A Traveling Mudshow with Krista Detor

Answer #183 - We are the People

2012-02-08T14:36:00.001-05:00

Channeling Gertrude Stein via Senator Vi Simpson

It’s American as apple pie and chutney yes it is it certainly is. Equal representation yes it is equal and fair and right it’s Creationism alongside Judaism and Islam and Scientology and every other worshipful thing and I can respect a good story no matter who propagates it or what their head dress or how they hold their hands it’s a free country this native land of ours yes it certainly is. Free free freedom free to speak freedom of speech free thought free market where is the freedom in the market when there is inequality where is the market when inequality is the market and when did the market displace the good and true liberty as she stands there on the island sinking to her knees, all alone now. In our hands are the hearts of our children in our hearts are the minds of our children the minds the wonder in the future the future the future in the hands of those who would bring the walls in tight and hard and rope the minds like cowboys in the old west and they think they are, they certainly do. But here we stand and the good boys coming home from war not like WWII when the pride swelled in them and there they stood dapper and crisp and we shook their hands in those cafes and slapped their backs those strong backs and those good hearts but here we stand and the boys coming home from war are not like those boys no they’re not. Boys. They’re boys. They’ve always been boys and some girls too some girls some young and not young and for this freedom freedom they’re fighting with not enough armor and breathing the poisons we thought we’d outlawed in Geneva 1925 and scavenging like hermit crabs looking for shelter in the shrapnel and scrap for pride and home home home home begging to go home go home and for this we offer them a rope and tight hard walls and tell them no matter where their grandmothers come from those grandfathers who built the grand nation on their backs and with their own bleached bones and no matter their generations upon generations of head dress and hands held and eyes pleading heaven or stars or trees for mercy and light they will learn to pray pray pray our father who art the lord almighty have mercy upon us have mercy upon us here. At home. Home. Have mercy. Have mercy. Theocracy that is. A Theocracy and I am no theocrat and America is Democracy I’m a Democrat, democratic red white and blue we are guided by the stars and the bars and the good constitution by the good people by the good by the good, the right isn’t always good but the good is always right. oh say can you see oh say can you see through the tight and hard walls graffitied in dogma a mighty fortress? oh say can you see his wrath and power are great and armed with cruel hate America the Beautiful can you see?

In good conscience, ladies and gentlemen I must insist I must, I certainly must insist upon equal representation for we the people. We are the people and we the people are individuals and we blaze our own paths we blaze them and walk unafraid into the deep woods and ladies and gentlemen pray that there will always be deep woods to blaze and places that no government has paved over forever. American as apple pie & chutney, ladies and gentlemen we are a nation of immigrants who’ve brought, thank God, God with us in many scarves and many baskets and if god is everywhere and everything then ladies and gentlemen let us teach our children to recognize the face of god everywhere they go and in every vision ever held in the mind of man of the love of god. Pray ladies and gentlemen that god is merciful pray that all gods hear us pray hard, pray hard and earnest for ladies and gentlemen we have boys and girls mothers and fathers who can’t yet come home who hide in tight and hard packed sand walls until one day they can burst from airplanes to run in open air in free air and ride in parades in New York City city of freedom and ladies and gentlemen, when they arrive with prayer beads worn down and small clenched tight in hands held in every worshipful grateful way, who are we to tell them that their god has been asked to leave America?

Answer #182 - Somewhere under the welcome mat

2011-12-12T13:31:00.000-05:00

Blessed are the Meek.

Complicated notion.

I have one dog that is meek and one dog that eats that dog's lunch when said non-meek dog is done with her lunch. The meek one is the boy, the non-meek one is the girl.

The non-meek one gooses everybody. EVERYBODY.

It's disconcerting.

She eats boxes the UPS man leaves. For no good reason. They don't, say, contain meat. Or anything perishable. Just sweaters. The meek dog would never do this.

The non-meek dog chews on the meek dog like he's a chew toy from Walmart. Not that I've ever owned a Walmart chew toy.

Where's the Blessing?
The meek one asks with his eyes.

The non-meek dog gets all the food, the chew toys, the gooses, the Christmas sweaters, the warm spot to sleep, to lick the cat whenever she wants, and the attention of almost everybody because she's absolutely adorable on top of all that.

Gotta go, she's scratching on the door and if I don't let her in she might eat the welcome mat.

Answer #181 - A Thundershirt

2011-11-07T13:15:00.000-05:00

“You’ve got to be kidding,” my dog said with his eyes.

“Another party, I’m expected to wag my tail at these

people whom I neither know nor like the smell of? No.

I think I’ll be in the office, in the dark, under the desk.

In case you’re looking and happen to have a leftover

piece of meat.”

I’m reading Skymall Magazine, enroute from Stanford,

via Salt Lake City (holy mother of Mike but what a

beautiful place this time of year – covered in snow,

surrounded by a ring of mountains), and wondering

How am I going to get my dog to lighten
up already?

And there it is –

The Thundershirt.

Temple Grandin’s a genius, brilliant, evolutionarily-

leaping genius and there it is, among the retail fruits of

her mental acuity: The vest you put on your dog to make

him relax when

· 1) There is gunfire from somewhere in the woods, which
is often, up here on Fulford Ridge

· 2) There are fireworks, firecrackers, or other small, nonspecific

explosions, which is often, up here on Fulford Ridge

· 3) You’re having yet another party and a ton of people your

     dog is unfamiliar with show up and attempt to pet him and/
     or get him to do stupid pet tricks, which is often, up here on
     Fulford Ridge

· OR 4) you’re the owner of an inexplicably neurotic, but sweet

    laborador retriever, ala the sleek, black lovely my parents are
    enamored with, and a Thundershirt’s basically a good way to
    get through the day.

Thank God for Skymall. I had no idea what to get them for Xmas

this year.

But there’s still the matter of my dog. He asked for a bark enhancer

for Christmas this year, because the girl dog we adopted from the
shelter is part Shepherd. She sounds distinctly German and scarier
than hell. He’s having a hard time with this. However, fact is, she’s
just as traumatized by loud noises and strangers as he is.

I think the solution is to get her the Thundershirt and him the bark
enhancer. If such a thing can be found. Yeah, I know, I’m particip-
ating in the whole perpetuation of the patriarchy thing, but if you
heard him bark, well, you’d make the same decision. Woof.

Maybe the big bark’ll make him braver and more willing to do
stupid pet tricks for my friends.

Answer #180 - After the first sip of Beer

2011-10-26T10:38:00.000-04:00

It's Halloween. I'm baaaaacccckkkkkkkk.......

Today's Limerick is about a witch with a candy house:

A witch with sweet tooth once said,

"Yeah, I built my house of gingerbread.

The occasional pity -

have to cook up some kiddie.

Ah, well. Adds some crunch to the spread!"

As a child, this concept of gingerbread houses of course brought to mind numerous perils. Among them, ants, rain, the inevitable decay...

