A small window (closing)

Just in time for the summer blockbuster season, a very rough cut.

Middle passage

Those of you who pay attention to my photography may wonder why I haven’t shown any work lately. The reason is that I am taking a seaon off. For the past five years or so, I have shot the same events: The Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Memorial Day and Fourth of July at Coney Island, Chinese New Year, the Jouvert parade, and the Middle Passage Ceremony. Now I’m going to attend these events simply as a participant.

A large part of the reason I'm taking time off is because I genuinely dislike photographers, especially here in New York. The Mermaid Day parade is the most egregious example. There are 10 photographers for every participant and by the end of the day everyone is pretty much traumatized, especially the scantily clad women. And if I were the type who got dressed up and paraded around, or performed a sacred ceremony, in public, I wouldn’t want assholes sticking their cameras in my face. For me to photograph these events, I have to believe that I am serving a larger purpose. I have to believe that my artistic rendering of these events will serve as an important record of a special time and place. Of course there are thousands of photographers at the Mermaid parade or Chinese New Year and a few of them do work as good or better than my own, but I am just about the only serious photographer who attends the Jouvert parade or the Middle Passage Ceremony. I hope it proves important that I have recorded these events.

Yesterday was the Middle Passage Ceremony and that was my first real test. I was at Coney Island on Memorial Day, but this year it was no different than any other weekend, and the light wasn’t good, so not taking photographs didn’t bother me in the least. Last evening, however, the light was beautiful and so was the ceremony and it hurt, really hurt, to leave the images to the ether. And for long stretches I was working as a photographer, though without a camera, anyway. Framing shots. Noting the ceremony’s progress. Identifying photogenic participants from the past and remembering them for the future.

But I was alternately able to drop that baggage and absorb the spirit of the event.

The Middle Passage Ceremony is to remember the African slaves who died during the transport to the new world. Participants dress in white, wade out in the surf, throw flowers, then walk backwards away from the beach. There is a lot of drumming and dancing before, during and after the ceremony. The flower throwing part is a solemn affair. A few people seem to experience religious ecstasy. Many of the images are incredibly beautiful.

This year my wife and young son came along. We’d noticed the event our first year in New York but didn’t know what it was. We heard the African drums and saw people dressed in white walking backwards from the surf, but there were few of them then. The drumming and walking backwards creeped out my wife. She thought it was some kind of voodoo ceremony.

The event has been growing exponentially. Now there is stage area with a PA system and many chairs up on the boardwalk and I’d guess three hundred or so people. We set down a sheet off to the side and sipped wine until the festivities moved down to the water. My wife was still creeped out a bit by the drums and ceremony. She knows quite a bit about central African secret societies and thought she recognized elements from one of them. Although this is an American thing, it’s not a farfetched possibility that it has real roots in Africa.

My son, however, totally got into the spirit of the event. He’s eight years old and they teach modern dance at his school. He was moving in and out of the crowd, jumping up and down in the surf, doing his Martha Graham and Bill T. Jones interpretive moves. I had to laugh like hell until I noticed a little Mark Morris seep into his choreography. I hit him with a small rock to put an end to that.

As is not unusual, sharing a bottle of wine with my wife meant that she had a glass and I drank the rest of the bottle, so I was feeling pretty good by the time the ceremony was over. My son, we’ll call him John Bob, wanted to go on a ride so we said goodbye to the wife and stayed in Coney Island. I had a beer while he went on the Saturn 6, then we went and saw the freak show where I had five more.

If you’ve never been to the Coney Island Freak Show, I strongly recommend it. The acts aren’t that great, but it’s a hokey good time, plus it’s a nice place to get out of the sun or the rain and the amusement park din and have a cold Heineken. My dirty little secret is that I have a crush on Insectivora. Insectivora is a totally tatooed woman who eats insects and fire. John Bob was getting bored by the time the freaks were into the third rotation of their acts, but I couldn’t tear myself away from Insectivora. And when I did finally stumble back out to the Coney Island night, I was feeling pretty high.

John Bob wanted some cotton candy, so I bought him a bag. There were three large balls of it, blue, yellow and pink. He ate the blue and I ate the yellow and pink. Somehow, the thin wisps of spun sugar made me ravenous. I bought us a corn dog and french fries, but that only made me more hungry. I ate a hamburger, then a gyro, clams on the half shell, fried shrimp, fried chicken, a regular slice, a slice with pepperoni, then sausage and peppers, a brochette, a candy apple, a caramel apple, and three boxes of popcorn. My stomach would not fill but my body began to grow, 7 feet, ten feet, twenty, then thirty feet, I waddled down the boardwalk eating small children, teenagers, pretty girls, fat girls and gnarly old women. Then, and I don’t know to say this politely, I hurled and passed out on the beach.

Um, dad, said John Bob, kicking me in the head. Shouldn’t we go home now?

Thus ended another typical day at Coney Island.

Animals r us

From CNN:

Debate evolves into religious discussion

Story Highlights

• Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, defends biblical creation narrative
• John McCain, an Episcopalian, says "the hand of God" made us what we are
• Sam Brownback, a Catholic, says religion and reason are not at odds

Reading further, we find that Huckabee went on to say that people who wanted to believe they were descended from a primate were welcome to do so.

He then contested the relevance of the question:

"It's interesting that that question would even be asked of somebody running for president," Huckabee said. "I'm not planning on writing the curriculum for an eighth-grade science book. I'm asking for the opportunity to be president of the United States."

Even if we leave aside the question of whether a president of the United States should have at least an eighth grade education (humans are unquestionably primates, so what does he think he is?), these Republican debates expose an ignorance so vast that it qualifies as insanity.

The general belief system of Huckabee, a total moron, is shared by literally millions of Americans who have had at least a modicum of education and uncounted millions, if not billions, of poorly educated people throughout the world.

Science be damned. We’re gonna believe what the preacher says. We don’t need no stinkin’ books, not even the Bible, though it helps if you know how to read it.

Common sense tells us we didn’t descend from no apes. Common sense tells us an all-powerful being created the universe, us, and everything else. Common sense tells us we’re special.

And if common sense fails, we have John McCain:

"There's no doubt in my mind that the hand of God was in what we are today. And I do believe that we are unique, and [I] believe that God loves us."

Or Sam Brownback:

"I believe we are created in the image of God for a particular purpose, and I believe that with all my heart," said Brownback, a Roman Catholic. "I am fully convinced there's a God of the universe that loves us very much and was involved in the process.“

This common sense view that there is a super being who created the universe and has a special love for us humans (primates as well as Huckabees) is shared by the overwhelming majority of Americans -- liberal, conservative, and politically apathetic -- and most of the rest of the world as well.

Well-meaning people may differ on which God created the universe and how exactly it cares about our individual lives, and they can certainly disagree on how it did it, whether by evolution, incantation, a twitch of the nose or a nod of the head, but everybody simply must agree that common sense tells us that some all-powerful super being somehow, someway, did the deed.

