, something I need, something I want. And so tonight I was going to go, sit, be, (chant, maybe?).

And then... I ended up here at the coffee shop instead. Drinking decaf soy lattes (gonna order a roasted veggie sandwich too, soon). Thinking deep thoughts.

I don't know if I'm here because of the part of me that resists the things that are good for me, the part of me that whines on the way to the Zen Center (or the gym, or yoga classes, or or or), or if I'm here because of the part of me that needs to take some time and think out some thoughts, write some of them down.

It

2011-08-03T21:20:00.002-04:00

I have a confession to make.

For the past week or so, I've been reading Stephen King's It. I'm kind of a slow reader, so I'm only a little more than 300 pages into it so far. 700 still to go.

That's not my confession.

This is my confession:

I think Stephen King's It is a fantastic book.

And I mean more than that. I mean this:

Most of what I read is non-fiction. Philosophy, theology, politics, eco stuff, vegan stuff. Lots of non-fiction, serious, grown up, smart stuff.

When I do read fiction-- and I do read fiction, quite a bit of it-- it's pretty much split into two camps, two wide genres: great literature, and dumb fun.

The great literature is the stuff I take seriously, the stuff I really, truly, thoroughly get into. The stuff I feel smarter and more sophisticated for reading. Hemingway, Kerouac, Camus, Dostoevsky, Burgess, Vonnegut, Hesse, Pirsig, Kingsolver, Orwell. That stuff. I love that stuff.

But sometimes I want just dumb fun. Sometimes I want to pick up a book that isn't "bad" by any means, but also isn't meant to twist the brain or leave you breathless or change your life.

Fred Saberhagen's Books of Swords. Anything from the Bunnicula series (I don't care that they were written for pre-teens, those books rock!). Robert Aspirin's MYTH books. Robert Jordan.

And Stephen King.

Firestarter. I read Firestarter last year. I loved it. It was just fun to read. The end.

So, when my wife finished up the copy of It that I'd picked up at a sale for 50 cents or so, I quickly moved it to my side of the headboard bookshelf, figured it would be my next read.

I'd just read a couple of serious John Joseph books (one was really, really serious), a couple of books on Buddhism, some health and fitness stuff, etc, etc, so on, so forth, so I figured I wanted something that was dumb fun.

But It isn't dumb fun.

It's a damn good book.

I mean, yes, it's about a monster clown that pulls kids into the sewer and eats them. And sure, that sounds like dumb fun on the surface.

But at 300 or so pages, it isn't really about that at all. Or, rather, it's about that just a little bit.

What it's much more about is a bunch of kids that grew into adults without ever fully facing and dealing with the pain in their lives. Kids who were the victims of vicious school yard bullies. Kids with obsessively overprotective mothers who convinced them they were frail and weak. Kids with abusive parents. Kids who'd lost siblings, or a parent. Kids who'd been picked on in school. Who were fat. Or stuttered. Kids who faced all kinds of pain, great and small, and moved on, left it behind, and didn't think about it ever again. Kids who found themselves forced to face it as adults, who found themselves with empty places, dark shadows in the midst of their otherwise very successful lives, who found themselves repeating those childhood patterns again and again, running from those unresolved fears.

In the book, they have to go back and kill that monster clown.

But they also go back into those memories and that pain.

This is beautiful stuff.

King writes in a way that makes you care about each and every one of these kids, that makes you far more terrified of the drunken father or the schoolyard bully than you could ever be of the jagged toothed clown. He makes you want to save each child.

Beautiful stuff. Less dumb fun, more psychological profile, moral story.

I can't wait to get through the next 700 pages (fully aware of King's tendency to blow the ending with a campy monster... but who cares?).

I Hope You Like Your STDs

2011-07-30T17:21:00.002-04:00

Last Saturday, my mother spent the night. Her plan was to get up and go to my sister's church (right down the road from me) on Sunday morning, then I would drop her and Sam off at the coffee shop where my brother works on Armory Square in Syracuse while I ran around the corner to do some birthday shopping at the record store (my wife turned a whopping 35 on Thursday), then the three of us would go somewhere and get lunch.

We were on our way to the coffee shop downtown, all just talking, enjoying hanging out together, when we passed a small throng of people gathered outside an official-looking building holding signs, milling about.

I couldn't make out each and every sign, but I could read the biggest. It was kind of sloppily done, but in big letters at the top it read "I HOPE YOU LIKE YOUR STDs."

Which is a mean sort of thing to say, really, no matter who you're saying it to.

Underneath that, he had scrawled some other stuff. It was sort of a long explanation of that first comment and I can't remember it word for word, but it was something to the effect of "Sex isn't supposed to be dangerous. One man/one woman is God's plan."

That's not it quite. It was a little longer and more pompous and not very nice sounding, but that's the gist.

My mother and I did sort of a simultaneous "hmmm" and then I commented that today was the day.

Last Sunday, same sex marriage officially became a legal reality in New York State. The law had been passed some weeks back, but last Sunday was the official go-date, the official you-can-actually-do-this date, the first day ever in New York history that two people of the same sex could actually really truly get a legal marriage.

Pretty cool, if you're like me and think that it's about damn time.

Not cool, I guess, for some.

I saw the sign and kind of did a "hmmm" and then I dropped them off at the coffee shop and then I bought some The National and some Adele for my wife's birthday and then I had a delicious black bean soup and an even better roasted veggie sandwich for lunch, and my day was pretty nice, relaxing, happy.

But that sign bugged me. The more I thought about it later on, the more it annoyed me.

It bugged for a few reasons.

First, it bugged me, because the guy with the sign and the people gathered around him were basically just being assholes.

Now, I say they were just being assholes without thinking that you must be an asshole to oppose the whole notion of gay marriage. You can oppose gay marriage and still be a decent, loving, kind, good sort of person. A decent loving kind good person with some very wrong opinions, if you ask me, but not necessarily an asshole.

These people, though, were just being assholes.

Had they been standing outside the legislative building on the day of the vote with anti-gay-marriage signs, there might have been some non-assholish point to it. Had they even been standing on a street corner or in front of a senator's office last Sunday, holding those signs just to express their dismay, there might have been a quality of non-assholishness to what they were doing.

But they weren't trying to stop a vote. They weren't trying to get a state politician voted out during the next round of elections. And, honestly, they weren't really even trying to change the minds of those who disagreed with them.

They were standing in front of a courthouse, holding signs, protesting the weddings that were taking place inside. Forcing people who had loved each other for years and finally had been given the right to marry to walk by a line of people holding hateful signs, rejecting them, insulting them.

They were there just to ruin someone else's happy occasion. Because they didn't like it.

That makes them assholes.

But that sign bugged me for more reasons than that. Petty reasons, maybe. Or maybe not.

It bugged me in part because it was illogical. Poorly reasoned. Backwards and stupid. And it bugged me even more because it was wimpy, spineless, half-assed, and cowarldy.

It bugged me because it was illogical and poorly reasoned in that "I hope you like your STDs" is a pretty stupid thing to say to people about to get married.

"I hope you like your STDs" might be a mean but at least accurate thing to say to people who have decided to commit their lives to all kinds of casual fornications and copulations and plain old bumping uglies with strangers. But, and I feel like we shouldn't have to really even mention this, I feel like we should all know this already, but, but, but... committed sex is, you know, actually a good way to avoid STDs.

So, you know, "I hope you like your STDs" isn't just a mean thing to say to two people who are about to forsake all others and commit their lives to each other, it's also a blazingly, achingly stupid thing to say. It makes no sense.

And it makes no sense because STDs aren't entirely orientation specific. I mean, yeah, I know, in the early days of HIV/AIDS it was the gay community in this country that took the brunt, that suffered the most. But STDs aren't a gay issue, they're a multiple partners issue. So it seems like maybe this sign shouldn't so much be marched around in front of a building hosting gay marriages, but might be more sensibly hoisted in front of any of the very hetero night clubs on Armory Square, or in front of one of the local frat houses, or maybe in front of one of Syracuse's numerous strip clubs. Of course, the carrier would be far more likely to get his ass kicked in any of those places, but that's a chance I'm willing to take.

So, yes, "I hope you like your STDs" is a mean thing to say, and that bugs me, and it's a stupid thing to say, and somehow that bugs me even more.

But the rest of the sign wasn't just stupid too; it was cowardly. Half-assed. Wimpy.

This whole "one man + one woman, so says God" bumper sticker stuff really gets on my nerves.

It gets on my nerves because everybody spouts it off like it's biblical, when it's not.

I mean, yes, I know, the male-female thing is pretty biblical. But the one + one thing, not so much.

Moses had two wives.

Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines.

King David had 8 wives.

And so on, so forth.

So quit it, just quit.

And then, here's the thing. Here's why this is so half-assed.

There is, of course, debate about what God wants. I mean, among believers, among Christians, even though some will insist with a straight face that the message is perfectly obvious and there are no two ways about it, there is, among believers, debate about how mad God gets when people of the same sex touch each others' naughty parts. What the Bible "says" and what the Bible "means" are interpreted by different people in different ways. Some will of course claim that they're not "interpreting" anything at all, that they're just reading the very unambiguous Word of God. These people are lying. To themselves, usually, but still lying. Everybody is interpreting.

But let's go and assume that those who are interpreting it in a more traditional, more conservative way-- the anti-gay-marriage crowd-- are right.

If they're right, then protesting gay marriage is half-assed. It's lame. It's wimpy. It's cowardly.

'Cause the Bible doesn't say a damn thing about gay marriage.

The stuff that they throw out there all the time isn't about gay marriage; it's about gay sex.

So when guys like the guy with this sign tell you that we can't allow gay marriage in this state because it goes against God's will, they're kind of full of shit. They're kind of gutless.

It's the gay sex they should be bugging out about.

If they're right, we're already doomed. The marriage license, the legal rights, that's all just extra stuff.

If God's mad, he's mad about the boinking and poking and rubbing and hot stuff.

These guys are just too cowardly to fight the real fight.

These Republican state senators with the impassioned speeches about how they can't vote to legalize gay marriage because it conflicts with their faith, with what they believe is the will of God?

If they had any balls at all, they'd be voting to outlaw gay sex. If they had the courage of their convictions, they'd be demanding that the police be sent in to shut down gay night clubs. They'd be sending in cops to stop the copulation when those "roommates" down the road turned out the lights.

But that would never sell.

That would never sell because it would be clearly and obviously and unambiguously the kind of bigotry that most of us don't very much like.

If these people had the courage of their convictions, though, they'd do it. These protestors, politicians. They'd step it up. They wouldn't declare war on gay marriage, but on gayness itself.

And why stop there?

If they really had any interest in bringing biblical ethics to New York State sexual conduct, they'd outlaw divorce.

Jesus, if you remember, didn't like divorce. Not one bit. I don't blame him. I don't like it either. Jesus had more to say about divorce than he did about gay marriage, that's for sure.

And he had even more to say about fornication.

Fornication is a big one in the New Testament. I know, because as a church-going teenager I kept checking and double checking. Fornicators were definitely on that going-to-hell list, along with witches and blasphemers.

And yet, fornication is perfectly legal-- rampant, even-- all throughout New York State, and none of our biblically driven representatives are doing a damn thing about it, no one is trying to outlaw it, and I haven't seen a single protester outside Adult World or the Salt City Bookstore or that XXX theater down the road from my favorite Asian market (where you can get a huge jar of the best-ever curry for cheap cheap cheap).

These guys don't have the guts. The gumption. The, if you'll allow me to be vulgar, nads.

They claim that God has spoken, but they only listen, they only act, when God's word gives them the excuse to pick on the unpopular and marginalized.

Heroes. Noble souls, all of them.

Like I said before, assholes.

There'd Be Cancer

2011-07-22T22:11:00.002-04:00

Even if we loved each other-- even if each one of us was merciful, compassionate, loving, decent-- there'd be plenty of hurting.

Cancer, for instance.

In a loving world, there'd be cancer. Maybe not as much, if we weren't poisoning each other for profit or ourselves to make up for the lack of love, but there'd be cancer.

If we loved each other, if we lived like we all mattered, thee'd be cancer.

And there'd be car accidents. Slips and falls that break bones. There'd be traumatic brain injuries and there'd be kids born with all kinds of disabilities that would add difficulty to their lives.

Tere'd be the flu. And pneumonia. There'd be those painful break ups when people care about each other but they realize that it's just not going to work.

In a world full of everyone doing their very best, there'd be toothaches and headaches and stomachaches. There'd be Alzheimer's. There'd be hearing loss and vision loss and heart disease. There'd be terrible floods and tsunamis and tornadoes and earthquakes leaving devastation and death and all kinds of heartache.

Much of the time, the world is good.

But the world is also full of all kinds of pain.

The world is full of suffering. And however good we are, we all get our share.

And I can accept that.

People that I love die sometimes. People that I love hurt often. Sometimes, I hurt.

I don't necessarily like any of that, but liking it or not liking it is irrelevant. It is. There you go. The end. It's what is and it is and it's the world we have.

A world that sometimes holds a lot of heartache. A lot of pain. A lot of suffering.

I can take that. I'm okay with it.

On top of all of that hurt though, in addition to all that just is and will never not be, why the hell do we have to be so damn unloving?

On top of all that hurt, why do we have to heap so much shit and pain? In the midst of the heartache and the sadness, why do so many of us so often have to stand there and twist the knife,salt the wound, spread the pain?

That part I don't get, and I haven't quite learned how to accept.

The infidelities. The hurtful lies. The greed. The bigotry. The hateful rhetoric. The bombs and the guns and the indifference, the exploitation.

The evil that we do.

In the mostly rural community where I work, a six year old girl was murdered the other day. Her mother's boyfriend stabbed her to death while the mother and the other kids slept.

For the past few days, that's been weighing on me.

I can't explain it, can't explain why.

It's just... been weighing on me.

Making me tired.

Making me disappointed.

Making me sad, of course, for the little girl, for her sister, for her brother, for her mother, for all the people that knew her and loved her, for all the kids in her class who will feel less than safe in the night for years to come, suddenly aware that they are vulnerable, suddenly aware that the world is full of evil.

Sad for each and every one of us. Sad that while only some of us pick up knives (or pick up guns or drop bombs), after thousands of years of the collective belief that it is love for one another that will set us free, we are all still busy finding countless ways to tear each other apart day after day after day after fucking day. Countless ways to be unloving.

That makes me sad. For all of us.

And just so damn tired.

EcoChallenge 2011

2011-07-18T21:58:00.001-04:00

EcoChallenge 2011.

Sponsored by NWEI.

I think I'm going to have to do this. I just have to think of some sort of a change to make.

The Heart of the Revolution

2011-07-17T16:17:00.002-04:00

Compassion isn't a soft and easy practice, though everyday connotations of the word might suggest that. Anger and aversion are easy. Compassion, on the other hand, is hard core, the antidote to suffering. (49)

Forgiveness-- the journey and practice of intentionally letting go of the stuff of the past that has caused us emotional suffering and feelings of anger and resentment-- begins with the understanding that all harm caused comes out of suffering and ignorance. There is no such thing as wise abuse or enlightened betrayal. This is the core truth of harm: it always comes from confusion and suffering. (62)

We must become the loving forces of a spiritual revolutionary front. It may take only a handful of committed assassins to inspire a full-fledged war against ignorance. (143)

Last night, I finished reading Noah Levine's The Heart of the Revolution: The Buddha's Radical Teachings on Forgiveness, Compassion, and Kindness. Like his earlier books, this is good stuff.

A Photo Essay, Sort Of

2011-07-16T22:45:00.009-04:00

So, there have been a lot of race cars these past two weeks.

A lot of lot of lot of race cars.

We've been on vacation.

Two weeks of vacation about to come to an end. Jen goes back to work tomorrow morning. Sam and I go back to work and school Monday. I'm sort of dreading the return... the freedom has been amazing. I haven't had two straight weeks of time like this in years. The last time was when Sam was born, and that wasn't quite a relaxing vacation.

Two beautiful weeks.

Early on, we had an onion harvest.

19 onions, 12 heads of garlic. Beautiful stuff.

And here's my garden Buddha doing a poor job of fending off hungry rodents during The Zucchini Wars. I lost two zucchinis during that fight. Finally managed to keep them out with dog hair and wind chimes. Since then, I've managed to make three awesome meals with zucchini and yellow squash. I was ready to declare myself victor, but someone snuck in and took a couple of nibbles last night. Time to up the game, I guess.