I was that kind of kid. Couldn't conceive of why a witch or anybody else would build a house out of cookies and candy. Pretty sure I asked this question of the tour guide at the Museum of Science & Industry on a field trip. No answer. He tried to divert me with some kinetic energy display. Or something that made bubbles. Regardless, the thought of eating gingerbread made me wretch. Actually wretch, with those wretching sounds and everything.

Further, I couldn't conceive, CONCEIVE, of why ANYONE would eat any other pastry, cake, doughnut, candy confection or anything ever other than one that was made out of CHOCOLATE. I truly, truly couldn't. And gingerbread was simply disgusting. Tasted like my grandma's house smelled. All spicy and musky and such. And historic.

So I decided, at 8, that something BAD happens to adult brains, in that they get bored with just chocolate, and so they convince their tastebuds that horrible things taste great. And then they call it 'an acquired taste.'

Seriously, at what point do we acquire 'Acquired Tastes?'

I also believed that other bad things happened to adult brains which made them talk about insurance, stories about old people in ancient history, and sit around all the time drinking rum and coke and smoking cigarettes. Even though they laughed alot while they did it. I determined that, somewhere, along the way, adults lose their ability to think clearly, and therefore shouldn't be allowed to run the world, what with all that insurance and smelly history and rum rolling around in their heads. No, kids should definitely rule the world. I knew it clearly at 8.

Pretty sure I was right about that.

Answer #179 - Kite Builders

2011-03-08T08:44:00.000-05:00

There, through the window, what characters wake up?

Robert dreamed of mercury.

     The bedroom below was full of kites; kites in boxes, in repair on the workbench, on the floor and hanging from the ceiling. Blue cement was the unfinished sky, as were the walls,

painted with kindergartenish, puffy clouds and V-birds with no bodies or feet. In the bedroom sometimes Robert dreamed of liquid mercury oozing from the twin bed posts and floating above him in silvery blobs in and around the black V-birds; beautiful poison bubble kites with no strings, just floating silver and cold.
   There were signs of a great flood in the years before Robert lived in the small house; high water markers here and there in the main floor rooms. None upstairs. None in the basement. Robert made notes and did the calculations. He read old newspapers on microfilm at the library and gathered stories from neighbors as to how very nearly the hand of God had swept all of the houses away. Robert wondered if the house could somehow be anchored to the live oak in the yard, should God reach down again. The tree had been there centuries, surely and could maybe hold a small house? He'd drawn a sketch of the mechanism but frustrated by the mathematics of maximum potential force that the watery hand of God might exert (because who could know just how angry God might become?), he'd wandered away from it years before and it lay in a stack of aviator articles, meteorology journals and colored paper.
    Robert finished the dishes and glided to the back porch in search of clouds. He did this every night. The illusive dark clouds were his current fascination, and the wind had come in off the ocean, bringing them with it. Not the cumulus clouds, but the low stratus, filled with rain, like dark blankets - they were what he was after and he was patient. The most patient man he knew.
Bits of colored paper blew through the field beyond the porch - bits of discarded kite making their escape, tumbling, occasionally catching air. Some windless nights, he saw something at the horizon; what must be the light of a train back behind the trees, though there were no tracks. It always moved at steady speed with a discernible doppler blue as it approached. It never arrived, though. Not even the night he heard the train whistle pleading. He'd jumped off the porch, he knew he had, though he was a rational man and therefore there could be no train heading for him to smash the house to bits on its way through the tangle of old houses and sheds in the borough. But the light and the violent, pleading whistle said otherwise, so Robert jumped.

Answer #178 - Caught between a Folk and a Hard Place

2011-02-28T13:13:00.002-05:00

I watched Devil last night. Shyamalan's Devil, that is.

I can't help it. I like the guy. I like the way he's hit and miss. I like the way the critics skewer him and he still says, 'blow this. I'm still making a movie about other-worldy interlopers, loosely wrapped around a morality play... neener, neener...'

Beyond that, I just like him. So whatever he does, I'll watch it. And hopefully his financial backers bank on that fact.

The movie's about an elevator full of morally-questionable folk - none of whom deserve, necessarily, the grisly gutting that awaits most of them by the presence of Satan among them, the actual Devil, come to take their souls to the nether-regions. And yet, it calls into question our relationship with the divine and (its) nemesis, and where in the world we actually find ourselves - at the end of the day, when it's only us and the leering conscience. And that big sky and all those stars.

Where do I stand, there in the dark, when I'm the only one to Answer for the Choices I've Made?

I honestly don't know. I tumbled down the stairs the other day, but no one showed up to collect my soul, so possibly I'm doing okay, and maybe still have a few more tick marks in the column that Santa Claus takes note of, than the column that Beelezebub does.

But I'd rather listen to a jazz combo than Kum-By-Ya any day of the week.

Damn! I think we all know where that compass points..

Ah well... for now, I'm still buying Girl Scout cookies. That should count for something.

Answer #177 - Start the story

2011-02-16T10:56:00.000-05:00

Out of focus. What do I do?

    Robert set the box of clouds next to the stove pipe. Small white puffs hung, silent, bumping gently against the lid. Robert's feet nearly slid across the worn carpet; years of mildew and fuel oil left slick trails where he walked - and in this way, he looked more like an ice-skater than a handyman. It was 7:00. Soon the larger clouds would gather, and with them, the winds.
   Poison comes in many forms. He knew this from childhood and secret places. And sometimes poison came accidentally and you swept it away, down the drains and from the surfaces. Pretty petals were sometimes poisonous and all manner of insects. Tethered to poison, he thought to himself. We're always so close to it. We can never entirely get away. "Best to be careful," he said to himself, as he put on the rubber gloves he kept next to the sink and squirted dish soap into the warm water.
    Robert dreamed valleys of clouds. Robert dreamed wings. Robert scaled the sides of buildings on occasion, with neither wings nor puffy cumulus to break a fall. His heart beat faster in the descent, while his fingers carefully held the rigging. He imagined the free-fall, imagined one day to jump out of an airplane and see, for certain, if the chute would catch air.

Robert dreamed of mercury.

beginnings.
who knows what comes.

Answer #176 - Himmelhochjauchsend oder zum Tode betrübt

2011-02-10T12:05:00.000-05:00

Goethe made the reference to the artistic temperment in Das Leiden des Jungen Werthers. The translation from my Dutch friend, Ben, is 'cheering from sky high or deadly sad.'

I admit, there's not much middle ground. I think, in this way, of Cohen, not unlike Beckett, and yet - plumbing the depths and the multitudinous winters of the soul for pearls or crystals. The difference - Beckett spent countless hours in dark spaces, at least too dark for me to stay in with him (heh. and that's saying something) - didn't seem to cheer from sky high - Cohen moved through the waters and up, like a dolphin, bursting into the air long enough to whisper Hallelujah.. so beautifully that the sound will carry across God knows how many bursts of solar radiation.. and diving back down again.