But of course that belief is not common sense. With what we know about the vastness of space and time, as well as the evolution of life on earth, it is ignorant.

It is insane.

The universe we know is something like 17 billion years old. There are something like 200 billion galaxies each containing 200 billion stars. Our planet is what a grain of sand is to the Sahara, if that, in the big picture. Modern human history is more like a molecule in a grain of sand compared to the vast Sahara of time.

The idea that some super being set all that in motion, created the vast and incredible universe, then waited 17 billion years to focus on us as individuals represents stupidity on a scale nearly as vast as the cosmos. And that’s not even considering the fact that even if that were true, the all-powerful super being is an idiot who botched it badly. For billions of humans, this is a world of shit, with little peace, and less justice.

Common sense, based on what we know (science), tells us there is no God. Common sense should tell us that the continued belief in an all-powerful super being who cares is nothing more than primitive baggage from the early days of human evolution.

Beyond that, common sense also tells us that the fact that we still have serious contenders for presidency-- not to mention the president himself -- who believe such utter nonsense demonstrates just how close we are to our chimp-like ancestors.

And it’s equally, if not more disturbing to note that the major media refuse to accurately report the facts about religion and science. In this case, the reporter alluded to the fact that humans are primates, but failed to say so directly. The enlightenment is dimming. The future looks dark.

On a related note, this article in the Guardian argues that we should stop respecting religions and those who practice them, at least when it comes to public policy.

I’ll agree with that and suggest we go a step further and stop using the word “religion.” For what is religion if not a belief in the supernatural?

We have a word for belief in the supernatural. We call it superstition.

We also have a word for people who believe in the supernatural. We call them superstitious.

I know what you are, but what am I?

I read Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago when I was in high school, so I recognized that the Bush Administration was using Soviet-style torture techniques on prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as secret prisons throughtout the world.

Reports of U.S. torture techniques also reminded me of a guy I new in Washington state. He trained U.S. Air Force pilots who could possibly be captured by the Soviets to cope with KGB-style interrogation. He was an American specialist in Soviet torture techniques. He seemed an okay guy, very well-read and thoughtful, really into hardcore punk, a bit harder than the rest of us, and he could be very intense. He described his job as fucked up way beyond my ability to imagine. He spent many days playing the KGB interrogator, torturing American pilots. They all inevitably broke, he said. He hated his job.


This article in the Times confirms that the U.S. does indeed use Soviet-style torture and refers to what I'm pretty sure is the Air Force program in which my long ago acquaintance tortured our troops. Yes, it's true. We are not only using Soviet-style torture, we are doing it consciously, by the book. How's that for nauseating absurdity?

Nauseatingly absurd, that's how. Or should be. At least for those of us old enough to remember the Cold War.

Of course a lot of people these days aren't old enough to remember the Cold War. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989 so pretty much everyone born after 1980, 1985 at the latest, did not grow up hearing about how evil the Soviet Union was, in large part due to their use of torture. Today's conservative kids did not spend their formative years being constantly reminded of how good the United States was compared to the Soviet Union, one of the important particulars being that we did not torture our prisoners. These younger folk were not constantly told that torture was morally wrong. Not only morally wrong but ineffective. And not only ineffective, but counterproductive. They were not told that the Soviet Union provided ample proof that torture was stupid on every level save the sadistic.

So the age thing may at least partially explain why the stupid right wing kids can so blithely condone atrocities that the United States stood against for so many years, but what about the older Republicans?

The older dead-end conservatives who still support George W. Bush and every single one of his war crimes are the same people who loudly denounced the Soviet Union for torturing prisoners in secret prisons during the Cold War. How can they forget just about every single principle they in which they believed?

Of course it's only speculation, but I'd guess they never held any real principles. Those 28 percent or so who support the conservative agenda no matter how criminally insane it becomes, are not principled people. They simply believe what they are told to believe. Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter if it changes. Doesn't matter if it's the opposite of what they were told to believe the day before.

Talk about nausea. Since we now know that Bush & company actually are using the Soviet manual on torturing prisoners, what other manuals are they using? A lot of people have sarcastically suggested their playbook is right out of George Orwell's 1984. Perhaps it really is.

More ammo

In other under-reported news, a Saudi Arabian company is purchasing GE Plastics.

This may surprise you, but chuckling knows a thing or two about GE plastics. They contain phosgene, a terribly dangerous chemical that was responsible for most chemical warfare deaths during World War I.

So is it wise to sell chemical weapons factories to Islamic Sunni extremists who support the insurgency in Iraq?

Personally, I don’t think it’s so much of a problem on those grounds. Not because we don’t actually know that those who control the company support the insurgency in Iraq. Apparently all Saudis do that. But that company already has plenty of phosgene plants so I don’t think selling them a few more particularly adds to the danger, unless they fire all the American workers and bring in bearded minions from afar, which wouldn’t go over well with the locals. No, I trust they just want to make money. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to sell off our few remaining manufacturing assets to foreign companies.

But that’s a different conversation. If you click on the above link, you’ll see that the Saudis are saying all the right things about how they value the local employees and don’t plan to change a thing. Perhaps that’s true, but probably not. That particular plant is old and dangerous and a lot of people in th know believed that GE was going to shut it down anyway.

But maybe not. The comments on the linked article are interesting. There’s a lot of talk about phosgene and how dangerous it could be to sell a chemical plant to A-rabs, but there are quite a few knowledgeable rejoinders from GE employees hoping to keep their jobs. Perhaps the Saudi’s will use it as an opportunity to build goodwill in middle America, just as Toyota does in the same general area.

Southern Indiana is a hotbed of ignorant nationalism, but they are acutely aware of who signs the paychecks. A few years ago anyone driving a Toyota was accused of being a traitor, but since they built the Tundra plant, Toyotas are the most popular car on the road.

If the Saudi’s play their cards right and keep the paychecks coming, it wouldn’t surprise me to see a lot of people in the midwest converting to Islam.

Connecting some dots

This morning’s New York Times breathlessly reports the obvious: Iraq has become a giant training camp for anti-American insurgents who plan to expand the conflict.

“The flow of fighters is already going back and forth, and the fight will be everywhere until the United States is willing to cease and desist,” says a Saudi with vast knowledge of Jihadist networking.

Yes, well, duh, you think. Any idiot could see that coming, But our politicians and pundits aren’t just any idiot. They are stupid on a grand, historic scale.

Note how our Jihadist counselor in the above quote doesn’t require the United States to turn off the teevee and convert to Islam. He says until we “cease and desist.” Presumably he means cease and desist from conquering foreign lands, propping up violent dictatorships, and arming foreign oppressors. Is that really too much to ask? That we stop our senseless murder spree? I could see room for argument if it were doing us any good, but as the NYT article demonstrates, our violent meddling in other people’s affairs is creating an army of formidable enemies.