And see this look?

That's the boy as we headed out to his first ever camping trip.

We didn't go far. For the first time, I figured we'd play it safe and I set the tent up in the back yard. We ate dinner on the back deck, then went into the tent, ate snacks, read a pile of books (including that Little Critter classic Just Me and My Dad) and told stories till it got really dark. Then it was a great but unproductive firefly hunt. Almost caught a few, but they outsmarted us. I managed to make it up the next night, chasing them around the yard by myself till I got one and brought it in to Sam.

Anyway, here's our very first night in the tent.

He had a surprisingly good time. And woke up at 4:45 in the morning, ready to go.

There was some other stuff.

I got to read lots of good books. Jen and I watched Season 3 of "True Blood." And I really like "True Blood." There was lots of time for the gym, and for yoga, and for sleeping in. We had a large pool of people wanting to take Sam places, so Jen and I actually got a surprising amount of alone time.

And there was Farm Sanctuary.

This is Blitzen. He's the six month old bull that head butted me a few times. He is very very cool.

And one of these two young bulls ate my shorts. Sort of. Got an entire leg into his mouth before I managed to pull away from him. He was pretty cool too.

And this is the sweet, cute little goat who head butted Sam. Gently and sweetly.

Throw in three trips to the Great Escape in Watkins Glen (that's the awesome ice cream shop with 24 flavors of vegan soft serve), a few good dinners in town, and a surprisingly awesome lunch at The Harvest Cafe in Montour Falls (that place needs a post of it's own), and good lord, but it was an amazing week two.

Can't wait till the next vacation... till the next trip to Farm Sanctuary... the next chance to just be "free" for a while. It was a wonderful way to be.

Wegmans Has Everything...

2011-07-16T22:39:00.002-04:00

Playing In The Rain/Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now

2011-07-08T23:12:00.003-04:00

There's a bit from a show I went to two weeks ago. Seems that someone very, very close to me was recording big chunks of it. When I first saw this bit, I thought that that was my head in front of the camera. It's not. But I'm somewhere around there.

This was a good show. Michael Franti and Spearhead at the Saranac Brewery in Utica. A lot of fun.

We almost didn't make it, though. Two weeks ago yesterday, a Thursday, the day before the show, I stubbed my toe.

I was up and about to get ready for work. It was rainy. The dog wouldn't go out to do his business in the rain alone, so I pulled on a pair of very baggy shorts and my flip flops and took him out into the front yard. It started raining harder, and as soon as he was done I made a dash back to the house. Halfway up the very slippery stone steps to the front door, the fool beast stopped. I stumbled over him, kicked my left foot forward to catch myself, and nailed the next step dead on. Blood and broken big toenail everywhere. I screamed something like "riffgrumbacahcahcahnyahhahafucaia'ma." Which sounded weird, I guess (my wife thought I'd been struck by lightning), but was better than yelling "fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck" in the front yard of a pleasant neighborhood as people were walking out to their cars. I ran in the house, filled the tub with cold water, stood in it, watched it get cloudy with blood and mud, eventually showered and wrapped it up and went to work.

Work didn't go so well. I made it till about 10:00, then had to leave the conference I was attending because my toe hurt so godawfulbad and anyway there was blood coming through my sock. I spent the rest of that day with an ice pack taped to my foot, lying around and moaning, feeling sorry for myself. I was convinced my toe was broken (it wasn't). Friday, I wore flip flops to work and limped everywhere I went.

It seemed that going to an outdoor show where I'd be standing in a crowd for two or three hours might not be the best idea, but my wife and I met at my buddy's house after work as planned, left the boy with him for the evening, and headed out to Utica. Having been on a healthy eating kick for a few weeks prior to the show, we planned to go to Peter's Cornucopia for some light, organic pre-show dinner. When we got there, it was closed. As we headed back to the car, it occurred to us that those very dark clouds rolling in meant business, and we had no umbrellas, no hoodies, no rain gear, just the shorts and t-shirts we were wearing. We hit the army/navy store near Peter's, but what with my new "no-sweatshops" kick, we couldn't find any clothes I could actually buy. We decided to call it off. We were hungry, we had no rain gear, my foot was killing me. We ran into an old friend's burrito shop and managed to get a fairly healthy dinner there. His brother told us where we could find plastic ponchos for $1.50 each. And so we ended up at the show after all.

It poured. It poured all night. And I didn't care. After a couple of songs, I didn't even notice that toe. I stopped limping. I felt like a fool for even considering blowing the show off. It was our second time seeing Spearhead. The first show was fantastic. This one was better. Something about the rain, about the fact that everyone was dripping wet all night long, just made it that much more fun, that much more carefree. Grown-ups don't get to play in the rain often enough, I guess. Having an excuse to do that, to be wet and giggling and silly, felt terrific.

Any time you get the chance to see Michael Franti and Spearhead, do it. It's an incredibly positive experience. The music is good, but the vibe is better. The sense of... something. I don't know how to explain it really. Go out and buy yourself a Spearhead album (I'd suggest "Home" or "Yell Fire" for starters, maybe "Everyone Deserves Music"), listen to it, pick up on that vibe, that feeling, that positive something or other, that thing about it that just makes you want to smile and be a better person. Then imagine it right there, in the flesh, loud, with lots of people dancing and splashing in puddles. It's a very good thing.

And speaking of good things.

I can't say enough about John Joseph's The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon.

Some people would disagree with that statement. Some of the people who actually get to be around me regularly would say that in fact I have already said quite enough about that book, and wouldn't it be nice if maybe I talked about something else for a while?

But listen, no, no, not at all, really I can't say enough.

I read a lot of books (for someone reason, some OCD-thing I have, I keep count; so far I've read 34 books in 2011, which is maybe not a world record or anything, but I think it qualifies me as someone who reads a lot of books). I read a lot of books, and a lot of them are good, but there have only been a handful over the past few years that have really hit me hard, have hit me hard enough that I can say that in some way that book changed my life. My Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn, is one. Karen Armstrong's The Case for God is another.

The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon is absolutely another.

Here's the deal, here's what this book basically is, the gist of it.

The Cro-Mags are one of those legendary hardcore bands from the '80s. I was never into The Cro-Mags, but as a great lover of hardcore, have always been aware of who they were, the gist of what they were about. The Cro-Mags are one of those legendary bands like Agnostic Front or Warzone or Youth of Today or Black Flag or The Bad Brains or Sick Of It All that helped shape the hardcore scene when the hardcore scene was still something new.

John Joseph was (is? there are occasional reunion shows, I guess) the singer for The Cro-Mags. On again, off again, I guess; there were lineup changes, he was in and out.

The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon is John Joseph's autobiography or memoir or what have you.

Now, opening this book, I already pretty much knew where it would end. I was vaguely aware of what John Joseph is up to now. He's a great big guy about 50 years old covered in tattoos who likes closer to 40. He's a writer, a vegan nutritionist, an iron man triathlete who recently wrote a book on veganism called Meat Is For Pussies (it's in the mail right now; can't wait to read that one).

I didn't know anything at all about John Joseph's past, except that he'd been into the whole Krsna-Consciousness thing at one point, was the singer for The Cro-Mags, and had a reputation for being really, really tough and really, really violent (the stories about The Cro-Mags' violence were kind of legendary).

So I read this book, and well... holy crap.

This is one of the best things I have read in a long, long, long, long time.

It's a brutal story. It's told by a guy who apparently has no desire to pull any punches, to sugar coat a damn thing. It lays out all the good, bad and ugly right there, in full light, and there's just a shitload of bad and ugly. He tells the story of his life, and an awful lot of it will make you want to cry-- the drunken boxer of a father who beat his mother bloody in front of John and his brothers over and over again. His mother's dive into drugs and depression. Years of living in horribly, disturbingly abusive foster care homes (I mean, holy-shit kind of abusive). More years of living in what was basically a detention center for unwanted orphans. And then life on the streets-- a homeless runaway at the age of 14, selling bunk acid, living in abandoned buildings, getting hooked on a variety of drugs, fighting and fighting and fighting and more fighting, crime, sex, being nearly beaten to death by a guy with a brick, prison time, more drugs, more fighting. It's a harsh, brutal story. I read it thinking to myself "there's no way I could survive that, there's no way I could pull through that, how the hell did this guy stay alive?" But he did. He stayed alive. He found some kind of spirituality, lived in a Krsna temple. Fucked up again, got hooked again, ran from the law again. Made a name for himself in the hardcore scene. Watched that fall apart. And somehow, in the end, through never giving up, through not wanting to be a statistic, turned his life into something powerful, something stable, something satisfying.

I now, like I said, he's a vegan nutritionist who runs iron man triathlons and writes books and sends free yoga books to people and writes about spirituality and hangs out with people like Moby and Morgan Spurlock.

It's a fascinating book.

It's a fascinating book that reached in and did something to me.

After the first couple of chapters, I sent in my application to Big Brothers Big Sisters. I don't think that will change the world. I don't think that this makes me an absolutely amazingly wonderful super-person. But my wife had mentioned a few days prior to my picking up this book that BBBS might be something I'd enjoy, and that they had a long wait list for kids because they had a shortage of volunteers. I read the first couple chapters and I was heartbroken for this little boy who was unwanted and abused, I was sickened by that, I wondered why the hell the people out there providing services like foster care were so twisted and sick... and the thought struck me that if good people aren't willing to do it, someone else will. And I figured, hey, I'm basically a good person, so what the hell am I doing? I signed up for Big Brothers Big Sisters (still waiting for some of the paperwork to go through, it's a slow process) and had the first of what I imagine will be many conversations with Jen about opening our doors to foster kids (a surprisingly scary thought, for reasons I don't quite understand).

And then there was something else. Right before picking up this book, I'd decided I needed to get my lazy ass in shape. Eat a healthy diet. Move around from time to time. I've gained wait over the years, I've gotten apathetic. I had gotten to a point where I was out of breath going up a flight of stairs, tired all the time, and disgusted with my image in the mirror. I decided it was time to do something about it.

Reading this book was an inspiration there. This guy's intensity, his absolute unwillingness to just lay down and die, his resolve to overcome all the bullshit that came his way... each day, I'd look at myself and basically say "if he can do that, then this is going to be absolutely nothing." In the couple of weeks that it took me to finish this book, I became a regular at the gym, started eating the way I've always known I should eat, developed a certain level of "contempt" for the crap I was putting in my body before. It's been a month now, and I already feel better than I've felt in years-- 8 pounds lighter (a decent start), more energetic, more confident, and absolutely committed to keeping on that path (I actually get really annoyed if I have to miss the gym two days in a row; it's always been a place I "had to" go to in the past, now it's the place I really want to be).

So, like I said, can't say enough about this book. It was absolutely the thing I most needed to read when I read it, struck a lot of chords with me, made me feel inspired. I recommend it to anyone, but with the warning that it's harsh. Extremely harsh. Unpretty. And while John Joseph may have turned his life into something very, very cool, may have risen above his circumstances, he's... well, he's still a hardcore street guy. He doesn't write gently. He doesn't have patience for nonsense. It can be a harsh read. But it's worth it.

And you know what's weird? Since picking up that book, I've wanted to listen to nothing but positive, fast-paced hardcore. I've rearranged my iPod, stocked my car and my work office with cds, have listened to nothing but Burn, Youth of Today, Sick Of It All, Vision of Disorder, Shelter, Ignite, Bane, Bolt, Judge, 108, Cause For Alarm, Rollins band.

But the song that's been constantly playing in my mind for the past several weeks? Starship's "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now." Let me leave you with that, so you can suffer as I have...

Harvester of Sorrow. And Garlic.

2011-07-02T21:02:00.002-04:00

Woo-hoo!

12 heads of garlic hanging from twine under the back deck, drying out.

12 heads isn't a lot, but it's a lot for me. It'll probably provide a good six months worth of garlic.

So far, we've had 3 harvests of spinach (each harvest being roughly enough to liven up a plate of hash browns) and 1 harvest of kale (really, about two servings of kale, which I threw in a stir fry).

The tomato plants are looking great. Zucchini and yellow squash are just about to bust out all over the place. Corn is more than knee-high by the 4th of July. Eggplant is looking like it'll be a success. The peppers, I don't know; they could go either way. Asparagus won't really boom until next year, and it's my first shot at planting blueberry bushes, so I don't know if I'll get any this year or just have to wait. The onions... oh... the onions look fabulous. I'll have them hanging by the middle of this week. About a dozen of them, which is good enough for me. And I'll be picking (and reseeding the bed) about 16 carrots by the end of this vacation.

It's a big gardening boom. Sure, it's not enough to live on, but for me, this is pretty good. I've never been much of a gardener, so I'm excited by the success this year.

Add to that the lovely blackberries I found growing in the back yard today (how did I not notice them last year). I ate all the ripe ones, but there will be more.

And there are grapes-- hard, yellowy-green, nowhere near ripe grapes-- hanging on the vines that I thought had died. Very cool.

I measured out some more plots and next year I'll be able to double or triple the growing area without really taking up any more of the yard (I'm just narrowing down the walking spaces in between beds, that sort of thing).

Ah, the lovely, lovely garden.

And now, on a completely-- or mostly-- unrelated thought...

Funny what gets stuck in your head.

Sam's Three Rules to Make Your Garden Grow

2011-07-02T11:35:00.003-04:00

Sitting at dinner last night, Sam decided to break down for us his three rules to make a garden grow. We were lucky enough to get him repeat it for the camera.

On Gay Marriage...

2011-07-02T08:47:00.003-04:00

(An email I got from John...)

Most Popular

2011-06-18T22:07:00.003-04:00

I've added a new sidebar.

Now you can access my 10 most viewed posts of all time, just like that.

I'm a little surprised at what did and didn't make the cut.

Some of that stuff's really not so hot.

Why the hell did people keep clicking on Hayduke Lives?

Maybe I'll have to tweak it...

[Update: I don't like it. It's gone.]

I Couldn't Sleep At All Last Night...

2011-06-16T21:52:00.003-04:00

If I had any sense at all, I'd be in bed right now.

Curled around my body pillow, listening to the sound of the fan, of trains in the distance, slowly drifting away. Sleep.

I'm running a little low today.

My alarm went off at 5:30. That wasn't working for me. After hitting the snooze button a few times, I reset it for 7:30. When I finally got up, I called work, said I'd be late. Lucky for me I have an understanding boss, who was running a little late herself.

It's not that I want to bed too late. I stayed up a little past my bedtime, sure, but I was under the sheets by 11:30, which isn't really so bad.

But then my head hit the pillow, and it just wasn't happening. Wasn't happening at all. The body was tired, but my mind was going fast. Wide awake. Wound. Somewhere around 12:30 or 1:00, I finally gave up and took a sleeping pill. One of those tiny, beautiful, blue, over the counter deals.

It did absolutely nothing. Or, no, it was quite effective, but the effect didn't kick in till it was almost time to get up. I continued to toss and turn and spin thoughts around and around until finally sleep hit like a hammer, beat me right down, and when that alarm went off... good lord, that alarm.

I went to the Zen Center last night.

That's part of the problem there.

I haven't been to the Zen Center in a while. I've continued my sitting practice and all the rest, but I've had other things going on-- the Voluntary Simplicity course, for instance-- and I don't like to spend too many nights a week out of the house and away from my family, so until last night it had been something like two months since I'd been to the Zen Center.

It was a good night, I was very happy to be there, but if you haven't ever done any serious sitting, I'll fill you in on something. This kind of caught me by surprise about a year and a half ago when I first started sitting for more than a few minutes and on a daily basis.

Sometimes, things just pop into your head, completely out of the blue. And, yeah, okay, so you expect that. But I mean, stuff that you don't expect. Images. Memories. And I don't mean horrible repressed memories (though that stuff can come up too). I just mean these completely random memories, these images and thoughts you didn't know you had kicking around in there.

About a year and a half ago, it was Tommy Atwood.

I was sitting in my living room, on my cushion, after Jen and Sam had gone to bed. I'd been sitting for twenty minutes or so, just sitting, just breathing, just being, and there he was. Tommy Atwood. In my mind, the perfect image of Tommy Atwood. A perfect, complete memory of Tommy Atwood.

And I thought that was weird.