I'm neither of those people, and to little dispute. Cartoonish scenes and sensibilities dance in and around me half the time, and holding on to the shaky framework the world takes so for granted daily, washing its doggies and driving its buggies, whirling endless through color and sound.. it's challenging. Most of the time, I'd rather write the new world into play, rather than put on my gravity boots and trudge through the jello of repetition and cordialities in this one. But, hell, I'm a paying member of the human club and there are certain obligations that come with carrying the card. Sadly, the percentage of club members that can currently influence world legislation have embraced the notion that goo for brains in the exploitation of every possible resource is a card member privilege and the key to happiness, marching the rest of us like Lemmings to fiery, oily seas. Nice looking as we trot, though. Well, some of us. Occasionally. So lately I want out of the club some, but there's a nasty ritual that goes along with exiting. I think it involves paddles and swallowing goldfish.

As beautiful as the German phrase is, this is where things begin to go a little dark for me and Yankee philosophy comes in.

Himmelhochjauchsend oder zum Tode betrübt can be treated with any number of small pills. We're the pharmaceutical kings of the world (say it with me: S O M A). No worries, no issue, no moon boots through jello. We Yankees have lots of clinical names for such malaise and its associated symptomology because we like categories and specialities, and we really really like people in lab coats that charge us lots and lots of money to diminish humanity to microscopic misfires of glands, serotonin uptake and peptide receptors.

We're good at this.

We need, however, to be better at hearing whale song and interpreting the chitter of dolphins.

And there's no pill for that.

So. Which is the better longitude?

I'm going with Goethe today. Himmelhochjauchsend oder zum Tode betrübt. And leaning toward the longitude just nearer the sun. Boxes of clouds under each arm, heading to the memory of last year in the Kenai Peninsula, where the curious harbor seals followed us along the beach for an hour, just watching, just wondering, maybe even waiting for us to say something they understood.. somewhere between the sky and the water.

Answer #175 - Someone with a box full of clouds

2011-02-09T09:20:00.000-05:00

It's a new year. It's actually February of a new year.

January blew by in a hail of hail, ice, snow and a short trip through Nebraska.

Nebraska? In January? Yep. Driving snow 6 hours there. Driving snow 12 hours back. We can never be accused of lack of dedication. Besides, we love Nebraska. The sky is huge, the people are an amazing combination of fierce independence and, despite their unquestionable ability to probably outlast all the rest of us in times of war, famine, or drought, unassuming humility. Is this because the weather on the Great Plains is truly humbling? Maybe half the nation's problem is that half the nation doesn't get this idea? That, despite our red, white, and blueness, we really aren't the biggest, baddest entities on the planet. Ice storms are. And don't get me started on tornadoes...

I wanted a concise overview of the year. To try to draw the conclusions I'd hoped to draw at the end of touring a new album, spending days and weeks on end on the road, and, in general, making a living at music.

But I don't have them, really. The industry shifts every five minutes, not unlike my myspace and facebook pages, and I find myself charting a new course along with it. Daily. Sometimes hourly, as a friend once said.

This year, I'll finish the play, Jane. I've got a new album rolling, but it won't stick its head above the dark water for quite a while. Instead, I'll finally start the book. I've wanted to forever. It kicks at me, and tickles my ears sometimes.. it starts with Robert setting a box of clouds next to a stove pipe.

And I don't know why.
But who am I to ask?

The world in Indiana is iced today. I like the idea of a box of clouds by a warm stove pipe... anything could rise out of the mist.

Anything could rise out of 2011. I'll keep you posted.

It's good to be back.

Answer #174 - Yes. And for the space of 3 hours, I had the whole catastrophe figured out

2010-11-13T16:54:00.001-05:00

Smoke pours from a stack to the South. It's a coal plant or a nuclear cooling tower. Earlier in the day, smoke poured from a burning van to the North. A day punctuated by smoke.

I'm surrounded by big rigs hauling freight East on Highway 70. A day punctuated by trucks.

I'll be in St. Louis in an hour. A day punctuated by departure points.

Three days traveling no less than 8 hours per. A run punctuated by ticks on a calendar.

People keep asking where I played and with whom and when. A tour punctuated with question marks.

I've just booked Alaska in December. This will not be predictable. An album release punctuated by extremes. The first in the deep South. The last in the frozen far NorthWest.

I don't know. I don't remember where I played and with whom or when. My existence, these last months, is a dotted white line, punctuated by sound checks.

And stops at Subway. And Starbucks. And though I refuse to speak Starbucks Orwellian Italian hybrid, I still drink their stupid coffee. It's predictable. I need predictable on the road. A life punctuated by the familiar.

Alaska, in the winter, will not be familiar, but I can't think on that. I've got St. Louis tonight. And I'm lucky. I'm working. And tonight, I'll punctuate the weekend, back in my own bed, because I'll drive 4 hours through the night to do it.

Was it always like this, all this space between punctuations?

Answer #173 - Then We Saw the Flames

2010-11-09T19:45:00.003-05:00

His leg, just brushing mine, is bouncing, in an episodic, rhythmic way. On this airline, there are no seat assignments. We were late. Dave's across the aisle, and both of us in middle seats, snuggled between strangers. One of my strangers is twitchy.

He's a college student, maybe. From Purdue, by his whoops and hollers when the stand-up comic flight attendant asks for fans to make themselves known. This airline offers energy drinks for $3. I'm hoping he doesn't opt for what would, I assume, be his second Monster for the day - the first having been consumed upon waking on the couch of the resort he must have stayed in, skiing with frat buddies here in Denver. He smells like a frat boy on ski weekend and is making up for the lost time by reading a text on the Civil War now, while his leg bounces and he chews on his pencil.

I'm reading Then We Saw the Flames, a collection of short stories by Daniel Hoyt, a literature professor I met while doing a show at Kansas State. He's brilliant. I'm unsettled by it, and spinning a little in the possibility of one mind opening another. I find inspiration in other minds more often than not. I wonder what this says about me, that I'm not consulting the raw firmament. Maybe I am, in some ridiculous and ineffable way. Or the firmament is too vast for me, maybe, so I troll for other minds to draw from - at least there's an implication of a far-reaching finite. I've seen all the rounded corners of my own fish-bowl brain, and, though I'm occasionally startled by an unfamiliar corridor, half the time something in it is trying to kill me. Yes, it's best to wander other minds, I think.

They're handing out bright yellow packets of plane-shaped crackers. I like that plane-shaped crackers exist, though I won't eat them just now. I have a compulsion to hoard things that are given away, for free. I have a collection of hotel shampoos, lotions, and small soaps that is spilling off the shelves Dave has built for them. I don't want to use them, because they were free, and some of them are Aveda or even fruffier Euro brands of this or that. The collection is becoming a little unwieldy lately. Every once in a while I put a couple of the lower-end bottles in the upstairs shower to make room for new acquisitions from 4-star hotels. No one ever uses them. Similarly, I have a collection of plane snacks in a plastic tub in the cupboard. They could if they wanted, but no one ever eats them.