The very same article contains even more powerful evidence of how mind-numbingly stupid our leaders continue to be. Have they learned anything from the experience of providing arms and international support to the likes of the Ayatollah Khomenei, Sadaam Hussein, or Osama bin Laden? Well, no

Last week, the Lebanese Army found itself in a furious battle against a militant group, Fatah al Islam, whose ranks included as many as 50 veterans of the war in Iraq, according to General Rifi. More than 30 Lebanese soldiers were killed fighting the group at a refugee camp near Tripoli.

The army called for outside support. By Friday, the first of eight planeloads of military supplies had arrived from the United States, which called Fatah al Islam “a brutal group of violent extremists.”

What the Times fails to report, in typical Times fashion, is that the Bush administration supported, at least indirectly, that very same terrorist group which we are now helping the Lebanese government fight.

Where will the next bin Laden come from? Follow our money, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of candidates.

So what would happen if we were to take our opponents advice and “cease and desist?” Would the sun come out from behind the clouds and spring flowers sprout overnight from the blood-drenched battlefields? Well, no. There would be a long period of fending off attacks and legally pursuing violent criminals, but over time what goes around would come around, just as it is right now, only in a good way.

But that is not going to happen. We have gone too far down the path of authoritarianism. With our Iraq disaster providing such a training and propaganda windfall for those who want to attack us, it seems inevitable that an attack will come. Do we, as a people, have the maturity to react intelligently to another 9/11? Not bloody likely. Our leaders, Bush and Cheney, are cowards and they will be replaced with other cowards. We have chosen our path. It looks like water rushing, downward, like a spiral.

The first day of summer

Friday after work the time and temperature sign across from Brooklyn’s Borough Hall reads 93 degrees. Saturday morning, 6 a.m. I’m lying in the familiar pool of New York summer sweat. Before that, I hadn’t given two thoughts to the beach, but by 10 a.m. the umbrella is planted, the kid is playing in the surf and I’m enjoying the cool ocean breeze. It’s a little known fact, but Brooklyn is a city on an island and there are miles of nice beaches. Of course we rarely go to a nice beach. We go to Coney Island.

Coney Island is what I call a people’s beach. By that I mean that real people go there, unlike the French Riviera or Malibu where the rich and beautiful pose in and out of their skimpy swim wear. More flesh can be seen on just about anyone at Coney Island than you’ll find on three or four fashionable types at the Cote d’Azur. The typical Coney Island bathing suit could be cut up to make forty or fifty bikinis or briefs for the beautiful people. Not that you don’t see a bit of eye candy among the pork bellies, but you’ve got to keep your eyes peeled.

In general, I’m okay with all that, and the fact that it’s one of the few remaining places in the U.S. where you can unashamedly get drunk in public, but so far this year I’m just not into it, I want to hear the crashing of the surf and maybe the high pitched squeals of the young’uns splashing each other. So I get irritated when not long after I plant my umbrella, a large Latino family plops down behind us and starts fouling the air with an endless stream of niggers and motherfuckers. Almost their entire conversation consists of those words. When they address each other it’s either as nigger or motherfucker. Except sometimes they get creative and call each other motherfucking nigger, or nigger motherfucker.

I’m not the language police, okay, and it doesn’t bother me in the least that my kids hear those words. They’ve been raised in Brooklyn and they hear them pretty much every time they ride the subway, which is every day. So they’ve heard 10’s of thousands of niggers and motherfuckers yet have never used those words themselves, at least not around adults. My son, in fact, is very uncomfortable with that language and often asks to move to the other end of the train when a crowd of nigger and motherfucker spewing specimens sit next to us. Same thing at the beach. We picked up our umbrella and moved.

But there was nothing we could do. Soon, the lifeguards arrived and they were talking loudly among themselves, nigger this, motherfucker that, then another family sat down near us and it was nothing but nigger this and motherfucker that, and we could still hear the original problem people yelling periodically, nigger this, motherfucker that, and it all blended together into a pulsing cacophony, nigger, motherfucker, nigger, motherfucker, nigger, motherfucker.

But for the most part we tuned it out and had a good time. I think it’s important to get the kids into the outdoors, away from the tv and video games, and even their regular friends. I watch my son playing in the surf, see him using his imagination to occupy his time, catching sand crabs, collecting shells, moving his body, diving into the waves, doing cartwheels in the sand, socializing with strangers. These things are good. These things are healthy.

Then later, we’re at the neighborhood playground. Here, diversity is more of a good thing. The whitest little girl is being chased by the blackest little boy who eventually hits her in the back with a water balloon. It occurs to me that southern conservatives would have murdered the child if he had done that fifty years ago, and not felt even a pang of guilt. Jewish kids are playing with Palestinian and Iranian kids, as well as Indians and Pakistanis. None of them -- black, white, Jewish, Palestinian, Iranian, or the other assorted nationalities seems to be considering the larger political realities. They’re just kids, having fun.

But it does get a bit weird sometimes. I know the Palestinian kids because they live down the block, my son plays with them and my wife tutors one off and on. Three families live in one giant house. They have a total of twelve kids all my son’s age or younger. They are very wild and violent among themselves. They’ve never included my son in any of their fights. I suspect that their parents must constantly warn them against fighting with outsiders. Still, when my son’s Jewish friends are visiting, I don’t let them hang out with the Palestinians. I’m afraid that there could be social repercussions if they beat up a Jewish kid. If that were to happen, I doubt it would have anything to do with any kind of Jewish/Palestinian nonsense. It would just be boys being boys, but still... I feel like shit for making those kinds of decisions.

So the night ends, as Saturday nights usually do, with the family movie. We were going to watch Studio Ghibli’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, but were unable to find it, so since it's the first day of summer, I suggest we watch Do the Right Thing instead, since it’s about summer in Brooklyn. It’s a great movie and I could go on about its palette and/or the ambiguity of its message, but it’s the pitch perfect depiction of summer in Brooklyn that puts such an appropriate ending on the day. There are several parts in which multiple people are screaming at each other, motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker, motherfucker, coming from left, right, back and forth, transcending to surround sound, a cacophony of motherfucker, the sweltering heat, the motherfuckers, summertime. Motherfucker. Brooklyn.

Only three more months of summer. It's gonna be a motherfucker.

Pelosi assumes the position

From today's NYT:

Pelosi stopped short of condemning the president's call for slowing the nation's growth rate in carbon emissions.

"In seeking solutions," she said, ''we need to shorten the distance between inconceivable and inevitable.''

Yep. The inconceivable is that the doormatocats will do anything beyond muttering incoherently in a way designed not to offend anyone -- not the people who vote for them, not their corporate masters, much less their republican overlords.

The inevitable is that they will lay down on the porch to facilitate those who enjoy stepping on them.

Speaking of stupid

I can't help noticing, despite the general silence of the leftish blogs, as well as my own efforts to avoid reading the news, that the doormatocrat party has suffered yet another humiliating defeat by Bush and the republicans. After threatening, and actually voting to withhold funding for military operations in Iraq, they totally caved, gave the idiot everything he wanted, and pocketed $20 billion or so in pork at the same time just to add a whiff of corruption to their aura of imbecility.