Tommy went to my high school. He was a year behind me. When I was in eleventh grade, we had a Study Hall period together, and he sat near me. We talked during Study Hall from time to time, and I think we ran into each other in the hallways sometimes. It's possible we even had a gym period together now and then, maybe sat at the same table at lunch once or twice. Tommy was a nice kid. Funny. I liked him. But Tommy wasn't exactly a real close friend. My graduating class was something like 450 kids. Multiply that by three grade levels, and there were a whole lot of kids in my school that I just sort of knew, saw here and there.

I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen Tommy in twenty years.

But there he was. Perfectly clear. A perfect memory of Tommy Atwood.

I thought that was kind of odd. I hadn't realized I'd had memories of Tommy kicking around in my head, just waiting for a chance to say "hey, by the way, we're here; what's up?"

And so last night. There I was, my back on the floor, my feet on the wall.

On Wednesday nights at the Zen Center, after a bunch of sitting, some walking meditation, sometimes a little chanting, sometimes some yoga, there's usually a round of "supported yoga" to close things out.

Supported yoga is kind of cool. It's relaxing. It feels good. Basically, you use cushions and other stuff to support you in a yoga pose, and then you just hold that pose for a long, long time. You stay in that meditative, present mindful state that you were getting in seated meditation, and you sort of just let gravity pull on this and that, stretch you out, open you up. I like it.

So there I was, after a couple of rounds of sitting and such, with my back on the floor and my feet up the wall.

Just lying there. Just sort of open. A nice sort of way to be.

And then, kind of like that Tommy Atwood deal, there she was.

Marianne.

A perfectly clear memory, a picture, an image, of Marianne.

For eight and a half years-- through my senior year of high school, college breaks, and a handful of years after I'd dropped out of college-- I worked in a hospital kitchen. At first, I was one of the kids who worked at night, serving food on trays to go up to patients, washing pots and pans. I eventually became the full time cafeteria guy, and then for a few years I was the store room clerk, ordering inventory, unloading trucks, hanging out in the freezer.

I liked that job.

For a few years, Marianne was one of my coworkers.

I really, really liked Marianne.

Sometimes, I liked my job because I liked Marianne.

She was a couple of years younger than me. Italian, with dark eyes, dark hair. A bitter, sarcastic sense of humor that absolutely fascinated me. And sweet. In spite of the sarcasm and such, just very, very sweet.

I chased Marianne hard. I never quite caught up to her. Once, I had a sort-of date. I invited her over for a movie. But then I rented Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and spent a couple of hours lecturing her on a variety of moral and philosophical issues (I was a little intense back then). We remained friends and I continued to chase, but there was no second sort-of date.

Lying there on the floor with my feet up the wall, I had a perfect picture of Marianne, and along with it, I had this sense. This sense of something. This sense, for lack of better words, of "I hope that Marianne is truly, truly happy."

It was this glowy strange sort of a feeling, and it came completely unbidden, completely genuine, and completely from a place of my own happiness, my own contentment, my own satisfaction for what my life has become. I thought something wordless along the lines of "I hope Marianne is truly, truly happy," and I thought it wordlessly with all of my self.

And then.

Then it was just strange.

I moved into the corpse position. If you're unfamiliar, that's where you lie down on the hard zendo floor flat on your back and you just breathe. You just be.

I was in the corpse position, not trying to attach to thoughts, just being being being, when a whole bunch of those images started flitting through my head.

I saw Marianne, and like I said, I wished for her on some not-entirely-conscious level every kind of happiness.

But then I saw everyone else who worked in that kitchen with me at one point or another over those eight and a half years. It was almost like one of those flip books, one picture at a time, just flip flip flipping by, an image, a smile, a pose by the stove, pulling dishes from the sink, standing in the cafeteria. Faces and uniforms and the memory of the tone of their voice.

Ginny, the cook.

Sue, my high-school girlfriend's mother, who hired me.

Phil, her boss, that people didn't like.

Jim, the guy who replaced Phil. Nancy, the woman who replaced Jim; I never got along with her.

Bubba Tut (ah, Bubba Tut).

Heidi, with whom I had a brief romance.

My best friend Jim, and that too long belt he always wore.

Larry. Duane. Brent.

Danny, the really quiet kid, and his good friend Mike, who introduced me to some cool hardcore and punk bands.

Asha. Kristie. Aaron. Jackie (RIP). Brenda. Stacy. Heather. Kristin. Robyn. Robin. Another Heidi.

The ladies. The grandmothers who left candy in the drawers for me, who gave me sheets when I moved into a new apartment, who collected money for me when I had surgery. Josephine. Mary. Liz. Kathy. Sandy. Cathy.

Sheila. Terry. Michelle.

The housekeepers and maintenance guys I'd run into in the locker room.

The regulars in the cafeteria, people who came in to visit loved ones in extended care, or came in for weekly treatments, the old guys who lived nearby and had no wives and wanted something that seemed like a reasonably priced old-fashioned home-cooked meal.

All these faces kept just flitting by, wordlessly, and with them, this feeling just rose up. This overwhelming feeling.

It sounds sappy. It does. I know it. But lying there on my back, in the corpse position, I just felt that completely unbidden, unexpected outpouring of love. Love for each and every one of those people. Love even for the ones that I didn't particularly like.

I haven't seen most of them in at least ten years. Some, longer than that. Some, almost twenty.

But there they were, all of them clear, all of them fresh, all of them so vibrantly present to me, and for each of them, I had this sense of "I hope you are truly, truly happy."

When it was time to open my eyes, I was a little bit afraid I would be crying. I wasn't, but it was close. I wiped a hand across my eyes, sat up slowly, waited for others to start walking out.

I drove home quietly, no radio, no cd, no thoughts in particular.

At home, I helped put the boy to bed. I read him a couple chapters of Stuart Little (yes, we're reading that one again; he loves that book).

I ate some black bean soup, kissed my wife goodnight, thought about writing those thoughts down, didn't think I'd be able to find the words, and so instead sat down with a book by John Joseph.

John Joseph's The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon is the other reason I couldn't sleep at all last night.

John Joseph was the singer for the hardcore band The Cro-Mags.

I was never a big Cro-Mags fan, but I knew who they were, and I've read bits and pieces of John Joseph interviews and such.

John Joseph is kind of a scary guy. Big. Strong. Covered in tattoos. You look at him, and you just know that he's not faking it. This is an actual, real, truly truly hardcore guy.

He's also a vegan, was (is?) into the whole Krsna Consciousness scene, is one of those good, compassionate souls. Still pretty damn tough, and unapologetically foul-mouthed, but one of those good souls.

The Evolution of a Cro-Magnon is his memoir. Autobiography. I'm not sure of the difference, exactly.

I bought it a while back and finally picked it up last night hoping to read 10 pages or so before I went to bed.

I read the first three chapters.

It kept me up past my bedtime. Not too far past my bedtime, but still.

I'd heard that this was a painful book. "Raw," some people call it.

It is that. It's raw. It's painful. It can make you want to cry a little.

In those first three chapters, I found myself hurting a little bit. I found myself angry. I found myself outraged.

John Joseph and his two brothers did not grow up easy. They endured piles and piles of shit that no child-- no adult-- should ever have to endure. The book put a knot in my stomach. It made me promise myself that this Friday I'd finally call that Big Brothers program that has 92 boys on a waiting list.

I put the book down and went to bed.

I went to bed and my head started to spin. Not spin. Wander. My mind started wandering. Racing.

I put my head on my pillow, and again, those faces flashed through my mind. Those people I'd known. Marianne and Ginny and Larry and all those others. That flip-book started whirring again. Not so intensely, not so overwhelming, but it was still there. I felt that love, I felt good. I felt very, very good about that, but it made me anything but sleepy. It was sort of a rush.

At the same time, I felt this gut-level anger, this desire to hit someone. I felt the overwhelming urge to protect the kid that John Joseph used to be, to strike back at the people who so horribly abused him. To strike out at every sick shit that hurts children. I felt this protective instinct, I felt this wrongness-of-the-world sensation in the pit of me, I wanted to shield someone and I wanted to strike back.

And so for hours I laid there, wishing I could just get some sleep.

Finally, the little blue pill worked it's magic.

I fell to sleep, and dreamed that someone was hurting my boy, hurting my son. In that dream, I hit harder than I've ever hit before, I wore my knuckles down, I thought to myself that it was so strange to be hitting, that I hadn't thrown a real punch in years, but I kept hitting and hitting and hitting, not just protecting my son, but punishing, correcting, fixing everything that was fucked up and wrong.

I woke up late. I stumbled through the day without screwing up anything too important.

And if I had any sense at all, I'd be in bed now, listening to the fan, listening to the trains.

Problem Solved

2011-06-11T09:24:00.002-04:00

Courtney Burke, the new head of OPWDD (The Office for People With Developmental Disabilities) has solved the problem of abuse at the hands of New York State employees.

It's so simple. So genius.

At a gathering the other night, she announced it: at the end of every shift, every employee will sign a piece of paper saying that they didn't witness any abuse that night.

Done and done.

Jonathan's Law (Or, A Kingdom of Ends, Revisited)

2011-06-09T19:43:00.002-04:00

This is The NY Times' second article on this theme.

I'm glad they've come back to it.

"A Disabled Boy's Death, and a System in Disarray."

For those not familiar with Jonathan Carey (and Jonathan's Law, passed after his death), he was a 13 year old kid with autism living in a state home in NY State.

He was murdered while sitting in the back of a van by one of the staff hired to take care of him.

The guy driving the van didn't bother to report the incident or check on Jonathan until he'd finished running some errands.

The guy who killed him had drug convictions and a history of allegations of abuse against him.

The guy driving the van had been fired from four private providers of services for incompetence and assorted other issues.

These guys were essentially "untouchable," partly because of the CSEA, the union that protects state employees.

Partly that. And partly they were untouchable because of the culture that pervades state run services in NY.

I could go on and on about this. It makes me angry. I have a lot to say. I say it often, usually at work. But it's hard for me to write rationally, coherently on this stuff. This stuff makes me bloodthirsty, fills me with contempt, makes me want to hit someone back.

Read this article.

Like I said, I'm very pleased with this paper for running this second story.

Jonathan Carey was killed more than 4 years ago. Jonathan's Law has required agencies like mine to do extra layers of reporting, jump through some more hoops (not necessarily a bad thing, not necessarily a bad law), but it hasn't done much to address the real issues, the culture in the state system, the patterns of abuse, neglect, the mounds and mounds of bullshit.

And of course, I have to say it here, have to pause and remind myself, put into writing: there are some awesome, compassionate, intelligent, decent people in the state. The average state worker is not a monster. The average state worker is someone who needs a job. And there are people who are above the average, people who sacrifice themselves, who give, who have a calling, and they are wonderful, under-appreciated. But there's a culture that drags those "average" people down, and gives the truly contemptible a safe haven, breeds abuse, complacency.

Read this article.

And go back and read the other, earlier article. I was at a loss for words when that one came out too, but maybe said it a little better then than I can say it now.

On Being Prepared for the Zombie Apocalypse

2011-06-05T15:19:00.002-04:00

CDC.

Yeah, it's been out there a while, but I'm always lagging a little behind.

After reading World War Z, though, I'm really trying to stay prepared.

Tie Me To The Mast Of My Intentions (And So Much More)

2011-06-05T14:36:00.003-04:00

I recently discovered reason, the libertarian magazine.

I saw it sitting there on the rack at the grocery store, and my curiosity kicked in, I just had to take a copy home with me.

I'm not a libertarian. I like some libertarian ideas, but I generally find libertarians to be on the wrong side of too many things to take them seriously as a group.

I've known some interesting libertarians, but too often when I hear someone claiming to be a libertarian, they're lying. To themselves, to me, I don't know which.

But this magazine? Based on this one issue, this is good stuff. I like it. I might even subscribe.

This article by Daniel Akst-- "Commit Youself: Self-control in the age of abundance"-- was just awesome.

Loved it. Got all "inspired."

I want to start a new band. Something heavy, hardcorish. I want to start a band a write a song with that line-- "tie me to the mast of my intentions."

'Cause that's awesome.

Get it? Odysseus? The sirens?

The article is about "pre-commitment." About taking away your own ability to not do the things you really want to do. Removing the temptation to quit. Forcing your weakest self to do what your best self most believes in.

Like Odysseus ordering his crew to tie him to the mast so that he can hear the sirens' song without succumbing to its call.

The article talks a bit about stickK.com.

It's a cool site.

It allows you to pre-commit. To make a contract. Best of all, you can do it using "anti-charities" (an absolutely brilliant concept).

A tree-hugging liberal hippie peacenik like me, for instance, might make a contract saying "I'll finish my novel by the end of this year or else I'll donate $1000 to the George W. Bush Presidential Library." I give my credit card number up front. No novel, my money goes to memorialize that guy, a little piece of my soul dies. That's incentive.

Brilliant. Just brilliant.

***

I don't live in Florida, so my opinion of what goes on in Florida politics doesn't count for much. But Republicans tried to do the same thing here in New York earlier this year, and though I didn't get around to writing about it then, it aggravated me.

You know, now and again some conservatives will accuse us of trying to start a class war, but what is this but that?

Florida is working on requiring drug tests before any adult welfare recipients receive a check.

The idea there, as it was here, is supposedly that the state is in some fiscal trouble, we've got to cut expenses, and we can't justify having addicts spend taxpayer money on illegal drugs.

Sounds good.

Except that when this was tried here in New York, a few things came out of the discussion.

One, everyone on both sides of the aisle pretty much admitted that there isn't much of a correlation between receiving social welfare benefits and drug use. A bunch of studies were cited that indicated there's really no evidence suggesting welfare money is being spent on drugs. A little is, of course. But not a disproportionate amount.

Two, the cost of annual testing would have been about $30 million. Which is more than anyone could have expected to recoup in denied benefits for addicts.

This stuff wasn't being refuted by those in favor of the bill.

It was clear that those pushing it were trying to send a message.

The message they were trying to send was this:

People living in poverty deserve it. They're bad. And not only their problems their fault, but our problems are their fault too.

That was never said out loud, in front of microphones. But that's what it comes down to.

Establishing an "other." Scapegoating. Class warfare.

This of course was on the heels of the Republican candidate for governor who wanted to close down prisons and reopen them as re-education camps for welfare recipients, where they could go to learn about things like "hygiene."

I don't think all Republicans are hate-mongering, bigoted, classist assholes.

I wish the ones in the spotlight would stop trying to prove me wrong.

All of this is especially repugnant given the timing. This venom and contempt for the poor, for the unemployed, seems bizarre to me given that the entire country-- most of the world-- has so recently been racked by economic meltdowns, recession, massive unemployment. You'd think we might all pull together rather than blaming the victims.

***

I said this would be the year.

So far, it is.

This weekend, I pulled up my second harvest of spinach.

I've never grown spinach before. I planted two square feet of it this year. One square foot didn't really take, no clue as to why. Turns out I didn't really need it. The other square foot is pumping spinach like you wouldn't believe. More than enough for my individual spinach needs. So far, I've been able to pimp out my Saturday morning hash browns (has purples, really, as I generally use those awesome purple-on-the-inside-too potatoes) and load up a tofu lasagna with my spinach crop. And the stuff keeps growing.

Also in the ground and looking good are four square feet of corn, three square feet of eggplant (two whites, one Japanese), two square feet of kale (one thriving, the other not so much because I started it too late), six square feet of zucchini and yellow squash (those plants take a lot of room), and four so-good-so-far tomato plants. I've got a couple of pepper plants that could go either way, and a square foot of carrots that's hard to read right now. Plus four square feet of asparagus that will take a couple of years to really start producing anything (I got a couple of shoots and got all excited, but I knew better). On the other side of the yard are a two blueberry bushes. I've never planted a blueberry bush before so I have no clue if they look like they're supposed to look. They definitely don't look like the bushes I helped trim at Grindstone Farm in the past, but these are months old, those were decades old.

I don't want to wish the summer by, I don't want to get ahead of myself, but I have to admit, I'm looking forward to picking that first ear of corn, eating that first tomato sandwich, peeling that first eggplant, frying up that beautiful, beautiful kale.

The Zen Doctrine Of No-Mind

2011-06-04T12:43:00.003-04:00

I've had good luck.

A nice, long string of really good books.

No duds.

Incendiary.

World War Z.

Love Wins.

Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

Others.

Good stuff.

No duds.

Until now.

D.T. Suzuki's The Zen Doctrine of No-Mind.

