That is what I was saying

I have always hated the way those students park large black pickup trucks across the sidewalk on Buchanan. I have never understood why it was ok to leave trash out beginning on Sunday morning, when pickup day is Thursday. And how is it appropriate to leave a couch you no longer want in the street, or hung up in some creeky tree branches?

Kvetch...Kvetch...Kvetch.

But no! I feel sooooooo validated. Yes! This week has been great. My personal peeve, the Duke students who leave trash all over our neighborhood, are now the subject of national disdain.

Just check out the story in the Voice of Authority.

You will also see links to the four other stories online this week about our neighborhood.

That is our neighborhood -- Trinity Park. I wish the Times would get it straight. This not a seedy run down neighborhood. At least, except for the part full of BMW's and SUV's with New York and Florida plates.

We have had this problem for a long time. Last year, it was the affair de baby oil. So while we do not know if the charges are true, now at least the whole world will shine its light on the habits of these undergrads.

Of course it is tragic that the light comes only because someone has been hurt. It stirs up a lot of other anger.

The additional point that I want to make with this blog, though, is the degree to which it is absolutely undue and thrilling to have your long term seething pet peeve turn into national news.

Titular implications

Language matters. Not to sound like Allan Bloom, because what bothers me has nothing with the cultural implications.

The catalog from a Christian bookseller in Tennessee does not sell Bibles. It sells "biblical solutions."

Time for playing in the dirt

This is the time of the year for resurrecting some great past times.

Baseball will soon return. I admit that I care. I am not alone. Kathy likes baseball. John is going to like baseball. I believe that baseball fans should be loyal. If your team won the World Series in 1985, no amount of misery should be reason to make you change your mind.

Gardening is here, too. Ever seen an aqualegia? How about a really great astible? Maybe you settle for a hosta.

I think hosta lovers are probably like Yankees fans. Everyone doesn't have to like hostas. You know, Cardinals fans are a bit like pussy willows. I built a four foot by eight foot planter in my front yard. Right now, it looks like an unfinished tomb. I suppose the neighbors are chuckling. But they are just cutting their liropi, right?

While we are at it, no one has to plant another azalea, either.

Peter Sellers starred in a movie about gardening and politics. The two are a lot alike, on a very simple level. That was his device for humor.

Dan Nicholas Park

John sits perched upon my shoulders. He pulls my hair. He puts a finger in my left ear. He leans hard into my neck. He wants to grab a wooden automobile on the table below us, in line at Hurley Station in Dan Nicholas Park. We, as well as about 2000 other people, are waiting in line in Rowan County, North Carolina.

"You inhale, you pay," says the sign next to the kazoos for sale. I will have to resist.

I pay for two tickets. But that is the line for buying tickets. There is another line for getting on to the train.

I like democracy. Everyone does, right?

Waiting in line represents the implementation of the democratic ideal. First come, first served. That's the only rule. No matter how much the richest banker might derive more utility (as an economist would say) from free time, that banker has to wait in line behind the guy with three tattoos.

I see plenty of free speech in line, emblazoned on the t-shirts of my fellow line waiters.
"I love Rock 92."
"Don't drive your truck when U are Jacked Up!"
"It's Bubba Time"
The antidote to all of this democracy: a strong cup of British tea.
But I realize, as I walk through a knoll littered with screaming children and smoking parents, there is a difference between these people and myself.
They are Republicans. Or, more than 70 percent of the people in this county voted Republican. The only ward that votes for Democrats is the one downtown -- where Elizabeth Dole grew up. Out here, in the country, its full of anti-tax voters. My county, with the geneticists on the left and the pharmaceutical salesman across the street - that is where you get people who cannot say no to a bond referendum.

Enough demos.

hungry bachelors say no to yogurt

I can see spring on my walk home from work. People are outside. Kids push bicycles on sidewalks. Daffodils push through the soil. The sun heats the earth. The earth smells damp. Not withstanding all of this life, I feel so tired from staring at rows of cells. But the walk helps.

The process of mourning continues. Susie has been staying in Salisbury for the past week. Having all of the 911 urban gang in Salisbury changes things. Our home is silent. I get the mail, but I can't think of why to stick around in an empty house.

People who know me will perhaps recognize a lack of domestic skills in my background. Or maybe, they might say I have an imperative for entropy.

I have tried the sa-cha chicken, the hunan chicken, and the kung pao chicken at the Hunan Gourmet. The Hunan Gourmet holds a spot between the Nationwide Insurance and the Boston Chicken in the adjunct wing of the Northgate Mall. These storefronts are engines for entrepreneurs.

What strikes me about the Hunan Gourmet is the clientele. It's a men's club. There is a fifty something guy eating in the aisle on the other side of me. There's a thirty something guy across from me. Instead of saying "open", the sign out front should say "hungry bachelor kitchen." It's a pathetic sight.

"Women would stay at home and eat yogurt," says my sister in law.

A box of puppies

RBC Centura has a new advertisement. The ad shows still lifes of things that cost something, even though they are free. A box of puppies. Chocolate on your pillow in a motel room.

Then it has some other still lifes that don't make any sense at all: blocks of cheese laid out for sample consumption at a grocery store. What does that cost? Chiclets. Hmmm.