How fucking stupid can they be? They chose to fight a high profile battle which they had no chance whatsoever to win. The troops would be funded. They said so from the outset. The question wasn't if they would surrender, it was when? And how?

And Karl Rove must have devised the "and how?" The Democrats did't just surrender, they profited from it, lined their pockets, and/or those of their campaign contributors. Can they really not see that trap? Wasn't Dick Cheney daring them to walk into it a clue? It's like a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which huge blinking signs with the word "trap" point at a trap, yet Daffy Duck walks right into it anyway. They're a bunch of maroons, that's what they are.

It's not like Bush and friends are all powerful super geniuses. They are idiots, widely hated and ridiculed. Losing to them is like getting beat up by a mentally challenged 1st grader. Could the democrats be any more stupid and weak? I don't see how.

The only explanation is that they are not a real opposition party. They are not laying there on the porch with a sign on their back saying "step on me (only $20 billion}" because they are stupid and weak. Who could be that stupid and weak? They are to the Republicans what the Washington Generals are to the Harlem Globetrotters, a team paid to lose.

Poetics, the sequel

Another Sunday has rolled around with no original content on Chuckling, the on-line magazine. Since last week's poem went over so well, I will offer up for sacrifice the other one I've written. If you don't like them, don't worry. I've worked on each for about four years, so it will likely be 2011 before you see another.

It's kind of fun to tell stories this way, with more elevated forms of language, but I won't be putting out the requsite "slim volume of poetry" anytime soon. I don't even submit them to magazines, other than Chuckling, which will publish just about any crap I submit.

In response to several emails I recieved on Pan, although my soul may well be wracked with the tortures of the damned, these poems are just writing exercises for the most part. Pan, like much poetry, takes the perspective of a mythical personage, in this case a forest god tempted by the sea. On the Eleventh tells a similar story.


On the Eleventh

My heart
is confusion
together with my soul
It is desolate
like consuming fire

Conceal yourself for a little while
in the midst of these coals
where living creatures,
torches, as it were,
burn in place of my grief

A vision will come
Life and old age
Counsel and prudence
Secrets of all living things

The days will hasten on fast,
draw together, bone to bone,
joint to joint,
sinews come upon them

To those without sense
from the earth
there will be
nothing
For them, graves

Something completely different

If you've been dropping by regularly, you've probably noticed that I've been struggling for content lately. I'm going through one of those phases where I get so wrapped up in more ambitious projects that I find it difficult to manage a little essay for poor Chuckling, the on-line magazine.

So rather than write a blog post, I will share with you this poem. Please do not get your hopes up. I am not much of a poet. This is really only the second poem I have put together. I've been working on it off and on for several years. It's still not finished, but so what. A week has passed and I have resolved to post something every week, so this is it for this week.

Enjoy, or ridicule. Whatever.

Pan

The harbor lays quiet
I feel a pleasant inward shivering
a thick mist floats up from the sea
and damns the forest
behind a wall of murk

Mist and fog
day like night
a vessel begins to move
but soon it disappears
and the birds fall silent

Then comes a storm
a play for me to stand and watch
the sea flings up
fantastic dancing figures
in seething mist

The heavy rush of wind
the cheerless cold
then all things quiet and still
rain and wind have done their work
my soul is tense

The sun tells false time today
a secret stillness falls
I ponder and am silent
my eyes follow the passing storm
still calling from the drying ground

I find something
in every change of light
the air so full of whisperings
and echos
floating out to sea

I'm burning up my life
for the sake of what?
nights of desolate dreams
a hot breeze stands about my head
the close foul breath of last year's wind

That was no true sun
to show the way
I took the wrong road
with the greatest calm
and came upon this un-true sea

Where all things change a little every day
and the sky is dressed in gold and mauve
and the snow has turned to water
and the ice has loosed its hold
and trickled away

No one ever hears it
and no one ever thinks it
and still it trickles on
this veil of murmuring
always calling me

That little sound of water
the time that went so quickly
the birds that all went silent
that sweetish rotting smell
of dead leaves in the wood

This mysterious current of air
this breath of something strange
these nights and all warm hours
that spirit wanders silent
seeing all through inflamed loins

Hearing music through the fog
the birds of passage gone
yet I do not go away
these familiar trees
mean too much

A snapshot of our lives

From the Washington Post:

Not waiting underground

Here are a few pics from my annual Cherry Blossum photo project. You may notice that I've developed a photographic technique that captures something of the afterlife. If you look even a little hard you can see a few ghosts. My damned head is still spinning.

TK

As is not unusual, I have started making grandiose plans for writing projects, which is not a good idea for a blog. I will try to dole it out in small pieces. We’ll see how it goes.

The pieces are these:

1. The purpose of art. Why write at all? Or take photos? Or do anything for that matter? Someone, I think it was a commenter at Alicublog, wrote that Kurt Vonnegut marveled at how much enthusiasm and sense of purpose a dog could have for playing with a brown rubber representation of an ice cream cone and commented that if he, Kurt Vonnegut, had spent his life happily carrying a brown rubber ice cream cone from one closet to the next, it wouldn’t have made one iota of difference to the universe. And Kurt Vonnegut said a lot of other things about the uselessness of life and art, yet he lived and worked most of his adult life as an artist.

To help me in this analysis, I will lean heavily on the thought of Victor L. Frankl and his book Man’s Search for Meaning. This book has been strongly recommended to me at various times throughout my life. I saw it for sale on the street yesterday and bought it. Couldn’t have come at a better time.

2. You may have noticed that the chuckling character hails from a small town in the heartland and is still in touch with those roots. If so, you’ve probably also noticed that I have unresolved issues with my upbringing there as well as the current environment and the lives of family and friends. People there suffer so horribly. Why?

It may seem a trivialization of Frankl to compare his years as a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp to the petty existential angst of the spoiled consumerist heartland, but I think Frankl would be okay with it. Apropos, he writes:

To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. if a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and consious mind, no mater whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore, the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.

I’d like to examine this phenomenon at some depth. And believe me, there are some depths in which to delve.

3. I recently read The Unconquerable World by Jonathan Schell. In it, Schell presents military history as a paradigm of progress for non-violence. It contains some very interesting ideas. How does the history of non-violence and the reality of an unconquerable world relate to the purpose of art and the suffering of the heartland.

Well, we’ll just have to see.

Backwater hues

Click here, right here for your backwater hues.

Laugh like hell

I haven't read a lot of Kurt Vonnegut obiburaries. Beside Roy's, I hadn't actually read any until I came across this observer piece by George Saunders. If you only have to read one, this is most likely as good as any.

Yes, a Vonnegut day is just what we need. For those of you who haven't read all of his books, drop your preconceptions and get started. My only advice is to read them backwards from Hocus Pocus. Everyone babbles on and on about Slaughterhouse Five. My advice is to not read it just to be contrary. But everything else, go for it.

Old stand-bys

You might find this little movie interesting. Made shortly after the killings at Columbine, it considers the threat posed by lonely Engish majors with violent stories kicking around in their heads and discusses strategies for dealing with the problem.