I can't finish it. I'm 2/3 of the way through this book, this book that I looked forward to with great anticipation, this book that I really, really wanted to read, and I can't finish it. I'm putting it back on the shelf.

I hate it.

Go figure.

Every customer review on Amazon is glowing. Only one gives it four stars, the rest are all five.

And I just hate it.

My review is just this: Don't read it. It's the first book I've ever picked up that makes Zen boring, that makes me sleepy, that makes me feel like I'm reading a math textbook.

Twenty Scenes (Sixteen Through Twenty)

2011-05-25T22:52:00.000-04:00

Sixteen

I've never been one for small talk. It's not that I'm unfriendly. I like people. I like being around people. But I've been much for the small talk stuff. Just no good at it. Can never think of a whole lot to say.

In my younger days, you could often find me at the party sitting on the kitchen floor, talking to the dog. While everyone be hanging out chatting it up, talking this and that and the rest that I really wasn't entirely caught up on and had nothing to add to, I'd be there on the floor, a beer in my hand, a couple of empties next to me, talking to Buddy the Dog. Or Boo the Cat. Whoever was there who didn't talk and didn't really care what it was I had to say.

Thank god for the nineties, when you could be the weird guy on the floor talking to the dog and it was basically okay. You were "pensive" or "artistic." I mean, come on, Kurt Cobain was a hero for staring at his shoes and singing lyrics like "aqua sea foam shame."

Not a whole lot has changed.

Once again, I've run out of things to say.

So here I am, sitting on the floor.

Instead of the dog, though, it's a little circle of two-year olds.

It's Lillie's second birthday party.

Lillie, Sam's best friend. The girl he will later insist that he is going to marry. The only one who ever gets rated as more beautiful than mama. The one with whom he insists that he is going to have a baby boy named Myrtle.

This is an important party.

For a while, I was in the other room with the other grown ups, eating tortilla chips and drinking beer. But I ran out of stuff to say. And anyway, just about everyone here works at the newspaper, no one here is a Candiria fan or wants to talk about Daniel Quinn books, and so that's okay, I'm on the floor.

Talking to the kids. Impressing them with my knowledge.

But then the kids wander off.

I've been abandoned.

I'm on the floor in the living room. All the adults are in the dining room and kitchen, and the kids have abandoned me for something interesting and shiny in the play room.

It's a Sponge Bob Square Pants theme. There are Sponge Bob party hats and Sponge Bob napkins and Sponge Bob plates. Right next to me, against the wall, is this big cardboard Sponge Bob figure thing, about as tall as most of the kids, nice and sturdy, very yellow yellow yellow.

Who needs those kids?

I pick up a bunch of Sponge Bob party hats and line them up very neatly and nicely, all facing forward, on top of that Sponge Bob figure.

Cool.

I sit back and admire my work.

Lillie comes in and stands next to me, looking at what I've done.

Seconds later, Lillie's mother walks in. She sees the party hats all lined up, neatly and nicely, facing forward.

"Lillie!" she says. "Did you do that?!"

Lillie nods.

I bite me tongue.

"Lillie, what a good girl!" she says. She's very proud.

I sit quietly.

She calls the others in.

"Look what Lillie did," she says. "She lined them up perfectly. Look how even they are! Lillie, you're so smart," she says. "Look what she did."

She's kind of beaming.

I sit back, very proud of myself. Glowing a little bit.

I am very smart. And they are very even.

Seventeen

We rehearsed it a few times on the way home, till I was sure he got it.

"If mama asks where we were, you just tell her we went on an adventure, okay?"

It's a couple of weeks before Mother's Day. Jen usually picks him up from Pre-K, but I told her I'd get him today. I picked him up, and we drove to the mall. Took some pictures in the little photo booth outside the movie theater, the kind that makes the strips where people can make silly faces or high school kids can kiss their girlfriends or boyfriends. Then we went to the real photo place, got a great big package done. Sam with a tie and his umbrella over his shoulder. Sam with a black jacket and Animal Liberation hat riding a Harley and making his tough guy face. Sam looking all sweetly into the distance. Lots and lots of very good pictures.

I'd bribed him with a stop at the comic book shop afterwards if he was good during the pictures. I bought him Yoda and Chewbacca action figures.

And then we rehearsed it on the way home.

"You can show mama the toys, and you can show her the pictures from the booth, but don't tell her about the real pictures. It's a surprise."

I pull into the driveway. He's got it down. No problem.

It's a nice day, so Jennifer comes out of the house and meets us in the driveway.

"Mama," he says after her "hello," "Mama, ask us where we were."

Jen looks at me. "I think maybe it's a surprise," she says.

"No, mama, ask me what we were doing."

"Okay. What were you doing."

He's practiced this. He knows exactly what to say. He screws on a very serious, not-going-to-ruin-the-surprise face.

"We were on an adventure," he says. "We got fake pictures. We got fake pictures, mama, but we didn't go get real pictures."

Eighteen

It's the day before Sam's birthday. I'm beat, just home from work, and I throw myself into a heap on the guest bed. Jen's on the laptop, but after a minute she sets it down and lies on the bed next to me to talk. Sam crawls up next to her, and we're all there, one happy, snuggling family, all just talking about our day.

I put a hand on Jen's shoulder, rub it a little, and then I get the response. The response I've been getting daily in recent weeks.

"Don't touch my mama!" he says. "That's my mama!"

And so I leave my hand there and give him my standard comeback. I'm prepared for this, I've got this down.

"She's your mama," I say, "but she's my wife. Anyway, I've known her longer than you have."

Score one for daddy.

But he's been preparing too. It doesn't catch him off guard this time. It doesn't leave him speechless.

"No, she's my wife, I'm going to marry mama!"

Weak, I think, just sort of assuming he's going to leave it there.

I start to give him the standard line about how you can't marry your mama, but he cuts me off.

"I will marry my mama." He pauses to organize his thoughts. Just for a second, though.

"I will blast her with a shrink ray, and then she will be very small and then she will be a baby girl. And when she grows up she will be a lady and when I grow up I will be a man, and then I will marry mama."

And oddly, I have no comeback. None.

Nineteen

"Is burying Yoko how the man makes her alive again?"

That question hadn't occurred to me.

"No," I say. "When someone dies, they stay dead, buddy. When someone dies, they don't ever become alive again."

He's processing it. I try to explain better, but it's a little hard to find the words.

He knew that Yoko was sick, he knew that she was going to die someday, and I thought he more or less got what that meant.

She'd been getting worse for weeks and weeks, and we expected it, but we expected it eventually. I certainly didn't expect it today.

I think mostly she was waiting for us all to be out of the house. For a little peace and quiet. A little time to herself.

She'd had a rough morning. I had to carry her out to the yard to go to the bathroom, and then carry her back up the steps again. She just looked tired. Worn out.

Jen was at work, Sam and I were home, nothing much on the agenda, both of us worried about Yoko, trying to get her to eat, trying to make her feel loved and happy, snuggling up next to her, petting her all morning.

In the early afternoon, we took a nice long walk, then played catch for a little while.

We came back in, and there was our beautiful twelve-year-old do in Sam's room, next to his bed, on the floor, not moving. I wasn't sure at first. It took me a minute to know.

And Sam stood in the doorway. When I told him she'd died, he wanted to come in and look. I don't know the right answer for that stuff, but I figured it had to be something along the lines of "okay, buddy, come on in." And we stood just looking at her for a moment, me explaining the situation, him just slowly processing things.

When I wrapped her in a sheet and took her downstairs, he wanted to know why.

"So we can take her to the vet, and he can bury her." Buried was a lie, but I didn't want to touch any conversation involving cremation.

And so, after a few minutes of thinking it through, "is burying Yoko how the man makes her alive again?"

I fumble through my best explanation. It holds him for a minute.

It's tough. I'm sad, and I figure it's okay to show that I'm sad, but I don't want to let it go too much, I don't want to be too sad in front of him, I don't want him to think that things are Not Okay.

We sit on the couch.

"Are you going to die, daddy?"

Something catches in my throat.

The way he's looking at me, it's almost too much. These sort of pleading, big blue eyes. Eyes that tell me that he wants one answer but already knows he's going to get a completely different one.

I explain that I will die someday, but not for a long, long time I hope. I explain that Yoko had a "special kind of sick" that she couldn't get better from.

He processes.

"I'm not going to die," he tells me. "I'm not ever going to die."

I don't argue that. But I don't need to. He already knows that's not true, too.

He looks at me with eyes that are killing me.

"Sometimes kids die," he says in this small, whispering, has-already-thought-about-this-stuff voice. "Sometimes kids die, too."

I don't argue with that. He knows it's true and I want to reassure him, but I don't lie to him. Sometimes kids die too. But I don't think he'll die for a long, long time, not for a million bazillion years.

For a while he's sad. He talks on the phone with my mother, tells her that Yoko is dead. For the next few days, he tells that he's a gorilla, mama is a mama gorilla, I'm a daddy gorilla, Pinto is a baby elephant, and Yoko is a dead baby elephant.

A few times a week, he asks me to lie in bed with him and tell him stories. Not fairy tales.

"Tell me stories about Yoko."

And so I memorialize her, over and over again. I tell him about the day I met Yoko. I throw in some details about the day I met his mother. I tell him how naughty she was. How she ate my vegan sausage bread on the day of our house-warming party. About how she used to just run through the screen door, knocking it off the rollers, whenever she wanted to go outside. About how she used to curl up next to him on the floor when she was a baby. About how happy we were to have a baby. About what a good kid he is. About how much I love his mother. About how much we all loved Yoko.

Finally, we bury her leash, collar, and bandana in the back yard. We bury her dog dish on it's side, and we plant dark purple lilies next to it. It's actually a very beautiful little memorial to the dog we loved.

The first night, a rabbit eats the lilies.

Fitting, I think. Serves her right for eating my damn sausage bread.

Twenty

Jen walks out of the bathroom and stands next to me in the upstairs hallway.

There's not looking. Not yet. We have to wait the allotted time.

We've been through this before. There's a lot of hoping, but a lot of playing that down, a lot of not wanting to invite disappointment.

A minute goes by. Another.

My stomach is turning. A lot of hoping. A lot of playing it down. But no lying to myself. Not really. There's no fooling that tossing, turning stomach, that pounding heartbeat, those sweating palms. The jittery edge to the insignificant things we say to pass those minutes, that jittery, chattery edge, that edge you get when you've been out all night, when you're functioning on adrenaline.

She steps into the bathroom and comes back out.

It's in her hand.

It's a big blue plus.

She doesn't believe me at first.

"Positive," I say. "Positive," I say, barely believing, barely able to let it be real, barely able to process it yet.

But she doesn't believe me.

One line is faint. She's not sure. It could be a negative. Maybe that faint line doesn't really count. Let's not get the hopes up.

"Positive," I insist.

That faint line is the negative line. The one that's always there.

I point to the other line. The up and down line. That up and down deep blue ocean of a line.

That one.

It dawns on her.

Tears stream down her face. Happy tears. Tears of relief, tears of joy, tears of something inexpressible, something far beyond words, something perfect and beautiful.

She falls into me, we stand there just wrapped around each other, breathing, her cheek wet against mine.

We don't sleep for a while.

We have a wedding to get to in the morning, but sleep is impossible. We talk. We drift into our own thoughts.

I finally begin writing words to some music I started years ago. The song plays in my head. Over the next couple of years, I add to it a little bit at a time, in no hurry to finish it.

You never looked so beautiful
Standing there, tears in your eyes
You said, "we've got a lot to learn"
I said "we'll learn, we'll learn and we'll be fine"
This is what we wanted
What we hoped for, prayed for, worked for
Now it's here
Never looked so beautiful

Just lay back, relax
There's no way I'm gonna sleep tonight
Every time I close my eyes
I see you never looked so beautiful...

Pinata

2011-05-25T19:05:00.003-04:00

Candy's gonna start dropping out of me any minute.

These past couple of days have been an absolute beating.

A very rough audit at work (ongoing, I get another round tomorrow). All kinds of crazy-ridiculous-piss-me-off-what-are-people-thinking nonsense at work that has to be dealt with soon and that I'd rather avoid. Staff leaving or planning to leave, so that I'll go from being full-staffed to half-staffed in the span of a couple of weeks, completely out of nowhere. Canceled plans to attend a couple of good hardcore shows this week (a buddy couldn't make his flight, and it's no fun going alone). And I stepped on the scale yesterday, and it's official--I'm the fattest I've ever been in my life. That may not be huge or anything, but it's disgusting to me (cue the self-loathing).

My wife took pity on me and gave me the house to myself for a few hours tonight so that I could read, write, do yoga, walk in circles, whatever. But then of course I got stuck at work very late for day two of the audit, and those few hours turned into something much less.

Just enough time to stuff my fat face with a few plates of tofu lasagna and watch some videos on YouTube, flirt with the idea of reading another chapter of World War Z (which, by the way, is awesome).

Okay, but hey, let's say something positive here, okay?

Playing around on YouTube, I came across this video, which I find to be pretty damn neat.

It's a bit from a television news show that I've never heard of, from way way back in 1995, about the vegan straight edge hardcore scene right here in lovely Syracuse. Lots of Earth Crisis.

I wasn't straight edge or vegan back then. I was a hard-drinking vegetarian really into the Syracuse hardcore scene, driving out here with my buddy Jerry (the one who couldn't make the flight from Denver this week) to catch shows as often as we could. There were a lot of great bands playing through here back then-- Earth Crisis, Strife, Vision of Disorder, Turmoil, Orange 9mm, Quicksand, H8 Machine, Envy, Despair, Downset, Another Victim. The list goes on and on. I loved that stuff. Loved the music. Loved the feel of the whole thing. Absolutely loved the ideas and the ideals (even the ones I didn't quite live up to).

Watching this, it's just strange. Everyone looks and sounds so damn young.

It was a long, long time ago.

Simplicity

2011-05-15T21:57:00.003-04:00

To commemorate the last week of the Voluntary Simplicity study group, Sam and I stood in the rain and planted corn and kale.

Living off the land, we are, we are.

Planted corn and kale, and read the final chapter of NWEI's 2008 edition of Voluntary Simplicity.

This last chapter was my favorite. Lots of very good stuff.

"The world is being destroyed-- no doubt about it," says Wendell Berry, "by the greed of the rich and powerful. It is also being destroyed by popular demand. There are not enough rich and powerful people to consume the whole world; for that, the rich and powerful need the help of countless ordinary people."

"To build houses," he says,"we clear-cut the forests there. To have air conditioning here, we strip-mine the mountains there. To drive our cars here, we sink our oil wells there. It is an absentee economy. Most people are not using or destroying what they can see. If we cannot see our garbage, or the grave we have dug with our energy proxies, then we assume all is well...

"The way to bring discipline into one's personal or household or community economy is to limit one's economic geography."

That's good.

This too.

"Eating is a genuine need," says Barbara Kingsolver, "continuous from our first day to our last, amounting over time to our most significant statement of what we are made of and what we have chosen to make of our connection to home ground. We can hardly choose not to eat, but we have to choose how, and our choices can have astounding consequences. Consider this; the average food item set before a U.S. consumer traveled 1,300 miles to get there. If Mr. Average eats ten or so items a day (and most of us eat more), in a year's time his food will have conquered five million miles by land, sea, and air. Picture a truck loaded with apples and oranges and iceberg lettuce rumbling to the moon and back ten times a year, all just for you. Multiply that by the number of Americans who like to eat-- picture that flotilla of 285 million trucks on their way to the moon-- and tell me you don't think it's time to revise this scenario."

And more stuff, good stuff, less quotable stuff.

The Little Zen Companion

2011-05-15T21:49:00.003-04:00

Been reading through The Little Zen Companion, a little book of quotes that I picked up a long, long time ago. There are a couple that I like. Like this Bulgarian proverb:

"If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water."

And this, from Janwillem Van De Wetering (who I have never, ever heard of aside from this):

"You are eight years old. It is Sunday evening. You have been granted an extra hour before bed.

"The family is playing Monopoly. You have been told that you are big enough to join them.

"You lose. You are losing continuously. Your stomach cramps with fear. Nearly all your possessions are gone. The money pile in front of you is almost gone. Your brothers are snatching all the houses from your streets. The last street is being sold. You have to give in. You have lost.

"And suddenly you know that it is only a game. You jump up with joy and you knock the big lamp over. It falls on the floor and drags the teapot with it. The others are angry with you, but you laugh when you go upstairs.