His elbow has crossed past the arm rest and into my personal space. This is egregious on a plane, but how do I explain this to monster drink-snorting bouncy college boy? I'm less charitable than I might be, because I just don't like him. I don't mean not to like him, but he hasn't bothered with eye-contact or acknowledgment of we, the other two Supremes, and thus, he's a poster child for everything that's wrong with the world. In my rock tumbler of a brain today, I can't help but see in him a young George Bush; smaller, silver-plated spoon, and energy drink instead of blow, but all of the hubris and none of the substance, and a sense of entitlement that allows him to extend his twitch into what little privacy I might have in this stranger sandwich. Just here, I'm an Iraqi farmer. Just here, he is inviting he and his Monsanto buddies to the dinner my wife cooked me, and every dinner after. So you see, I have cause for disdain. It's not disproportionate.

Nice lady from Indianapolis to my right is delicately munching plane-shaped crackers and reading something by someone named Aaron Elkins - Where there's a Will. I don't know him or his work, but she is very careful and she is very neat, and I think to myself there are probably body parts and messy crime scenes between those pages. Just a hunch.

But me, just now, I'm feeling the grind and jitter and shackling of no escape. Just now, I'm in day 19, at least, of less than 5 hours of sleep on any given night. I'm tuned to the sub-woofers and sluggish frequencies of the weary, I'm swatting at flying crackers, and Daniel Hoyt is whispering in Latin. I spoke at Stanford this weekend, and I'm no lit. professor. I have no Beckett Compendium, I don't know why Lorca loved Dali so - I love Lorca and I don't particularly love Dali, and I have no language to tell you why. But Daniel Hoyt could, as he whispers in Latin, and I'll ride the cadence of it through the air above the Great Plains, where he sits below, I imagine, munching red wine grapes and spitting out the seeds.

The mission overflows with false angels and the sting of broken teeth. Our missing parts yell at us. My molar aches from a distant landfill and the angels we never believed in tug at our sleeves, stare us down, and keep us on a trajectory we did not choose. I imagine voices from the clouds. They sing and beg me to join in on the chorus. - Daniel Hoyt

Answer #172 - Banished to eternal brimstone

2010-10-20T21:56:00.002-04:00

It's October in New England.

Every other yard on the way in to nearly every borough and township sports a ghoulish display of bones and the Undead.

And not the silly, cartoonish inflatable ghosts and pumpkins - these yards and porches are meant to scare trick-or-treaters. To actually SCARE them. This is not a holiday for the sheepish, after all, here in the land of the witch hunts.

Out of balance in the Western World. We live out of balance.

Koyaanisqatsi, eh? where did the balance go?

We banaished all things dark or mysterious (or unknown, strange) to the land of the brimstone and eternal suffering, and by doing so, banished a part of ourselves to silence...

It's the silent part that speaks best on Halloween.. through the mask of a ghoul, a devil, a corpse, ghost, monster or other wild thing; the silent, wild part that speaks the anxious uncertainty of the animal kingdom that we Stewards have so long brutalized. It speaks the silence of the last acre of land that still lies in true dark on a moonless night, and speaks in moans and howls with fangs and horns while wars are waged for shiny rocks to throw at glass houses.

I want to go home and make ghouls out of old clothes and dried corn stalks and animal bones.. and the antler and skull that showed up out of nowhere five years ago at the edge of the woods, in the biting, ragged grass - bits of skin and fur still on it. I want to put them everywhere, everywhere, everywhere in the world. And howl.. maybe like Ginsberg, because he heard it out there, too.. in the quiet, at the edge of a dark wood

Maybe like my dog, who says everything while saying nothing at all, but who howls when he hears the coyote calls that I never will.

However it happens, I'm tired of the silence. I want to wake up the wild part and look it in the teeth and then howl a ragged, bleached-bone lifetime at the sliver of a Halloween moon.

Five days from now I'll cut the first dried stalks and dig up the bones the dog buries behind the barn...

Howl.

Answer #171 - Fried Pies and Serial Killers

2010-10-16T14:00:00.002-04:00

As seen from The Road:

As we pass the Fried Pies, Exit 51 sign on Hwy 35S in Oklahoma, a black leather-clad cowboy is hitch-hiking. He is striking in the vest that shines and the hat tilted just so. He's a hitch-hiker. It's incongruous. I think maybe he's out of gas - a shiny black Cadillac on the highway somewhere north of our entry, bone dry and oxidizing minute-by-minute in the punishing Oklahoma sun.

I think maybe he's a serial killer. On the off-chance that he's a serial killer, I won't stop. Though I entertain the morbid notion that a narrow escape from the clutches of a cowboy serial killer would make a great story, and maybe then a song. But even I'm not reckless or foolhardy enough to risk it.

So I drive on.

This is in contrast to the last side-of-the-road oddity I saw in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. On the way to the Porcupine Mountains Music Fest, a pair of boots - standing upright in the graveled shoulder of the road. No one around. Just the boots.

What is that? I ask the passengers, as I rubber-neck while we drive by.

I'm awe-struck. Who leaves their boots? Who walks away and why?

Is this some sort of art installation? That Christo person, maybe? Will there be standing boots now every few feet along this road? A friend once proposed picking up pianos from people who were giving them away and placing them randomly in wooded areas.. just so people could stumble upon them. And maybe play them. And maybe wake up a bit from the hypnotic routine that is civilization.

Is it like that?

About a mile up - we see him. Stocking-footed and walking in the gravel. He looks dejected. He has a backpack. He has a hunter's cap with ear flaps.

That's him, right? Should we stop? Do you think he's okay?

Do we really want to stop for someone who has walked out of his boots for no apparent reason?, asks the scientist bass player.

Hell yes, I think. But I don't say anything.

I suppose he could be a serial killer. And yet.. what a story that'd make, huh?
What a story...

Answer #170 - Car Talk

2010-09-27T12:55:00.003-04:00

What's more fun than Rush Limbaugh?

In a car with friends Tim Grimm, Scott Russell Sanders & Ruth Sanders, The 'car talk' is an education.

In three short hours we've broached:

1) Tribal legacy and the genetic advantages of offering your daughters for overnight excursions with visiting hunter-types

2) The devastating loss of top soil on the Earth, what this will mean to future generations if we don't stop the Agri-Borg, and how this 'loss of top soil' can equate to what Clear Channel has managed to do to the whole of music in the U.S.

3) The legend that the Welsh may have been in North America centuries before any other European culture, and the possibility that, along with their cultural artifacts & blue-eyed genes, they brought the Baby Jesus who ran into Joseph Smith along the way at
a ski resort in Utah.

4) The contribution of the internet / technology to the over-use of mind-altering chemicals in the human population. Tim's contention that the Human animal is not wired for constant awareness of the deaths per second that are occurring on a constant and unrelenting basis. I, agree. However, I feel compelled to both blog the conversation and consult the GPS (which we've dubbed 'The Oracle') whenever determining the next turn on the road of my life.