Notes from behind the headlines

For this piece, I will go into high pundit mode and extract meaningful insights about the state of the union from anecdotal evidence obtained from drive-by interactions with real people. In case you haven’t read between the lines of my recent posts, I have been on a trip to the nation's heartland.

One of the great things about high punditry is that I don’t have to be structurally original, or even interesting, and I can say what I really think. None of that chuckling shit. No rambling intro. No obscure meaning. No car chases or explosions. No paragraphs with 500 commas. Just straight talk from the commanding heights of punditry.

Since I have the freedom to be unoriginal, I’ll use the old “glance at the headlines” structure to make my insightful observations concerning the beliefs of millions of people based on a few persoal anecdotes. This is not entirely a cheap literary trick. Although I am revising this writing, I really did start by glancing at the headlines and realizing that they were representative of what people were talking about out in the heartland. We east coast journalists in our brownstones and lofts tend to forget that there are real people leading nuanced lives somewhere inside those headlines. Most of the real caricatures are either politicians or journalists, not just angry losers who obsessively listen to hate radio and watch Fox News.


Gas prices about to take spring jump


I had to laugh like hell when I read that. In the coming paragraphs I will discuss a number of headlines and how they relate to any number of individuals, but every single person I interviewed on my travels bitched about the price of gas.

Everyone in the heartland drives. People drive three blocks to the grocery for a pack of cigarettes. They drive to their neighbor's. Quite a few of them drive 50 miles, or even twice that, a day to their jobs and back. And most of them drive gas guzzling pickup trucks or SUV's.

The one extreme was this: I was interviewing a bunch of blue collar types over a six pack or two of lite beer. They were, like everybody else, bitching about the price of gas. Then someone made a snide comment about how we went to all that trouble to invade Iraq and didn’t even get the cheap gas we were promised. How’s that war working out otherwise, I asked. They just snorted in their beer.

On the other extreme, during a long series of interviews with a Republican party activist, he volunteered the explanation that gas would be under $1 a gallon if they’d only let us drill in the national parks. I had to laugh like hell again and snorted in my beer to boot. If that’s all they got for the party line these days, the party’s in a hell of a lot of trouble.

But those are just the extremes. Everybody else just bitched. Price a gas went up 5 cents overnight. Yep. Fucking shit. Yep.

From my high pundit perch, I pronounce that the Republicans are in deep shit over the price of gas.


163rd alerted for new tour



Eight U.S., four British soldiers killed

Honor guards now meet the slain

In an about-face by the U.S. government four years into the war in Iraq, America’s fallen troops are being brought back to their families about charter jets instead of ordinary commercial flights, and the caskets are being met by honor guards in white gloves instead of baggage handlers with forklifts. That, according to the newspaper.

One of my family's friends joined the Marines and is going to Iraq. He had a little time off after boot camp. He's a nice kid, much nicer than me. He saw that my mom's tv was getting old and he bought her a new one. I interviewed many of his family and friends and pparently everyone who knows him loves him. And they are a flag waving bunch, not a college degree among them. And they don't drink lattes. They prefer their coffee weak, with lots of sugar. And no wine, red or white. Lite beer or a Jack and Coke on special occasions. Yet to a person they were furious that he had joined the military. They thought he was an idiot. How could he be so fucking stupid? That's the question I heard again and again as people sadly shook their heads. If a Democrat went on tv and talked like those people, he or she would be apologizing profusely for several news cycles. But these people of the heartland aren't going to be apologizing to anyone.

Why did they think it was so stupid for a nice young kid to go to Iraq? Two reasons.

One, the obvious, that he could get himself killed or fucked up for life in a stupid war that wasn't doing any good for anybody. You can fool them for awhile, but they don't stay fooled indefinitely, and when they realize they were fooled, they don't look kindly on th e assholes that fooled them. Nobody believes a word the government or tv tells them about Iraq anymore.

Two, they felt the boy was stupid for believing the recruiter's lies. Those are their words, not mine. These people generally aren't very good at getting their facts straight, so this isn't about facts. I don't know whether the recruiter lied to the boy or not. They are, however, sincere in their beliefs, and for the most part, it's their beliefs they act on. Facts be damned.

The boy, they said, was promised an education and career in electronics. He's getting four weeks training as a radio operator and will be radio operating on convoys in Iraq. I guess it's like Vietnam where they put the fresh meat on the most dangerous missions. The theory being that if you are going to die in hell, it's better to get it over with quickly. You really have to shake your head and admire those boys. What a world it might be if their best instincts were used for good instead of murder. Unfortunately, this isn't that world.

Anyway, from my high pundit perch, I seriously intone that everyone knows that Iraq is fucking fucked and anyone who says otherwise is considered an idiot and a tool. Not by us high pundits in New York City, mind you, but by the lite beer drinkers out there on the highway in their pickup trucks. The beating muscles of the heatland. You know, real people. And women too. White.


More factory layoffs coming

Whirlpool says slump may be temporary

Hancock Fabrics closing local store


One of the first things I'm always struck by when I spend time in the heartland is the abundance of mansions. A three thousand square foot house with a two car garage on an acre of land is not at all unusual. The countryside is, in fact, scattered with them. Even in the bad neighborhoods in towns people live in sizable houses and all of these places have boats, jet skis, treadmill's, tanning beds, whirlpools, swimming pools, playgrounds, or any number of other luxuries littering their yards and garages. Of course there are plenty of apartment dwellers and trailer park residents, but for the most part you don't see too much of them. You really have to look hard.

But people I interviewed are very concerned about their ability to maintain their lifestyles. Every day there are stories in the newspaper about factories and stores closing down. Shuttered strip malls are common sights on the edge of towns. What was historically the largest employer in the area is up for sale. A Saudi-owned conglomerate is reportedly interested. Other factories have been sold to foreign companies. Many people have been laid off over the last five years. Many more have had to change jobs and take a radical pay cut in the process. The local Republican activist complained about the influx of illegal immigrants to the area and hinted that they were the cause of people's unease, but the issue never came up among working people bitching about the economy. The day may come when pickup driving Americans start fighting for those farm jobs and nursing home work, but we aren't there yet.

From the heights of high punditry, I declare that ordinary Americans are not yet there on "free" trade but are ripe for understanding. They are beginning to make some hazy connection among factors such as the price of gas, jobs moving overseas, foreign ownership, their deteriorating standard of living, and the war in Iraq, but as yet there has been no cataclysmic event that has caused them to see what's going on. They haven't quite connected the dots between the purported need for America to become more competitive and the fact that that means lower wages, fewer benefits, and environmental degradation. I think they will, but unfortunatley, since there is no political party that represents their interests, I fear they will be ripe targes for demagoguery on these issues and things will get really ugly.

Education official linked to loan probe.