"You know you are nothing and know you have nothing. And you know that not-to-be and not-to-have give an immeasurable freedom."

Political Typology

2011-05-15T15:07:00.002-04:00

Took this little quiz from the Pew Research Center the other day and, not all surprisingly, I fall as far to the left as the rankings go.

What did surprise me is that my wife is basically a moderate. How'd I get mixed up with that sort?

Sustainability

2011-05-10T14:13:00.003-04:00

I like this paragraph from the most recent "New Environment Bulletin:"

'Sustainable' has become a mere add-on to the normal state of affairs, a sort of pledge of allegiance that gets invoked in order to declare oneself on the correct side of the tracks. Everyone is encouraged to keep following his or her accustomed habits and routines, as long as there is at least some lip service given to 'Sustainability.' Implicit in all this is an entirely different meaning to the word: to maintain things as they are as long as possible-- in other words, to 'sustain' the existing way of life.

Twenty Scenes (Eleven Through Fifteen)

2011-05-06T23:45:00.005-04:00

Eleven

"Pecker."

He's looking right at me. He's talking to me.

"Pecker," he says again, a big grin on his face.

I didn't teach him this one.

You can blame me for "damn." You can blame me for seventeen variations on "damn." My internal editor works hard, logs a lot of overtime, but it can't catch everything. Sometimes the very best I can do is soften things down to "damn." "Stop hitting me with your damn shoe!" might not be the best choice of words, but it's so much better than the string of profanity it's replacing.

Blame me for "damn."

Not "pecker," though.

That one's not me. I don't say "pecker." That's kind of a gross word. Just plain tacky.

"Pecker," he says again, still smiling.

"Sam, let's not say that. Let's not say 'pecker.'"

I would have let it go, hoping he would just move on to something else, but he's latched on now. He's proud of this one.

He came across "pecker" at random.

We've been standing here in the bathroom getting ready for the past few minutes, and he's been chattering away, trying out some new nonsense words.

"Mecker."

"Becker."

"Flecker."

He worked through a list.

"Pecker."

There was apparently a certain ring to that one. That hard "puh" that you have to just force out, that edge to it.

Or maybe there was a look on my face.

"Pecker, pecker, pecker," he says again, drying his hands on a towel, laughing.

"Okay, Sam, let's say something else. We don't say 'pecker.'"

He looks at me to see if I'm serious.

I am.

He looks confused.

But he's in a good mood today, he's willing to comply.

"Why, daddy?" he asks. "What does pecker mean?"

I'm ready to pass it off with "I don't know" or "it's just not nice," but right there I have a little flashback.

I'm Sam's age. My grandparents are in Georgia, and one of my jobs is to go to their house every day and bring in the eggs from the barn.

I really like the chickens, but that one brown hen? She's a pecker.

Walking down the driveway on the way up to the house, I explain that to my dad.

"That brown one's a pecker," I say.

He cringes.

"Don't say that," he says.

"Why not? She's a pecker. I don't like her. She's a pecker."

"Let's not call her that..."

"Why not?"

"Let's just say 'she pecks,'" he says, and he changes the subject.

It seems like a strange request to me. It's years before I get it.

And so I'm standing here. He's waiting for an answer.

"Penis," I say. "Pecker is a not-nice way of saying penis."

He thinks about it.

"Okay," he says. And then, "mecker, flecker, decker, wecker, shecker, wrecker, becker, tecker..."

Twelve

What am I?

That's right.

Best. Dad. Ever.

And prepared.

The best dad ever, and prepared. Super-prepared. Dedicated. Dedicated to the health and happiness of my boy.

Other parents-- other "less good" parents-- take the easy way out. When their kids start eating food, what do they do? That's right. They run off to the store and buy little cutesy jars of baby food applesauce and peaches and peas and the like.

Which is fine. Fine for "less good" parents than me.

But me? I'm totally, totally dedicated. And prepared. Very, very prepared.

Also, passionate. Passionate about a lot of things. Passionate about real food. And passionate about being an awesome dad. And so, of course. It's just that easy. It's all wrapped up, tied together.

I've been working in the kitchen for a while, and everything's almost ready.

I bought this kit before the boy was born. Just weeks after we knew that Jen was pregnant. I've got all the little cubes lined up on a counter, I've got the dog-eared carrot-smeared cookbook propped up, I've got food-processors and blenders a-whirring, piles of locally grown organic carrots and peas and whatnot being sliced and diced and cooked down to bright orange and green baby-friendly purees.

No toxins for this boy. No packed-in-Thailand pop-top nonsense for my son. Jen did her part, gave him a good start. Now it's my turn. Now daddy is in charge of the nutrition.

And... we're ready.

The bib is cute. He's got a smile on his face. He's a sweet kid. Sweet kid, cute bib, good food coming any second.

Really, truly cute and sweet, the kind of cute and sweet that needs to be documented. This precious moment here, documented, kept.

I get out the Flip camera and set it on the table, positioned just right, pointed at the high chair.

All set.

I fill up a kid-sized bowl with carrots. I get out the kid-friendly spoon. I sit down in front of Sam with a big "you're gonna like this" and then I reach over and press the record button.

He's still got that grin. He's watching the bowl, watching me dip the spoon. He's hungry. He's looking forward to this.

He opens up wide.

I deliver the carrots. The beautiful, bright, carrot puree. It looks so good. He's going to love this.

He's going to love this because I am the Best Dad Ever.

He closes his mouth. He starts to swallow.

I'm beaming. I can feel it. I'm just beaming.

He gags.

He has a look on his face, one I've never seen before. It's the "something is dying on my tongue" look. Shock. Horror.

He gags a little more.

And then he spits.

Projectile. Powerful stuff.

Must have gone down wrong.

I give him another bite.

He starts to swallow. He gags. He spits. And then he sticks out his tongue. He takes his tiny fingers and actually begins to scrape his tongue with eight little finger nails. He makes this sound:

"Gkkgkkchchhchkggkck."

He makes it again.

I'm sweating now.

This isn't going at all how I planned it.

A third bite.

We'll try a third bite.

As the spoon comes closer, he stops scraping his tongue. The hands go down. The tongue goes in his mouth. He squints his eyes and locks his lips together, seals them, presses them together till they start to turn white.

I'm panicking.

I'm... I'm...

I'm the best dad ever...

I'm taking over the nutrition now...

I'm tying together my passion for local organic food and my passion for raising the boy...

I'm... I'm...

I've managed to smear carrots all over his lips and chin, but nothing's going in. When I put the spoon down, he gets back to the projectile spitting and frantic tongue-scraping, punctuated with the occasional hoarse gag.

Over the next few days, I add pureed carrots to soups and stews. Some I just throw away.

Jen buys him some organic jarred baby food. He eats like crazy.

A week or so later, she takes a crack at pureeing some fresh veggies.

He can't get enough.

Thirteen

"Whoopadoo."

The teenage girl sitting across the table from me gives me a blank stare.

If not for the stare, I might have hoped that that hadn't been out loud.

No luck there.

We're sitting in the Assessment Room, which, no lie, used to be a storage closet. It's wired now, and there are shelves in here full of all sorts of McCarron-Dial work sheets and accessories. The doors cracked to let a little air in.

I've got my Clinician hat on today. For a couple of hours, I'm a Voc Rehab Counselor. I like doing this stuff. It's a break from manager duties. It's hands on. Fun.

Across from me is a 19-year old girl diagnosed with CP, about to graduate from high school, referred for an assessment to help her determine future "vocational programming."

To whom I have just said "whoopadoo."

And by "whoopadoo," what I mean is a loud, fast, high-pitched "whoop," a grace not of an "a," and a long, lazy, lingering "doo."

"Whoop-a-dooooooo...."

It's a diaper thing, really.

I've been changing a lot of diapers.

When I'm trying to change a diaper and keep the kid happy and smiling, I have two go-to routines.

One is "zombie feet." As in "oh, he's got zombie feet... oh those smelly, smelly zombie feet... ewww...."

The other is "whoopadoo." As in just yelling whoopadoo in a silly, silly voice as I raise the boy by the ankles, stick a diaper under his butt, get him back into a onesie.

But it's been slipping into my everyday speech.

Drop a quarter? "Whoopadoo!"

Almost get run over in the parking lot at work by that 85 year old doctor who should really maybe think about taking a cab? "Whoopadoo!!!"

And now, sitting across from a teenager in a storage closet, jotting the wrong number down and then fumbling my eraser as I go to fix it? "Whoopadoo!"

I explain this to my assessment subject, so that she won't think I'm weird or something.

She maintains the blank stare for a moment, then smiles awkwardly but politely.

We go on to the next exercise.

Fourteen

It's just like catching minnows.

When I was a kid growing up in Westernville, we spent a lot of summer days at Big Brook.

Natural water slide, a few areas deep enough for younger kids to do real swimming, some rapids, wading areas, and lots and lots of rocks. Rocks everywhere. The whole extended family would gather, lay blankets on the rocks, break open the picnic baskets, watch the kids play.

Those of us who were too young for the natural water slide (the awesomely scary, cool water slide) spent a lot of time catching minnows.

We'd stand in the water up to our knees, plastic cups in hand, trying to catch one of the thousands of minnows swirling around our feet.

Or, less skeevy, less gross, we lie on the rocks above and dip our cups down.

I didn't like to actually touch the minnows. I don't think I even really wanted to catch one. The thought of handling them kind of freaked me out. But it was something to do, something to do when it was hot, when there were cousins running all over the place, when you were still too little to go down the awesomely scary, cool water slide.

"Just like catching minnows at Big Brook," I tell myself, rolling up my sleeve and dipping my hand in the water.

Poop minnows.

Slimy, squirming, somehow-managing-to-elude-me poop minnows.

I kind of knew this would happen eventually.

Jen has him out of the tub now, she's drying him off, wrapping him in a towel, trying not to laugh.

And I'm catching poop minnows.

Rascally, fidgety, rapidly moving, just-won't-get-in-the-cup poop minnows.

Just like those Big Brook minnows, I kind of don't want to catch them. I don't want to touch them. I don't want them to come out of the water.

But it's a hot day, I just happen to have the plastic cup, not-yet-potty-trained Sam has unburdened himself in the bath water, and it just seems like the thing to do.

Better than trying to unclog the drain if I let the water out.

Fifteen

The doctor lifts both of Sam's arms above his head, then lets go.

The arms fall back down to his side with two dull, smacky thuds.

Sam stares at him with his big, blue eyes. Doesn't blink. Doesn't make a sound.

He was chattering away non-stop on the car ride over, but now he's quiet.

I don't blame him. I think this guy freaks him out a little. He freaks me out.

I'm sweating. I swear they keep these exam rooms set to somewhere around 117 degrees. That, and I can never escape the feeling that the doctors are judging me. I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong, and I'm pretty sure they know it. I don't know what it is exactly, and I sort of wish they'd tell me.

The experience is, as usual, somewhat on the unpleasant side. I'm sweating, Sam, stripped down to his diaper, has goosebumps.

The doctor turns to look at me. Sam is still staring at him. I wish he'd blink. Or make some sort of noise.

"Has he tried to pull himself to standing?"

"No," I say. "Not really. He..."

I can't think of the next line, the explanation.

"Is he crawling at all?"

"He doesn't really crawl. When he's on the floor, he's usually on a blanket, and if he wants something, he sort of just pulls the blanket and slides whatever it is over to himself..."

The doctor looks like he knows something.

He turns back to Sam. He tries to get a reaction that he doesn't get.

"Milestones" he says. Something about milestones.

Which I already know. I know that Sam isn't hitting any of those damn milestones. Not the physical ones, anyway. He loves books, he loves to talk, he loves to play, he loves music. But he's probably not going to play college football. He hasn't tried to walk. He's not much interested in crawling. Set him down somewhere, and he'll find something really, really interesting exactly where he is. He's just... mellow.

And, well, part of it is maybe that we don't set him down.

I try to explain this to the doctor.

"My wife and I both work," I say. "When we get home, we haven't seen him all day, and so we don't want to put him down."

I think he's listening, but in reality, he's half-listening. I get that later.

I explain to him now, though, that it's really our fault that he's not hitting those milestones because we obsess about spending every second with him. We carry him wherever we go. We got rid of cable so that there'd be no temptation to stop reading him books. I dance with him every night (to Rush and Spearhead mostly; sometimes Duran Duran). We sing him to sleep. We sing him awake. We don't put him down, and he hasn't had to learn to do anything for himself.

I try to say all that, to explain it, to take the blame. It doesn't all come out exactly right. I'm sweating and nervous. I don't like the way the doctor is looking at Sam. He does that arm thing again. Two more smacky thuds.

"I'm going to give you a number," he says, and he tells me about the Early Intervention programs in our county. He tells me that physical therapists can come to the home, work with Sam on gross motor skills, do an assessment, find out exactly what he needs.

"I understand that you're busy," he says, "but it's important to really get down and play with him."

That confuses me. It doesn't immediately register what he's getting at.

He puts his pen away, picks up some papers. As he's about to turn for the door, Sam grabs hold of the paper sheet that covers the exam table and has at it, shredding the edge closest to him, enjoying that rumply sound.

The doctor looks surprised.

Surprised that Sam has moved, is playing. Surprised that this funny, playful, constantly giggling kid is moving and playing.

"Well there," he says. "That's good. Now he's showing a little interest."

He leaves. I dress Sam, head out to the front desk, then to the car.

Sam is laughing. He's singing along with the radio on the way home.

We're maybe half way there when it sinks in exactly what the doctor was saying.

"I understand you're busy, but it's important to really get down and play with him."

I get what he meant now, and I'm suddenly angry. I suddenly want to turn the car around, go back in the office, and tell him to actually listen to the words I'm saying.

He wasn't listening. When I tried to tell him why it was all my fault, he didn't get past "my wife and I both work."

When I was telling him that we missed the hell out of our boy all day long and so wanted to do absolutely nothing but play with him and be with him every minute we were home with him, he was hearing that we worked all day, that we were just too tired to bother with our child. Too tired and disinterested to get down on the floor with him.

I want to turn around and go inside and yell and tell him to listen to the actual words that I'm actually saying, but I don't.

I want to tell him that Sam was quiet because the doctor was poking him with sticks and lights and freaking him out. And because he probably knew that he wasn't a guy worth talking to because he doesn't listen to what people actually say. But I don't.

I don't, because the doctor's wrong about all those social things. He's wrong about the interactivity and curiosity and vocabulary and the rest. And he's wrong about the reasons.

But he's right about a little.

He's right about the physical milestones.

And it's probably no big deal. It's probably not even worth a call to Early Intervention. Every kid is different. Every kid grows and learns at their own pace. I have no doubts that Sam will be running and jumping and climbing and getting into things we'd rather he stay out of in no time at all.

But I work in that field. I work with people every day who didn't hit their milestones. Who didn't run and jump when they were kids. Who didn't grow up with much in their favor.

I have no doubts... but I do. I have those fears. That sense that maybe I've been missing something.

And so I go home. I call my wife. We worry together. We eventually call the agency, meet the service coordinator, meet the physical therapist (a great lady who makes us feel a whole lot better about all of this), get the assessments done.

It turns out that Sam is way ahead in all those areas that we already knew he was way ahead in.

And he's right on the border of being behind in all those areas we knew that he was a little behind in.

And so Charlene comes over once a week and plays with Sam, which sucks and makes me mad but which I accept (because, like I said, she's a great lady who makes us feel better about this). I come up with some new games for Sam. I put my guitar on the stairway landing so that he'll have to climb in order to play with the strings (he loves the sound of that guitar).

And after a little while, Charlene sort of admits that he probably didn't need much of anything after all. He's doing all those things that kids do. There's really no point to any of this.

A little while later, and Jen and I are just wishing he'd slow down, stop jumping off the coffee table.

A little while later, he's helping me clear leaves and branches out of the back yard, pushing his wheelbarrow, wielding his rake, doing most of the heavy lifting.

Love Wins

2011-05-06T23:28:00.003-04:00

I spent part of this past week at a conference in Lake Placid. With a little free time and a hotel room all to myself, I had the chance to read Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins.

Do a quick Google search on that, and most of what you'll find are reviews by people who really, really don't like Love Wins.

Love Wins has generated a little bit of controversy. Rob Bell has made some people upset. Some seem pretty angry. Others just seem... concerned? Annoyed? Worried?