Tim and Scott consider me now part of the larger problem. Though Rush Limbaugh is a bigger, fatter part of the problem.

Miles to go until Cobden, Illinois... we've just passed a sign that says 'Final Phase Next Exit.'

Ruth says, 'Let's not exit. I'm not quite ready.'

Me neither.

Answer #169 - Digging into the loam

2010-09-22T09:00:00.000-04:00

I'll be in Salina Kansas this weekend, at the Prairie Festival, sponsored by Wes Jackson's Land Institute.

Humbled by the work they're doing. Trying to save the world and all.

Perennial polycultural is the method of sustainable agriculture Jackson's developed, by studying the prairie for the past 30 years or so.

Life Magazine called him one of the 100 most important people of the 20th century.

In celebration of its 35th anniversary, Smithsonian counted him as one of 35 people who have made a difference.

Humbled.

My job? To write him a song. And sing it to him. So I've written it... will bring it to my friend Malcolm Dalglish, and we'll snap it together - maybe duet it - like Sonny & Cher, or probably more like Carole King and Neil Sedaka...Or the Bergmans... nah... knowing us, it'll be Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers...

Anyway...
Humbled.
We'll play for and honor both Wendell Berry and Scott Russell Sanders as well.

Further humbled. Because cleverness as achievement is hubris... while these men stand up, determine the direction of the wind, and offer shelter by way of solution. No cleverness. No bravado. No hubris.

We walk in with our songs and stories, and we, all of us, leave - returning to our 'expanded tribe' with the hope of ideas of great minds to carry us forth into the uncertain future.

"The binge is almost over," Jackson says. "It's time to go home."

Humbled.

And immensely grateful for the existence of people like these.

Answer #168 - Call Me 7 of 9

2010-09-08T13:17:00.002-04:00

I'm Zaphod Beeblebrox without the spongecake (I do occasionally have the martini, though).

The world wide web is an infinite space and I am a mostly hairless monkey with little ability to fathom big words like i n f i n i t e.

One string leads to another.. an infinite web of sites connected via the search engine neurons and linked infinitely and where does a mostly hairless mammal go when the world is too big and the brain is too small?

Sometimes, to the bath tub. This is, of course, the most primal, fetal desire - to be completely submerged in warm water, with nothing but the sound of a heartbeat and the white noise of the organs and vascular systems whooshing and whirring. Ah...

Just talked to a songwriter good friend... 'The road is actually restful,' she said. 'And how do you explain that to people?'

How indeed. 12 hours of driving between here and Wichita, and I'm rested upon arrival? Surprisingly, yes. For a short while, there was no internet in the car, so it was audio book and fast food time. What's not to love? What's not restful? Open highways... yellow Subway signs... friendly Agri-Evil signs along miles of fields, assuring us that our genetically engineered crops are inevitable and that Resistance is Futile...

Wait. That's not restful. But most things about the road are.

But speaking of the Borg, being constantly connected to the WEB is a bit like being a Borg. Or The Borg.
All flushed, nearly instantly, with the same information.. hive mentality. Flush.

Is this our new evolution? Connection to the hive?

If so, then the marmoset that lives in my mitochondria is having a hard time assimilating.

Still. I'm here. I'm connected. I'm 7 of 9. Sans the blonde hair and ridiculously proportioned body...

But what I wouldn't give for a tiny piece of spongecake and sunglasses that turn black in the presence of danger.

Answer #167 - Bleaux Me

2010-08-23T07:15:00.001-04:00

I inexplicably came up with a snippet of a pirate song a while ago - about barrels of whiskey washing over the decking... Baffling.

And then it all came clear, suddenly, over the weekend, and I ended up using the snippet as inspiration for a friend's birthday.

He has a boat. The Bleaux Me.

So, since the original pirate song washed whiskey over the decking, to the sad dismay of the drunken captain, so did this one. To the tune of an old Scottish folk song -

Captain, we should head for shore
the storm is threatening disaster!
Bleaux that! My scotch has fallen overboard
and damned if I'll be swimming after!

It just gets worse from there.

But still, just goes to show - there's a reason for everything.

Even pirate songs.

Yo ho!

What Did the Captain say to the North Wind?

Aargh. Not enough coffee...

Answer #166 - Yes, Adventure Boy fights Hornets in a Bee Suit

2010-08-20T18:50:00.002-04:00

White faced hornets. The kind that can single-sting knock over a horse. They were nesting on the side of the barn, near the open window which leads directly to the Assistant Engineer's apartment, said Assistant Engineer being among the few folks who swell up and possibly die once stung by a stinging insect.

Eradication was called for.

Hence, Adventure Boy pulled out the bee suit and the duct tape and attempted said eradication.

Oh God Oh God Oh God, what are you doing? I ask, panicked.

Don't worry! I read on-line that you might get 3-5 stings in the seams of the suit, so I've got duct tape. And then you drive up near me, in the car, and keep a can of hornet killer handy, and then if things go pear-shaped, you can roll down the window and spray me down. No need to kill the hornets if I can just walk the nest into the woods!

Oh God Oh God Oh God, I repeat, more panicked, though I love Adventure Boy's respect for life in all forms.

Um, I need to interject that if you're surrounded by 500 stinging hornets and things go badly, we'll be well past the point of hornet spray. However, I've brought my camera, says our visiting friend - who's visiting simply because the hornet eradication is happening.

Did you bring the camera so you can put the clip on Jackass?, asks another friend.

I laugh, nervously. Or for the coroner, or the police, er...?

But we go outside, Adventure Boy in the bee suit, me, nauseous, in the car with the camera man and various onlookers. He's tentative at first, as the hornets begin hitting him like BBs from a BB gun. Eventually he makes his way, slices down the nest and, in a tornado of hornets, walks it to the woods.

We captured it on film.

Damned hornets are rebuilding on the barn.

Damned hornets.

Answer #165 - I angered the Dark Side by compulsory do-gooding

2010-08-13T09:21:00.001-04:00

The waking dream.

This is a phenomenon that shakes me at its most crystalline - when the dream of being awake in the room in which you're sleeping is so real and detailed that, upon actually waking, you can't be entirely sure that, this time, it's true.

It's never inane conversation in the waking dream though, not like in real life. It's always, for me, something other-worldly or surreal - something out of context involving animated articles of clothing or cheap pottery that emits eerie sounds. Or wisdom, in the voice of James Earl Jones. whichever.

Maybe we always live at the crossroad between here and there. Some of us keep a shaky grip on one plane - while others bounce around and mutter to ourselves on southern California beaches.. or in the dark corners of pubs.