Girl locked in truck bed: Mother faces neglect charge

Schools lose funds

Meth lab busted near school



Patient had rat in mouth: lawsuit

Staffing was so inadequate at a California senior center that a rat crawled into an Alzheimer’s patient’s mouth and diesd there before staff noticed, a lawsuit claims. Says the morning paper.

Health, education, government corruption, drugs, social ills – those are all common topics of conversation. Most everyone is suffering through the drawn out death of a relative or two, wondering when to put grandma in the nursing home, scheming to protect the assets. A lot of women work in crappy jobs just for the health insurance. The price of medicine is insane. Some people actually understand why the doctor prescribes them Nexium when they didn't even complain about heartburn. More will learn. High punditry suggests that people's continuing gullibility concerning the idiotic lies of the drug lobby and their political lackeys will go the way of their gullibility about our string of glorious victories in Iraq. Unfortunately, high punditry must lament the fact that people who may someday become ill are a constituency without a party, so nothing positive will come of it.

Regarding edcuation and child rearing, almost everyone has or knows teenagers who are miserable or doing poorly in school. One rural school had two kids hang themselves in one year. A lot of young girls are cutting themselves. Just about everybody drinks and takes drugs. If not, the doctors prescribe them some.

The common explanation I hear for the sorry state of our youth was that kids these days grew up without ever having heard the word "no." I think there's some truth to that. People I've interviewed out in the heartland over the years really are clueless when it comes to properly raising their children. They plead with them to do right rather than make them, then they overreact and hit or verbally abuse them when their pleading doesn't work. I was there for a week and never saw a single kid eat a single vegetable. And they really do try to give them everything they want, from candy all day long to a car when they turn sixteen. And contrary to popular belief among children, giving a kid everything he or she wants will not make them happy. Quite the contrary.

But even though these problems are the result of stupidity, or more accurately poor education, it's still sad, heartbreakingly so, to see how they suffer, both the parents and the children. And I can't help but contrast that with my own situation. I live in and around one of the most liberal environs on earth. My kids go to one of the most progressive schools on the planet and I spend a lot of time around the children of very wealthy. liberal individuals and know their parents, too. The first thing anyone would note about these children is how happy they are. Yet although their parents have the means, they do not give the kids every plaything they want and they say no to them all of the time. And needless to say, they never hit them and rarely slip into any kind of verbal abuse. They do, however, give themm all the educational opportunities they can afford. They buy them classes, travel, educational camps, after school activities and the like. And if the kid doesn't like it, too bad. But they like it.

The high pundit solemnly intones that the coming generation of severely fucked up kids from the heartland who will have little or no economic opportunity better than joining the marines will not be a happy lot as they age. Problems will ensue, particularly as they note the gap, but fail to understand its cause, between themselves and their liberal breathren in the cities.


Climate report offers bleak outlook


I walked into a supermarket with a local environmentalist I was interviewing. She writes a weekly column for the local newspaper and is subjected to a constant stream of put-downs, eye rolls and verbal abuse. A Republican city councilman was there and called out to her, "how ya gonna save the world in here?" I just had to laugh like hell.

Over lunch, she talked about how the bees were mysteriously disappearing and encouraged me to see An Inconvenient Truth. I hope Bob Somersby isn't reading this because I fear it would give him a hemmorage. She said that she could make no headway with the locals because they all had an intense hatred of Al Gore. Why, I asked. She didn't know.

She had moved there recently and was just getting the group organized. They hadn't even named it yet. She said she was leaning towards something with Gaia in the title and asked my opinion. I said that under no circumstances should any group in these parts have the name Gaia in the title. Sounds like Olde English for gay, if you asked me. I emphasized that, to have any hope of success, they would need to get the concepts of religion, patirotism and militarism in their name. I suggested Patriotic Environmentalist Warriors for Christ and Country (acronym pronounced "puke"), She was not enthused, and was not sure whether or not to be amused.

I was serious though. The problem with people like her is that they don't really want regular people to come to their meetings. They want a nice social event with like-minded friends. They will never make any political headway like that. Change will have to come from elsewhere.

And it might. The lite beer swilling masses made a few comments about climate change. They hadn't seen the movie, and didn't really know squat, but they're pretty much to the point where they'll believe anything that is the opposite of what George Bush says. And the weather has been getting weird...

As pundit on high, I profess that it's nice that some people at least try, though fat log of good it will do them. Unless someone comes up with a full sized pickup that gets 100 miles a gallon, it will be impossible to marshall the hillbillies to support an environmental crusade. An oil crusade, however, is a real possibility. They're not bothered by their belief that we invaded Iraq for cheap gas. They're bothered by the fact that gas is not cheap.

‘Living Last Supper’ adds interpretation of Bible story

Larger venues let churches reach out to masses



It’s sunday morning at Zion Evnagelical United Church of Christ, and the Rev. Bob Walker is preaching about love and devotion, or so we're told in a front page "news" story.

With all the economic problems, social ills, stupid wars, and rotten children, along with the fact that most of the "moral majority" political types have been exposed as sex fiends, drug addicts, or just pathetic excuses for human beings in general, it's not surprising that a lot of people would be searching for a way out of the mess and that preachers with collection plates would be there with some easy answers. I did find it a bit surprising, however, to see how much the newspapers have gotten on the bandwagon. There is a religion section of the paper that pretty much functions as free advertising for various churches and it seems at least one pro-Christian article is on the front page every day. The new license plate prominently features "In God we Trust and an American Flag. Most of the kids that cut themselves, I'm told, are Christians.


Kurt Vonnegut Dies


I haven't said anything The editorial pages because they have no influence whatsoever. Still, it's interesting to see what kind of momentous issues the journalistic elite and the ten or twelve people who read them are using to stroke their mighty brains and weighty consciences. On this particular day, they are concerned about the gagging of David Hicks. Hicks is the Australian gentleman who was the first terrorist to be convicted by an American military tribunal. For his terrible crimes against humanity, he was sentenced to nine months in prison, plus time served, in Australia. The only caveat was that he would be imprisoned for much longer if he accused the U.S. of torturing him during the five years we tortured him at Guantanamo.

Although no one reads that kind of shit, it is still instructive, because if they did, they would see that it was shit. How do we know that he was tortured? Easy, because the United States made him sign an affadavid agreeing not to accuse us of torturing him. Who do they think they fool with that nonsense? How stupid do they think we are? Pretty damn stupid, that's how.

So there you have it. A detailed rendering of the souls of the little people of the heartland, the people behind the headlines by the punditry on high. The Republicans are fucked. Now that you know, please go on about your business. Nothing to see here. Nothing you can do about it.

No fly for you

Via Atrios, this article provides more anecdotal evidence that the government is using the No Fly List to torment its critics. Having gone to a peace march, for example, may be the most common clue to why someone is singled out to be harassed at airports.