I like Rob Bell.

I like Rob Bell a lot.

I'm new to his stuff. I read Jesus Wants to Save Christians earlier this year. I watched a few of his NOOMA videos.

It's all good stuff.

And this is good stuff. Love Wins is really, truly good stuff.

It's funny. I don't say this out of regret, out of wishing things had been different. But I think about it anyway. It's strange to think how different my life might have been if I'd read this book 20 years ago instead of 4 days ago. If this had been available to me at 17. If I'd picked this book up instead of walking into the fire and brimstone "hell is real and you damn well better believe it" that night when my head was spinning with questions...

Half-Assed

2011-04-30T23:03:00.002-04:00

I was driving down 690, one of the highways that cuts across Syracuse, on my way to pick Sam up from pre-K, listening to a little music, when this lyric struck me:

I just wanna tune out the billboards
Weld myself a mental shield
I just wanna put down the pressures
And feel how I really feel

Just show me a moment that is mine
It's beauty blinding and unsurpassed
Make me forget every moment that went by
And left me so half-hearted
'Cause I felt it so half-assed

One of my favorite Ani songs from one of my favorite Ani albums.

And it fit the moment perfectly. Fit the scenery.

Just a couple days before, I'd been driving down that same stretch of 690, and I did a little experiment.

I decided to actually notice the billboards.

To process them.

To see each one, get the message, experience it.

690, you see, is pretty saturated with billboards. And usually I just drive by, on my way to wherever I'm headed in quite a hurry, seeing them with my eyes but only half-experiencing them, not really registering them, letting them hit me only on a half-conscious or sub-conscious level.

So, driving along, radio off, I'd decided to really, truly see them. To let each one speak to me.

And the message went something like this:

"If you're sick, only St. Joseph's can really make you better."

"Help us fight breast cancer."

"You need a new car."

"No, no, no; you need this new car."

"Beer will make you happy and relaxed."

"Don't drink that beer; drink this beer."

"Don't you deserve a night out at our restaurant?"

"Really, we mean it; if you don't go to St. Joseph's, you'll probably just die."

"What about a truck? Wouldn't you like a truck?"

"Please remember that alcoholism is a serious problem, and donate some money to help fight it."

"No, not that beer; this beer!"

"Wouldn't you like to go on a vacation?"

And so on and so forth, one after the other, my eyes shifting back and forth, trying to catch them all before I passed them.

There were too many, though. I didn't really get them all.

There were so many, I couldn't possibly have gotten them all. Not without putting the safety of other drivers at risk, not without slowing down, swerving, turning my head, causing a pile up.

There were too many billboards on that strip for any one person to possibly read at 65 mph.

But the point, isn't, I guess, to really read them, to really process them. The point, I suppose, is to be saturated, is to take it in without processing it, without really thinking it through.

I kept driving along, and I thought of some lines I'd read for that Voluntary Simplicity course I've been attending. It's from something by Mark Burch.

During the 20th century we developed an entire culture-- and an industrial and economic system to serve it-- with the principle purpose to abolish any idea of "enough," to orient every waking moment of human existence toward consumption for its own sake and promoting insatiable desire as the defining characteristic of human nature...

[T]here is very little, if anything, in our social milieu, in the media, in economic and technical development, or in political discourse that in any way suggests that moderation might be a comprehensible, even desirable way of life...

I resent that.

I resent the attempts made daily, hourly, to get me, my family, my child, to feel unfulfilled, to feel needs that we don't really have. The attempts made each and every day by someone out there to make us feel that we're not good enough, that we need something more to be complete.

I resent that, and I've done what I can to turn it off, to shut it out.

No TV, very little commercial radio-- we've gotten kind of out of touch with the "culture," to the point where sometimes I don't even get coworkers' jokes, don't know what they're talking about. But it feels good, good to be free of that incessant message, that incessant whispering, that incessant "this is what you need."

I can't shut it all out, but I can enjoy that little victory and then start to notice the crap that still gets through, truly see the billboards, really, truly see the tricks and subtleties and coercive nonsense that penetrates to every area of life.

I like that Ani song a lot.

I like how it ends, all upbeat, all free.

Spring is super in the supermarket
And the strawberries dance and glow
Never mind that they're all kind of tart and tasteless
As strawberries go
Meanwhile wild things are not for sale
Any more than they are for show
So I'll be outside, in love with the kind of beauty
It takes more than eyes to know...

Cinderella Ate My Daughter

2011-04-30T11:23:00.002-04:00

Last night I finished reading Peggy Orenstein's Cinderella Ate My Daughter.

I've got a boy, and there are no imminent plans to add to the family, so I will most likely not have to deal with all the trials of raising a girl in this world.

If I had a daughter, I'd be calling the library to tell them I lost this book instead of returning it tomorrow. I'd want to have it on hand to go through over and over again. For moral support. For inspiration.

This is a very, very good book.

All about the ramifications of the new "girlie girl" culture, as Orenstein puts it, it takes a look at the Princess craze, toddler beauty pageants, the mainstream sexualization of young girls (why do Halloween costumes for six year old girls look like something strippers might wear to a bachelor party? I've vented about this before...), the cultural pressures and expectations put on girls of all ages to see their value as something external, to toe the line between Princess and slut (gotta be innocently sexy, by accident; cross that fine line, and you're a tramp).

Orenstein comes across as passionate and frustrated without coming across as judgmental. She shows sympathy for and solidarity with mothers whose choices she is clearly horrified by.

This is good, good stuff, a great read even for those of us not trying to raise happy, healthy girls in an everything-is-wrong world.

Science And Zombies

2011-04-30T11:19:00.002-04:00

I love this article on science and zombies on CNN.

For important stuff, this is.

As for me, I'm no scientist, but anytime I go for a walk, I do scout out the best places to hole up in the event of a zombie apocalypse. So I figure zombies have helped me prepare for all kinds of natural disasters, foreign invasions, interdimensional takeovers, etc.

Iron And Wine, Betty's

2011-04-23T19:00:00.002-04:00

Someone recorded bits of the Iron and Wine show that Jen and I caught in Buffalo last weekend.

This wasn't the highlight of the show (it was good, but there were better songs), but it's the best bit of video I could find.

I'm not a big Iron and Wine fan. The CDs I've heard just get too... "breathy." I don't know how to describe it. I listen half-afraid that the singer is either going to fall asleep or start sobbing.

But the show was really quite good. Especially the newer, more energetic stuff. So I'm glad we went.

On a related note, if you're ever in Buffalo and you need to find a place to have breakfast, you could do a whole lot worse than Betty's.

I am very, very comfortable saying that was the best tofu scramble I've ever had in my life. Unbelievably good. Home fries really hit the spot too.

I want to go back and have lunch or dinner there sometime, check out some of those other choices.

And I love that their menu specifically asks people to stay off their cell phones.

And Still Your Thirst Would Not Be Slaked

2011-04-23T18:44:00.003-04:00

I've been itching to write for the past few weeks, but it's been hard to find the time (and/or energy) to do so.

Busy season, I guess. Lots of yard work to do now that the snow is really, truly gone. Gardens to prepare and meetings to attend and walks to take and so on and so forth and finally, when I have a moment to sit, I'm just exhausted and want to sleep. Or there's this great book I want to read.

Just for now, though, I wanted to type out this quote. I may have posted it here before. Maybe not. I've read it before, and read it again last week for the NWEI Voluntary Simplicity course I'm participating in. It's excerpted for that study guide from a Janet Luhrs book (The Simple Living Guide, I believe).

"How did we get this way? When did we decide that more and bigger stuff would give us a better life? When was the time a busy calendar gave anyone more serenity? Do we really get more job from worrying about, rearranging, and dusting our things than we do from visiting with a friend in an intimate way?... Do we like ourselves more if we move up from a medium-size to a big-screen television set? Will that make zoning out every night a little more pleasant? Is zoning out what we always dreamed was the meaning of life?"

I like that. I like that a lot.

I like this, too. It's from The Dhammapada, which I recently re-read:

"The rain could turn to gold
And still your thirst would not be slaked."

Night

2011-04-11T22:43:00.003-04:00

It's been a busy couple of weeks, what with getting things ready for the Voluntary Simplicity study group (which kicked off tonight with a decent turnout), a lot of craziness at work (including firing a staff person that I really like and did not want to ever have to fire), lots of yard work and garden work, a night out to see Nine Ball (they were really good, and the night brought back a lot of memories), having some friends over to the house, and so on, so forth, et cetera.

A busy couple of weeks, but I've had time to read a few good books.

Karen Armstrong's Buddha, which is kind of sort of a biography of the guy who started the whole deal. (Kind of sort of but not quite.)

Euripides' "Ion," which is a great play. (I haven't read Euripides in many years, but as soon as I started this I remembered how much I'd loved his stuff.)

And Night.

Elie Wiesel's Night.

Beautifully written, but hard to read.

Hard to look at all the ugliness that humanity has to offer. All the hate, all the suffering we're willing to inflict upon each other.

Painful, ugly stuff, beautifully put together.

Makes me not want to read anything else for a while. I mean, what else is there for anyone to say?

Playing In The Dirt (A Photo Essay)

2011-04-03T20:25:00.011-04:00

Twenty Scenes (Six Through Ten)

2011-04-02T23:16:00.002-04:00

Six

Mornings have been difficult.

I've been showing up to work late almost every day-- fifteen minutes, twenty minutes, half an hour. Sometimes it's worse.

Even though Jen's office is right across the street from preschool, she starts her work day an hour before the preschool doors open, so morning duty is all me.

There's a pretty basic daily routine. I get up. I eat a bowl of porridge with blueberries. Maybe some veggie sausage. I sit quietly in my chair in the mostly dark living room slowly drinking my cup of coffee, trying to hold the day back a little. Then I go into Sam's room, wake him up, give him a snack (milk, some peanut butter crackers) before I jump in the shower. If all goes well, I shower, dress, dress the boy, drive the fifteen minutes into Syracuse, sign him into preschool, drive fifteen minutes back the way I came, drive past my house, and drive another 30 or 40 minutes to my office.

It doesn't always go well. It's tantrum week. Or tantrum month-- I lose track of how long this has been going on.

It hasn't been an easy morning. I don't know what set things off today. But he's mean. Really, really mean.

It's okay though. I'm in a sort of sanctuary. While he's raging about upstairs, I'm hiding in the downstairs bathroom. He can scream and scream and scream if he wants to, but jokes on him; down here, I can barely hear it. For a few minutes, I can pretend I'm a normal grown up having a normal grown up morning.

Hiding.

But not just hiding. Taking care of some urgent business.

There's a pause in the yelling, in the ranting.

I know what it means.

He knows that I'm gone. He knows that I'm not listening.

He knows where I am.

I hear the sound of very small feet coming down the stairs.

I wait, quietly.

And then the door bursts open. He races in.

He's screaming again.

And I'm... vulnerable.

I tried to prepare. I tried to get ahead of the attack. But I'm too late. He rips the piece of toilet paper out of my hand and throws it across the room. I needed it. I go for another. As I'm reaching over to reload, he grabs onto my arms. He's screaming something, something about "going upstairs," he's not happy at all to have found me down here.

I try to push him away, but he's freakishly strong for a kid who just turned 3 a couple of months ago.

I get my hands free, and he grabs me by the ankle, throws all his weight into it, and tries to pull me off the toilet, out of the room.

And, again, I'm... vulnerable. I wasn't prepared for this fight. I'm... I'm exposed.

I defend myself as best as I can, trying to keep myself positioned on this porcelain throne, trying to ward him off. He pulls. Punches. Rips another piece of toilet paper away from me. I'm sweating. Yelling, now.

Somehow, I break loose, I manage to push him out the door, and I quickly lock him out. Long enough to finish taking care of that business, put myself together.

I leave the bathroom. He's not down here. I hear him yelling upstairs again. And pounding. What the hell is that noise?

I get to the top of the stairs and look into the living room.

He's naked now. I don't know why.

Naked and jumping up and down on the coffee table.

I'm going to be late to work again.

I'm going to be exhausted and ready to call it a day before I even get to my desk.

Seven

For the first time in my life, I'm about to punch a woman.

I'm going to punch her, and I'm going to punch her hard. Right in the nose, most likely. And I'm not even going to feel bad about it.

I haven't thrown a punch in a long, long time. I'm a little rusty. But I'm pretty sure this one's going to count. A good, hard, whack to the nose.

I mean, what the hell is wrong with this woman? Is she completely deranged? Some sort of sickening sociopath? I'll whack her, and that'll make the world a better place. We don't need sick, twisted freaks like this running around.

For God's sake, he's a week old!

What kind of twisted, soulless monster takes a razor and cuts open the foot of a week old baby boy? What the hell?

"Good," the nurse says. "He's a screamer."

Oh, right, yes. I missed that. My week old son, screaming, red-faced, kicking, terrified. Bleeding. Yes, a screamer. Thank you.

"The more he screams, the more the blood flows."

Monster.

She puts one little vial down and picks up another one.

"Almost done," she says.

"Gnnnh," I say.

I'm holding the boy down. A traitor, I know, holding him still for this.

But as soon as I let go, as soon as my hands are free, I'm going to punch this woman in the nose. Really, really hard.

I hate her.

I absolutely hate her.

"All done," she says, and puts some sticky bandage on his foot. "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Gnnnnh," I say.

Sam is in his treefrog pose now, clinging tight to my chest, sobbing in a way that sounds way too grown up for this tiny little body.

She tells me something about when the results we be available.

"Thanks," I say, heading out the door, down the hall, out to the car, home.

Eight

We're on our way to Farm Sanctuary. It's our annual trip, our getaway. Every year, we rent that same cabin, take a couple of days off, and just relax. Stars. Animals. Vegan food.

And organic blueberry wine. Sometimes Kingdom Red.

Four Chimneys is on the way, just a quick turn off the main road, maybe a mile or two down.

We never miss a stop at Four Chimneys. We load up-- a bottle or two for the stay at the cabin, plus some bottles to take home. Good, local, organic wine.

Sam and I are browsing. We've already made the purchases. We're waiting for Jen, who has run off to use the bathroom.

Sam just turned two. Still likes being carried everywhere, so he's tight against my chest, turning his head this way and that to check out the honey, the honey wine, the glasses, the racks, the t-shirts.

The big door opens and a couple steps inside, out of the bright, bright afternoon into the cool, dark barn.

An older couple.

The man is sort of nondescript, sort of the standard old guy in a winery-- the hat, the yellow pants, the light jacket, the smile.

His wife looks unhappy. Her dyed blonde hair is pulled up tight. Her expression is stern. She's wearing nice earrings, black slacks, a black and white striped shirt.

Sam is still twisting and turning, looking this way and that, and then his eyes land on the couple.

He goes still for a moment.

I can see it on his face.

I know what's going to come next.

He's absolutely fascinated. Just blown away.

"Daddy," he says.

"Okay, buddy; hey, look at this picture."

"Daddy," he says again, not distracted even for a moment, not falling for it. "Daddy, she's a zebra."

And then, louder, very loud, shouting.

"Daddy, she's a zebra! Look, Daddy, she's a zebra! That lady is a zebra!!!"

A bounce him about in my arms a bit, gently, looking for something else to get him interested in. Nothing works.

The zebra-lady clearly hears, but isn't smiling. She isn't looking our way. She doesn't look like a very friendly zebra-lady.

"A zebra, Daddy, look!"

I run for the door.

Jen's going to have to find her own way out.

Nine

"I've got to go potty," he says, and he runs for the bathroom.

"Hold on," I say, "I'll be right there."

I'm in the middle of something, just a few seconds behind.

"Wait for me," I say.

He's getting the potty thing down, but he's still at the point where he really does need to wait for me. He's getting better and better at this, but he's not what you'd quite call "independent" yet. For one thing, he hasn't yet figured out the "standing up" technique, and he's a little too short to get onto the seat by himself. He needs a little assistance.

I set whatever I'm finishing up aside and start down the hall.

There's a thud, a grunt, and a loud "Daddy!" from the bathroom.

I run the last couple of steps.

And there he is.

He didn't wait for me.

He should have, but he didn't.

So there he is, this horrified, slightly puzzled look on his face.

His pants are off. And he's on the toilet. Sort of.

In the toilet, really.

He's folded in half. His head is against the tank, his arms are pointing in the air, both feet are pointing straight up. The rest of him is in the pot, his bare butt just sort of floating in the water.