A waking dream has scared me from sleeping for 3 nights running. I don't want to go back to that plane, wherever that plane is. I know, I know. It's only a dream. But face it, you don't really know what the dream state is anymore than I or any other Mr. Science walking this big blue ball might. It's not as if I'm worried I'll get trapped in some imaginary mindscape, like Leonardo DiCaprio -
(incidentally, I saw Inception at the IMAX in NYC last week. Thoroughly enjoyed the big fun & eye candy of it) -

It's just that I don't want to live in a world where the day's discarded clothing stands up and dances, as if controlled by puppeteers...

Wait, part of me kind of does want to live in that world.

But that's not the point. The point is, the pottery was creeping me out, and Why oh Why is there always some Unseen, Unnamed Dark Dread that, for some reason, wants to drag me into the Dungeon Dimensions? I mean, seriously.

What did I ever do to the Dark Side? Except thwart it on occasion by some act of do-gooding, which is less intentional than compulsory if you happen to prefer the Side that isn't in support of the whole world being ruled by a gigantic flaming eyeball.

Wait.

Maybe too much information. And besides, I just answered my own question.

Still.. 3 nights of no sleep later.. I can't entirely be sure that James Earl Jones isn't living in my Dollar Store vase.

Answer #164 - Yes, you are utterly alone

2010-08-04T09:56:00.001-04:00

It's like being a trucker.

You stop thinking about the distance driving in the way that other people think of it. Which leads me to the the rhetorical question:

Is every single human experience utterly unique and existing only in the realm of individual perspective?

Which is rhetorical and even silly to commit to the written word - but think about it. You get 'used' to driving vast distances.. it stops being the exhausting, grueling, minute-by-dragging-oh-for-the-love-of...let-me-get-there-already experience. It starts being just another day.

Of course, the implications are that there are never any true shared experiences, shared emotions, shared.. anything.. maybe an occasional ice cream cone, but even that experience is unique to the individuals involved. Kind of sad, really. Unless you get more licks.

But for me, seriously, being in the car 10 hours or out of the car 10 hours - no real difference anymore.

Perspective shifts. The paradigm is that I drive alot. It's no more tiring than any other thing I've ever done. Which means it never actually was gruelingly exhausting. I only perceived it that way.

And that's the truth, except that I'm less stressed on the way to shows, as there's only so much you can do in a car. At home, in the office, in front of the computer.. the work is incessant and endless. In the car.. it's just me and the ipod that now contains many audiobooks. I affix it to the steering wheel and between that, the control panel in the Prius, my cell phone in the cup holder, the GPS on the dashboard - it's like being on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Depending on what I'm hooked into on audiobook, I can actually BE on the Bridge of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Although that would require me listening to the Star Trek series on audiobook, and though I have more experience with Star Trek (series, spin-offs and movies) than I'd like to admit, there's not a day dry enough for me to launch onto that voyage.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so, says Shakespeare (and then, much later, Lincoln).

10 Hours to D.C. No big deal, I say to my passengers.

They didn't buy it then, and having arrived, are not buying it now.

I know someone who recently returned from a 2-week trip to Europe and needed nearly a month to recover.

It's all in perspective, because that's the lamest thing I ever heard.

Answer #163 - Who needs a blog when you've got the Sheriff's Log?

2010-07-28T11:03:00.000-04:00

This is the true-to-life Sheriff's Log from the Brown County Democrat, Nashville, Indiana. Thanks, Michael Redman, for the heads-up!

July 19, 10:40 a.m.:  911 caller on Sweetwater Trail requests an officer in reference to flashbacks.

July 19, 10:19 a.m.:  911 caller on Wells Drive advises her neighbor is in her car in the back seat wanting a ride for vodka and cigs.

July 17, 6:43 p.m.:  Caller on Center Lake Drive advises she has a dead deer in her driveway. She is requesting an officer to help her with it. 6:59 p.m. Officer advises the deer is handled.

July 15, 8:09 p.m.:  Caller on Center Lake Road reports two foxes running wild and being aggressive.

July 14, 4:08 p.m.:  Caller reports a teal Pontiac speeding westbound on State Road 46 East. Vehicle is passing on double yellow with oncoming traffic. 4:25 p.m. Officer advises it is a military man trying to get to Bedford regarding one of his men involved in a traffic fatality. Officer advised him to slow down and make it there safe.

July 13, 7:08 p.m.:  Caller on Three Notch Road advises an officer broke his front door last night and he wants it fixed right now. Caller wanted dispatch to send the maintenance man there to fix it. Dispatch advised caller to talk to the sheriff in the morning.

July 13, 3:11 p.m.:  911 caller on Center Lake Road advises her 18-year-old son is turning green and passing out.

July 13, 10:27 a.m.:  Officer advises he is stopping a vehicle on Helmsburg Road. 10:32 a.m. Officer advises he is out of his vehicle regarding a field sobriety test. 10:36 a.m. Officer requests Poison Control called for a hot pink pill with no name. Poison Control advises it's a 25 mg Benadryl.

July 13, 6:31 a.m.:  911 caller on Albert Johnson Road advises when she woke up someone was looking in her window. She went outside and screamed to get off her property and then shot a gun into the air.

July 12, 8:17 a.m.:  911 caller on Three Notch Road advises that his mother hit him in the face with a stick, then said to others that she didn't hit him, but she did hit him and kicked him out.

July 11, 2:08 p.m.:  Caller advises that a blue ninja-style motorcycle driver has a blue headband and is speeding westbound from town on State Road 46 West.

July 11, 12:06 a.m.:  911 caller advises there is a four-door Chevy Blazer rolling down the big hill on Nineveh Road just outside Cordry.

July 10, 12:40 p.m. :  Officer is out of his vehicle on Owl Drive regarding a noise complaint. 12:53 p.m. Officer advises they refuse to turn it down unless the neighbor does. 1:15 p.m. 911 caller on Owl Drive is complaining about noise from across the cove.

July 9, 4:46 p.m.:  911 caller reports the driver of a dark gray Toyota 4x4 extended cab threw out a can that hit a bicyclist in the head on Clay Lick Road past the camp where they keep the horses. A passenger of the Toyota also threw out a beer can that missed the bicyclist.

July 9, 11:09 a.m.:  Caller on Sunset Drive, her son's residence, requests to speak to an officer regarding a snake in the house.

July 8, 7:45 p.m.:  Caller wants an officer to call his 17-year-old daughter and tell her to come home. Officer advises we can't do that.

July 7, 10:17 p.m.:  911 call is a misdial. Owner was trying out a new cell phone. It works.

July 6, 5:33 p.m.:  Caller reports an animal with a broken leg under the bridge on Old State Road 46 at Clay Lick Road. He doesn't want it to be shot, though. Dispatch gave him phone number for South Region. 7:19 p.m. Same caller reports an injured animal that needs shot on Old State Road 46 by Clay Lick.

July 6, 4:52 p.m.:  Caller on Lick Creek Road reports a blue van selling vacuums, two scruffy looking guys. They didn't seem like salesmen.

July 6, 2:14 p.m. :  Caller on Bean Blossom Road reports two cars stolen. They had to be towed because they don't run. 2:33 p.m. Caller advises to disregard; the cars are still there and the neighbor was mistaken.