You might think that more people – people like our elected representatives, the fucking Democrats if nobody else, or even those running for office, not to mention the media, or even the man on the street halfway through his case of Busch Lite or the soccer mom cheering the little tykes from the sideline, pretty much everyone that might someday voice an opinion of any kind on any subject – would be upset that the government puts peace activists and other advocates of non-violence on terrorist watch lists. If this kind of thing can happen to the least violence-prone among us, imagine what will happen when government sponsored petty retribution gets totally out of line. Making snide comments about the price of gas? No fly for you. Wish that kid you liked didn’t get tricked into enlisting? Upset that he got fucked up? Died? No fly for you. Have you seen An Inconvenient Truth? Grounded, sucker.

Ah, but you are not a peace marcher. Frankly, I’m not either. And I don’t drive. The price of gas doesn’t even affect me. And no one I know is in Iraq. Seriously, nobody that’s anybody to me has died in our wars. And I’d sooner drill a hole in my head than pay $10 to see a slideshow about science. Trust me, I’m not in any danger of being put on the No Fly List because I like to watch Al Gore. So it’s really not my problem.

I’m not even sure they go far enough. So many more people die from car bombs than airplane hijackings. Wouldn’t it make a whole hell of a lot more sense to have a No Drive List? Of course it would. And suicide bombers wear vests. Shouldn’t we have a no vest list? And terrorists carry guns and use ammunition to construct bombs. Shouldn’t there be a no guns and ammo list?

Ha ha, just kidding. A no guns and ammo list? Sorry, that’s just crazy. Anyone who suggest it should be put on the No Fly List, and maybe even the No Drive List, if they haven't been already. It’s all well and good that the government harasses old ladies for peace, but the constitution guarantees all men, even suspected terrorists, the right to own guns. I'm not going to to live in some future where they say that first they came for the terrorist's gun, but I wasn't a terrorist...

So you see? Old chuckling has no dog in this fight. They can put anyone on the No Fly List, as long as it's not me. As long as it's not me, I just laugh like hell.

See how those who actually advocate armed resistance to the American government, those who are actively stocking up on weapons for just such an occassion, those who like the communists of old are openly joining the army, serving in Iraq, in order to gain experience for the coming struggle – people whose movement has already fostered domestic terrorism from the assasins of doctors to Olympics bombers to mass murderers like those who killed hundreds at the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City – how these heavily armed anti-government wackos are considered less of a threat to the government they hate than people advocating non-violence and popular participation in the American constitutional system of government. You just gotta laugh like hell.

The punchline, of course, is that the war protesters and those who take their democratic responsiblilties seriously and make informed, moral choices when they vote are not a threat to national security. They may be, however, a threat to the national security establishment, which is what it's all about. And that's what's really funny. They are no more of a threat to the national security establishment than they are to hijack an airplane. People who advocate non-violence have zero influence on national policy and they are not going to hijack any airplanes.

The second amendment guarantees the right of terrorists to purchase assault rifles without a background check. The rest of the constitution may be nothing more than a relatively coarse brand of toilet paper, but the second amendment rules. The skys would be safer if everyone carried guns. Everyone but peace activists that is.

And even though the idea that an NRA member would hijack an airplane or commit an act of violence is only exponentially more likely than the people with children, families, and a strong place in the community who advocate non-violence, we have to ask ourselves who the fuck hijacks airlplanes anyway? It’s not something that happens every day. Is there even one a year? Even the 9/11 hijackers flew a lot and didn’t usually hijack their airplanes. The odds of it happening on any one flight, even if Mohammet Atta is on it, are subatomically slim.

Of course the big joke would be if what goes around comes around. Regimes change but tradition based on principle has a longer shelf life. If the tradition is that government harasses its critics based on the principle that they can, then payback could be hell. Wouldn’t it be fun to put every member of the National Rifle Association on the No Fly List? What about the anti-abortionists? And prominent Christians? Fuck, let's include taxidermists. No fly for you, suckers. Maybe you can rent a car? Ha ha. Maybe not.

But although revenge can be a powerful motivator when it comes to trashing our constitution and way of life, I don’t think that fully explains why no one (with the possible exception of the victims) cares about the fact that 100’s of thousands of innocent people are being harassed by the government for no good reason. We really should look into it, appoint a bi-partisan commission or something. But hey, look over there, nappy-headed ho’s. And Sanjaya. What’s up with that? And the price of gas? Wasn’t that supposed to get cheaper when we invaded fucking Iraq? Ooops. I didn’t say that. It was some other guy. No fly for him.

Re-creation

We left New York under a gibbous moon and journeyed far into the past. Our goal was the beginning of time, but we only managed to go back about 40 years.

It began with a drive down the BQE towards the Brooklyn Bridge at 3 am. The lights of lower Manhattan twinkle on the other side of the river. A rush of adrenaline wakes me up as I speed across the bridge and fight for position with the yellow cabs. Then I’m winding down Chambers street dodging potholes. The sidewalks are filled with junkies, prostitutes and the homeless as I near the Holland Tunnel. The whores are calling the cops out for a suck. No, sorry. That’s just Lou Reed on the cd player. This is Tribeca, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S. It looks seedy to an untrained eye, but in reality it's difficult to drive through there without running over Robert Deniro. A few beautiful people are still on the street. That’s about it.

Then New Jersey, PA and WVA. The morning wears on. O-hio, a strange land where so many people still wear their Bush/Cheney decals defiantly on their bumpers. A few, however, appear to have scraped them off.

But Ohio only takes us back to 2004, or 1984 at best. Kentucky’s on the event horizon now, just across the Ohio river. There, I have been led to believe, we can go back all the way to the beginning of time, 4000 or so years ago, when the cave-men and their pet dinosaurs walked the earth.

Sorry, to be so hokey with the tease. The story is this: I came across this article about a Creationism museum the other night. I IM’ed my daughter a few choice quotes and asked if she wanted to go. She was pysched so we decided to make a road trip out of it. The next day I got a car, loaded up the children at 3 am, and off we drove.

As I was saying in the previous post... with all the instant messaging, cell phones, and other wacky new technologies, our family communication has suffered. We sit in our small apartment – my daughter in her room listening to the iPod, my son in his room playing the GameBoy DS, me in my cave, drinking cheap beer and thinking vast and noble thoughts, and communicate by instant message when we are not 50 feet away from each other physically. It makes me yearn for an earlier time.

I think back to the sixties before we had those technologies. How did families communicate? How did they spend time together? Well, one way, perhaps the best way, was to get in the station wagon and go somewhere. Preferably somewhere far away. Being cooped up in the same car for a long day would bring us closer together then. Maybe it would bring us closer together now?

But it didn't appear to be working. We weren’t three feet apart. My daughter sat right next to me in the passenger seat and listened to her iPod. My son was just behind me playing his GameBoy. And there’s nothing like a long road ahead to get the deep thoughts thinking. After a few beers, I decided to resume work on my 13 part treatise on the films of Studio Ghibli. I had become stuck on the fact that Princess Mononoke wasn’t really about the Princess, but now I saw a way around that obstacle. I saw a grand literary prize in my future. Finishing volume XIII would be a cakewalk. What would I wear to the ceremony? Those thoughts consumed me for several hours and nearly half a case of beer.