He looks like he has no idea how this could have happened.

"Help," he says. "Help, I'm in the potty!"

Sadly, this isn't the first time this has happened, though it is the first time I've had to do the retraction.

I grab the arms and legs and pull. He comes out easily enough, though it takes a while for the rim dents to fade from his back and legs.

Ten

5:30 a.m. I'm in shorts and my Inside Out hoodie. I'm carrying a duffel bag filled with snacks-- some vegan jerky, rice milk chocolate bars, Clif bars-- a library copy of The Story of B, a spare shirt, some other odds and ends.

Jen is sitting next to me.

We've been up since 4:00, and didn't sleep much before that.

We're waiting. Seems like a long, long time, but it's probably only been a few minutes. Everything is a little surreal. Everything is larger than life. Colors are bright, the whispering morning voices in the admissions area are somehow crisp and clear, defined.

My knees are knocking and my teeth are chattering. We're making small talk, and I'm paying attention, but I forget each sentence as soon as it's out of my mouth, none of it is staying with me.

Then we're upstairs. It's a nice room. Big. There's a whirlpool in the bathroom. We won't end up using that. There's a tv. We won't use that either. The bed looks comfortable. There's a decent cot that I can lie on, this fold out chair bed thing that actually ends up being not so bad.

I do a lot of pacing, a lot of snacking, and a little bit of reading. Nurses come in and out. There's the occasional shot. At first, Jen feels fine. As time goes on, she starts to look a little worn out. A little dopey.

The waiting room eventually fills up and I go back and forth. My mother, my brothers, my sister, Jen's mother. They take turns coming in for a few minutes at a time, but eventually Jen decides she'd do better without the visitors, and so I just run the occasional message out. "Everything's fine, nothing happening yet."

Somewhere in there, I eat lunch. I must. It comes and goes, I don't remember it five minutes after it's gone. Something off a tray.

I hear nurses and the doctor talking about the time. They'd hoped to be out of here by 5:00. It's almost 5:00 now.

I get defensive.

These are good people, but I'm sort of a hostile husband. Not hostile. Not openly hostile. Just... cautious. Wary. I've been hanging out with Holistic Moms. I've got my eye on these doctors. These doctors and their drugs and their treating this like they'd treat an illness and whatnot. I'm watching them. And I don't like this talk about "I thought we'd be out of here by 5:00."

I don't want anybody rushing anything. I don't want anybody rushing anything and doing something wrong.

But then, it's a couple minutes to five, and now things are rolling.

"Push," etc.

I'm doing my part as well as I can. Jen's part seems harder though.

The doctor doesn't come in till a few minutes before the end.

"One more push," then it's 5:24 pm, and there he is.

He's blue.

He's really, really blue.

I look around at the nurses, at the doctor.

None of them seem to be panicking. I mean, they have to notice that this boy is really, really blue, but they're all going about their business like this is normal. My heart is racing, my inner dialogue is just a record skipping on "oh shit... oh shit... oh shit... oh shit...," but the nurse is handing Sam to Jen like everything is fine, she's looking at me with very, very happy (tired) eyes, and so I'm willing to think maybe this is okay. Maybe blue is normal.

Jen has him only for seconds before a nurse takes him away. They clean him, weigh him, throw him into some sort of microwave that turns him from blue to a shade more along the lines of what I was expecting. Someone swaddles him.

"Do you want to hold him?"

The nurse is talking to me, and of course the answer is yes. Yes, I want to hold him. Yes, I very much want that.

I'm sitting with this boy, only minutes old, on my knees, his eyes wide open, bright blue, staring straight up at me, staring straight into me. I'm memorizing his face. Nurses and the doctor are still attending to Jen, and I'm sitting here quietly, waiting for them to finish, and memorizing my son's face. Every little detail, carving it into me.

"Very serious situation," I hear, and the background noise becomes foreground noise, I start listening, I start becoming aware of the conversation.

Jen's doctor is talking.

"We need to go to surgery," she says, "before this becomes life threatening."

I have no idea what's going on, but everyone is moving very quickly, very purposefully.

"A lot of blood loss," the doctor is saying.

"Everything will be alright," the doctor is saying, that reassuring tone, that reassuring tone that you don't want to hear, that reassuring tone that you hear and know you're hearing it because doctor's can't say "oh shit" in front of patients, in front of patients' spouses.

And then the room is suddenly empty.

There is no one here. No one here but me and Sam.

The bed is gone, they rolled it out.

There were several nurses in here. They're all gone. The doctor is gone.

The room is empty, except for the tv we didn't watch, the duffel bag of snack wrappers, The Story of B, and blood-- too much blood, lots of blood-- on the floor.

No one had time to say a word to me on the way out. I don't blame them. They had to hurry. But no one spoke to me, and I have no idea, no idea at all, what is going on.

Except that this could be life threatening. That this is serious. That they're on the way to surgery.

I look down at Sam.

He's still staring up at me, into me, with those impossibly blue eyes.

I want to choke.

I want to choke and cry.

I am suddenly very scared. I suddenly feel unbelievably helpless.

I want to choke and cry and panic and call for help, but my son is ten minutes old, and he's on my knee, and he's looking up at me, and I won't let my son's first experience of this world be his father in tears, his father calling for help, his father afraid.

I stare back at him, into him. I continue to carve his face into every part of my being. I hold him gently, not quite sure of myself, but faking it, faking confidence, faking strength.

"This will be fine," I say, and other things, other things like that, hoping that I sound more honest, me reassuring than the doctor did.

Someone comes in. A nurse, a CNA, I'm not sure.

She tells me that Jen is in surgery, and should be about an hour.

I ask her to go out to the waiting room and send my sister in. No one out there knows what's going on, and I should explain, but I can't take Sam out into the waiting room.

My sister comes in. She's a pastor. I figure she can explain this to everyone. I ask her to do that, but first I ask her to hold Sam. Only for a minute, I tell her. I don't want to let go of him at all, so only for a minute.

I hand Sam over and then I go into the bathroom. Once the heavy door is shut, I let myself break down. Only for a minute. I look into the mirror. I gag. I choke. I spit into the sink, splash water on my face. I breathe too heavily. I let my heart race, I scrub tears off with a dry paper towel. I breathe deeply a few times now, get myself together, go back out and take Sam.

For an hour, we stare at each other. I lose track of the things I'm saying to him. Promises. Promises of the kind of father I'll be. Promises to always be there, no matter what, as long as I am able. Promises that life will, on the whole, be alright, be good.

At some point, my mother steps in, only for a few minutes. She asks me if she can hold him. I tell her no, with more venom and sting than I expected. I spit it out, wounded, angry.

"Jen hasn't even had a chance to hold him," I say. "Nobody is going to hold him until Jen has a chance to hold him."

And at the end of an hour, she's back. She's tired, hurting, but fine. She's going to be alright. Scared the hell out of me, but she's going to be alright.

The three of us sit together. She holds Sam, and I watch them, fall in love with the sight of them together, his tiny head against her chest.

I believe, right then, that things will in fact be fine, that some things are good.

Eventually, Sam closes those blue eyes, drifts off to sleep.

This Is The Year. For Real.

2011-04-02T23:10:00.002-04:00

Last weekend, I finished reading Mel Bartholomew's All New Square Foot Gardening.

Today, I ran all over town and loaded my wife's vehicle up with 240 pounds of manure, 160 pounds of mixed compost, several hundred pounds of peat, and 5 big bags of vermiculite. Plus some starter pots, weed mats, assorted supplies, and, of course, a very small wheelbarrow for the boy.

Tomorrow, I mix the soil and fill the beds. Maybe even plant some spinach.

Next week, I've got to figure out how to make a fence that'll keep the local rabbits out (the stuff I bought isn't gonna do it).

This is the year. For real. This is the year that my garden actually gives back as much as or more than I put into it.

Seriously.

This is the year that I roll in eggplant, give away zucchini, and grow tired of canning tomatoes.

Twenty Scenes (One Through Five, In No Particular Order)

2011-03-26T22:23:00.003-04:00

One

Sam is having a rough week. The tantrums go in cycles. For a solid week, he'll have meltdowns every day, over just about anything. They can get pretty wild. Jen and I start to pull our hair out, we get that glassy-eyed "I can't take this anymore" look, and then, quietly, for no reason we can really pinpoint, the tantrum phase ends. For six or seven months, he's just a whole lot of fun to be with. Sweetness and hugs and smiles and laughter. The occasional bad behavior, but on the whole, such an easy kid.

This is a tantrum week.

I get up around 5:45 a.m. Jen and Sam are still sleeping. I eat, then take a shower. When I turn the water off, I hear screaming. Mean, nasty screaming. Not scared screaming or sad screaming, just that mean stuff. He's pissed. I don't know what it's about, I just hope I didn't do it.

Eventually, he stops torturing his mother. He's in the kitchen with me. He's fairly calm. I smile and talk to him and hope that we can turn the morning around.

He looks up at me. He's got something on his chin-- maybe juice or water, whatever Jen gave him to drink-- and it's clearly bothering him.

"Wipe my face," he says.

I pause for second.

"Sam," I say, "I think you can try again." You know, we say please in this here house.

He takes a breath. His eyes narrow, fists clench.

"Wipe my face NOW," he says.

Inhale, exhale.

I'm actually not so much mad as just trying not to laugh. Laughing just isn't appropriate.

"Sam, why don't you try one more time, that's not how we ask," I say, trying to sound soothing but firm at the same time.

His fists get tighter. He glares at me.

"Wipe my damn face NOW!" he says.

I have to leave the room. I have to leave the room and laugh silently in the hallway.

Two

It's roughly 7000 degrees outside. July. A wet and sticky kind of hot.

And the sling is black fabric, which doesn't help. Everywhere it touches me, I sweat.

I spent a lot of time hanging out with a local Holistic Mom before Sam was born, and she convinced me that bjorns and front packs and all those other holders were just horrible, horrible things, that a sling was the only way to go.

I'm enough of a hippie that what she said made perfect sense to me, so my two month old boy is in a black fabric sling balled up against me as we shop the co-op on this 7000 degree day.

And, really, I don't trust the sling. I'm a nervous dad. I don't let people hold him much. Or, rather, I do, but while they hold him, I'm right there, staring, tapping my foot, grinding my teeth, waiting for them to give him back, hands half extended like I'm about to catch him if they drop him.

And so I certainly don't trust this flimsy sling. The whole idea of the sling is that I can do what I need to do while my hands are free, but I've basically said nuts to that. I'm doing my co-op shopping left-handed-- angling the cart around those tight turns, opening and shutting bulk bins and cooler doors, loading up with tofu and rice and OJ and hand crafted soaps. My right hand is pressed against the bottom of the sling, holding Sam close to me. Really, it's unnecessary. The sling is hot and awkward, but it's fine. It's secure.

I'm done. I get to the register. The person rings me up, loads my canvas bags. I've got to pay now. Doing that one handed is going to be a trick, so I finally pull my right hand away and reach back to grab my wallet.

I get my wallet up where I can see it and... and... what the hell is that?

What the hell is that thick, drippy glaze?

Shit.

Yes, exactly that.

The boy has done gone and pooed himself. And no ordinary poo. An exploder. This poo worked its way through his diaper, through his onesie, through the sling, and managed to completely engulf my hand.

Funny that I didn't feel it.

I put the wallet in my left hand, while hold my right out to the side, as far away as possible. I do some pretty impressive tricks to extract my debit card one-handed, to get everything back into my pockets. I sign the receipt left-handed and carry all those heavy bags out with one hand. Then I lay Sam in the back seat of the car that has been baked to 15,000 degrees (give or take), and then (dripping sweat, a real waterfall now, half from the heat, half from "oh lord I've got shit all over me") I scrub us both down, and (because I forgot a change of clothes for him, and anyway it's really hot) I strap him into the car seat naked for the drive back home.

Three

Jen's mother is up for Thanksgiving. That's tomorrow. Today is Wednesday. Today I've got to go to work.

Jen is upstairs getting ready, her mother is still in bed, Sam and I are down in the living room.

I'm beat, could use a cup of coffee. I hear it brewing, that sweetly pitched gurgle and chug. I smell it. I need it.

I've been carrying the boy around but I put him in his swing now. I don't bother putting the tray on the front, but I strap him in tightly. I figure I'll come out and sit with him and watch him swing back and forth while I drink the coffee. Watching this little six-month old kid is like watching a fire, mesmerizing, soothing.

I'm in the kitchen, pouring the coffee, when I hear a "thud." Just this dull, solid thud.

I don't like it. It seems I have this long pause where I think it through, like time is just sort of standing still, that stream of coffee hanging in the air, everything frozen, but it's really not even a second. Less than a second before that thud is followed by screaming. Wailing.

I race into the living room and there he is; his feet are up on the seat of his swing, all twisted up in the belt that I strapped him in with. His head is on the hardwood floor.

I pick him up. There's this horrible looking spot at the top of his forehead.

I'm freaking out. Jennifer runs down the stairs. We call the doctor and we race to the ER. He's screaming the whole way.

I know, without doubt, I know with absolute certainty, that I am the worst father that has ever lived. A terrible, terrible man. My boy is the backseat screaming, his skull is all smashed up, he's never going to be okay again, because I left him in his swing for 42 seconds while I poured my coffee. I should have known better.

If Jen divorced me, I wouldn't be able to blame her. If I was her, I'd divorce me.

I let Jen and Sam out at the ER door, then go park the car. Running back the two blocks to the ER, I call my boss, tell him I won't be in for the day.

I tell the nurses who I am and they show me to the room where Sam is being looked at.

I get in and...

He's flirting with the nurse. He's giggling. No tears. No crying. He's having a blast. Nurses who aren't working with him keep popping in and making eyes at him, commenting on how gorgeous he is. He's eating it up.

The doctor tells me how it is:

"Babies fall down sometimes. They're usually fine."

He sends us home.

It wasn't so bad.

There's a dent though. There's a dent in my baby's head. A visible dent. You can see it in pictures for almost a year before it finally fades away...

Four

We're home. After a long couple of days in the hospital, we're home.

And they gave us a baby. I mean, yeah, it's our baby, but I still think those people must have been a little crazy. I mean, hell, I don't know what to do with a baby. I think they were a little irresponsible. They should have sent someone home with us for at least the first couple of weeks.

But he's sleeping. Right now he's sleeping.

Jen and I are exhausted and we should be sleeping too. It's been an interesting, emotionally draining couple of days.

But we want to watch "The Sopranos." We really, really like "The Sopranos." We haven't given up cable yet, and we DVRd the most recent episode. So we stay up and watch.

We have the lights off and the volume fairly low. It's one of the episodes where Tony Soprano's twenty-something son is dealing with depression.

He tries to kill himself. He weighs himself down and steps into the deep end of the pool.

Tony hears him just in time to save him. He pulls him out of the water, wraps his arms around him, starts crying, "what did you do? what's wrong with my boy? what's wrong with my son? what did you do?" over and over again.

I started sobbing. Just glub-glub-glub sobbing.

I look over at Jen in her chair. She's sobbing too.

Five

He's almost three and a half, and he has a very best friend.

Her name is Lillie. She's a little younger. Her mother is one of Jen's good friends.

Sam and Lillie adore each other. They are going to get married, have babies. One of those babies will be named "Myrtle." They go to preschool together, they go to all the same parties, and they have the occasional sleepover.

Jen and Lillie's mom are out and about tonight, and I have both the kids at our house.

They've been good. Easy.

Lillie is potty-training. Sam too, but he's mostly got it down, just the occasional accidents by this point.

Lillie's newer but her mom says she's mostly got it down too. So she came with a couple of changes of clothes, but no diapers.

Turns out that being in a somewhat strange place makes it all a little harder, though. We're on the last pair of everything and the night is still young.

And then it happens. Just like that. It all sort of goes to hell.

"I peed," she says, and yup, that's true. She peed. We're in the kitchen. I'm standing on dry floor. She's standing in an awfully big puddle. An awfully big puddle.

"That's okay, honey," I say, all calm and sweet. "Let's just go into the bathroom okay?"

I reach to pick her up.

"I pooped," she says.

She runs.

Every room but the kitchen is carpeted. She runs down the hall, not toward the bathroom exactly, leaving little wet footprints.

Sam is in the kitchen investigating the pool.

"Sam, go out of the kitchen," I say as I run after the girl.