July 5, 9:01 p.m.:  Caller on Ritter Road reports a dark green minivan with a man and a woman trying to give away free Windex. Caller is afraid they are scoping houses out.

July 4, 5:25 p.m.:  Officer advises subjects put a smoke bomb into the tree to get rid of ants and now the tree has caught on fire.

July 4, 9:10 a.m.:  911 caller reports as he was driving his vehicle eastbound on State Road 46 West, approximately a half-mile from town, a dirt ball hit him in the head via his open driver's side window. No injury, no damage to vehicle; caller just wants it logged.

July 4, 12:44 a.m.:  Officer is out with one male subject at the courthouse. 12:46 a.m. Officer advises the subject is sitting on the courthouse lawn guarding his car.

July 3, 9:34 a.m.:  911 caller is a 72-year-old male who advises he is confused and needs help. Sweetwater Drive. 9:56 a.m. Officer advised that he fixed the subject on Sweetwater drive a bowl of cereal and the subject is fine now.

July 2, 11:17 a.m.:  Truck 14 is arriving at the state park regarding a 36-year-old male fallen off tricycle.

July 2, 6:31 a.m.:  911 caller on Lanam Ridge wants a female removed from his front porch. He is afraid to tell her to go away. Never mind; he thinks she is leaving.

June 30, 5:36 a.m.:  911 caller reports part of a desk sitting on the center line of State Road 46 West just west of Belmont.

June 30, 2:22 a.m.:  911 caller on Buffalo Drive decided he didn't need 911 and would not say what was going on and hung up on dispatcher. No answer upon call back. 2:26 am. Officer is on his way to Buffalo Drive. 2:29 a.m. Dispatch finally reached 911 caller and he advised one of his children called 911 because they do that sometimes. Officer is still on his way. 2:32 a.m. Officer is arriving at the scene; occupants won't answer the door. 2:48 a.m. Officer advises it appears that three friends had a disagreement and one was sporting a fresh black eye. They all assured the officer that everything was fine.

June 29, 3:15 p.m.:  Caller on Upper Salt Creek Road advises she needs a theft report for an 8x10 barn stolen from Beechtree Road two and a half weeks ago.

June 26, 4:38 p.m.:  911 caller on Eagle Drive reports four boats; one has a female involved in sexual activity. 4:54 p.m. Officer will be across cove to observe.

June 26, 10:36 a.m.:  911 caller reports a goose loose in the middle of State Road 46 East one block east of winery.

June 24, 12:30 p.m.:  911 caller on West Main Street advises there are purses on the rooftop of the church behind his residence.

June 23, 1:16 a.m.:  Officer will be out of car at shelter house behind fire station; advises they were just getting Cokes.

June 22, 11:49 a.m.:  Caller on Old State Road 46 reports her daughter invites kids over that she doesn't want in her house. Dispatch advised her they are not breaking the law and we can't make them leave.

June 19, 5:27 p.m.:  911 caller advises an elderly gentleman is caught in the flood water. Subject is in an S10 truck with water up to the windows, refusing to leave his vehicle. Subject is dry, but has been there approximately one hour.

June 18, 9:11 a.m.:  911 caller reports she stopped at a yard sale and a car hit hers and then left. It's a small black car with an elderly lady with a hat on heading down Salt Creek Road.

June 16, 3:43 p.m.:  Caller reports a golf cart vs. electric car at music festival.

June 15, 7:01 p.m.:  911 caller on Oak Ridge Road advises a woman is stoned in her yard and she wants her removed. 7:25 p.m. 911 caller on Oak Ridge Road advises the woman is on her front porch. Caller advises to disregard her call. A funnel cloud went over the house and they put the woman in the basement.

June 14, 8:20 p.m.:  911 caller advises he will be in the bathtub if a tornado strikes.

June 13, 4:37 p.m.:  911 caller reports a car on blocks partially in the road, 1800 block of Hornettown Road.

June 13, 12:45 a.m.:  Abandoned 911 call. On call back, female subject advises her uncle is lost. Lost signal again. On call back, she found her uncle; he was hiding.

June 12, 8:20 p.m.:  Woman on West Lost Branch Road calls regarding gun shots on neighboring land (possible terrorist). Dispatch advised caller that unless they are on her property or shooting at her that it is not illegal.

June 11, 7:55 a.m.:  Caller from hospital requests welfare check on a nurse that did not show up for work today. 8:10 a.m. Officer advises the woman overslept.

June 10, 9:43 p.m.:  911 caller on North Drive Greenbrier Lake advises that the residence down the street on West Shore Drive is being gassed and gas is escaping from the tent and she is concerned and wants someone to check it out.

June 10, 5:33 p.m.:  Female caller reports someone has dumped an entire truck load of trash on Carmel Ridge Road near the iron gates; requests an officer to check it out.

June 9, 8:18 p.m.:  Church advises of a child with a fishing hook in his knee.

June 9, 1 p.m.:  911 caller on Oak Ridge Road advises she needs someone to call her ex and retrieve her cell phone for her. 1:19 p.m. Dispatch made eight attempts to call back the woman on Oak Ridge Road with no answer.

How could I live anywhere else?

Answer #162 - Here, Kitty Kitty!

2010-07-26T09:08:00.000-04:00

Having been gone for a week's touring, the answering machine is flashing the number 22 at me.

22 messages.

I'm averse to listening. A couple of steps will be required, should I choose to walk that path. Among them, writing down what I hear. The hard part comes, however, in the acting upon what I hear. Someone will invariably want me to do something.

I don't want to do something. I want to do nothing. It's just not in my genetic make-up to do nothing. Hence, if I avoid listening, I avoid the compulsion to act on the information.

Also, my cat, Jezebel, seems to be missing. The cross-eyed, toothless cat that I drug with me from Florida to Indiana, and for whom everyday is a puzzling and fuzzy adventure. I'd worry more about this had she not gone missing before. Generally I find her in the basement in a pile of wrapping paper or air filters. I'm hoping this will be that kind of day. The kind with a happy ending. Otherwise, I'll need to panic, and then start running the long movie-ola of her cat life, and look at old pictures with a bottle of cheap red wine and a box of tissues.

Pathetic? Yes.

Probable? Possibly. When all else fails, I tend to revert to drama. Also somewhat compulsively.

Two poets have written me in 24 hours. I think this is a strong indication that it might be a good time to think about writing. I heard a couple of great writers over the weekend in Canada. Sparks were flying between my ears briefly - and then, like fireflies, they were gone. Might have been the cramped constraints of the backseat, traveling between Ontario and Indiana. Might have been the lack of sleep after a week-long run. Might have been the triple-shot latte I had in Detroit.

Regardless, there it is. 22. Flashing.
A pile of thank you cards to write, 3 new books to read
(Dave Eggars The Wild Things is calling...),
the gentle but slightly abrasive susurration of cicadas riding neuron sparks in the vacuous gray that holds the walnut shape of my brain.. and a missing cat.