That was great, but the trip was supposed to be more about togetherness. I wanted it to be an educational experience for the children as well. That’s why we were going to the Creationism museum.

The chuckling household is non-denominational. The kids don’t learn anything about religion at home beyond the fact that it is laughable. Of course they go to a progressive private school where they study the bible, but I wanted them to learn about the real Christianity, not the one you read about in some old book. And it’s not enough that they intellectually know that it is laughable. They need to laugh at it themselves, to witness its irrational senselessness at the apogee of its glory, to feel it in the gut. And what better place to laugh at religion than a Creationism museum? And in Kentucky no less.

I was a child in the sixties and my parents were young and liberal. They paid lip service to the ideas of racial and ethnic equality and I was taught not to discriminate based on the color of a person’s skin or where they were born. The only exception to those fine ideals concerned Kentuckians. It’s sad and I am embarrassed to share this, but it’s true. I, and everyone else in my neck of the woods, was raised to disrespect people from Kentucky.

I don’t guess you could call it racism. Kentuckians weren’t really considered a different race. They were more of a sub-species, like monkeys only not quite as cultured. Sorry, it’s hard to break the ways of our upbringing. They were portrayed as an ethnic group, one like any other in which inbred stupidity and cowardice are the norm. These days we call them Republicans or conservative Christians, but back then they were just plain old Kentuckian dumb fucks. But now I realize that was wrong, that Kentuckians are just as good as anyone else and I vowed not to raise my own children with any of the those horrible prejudices.

Still, even though I have pulled free of my anti-Kentuckian roots, I have to confess that I got a bit of a snicker from the fact that the Creation Museum with its dinosaurs on Noah’s ark is located in Kentucky. Unfortunately however, the joke was on me. The article failed to mention the very important fact that the museum was not yet open and I hadn’t done any other research. When we pulled up at the gates I learned that the Creation Museum not open for another two months.

That was a bit of a blow, I admit, and the teenaged one was, as you can imagine, cruel, but we are a resilient people and I would have to make the best of it.

The plan had been to camp near the museum and spend several days there, but now there was no plan. I drove aimlessly, scanning the horizon for a sign. And it was a sign I saw, in the form of a giant inflatable bottle of Jack Daniels. What the fuck is the matter with these people, I thought. If there is one good thing you can say about Kentucky, it is that they make some damn fine whiskey. Why, in the land of Jim Beam Black, is there a giant bottle of Tennessee whiskey making eyesore of the skyline?

I stopped in to investigate and bought a bottle of Ezra Brooks to help me ponder these things. That’s just whut people like, said the cashier. Just whut people like. Just whut people like. God, fuck, people. Whut they like? This trip was going south. Whut was I going to do? I drove in circles around the giant bottle of Jack Daniels thinking, thinking. Going south, I thought. The trip is going south, so maybe we should go south. That was it. That was the ticket. We got back on the interstate and headed south. Soon we came to Louisville.

I’ve passed through Louisville many times but never learned much of anything about it. On the positive side I knew that both Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Ames, two writers who revolutionized the practice of journalism, came from there. It may seem counter-intuitive that cultured, creative people could come from such a place, but it’s really not so surprising. Talented people stuck in these hellholes just want to get out and the struggle fucks them up. They come out twisted in their own particular ways. I also know that Cassius Clay was from there, though I never quite saw what made him such a hero. I guess anyone that stood up against Vietnam and went to prison for it, especially someone with so much to lose, is deserving of respect, but if there is justice in this world, he may rot in hell for what he did to the English language.

Anyhow, Louisville's Main Street proved to be an artsy little mile. We saw galleries, museums, expensive gift shops, bars and trendy restaurants. We parked and walked around. They had commissioned a lot of art for the sidewalks. We passed various sculptures, a cool bike rack, that kind of thing. My teenage daughter made snide comments about how out-dated my anti-Kentuckian snobism. This place was cool and up-to-date, unlike some people she knew.

It also seemed that there was a vintage car revival going on. We saw several from the sixties, including a very cool Ford Fairlane station wagon that had been restored and painted. Funny how what must have been the un-coolest car of the entire sixties looked so cool now. And there were a couple of guys, not a couple, just different guys, and I don’t even think they were gay, in different locations who were wearing tight fitting gym shorts and t-shirts like John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. What was up with that? I was forced to ponder. But that was not all.

We also noticed that Louisville was also doing the Kentucky version of New York’s painted cow thing from just a few years past. We saw decorative race horses at various points throughout the city.
‘
And soon we noticed that it was only 5 o’clock on a beautiful spring Saturday and almost all of those fancy art galleries, gift shops and museums were closed. My son, who is only eight, speculated that it must be a very Jewish city, but my daughter became increasingly angry and began composing Kentuckian jokes of her own. Why do all the shops in Kentucky close before five? So the yokels can get home in time to have sex with their siblings. It was obvious that my lessons against anti-Kentuckinan discrimination had failed, but I confess that I felt a shameful kind of pride. Where I’m from it's a big occasion when a child made its first Kentuckian joke. Sadly, we’re never as far away from our roots as we’d like to think.

But I made a game face. You have to be positive, I said. Think of it as time travel. Traveling to Kentucky is like going back in time forty years. It’s still the sixties here. Of course everything closes as five. But when you’re old and want to revisit your youth, all you have to do is come to Kentucky. They’ll be wearing the same fashion and listening to the same music then as you do now. They'll even be driving the same cars. And wearing the same underwear.

Unfortunately, by that time I wasn’t making much sense. I had drank way too much whiskey and was driving erratically. The only logical thing to do at that point was to get off of the street so I drove faster and took the sidewalk. Before going half a block, I ran over one of those god damned fake New York cows, a rainbow-colored horse and jockey. The damned thing was staring at me across my crumpled hood. I backed up, confused. Fucking Kentuckian horseboy, I yelled and ran over it again.

Umm dad, said my daughter, here come the police. Fucking John Law, I thought, just won’t leave me alone. Still, seeing the lights and hearing the siren sobered me up a bit. I spun around, raced down the street, up the on-ramp to the interstate and headed for the state line as fast as the little car would take me. But two sets of flashing blue lights were gaining on me in the rear view. One was right on my ass.

You may think that I am writing this from my jail cell, but it wasn’t all that difficult to outwit the Kentucky state police and escape across the river. When I came to the last exit ramp before the bridge, I turned on my right turn signal and slowed down as if I were going to exit. At the last second, I gunned it forward. The cop, unable to react in time, took the exit.

That was easy, but the second cop car took its place on my ass. No exits remained. We were on the bridge. I didn’t know how I was going to lose him. It was a conundrum.

Then I thought, what the hell, it’s worth a try. I flipped on the right turn signal and slowed down as though I were going to exit. The cop was totally fooled and drove right off the bridge and his car exploded into a giant fireball when it hit the water.

Nevertheless, our bad experiences in Kentucky taught us a lot about inclusiveness and I think the whole family came away more open minded. And next time we will visit the Creation Museum.