She makes it past me, runs by the kitchen again.

I'm running behind her, squishing along in the wet trail she has made.

I glance into the kitchen. The dogs are drinking the pool.

"Oh, god, stop it! Yoko! Pinto!"

I run into the kitchen and kick at them, trying to scare them away.

Lillie tears past me. Sam is running too, thinking this is a whole lot of fun.

I manage to wrangle her into the kitchen. I get the clothes off.

She's right. She pooped too.

Oh, lord in heaven, she pooped too. It's rough stuff, here. I'm holding it in my hand. I've got to do something with it.

She's tearing down the hall again, naked, her feet still wet, Sam behind her.

I can hear the dogs slurping again in the kitchen.

There's poo on my hands.

And I don't want the clothes to get stained and ruined, I've got to rinse them out.

I turn on the bathroom sink. Lillie tears by me again. I throw the clothes in the sink and go after her.

I catch her and put her on the toilet.

Now for the dogs.

I race back into the kitchen and chase the dogs away. I grab wet paper towels and clean up what I can from the kitchen floor. A big pool, lots of little tiny footprints, human and canine.

I throw away the towels and chase Sam out of the bathroom.

I turn back to Lillie, and...

Oh, crap! The sink is about to overflow.

I turn the water off and now I'm looking a sink that is filled to the brim with brown water. Poo water.

Trying not to weep in front of the children, I stick my arms down in the poo water and pull the clothes off of the drain. The water goes down, I squeeze out the clothes and throw them into the tub, then I scrub my hands. And scrub, and scrub, and scrub.

Lillie goes into one of Sam's diapers.

The three sets of clothes go into a plastic grocery bag, still dripping wet.

I scrub whatever spots I can out of the carpet.

When Jen and Lillie's mom get back, I smile and tell them it was fine. "Fine, fine, just fine. Oh, by the way, gave Lillie one of Sam's Pull-Ups to wear."

Later, I tell Jen all about it, and I get to be the good-husband-hero-guy for a little while. Which makes it all worth it.

Joshu, Revisited

2011-03-26T20:53:00.002-04:00

A monk told Joshu: "I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me."

Joshu asked: "Have you eaten your rice porridge?"

The monk replied: "I have eaten."

Joshu said: "Then you had better wash your bowl."

I posted that a few weeks ago. I didn't add any comment. It's one of my favorite Zen stories.

Perhaps I should have added a comment.

My brother read it and made fun of me. He didn't really get it. "So," he said, "if I do the dishes, I get enlightened?"

So, I'm posting it again, and this time I'll add a little to it. I don't think I can exactly "explain" this, I don't know that I get it on a deep enough level to really make it make sense. I'm certainly no Zen teacher. Not even remotely qualified for that.

But, well, here.

Here are a couple more quick little stories. You can find them all, along with "Joshu Washes the Bowl," in Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. It's not the best Zen book out there or even really one of my favorites, but it's one of the first I ever read (back 19 years ago or so) and some of the stories still have a bit of an effect on me just because they were my first dabbling in Zen, they still have that "newness" or whatever to them.

So, here's one. It's short.

A monk asked Tozan when he was weighing some flax: "What is Buddha?"

Tozan said: "This flax weighs three pounds."

Deep, huh? Brilliant.

Okay, here's a slightly longer one. Still short. Not quite as short. Maybe it tells the same story a little better.

When Bankei was preaching at Ryumon temple, a Shinshu priest, who believed in salvation through the repetition of the name of the Buddha of Love, was jealous of his large audience and wanted to debate with him.

Bankei was in the midst of a talk when the priest appeared, but the fellow made such a disturbance that Bankei stopped his discourse and asked about the noise.

"The founder of our sect," boasted the priest, "had such miraculous powers that he held a brush in his hand on one bank of the river, his attendant held up paper on the other bank, and the teacher wrote the holy name of Amida through the air. Can you do such a wonderful thing?"

Bankei replied lightly: "Perhaps your fox can perform that trick, but that is not the manner of Zen. My miracle is that when I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel thirsty I drink."

Beautiful stuff, that.

You could add to that last line, "and when the dishes are dirty I wash them, and when I am tired I sleep, and when... and when... and when..."

And so, to my brother, yes. Just do the dishes, and you will be enlightened.

But it's a big "just."

Just do the dishes.

That's Zen, right there.

Just do the dishes. Just chew your food. Just walk down the road. Just drive your car. Just got dressed. Just go to sleep.

Just do the dishes.

The reality is that we almost never just do the dishes.

We do the dishes and think about how much it sucks to have to do the dishes.

We do the dishes and think about how great dinner was, or how much dinner sucked.

We do the dishes and think that next time we'd rather go out to eat and have someone else do the dishes.

We do the dishes and hurry so that we'll be done in time to watch "The Biggest Loser."

We do the dishes and wonder we she didn't return our call.

We do the dishes and finally think of the perfect comeback for when that guy made us the butt of the joke at work this morning.

We do the dishes and remember how much fun we had when our third grade teacher was out sick for two weeks and we totally took advantage of that substitute.

We do the dishes and wonder where the figure of speech "piss like a racehorse" comes from. Do racehorses have more hearty pisses than other large mammals? What's that all about?

We do the dishes and wish we didn't have to go to work tomorrow.

Every now and then, though, just maybe, just maybe, we just do the dishes.

Or, maybe more often, we just play the guitar. We just kiss our spouse. We just watch our child playing. We just play basketball.

We find ourselves fully present. We find ourselves completely here, completely now, completely one.

And then the moment fades. We come to the end of the song or the end of the kiss or the phone rings or we stub our toe or we think "hey, I'm completely present" and the moment fades, we split again, we go other places.

Zen is that, always. Zen is that moment played out longer and longer. Zen is a practice that is in one sense all about finding the present, being completely awake to where and what and who we are.

Zen is just doing the dishes. Without regret or attachment, without the mind wandering, without dividing ourselves into the part that is here and the part that wishes it was doing something else.

That's what all the meditation and discipline and whatnot is all about.

That's why I sit still for 15 minutes or an hour every night. That's why I dropped caffeine and alcohol out of my life.

It's tough to just anything. But with lots and lots of practice, with a ruthless willingness to cut away the distractions and pitfalls, you become... well, not enlightened necessarily, but at least more present, more there, more one.

What is Buddha? This flax weighs three pounds. That's what it's about. I'm weighing flax. It weighs three pounds.

Have you eaten? Wash your bowl.

This is it.

And that is very, very, very, very cool.

Tina Turner And The Green Boddhisattva

2011-03-26T20:04:00.002-04:00

My new car came with XM radio.

I don't know if I'll actually go ahead and subscribe when the three-month free trial period runs out. Even the metal and hardcore and alternative stations that I thought I would like don't really play the music that I want to hear. I've pretty much given up on finding anyone out there who's really going to play to my tastes.

But the NPR. The NPR is good.

I'm a big NPR fan, listen obsessively on my commute each day, and usually tune in when I have to run back and forth between sites throughout the work day. But I get no radio reception whatsoever in my office, and so I usually miss the shows I love the most-- Diane Rehm, Talk of the Nation, Tell Me More, etc.

The NPR station on XM plays all the stuff I love (as well as stuff the local NPR stations don't carry), but they play those shows at different times. If I miss Diane Rehm at 10:00 a.m., I can catch her on the commute home those nights I work late, or even on the weekend. Same with all that other good stuff. So maybe (maybe) I'll end up shelling out the subscription fee. And since they buy the shows from NPR, it's kind of an indirect contribution to NPR too, right?

So, anyway, I was driving home last night, listening to NPR on XM Radio. Not sure what show. I'm thinking it was Talk of the Nation, but I don't know.

The guests were talking about nuclear power. Everybody's talking about nuclear power or nuclear disaster or nuclear whatever they can right now, what with the truly scary stuff happening in Japan.

The specific issue was something like this: can we afford to cut back on nuclear power for our electricity right now? Is it possible to break our addiction to fossil fuels without nuclear power? Is turning away from nuclear going to be very, very bad for the environment? What should we do? What makes sense?

The collection of very smart people on the air gave some very smart answers. There were some differences in opinion, multiple strategies discussed. Pros and cons and risks and benefits were thrown around. It all sounded very smart and important and well thought-out.

But there was something that never came up. Something that wasn't mentioned. Something that never, ever gets mentioned during conversations like these.

Nobody said anything that sounded at all like "maybe this wouldn't be so hard to figure out if we would just change our behavior."

The answers and strategies during conversations like this might include increased efficiency, more spending on green power, higher mileage in cars, biofuels, etc, etc, etc.

But I never hear anyone say (at least not in these official, mainstream venues) maybe we can change what we're doing.

Maybe we need less cheap plastic shit in our lives.

Maybe we need to stop spending money like crazy, trying to shop our way to happiness and fulfillment.

Maybe we could all learn to cook.

Maybe we could eat fewer animals.

Maybe we could... well, maybe we could do a lot of things. Do a lot of things differently.

The show yesterday made me think about a piece I read in the local paper a few months back.

It was in the "Voices" section, which means it was written by a high school kid, so at the time, I couldn't get all judgmental and annoyed-- I mean, it was a kid. She was young, learning, and at least trying to articulate something. But what she said sounded like the essence of what I hear from so many people, and so it stuck with me.

The girl's piece was a "green" article. She wrote about her fears for the future, her concerns regarding global warming and pollution. She talked about recycling, and how important environmental issues are to her at this point in her life.

And then she got to the important part, the telling part. "I'm not going to change how I live every day," she wrote (and forgive me, I'm paraphrasing here), "but we can all try to make the world better."

That article reminded me of a conversation I was involved in a long, long time ago. One that I've thought about from time to time, one that had a bit of an impact on me.

I was-- I don't know, 15? 16?-- and I was at summer camp. Church camp. My uncle, a pastor, was the dean of the camp for that week, and he was leading a sort of Bible study or devotional or discussion group thing with a group of the guys in one of the boys' cabins.

I don't remember much of that conversation. But what I do remember I remember pretty clearly.

He was talking about a Tina Turner. He'd just seen an interview where Tina Turner said something to the effect of "yes, I'm a Christian, but I'm not going to let it change how I live my life."

That line blew my uncle away.

To be fair, I didn't hear it, I don't know if it's exactly what she said or how she meant it to sound.

But the idea behind those words really got to my uncle, and as he talked about it right there, it really got to me.

"Yes, I believe in this hugely important thing," she seemed to be saying, "yes, I believe in this miraculous, amazing thing, in this calling, in this purpose, in this divine touch into my life, yes I believe that the world is nothing at all what the world thinks it is, that there is something far more important than any of the trivialities I have surrounded myself with day in and day out... but, you know, I'm not going to let it change my life. I'm not going to let my acceptance of that earth shaking, soul searing truth affect what I do from day to day."

What my uncle said then made sense to me. "If that's how she feels," he said, "then she got the first part wrong. If that's how she feels, then no, I'm sorry, she's not 'a Christian.' Because to say 'I'm a Christian' and to say 'I'm not going to let it change my life' are two mutually exclusive things. To say 'I'm a Christian' means 'I believe in this thing that is changing my life.'"

(Okay, my uncle didn't say those words exactly, but from what I remember, that was the gist.)

That, in turn, reminds me of this thing that Noah Levine said when I saw him speaking at S.U. last year.

He said that he's been at a talk the Dalai Lama was giving in L.A. a while back when a guy in the audience asked a question.

"What," the guy asked, "is the fastest, easiest way to get enlightened?"

Noah said that when the guy asked that question, the Dalai Lama cried.

But that's what we want, isn't it?

We want a faith that doesn't require us to change the way we live our lives.

We want enlightenment that doesn't take a lot of time and hard work.

We want the world to be a better place without requiring us to give up any of the stuff we've gotten used to (I won't say "without requiring us to give up the stuff we enjoy," because as often as not, I don't believe we really enjoy it at all).

Sadly, none of this stuff exists.

Faith by it's very nature changes lives. If it doesn't change your life, it's not really faith at all.

Enlightenment by it's very nature takes lots and lots and lots of hard work over many years. Anything that comes quickly and easily isn't even remotely close to enlightenment.

Making the world a better place will require us to live our lives differently, to sacrifice some of the things we've attached to... because those things are the very things that are fucking things up to begin with, that lifestyle is in and of itself the problem.

But we won't talk about that sort of thing. The politicians won't touch it, the experts won't suggest it.

Instead, we'll focus our time and energy on phony cures, bandages, surface solutions. We'll ignore the problem, the obvious solution, the meaningful change.

The other night, I finished reading the Winter 2010 issue of Tricycle (I've gotten a little behind).

I want to steal a couple of paragraphs here from Clark Strand's piece in the Green Boddhisattva section. He sounds a lot like Daniel Quinn to me, like he's pointing at some of the same stuff from a different angle. (And a boddhisattva, for those who aren't familiar, is basically an enlightened person who chooses to remain in the world of suffering in order to help all people become free.)

Clark Strand writes this:

"Humanity is drunk, blind drunk, and even now is in the process of spending all the money and burning down the house. It blacks out after its worst excesses and can't remember a thing. Faced with the wreckage in the morning, it will sometimes admit to itself 'I did this' and feel some remorse. What follows, invariably, is a feeling of shame and the desire to compensate in some way. But that only adds more human culture to the mix, which in turn further feeds our addiction. We write books or make movies; build faster computers or better phones; try to cure cancer, hunger, or poverty; and hold summits of various kinds-- anything to deny the certain knowledge that lies like a dead weight at the bottom of everything we say or think or do: This addiction is going to kill us in the end.

"Why is that? It is easy nowadays to blame the demon oil. But oil is not the problem and never has been. A defect of character underlies our common addiction, a defect that throughout history has always masqueraded its symptoms as solution-- agriculture, mass production, petroleum, consumer-based economies, it hardly matters which. And what is the underlying character defect shared by modern human beings as a whole? It is the belief in a destiny apart from Nature-- a veering off the path established by our ancestors on the long green road of time."

I Was Told There'd Be Jugglers

2011-03-26T19:54:00.002-04:00

The plan, tonight, involved jugglers. And a magician. Maybe. Maybe a magician.

I slept in quite late (Saturday is my "sleep as long as you want to" day; Friday is Jen's).

I woke, ate vegan pancakes a la Jen, and then after a quick shower did some birthday shopping. Bought a big red barn. Some cool fantasy action figures that I'll probably play with as much as Sam does. A wooden snake. I browsed for quite a while in the comic book shop, washed the car, bought tofu and juice and and nuts and bananas at the co-op, took the dog for a long walk, and then...

Then we canceled our evening plans.

Our evening plans, as I said, involved jugglers. And (maybe) a magician.

We were going to take the boy to kids' night at the newly opened burrito shop in town. But he didn't nap, his stomach seemed a little iffy, his attitude was beyond iffy, and a night at the burrito shop started seeming like a bad idea.

And then Jen kicked me out.

I started getting stir crazy. Then I started going through things in my desk that got me feeling all moody-- notes for the novels and stories I never wrote, plans for unpresented presentations an eco-group I work with was sorta-maybe gonna do but didn't. And then I started getting all annoyed with little messes around the house. Piles of bills, dog hair, a tub that needs scrubbing, the thick smell of dog on every surface, blah, blah, blah.

So Jen sweetly kicked me out. Suggested that I take the laptop, find a coffee shop, do some writing, and come back... well, come back whenever. No hurry, really.

The cool indie coffee shop in the area closes quite early. And I can't make myself sit in a Starbucks writing deep thoughts.

So I'm here in a Panera, drinking decaf soy lattes (I gave up caffeine five or six months ago, something like that), watching people go by (why does every third person in this place have a North Face jacket or windbreaker?), trying to organize my thoughts, wishing I could play with those action figures before Sam's birthday party.

Feeling a little pretentious. 'Cause, I mean, it's Panera. But, hey, okay, I've written great things at this table before. It's open late. And they make damn good black bean soup.

A Couple Of Quick Links

2011-03-26T15:53:00.003-04:00

The last news story I linked to made me quite upset.

This one makes me happy.

Bruno Serato is doing a wonderful thing. I wish I was more like him. That I had that moral courage, that commitment and purpose.

*****

A former coworker emailed me this article from the Huffington Post. She thought I'd like it. She was right. It's Jimmy Kimmel's tsunami story. I don't really have much interest in Jimmy Kimmel, but this is good.