Ah, well then. Here, Kitty Kitty!

Answer #161 - In stiletto heels, we wait

2010-07-22T22:29:00.000-04:00

The special occasions…

Those days that we’re expected to do something wonderful, magical, amazing…

New Year’s Eve is one of them.

Every year, I expect to do something wonderful, magical, amazing.. I expect to hear the ringing of a bell and the sure knowledge that an angel has gotten its wings as the ball drops and the stars rise.

Birthdays, anniversaries.. hell, all the holidays.

Expectations of magic and wonder.

And yet, when we don’t expect it, that’s when magic and wonder happen. When we’re not looking. When we’re blind-sided by the bright spotlight of Chance and Circumstance meeting on a dance floor somewhere.

She wears stiletto heels, Chance that is. Because she’s flirty and unpredictable. She runs hot and cold, but when she shows up, Josie and Betty Lou both avert their eyes.
They can’t touch her.

Circumstance, well, he’s steady… has a great day job – wears comfortable shoes, even if they’re more than likely Italian – and oh, when Chance walks in, they lock eyes and… well, suffice it to say that they’re responsible for the miraculous and immediate birth of the twin sprites – Magic and Wonder.

And there they are, unexpected. After that, they’re free spirits – can’t be cajoled into making an appearance by any living human, no matter the occasion. No, Magic and Wonder walk the world, looking for the space between night and day - only their parents can command an appearance.

And no amount of wishing will make it so.

No.. we wait in anxious hope, don’t we?

While the stars twinkle, and the red circle on the calendar recedes into the pink of twilight…

We wait. Maybe this year..

Answer #160 - This Earth, this Realm, this Michigan

2010-07-20T21:30:00.001-04:00

Greetings from Michigan

Shakespeare never graced the shores of this lake.

Well, assuming Shakespeare was Shakespeare, and not an Indian Maiden tour guide for wayward explorers who penned soliloquies between river bends… there’s been so much speculation as to his/her true identity…

But probably not, no, Shakespeare was most likely never here.

Still.. it’s a glorious countryside here in the MidWest – which lends itself to art, unhampered by pretention or frippery. And somehow, maybe this wide open and fertile landscape has bred into its inhabitants and immigrants an openess that is unprecedented in other U.S. regions, and for varying reasons. Still, it’s unboundaried by age or economics. A kind of pervasive humility levels all playing fields, and for that reason, you rarely know who you might be talking to.

Pretention gets doors quietly and politely shut in your face. But forever. More or less.

We’re walking down the thin strip of beach on the western shore of Lake Michigan, just outside of Douglas. It’s beautiful and about 77 degrees, though the humidity is tougher than the wind can tickle.

We’re passing a group of teenagers and a mom - adorning beach chairs and sunglasses, surrounded by chattering sea gulls.

Where are we that there are there seagulls on a lake? I ask Adventure Boy.

Gulls aren’t that smart. Sea. Lake. Both one syllable. They can't spell so they don't know the difference.

Huh…

I’m smiling at the kids surrounded by gulls.

A bright-eyed, long-haired 17(?)-year old smiles big:

We’re feeding ‘em spicy chex mix! – and then he laughs.

The mom chimes in, And they love it!

And we don’t know them and they don’t know us.. and my first inclination is to worry about spice in the tummy of a gull, until I remember what incredible pestilence connoisseurs gulls are and I stop worrying.

And my second inclination is to laugh with them.

We don’t know them and they don’t know us. But we’re in the MidWest, all of us, right here, right now, together, in the company of acrobatic birds, the sun and waves. What more do you need to know?

And the gulls snap up beak fulls of chex mix and sand and I walk with Adventure Boy another mile or so until it’s time to get on the road again. When we pass the group, the chex mix and gulls are gone.

They cleaned us out! Kid says. Now they're fishing, as he points to the sky above the lake and the circling, diving gulls.

Next show – Ann Arbor.

This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this Michigan.

Answer #159 - A letter from the cliff

2010-07-17T11:44:00.001-04:00

Dear Sir,
In response to your admonition - I'm wearing nothing close to rose-colored glasses. Quite the antithesis. Left, Right, no difference... it's become nothing more than a sensationalist summer camp (ala Lord of the Flies), replete with media censoring, big money spin-doctoring, and bile spitting back and forth. We entertain ourselves, I think with this nice diversion while the new corporate Gods eat us whole. Sadly, I've got no fight left in me for this, nor rose-colored glasses. Maybe you'll get what you want, and the Right will get back in power, and then it'll all be... better?

But the fact is, a vote for Obama wasn't in all cases at all a vote against the man 'you folks' put in power. A generation of children is looking at an impending implosion - and not much to hold onto. While you argue the Constitution (and stubborn, hostile bombast doesn't mean you've won.. sometimes just means people get tired of beating their heads against a brick wall), they can see clearly that we're an organism on the brink. Global warming or not.

He looked like hope - an intelligent leader, a constitutional scholar, a change. A chance. Maybe it's easier to see us as whiny elitists, maybe it's easier to see us children with our fingers in our ears singing, 'la la la la la la if I click my heels three times...' Fact is, it's just not true of the majority.

There are crackpots on both sides. There are idiots on both sides. There are bloody battles being waged on-line and sensationalist bastards selling books on both sides. Ignorance breeds evil. It's pervasive on both sides - ignorance. Ignorance breeds civil war. Could be the death of us if we're not careful.. propagating like mold. You indignantly see us as hapless hippies hastening the end of freedom (the government should be the father-figure none of us got), we indignantly see you as the small-minded redneck proponents of the annihilation of civil rights (as long as it's wearing red, white and blue and has hands folded in prayer, it must be true) And fact is, feeding the beast of righteous-indignation is nothing more than that. But 110 days from now, be careful what you wish for. If I thought for 5 seconds that, in the hands of the Right we'd suddenly be the dream land you'd like us to think Obama has single-handedly obliterated, I'd vote along with you. And I'd buy all the bridges in Brooklyn...and swim in tea...or oil, as the case may be..

But I've come to believe, lately, that the only real hope there is lies somehow in the realm of love - and respect in all things. So I read between the angry lines - and think on what you write. Because the truth, as always, lies somewhere in the Middle. And maybe we'll survive ourselves long enough to find a way out of the quagmire without rose-colored glasses. I want America to be the dream it once dreamed it was - and not built on the blood and bones of smaller, less funded nations. I want something to believe in that's based in intelligent choice and decency - not just the cloak of it or the pretty, winking picture of it. But more than all of that, I want to survive this time, as we stand on either side of a cliff's edge, Lemmings deciding whether or not to jump into the sluttish and rutted sea.
Will we jump?

Nothing good will come of the hostility and insult. Nothing. Only more of the same. The only real hope there is lies somewhere in the realm of love - and respect in all things.

Which is all I offer you this morning.
Krista