The ad borrows from the cool blue hues, created by natural morning light, that characterized many pictures in DoubleTake. That was a hip magazine that had its day in the mid to late 90s.

I couldn't enjoy those kind of pictures when they were in DoubleTake. Somehow, it strikes me differently in video. I do not know why.

Rosie crawls

Rosie scaled the quarter length stairwell between Rose's downstairs living room and her upstairs sitting room on Saturday. You can see the focus in her eyes. Rosie takes the cautious path. She grasped the stair rail and stood up. She shifts her weight forward. Then removes her outside hand and finds a place on the next tier. There is no risk, no climbing with feet and hands all at once. How different than her brother.

About Edward Post, 1921-2006

I walked out of Memorial Hall with Erik and Mani after hearing Joan Didion give a reading on the first year of her life after the passing of her husband. Didion's experiences became the contents of The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir that the New York Times characterized as one of the ten most memorable books of 2005.

It gave me a lot to think about.

"I felt grief in waves,' she read. She described a kind of grief that comes and goes, that constrict ed her throat and sates hunger.

I thought about that as we walked in the early spring air. Upon departing, I opened up my cell phone to call Susie. Susie took off for Salisbury after lunch to spend the day with her father.

She answered without a greeting. "I think he is gone," were her only words.

Susie cried. I told her that she loved him and he knew it. She cried some more. Then I heard commotion in the background. Susie hung up. Eddie died before he arrived at Rowan Regional Hospital.
--

I am rocking on a porch swing out back of 125 E. Corriher. There is a foos ball table and a ping pong board on the deck. Eddie made the deck treated wood. He carved a spot in the wood to give a spot for a large tree. Now that tree holds grilling tools.

The early evening light casts a blue light on the dark shadows. Andrew Eton interviews Rose, Jonny, Phyllis, Susie and David. The room glows in yellow warmth. Pictures of two Pliskens stare directly out through the glass of the sliding doors.

It is not my place to suggest the interpretation of his life for his funeral. But if I had the opportunity, I would say that his legacy comes from his ability to teach, and to teach with love. Eddie had a lot of loves. He loved tennis, skiing, and bridge. The games near me are further testimony of his search for avocation.

I remember our last conversation. Eddie was lying in bed. Eddie spent most of every day of his last months in bed. We made a bet. Forty cents -- I pick any four teams, he gets the rest, for the winner of the NCAA tournament.

He played a lot. He always said "bend your knees."

He ran Zimmerman's Department Store. He had several storefronts in downtown Salisbury, as well as branches in a few other communities.

"If someone wants to see one pair of shoes," he said, "don't bring back fewer than three pairs."

You can see the results in his family. It is not just that they all play tennis well. Although they do all play it well. Today Jonny played racquetball. His comment about the game was that he let a player who was equal in skill to him win the match. That is not normal for Jonny. Normally, Jonny works hard enough to win that match.

People never really cease to exist if they remain alive in the minds of others. I'll take Duke, UConn, George Washington, and West Virginia. You can have the rest. Have a tic-tac, while you are at it.

Joan Didion makes a peanut butter sandwich

A ray of hunger rankled my stomach. Hunger evokes an imperative of inner unrest sobering my mind. I open the door to cabinet in my apartment kitchenette. The door squeaks. Like my stomach. And I begin to scan for what some might term a solution, or a quick fix, or whatever pastile might answer my ailment. I read that food is medicine. I read that the first thing a sick person wants is a bowl of soup. When I was interviewing people in California about their childhoods, without fail, each one associated their past with food.

I think to myself that a lesser god in a lower celestial invented peanut butter. I plough my plate knife through lead clouds.

Wonder.Bread. Together, the words form less than the parts. Alpha and Omega, God and Mammon, Wonder and Bread. I read that children cannot recognize the taste of peanuts without the cue of the white spongy milled grain accompanying it across their palate for some many years. The bread absorbs the oils. Once cut, the bread seals at the edge.

These peanuts come from Georgia. The bread comes from mills in Minnesota. Did Carter and Mondale personify a sandwich?

The end is near

John made us proud this morning. I will write as opaquely as possible, but let's just say that he made the Giant Step. No more diapers.

I was on the phone with Susie to hear a report on the details:

"You are going to be so proud of John," she says. "He has a Big Announcement. John, tell us what you did..."

John stands up. He is ready to grab the phone. Like the rest of us, he walks while he talks. But first, he points at his product. Whereupon, he drops his matchbox car into the pot.

"Hold on," Susie says."
"Oh no! Oh no..." line goes dead.

What I have since learned is that a series of accidents followed. John picked up his car. Susie grabbed the car with a wipe. The wipe and the car went away. But Samson picked up a wipe from the pot. He dropped it on the floor. I think it spiraled from there.

-----
Did you ever go to a dinner party that turned into eight people listening to one person provide their medical narrative?

Mennonites strike oil

What a just world it would be, if only Mennonites discovered oil more frequently. That is what happened over the weekend, though. Imagine how differently our political allegiances would shift. Instead of overlooking fundamentalist beheadings, we would be straining to demonstrate how to live simply.

----

Susie was going over some of the portraits made by Annie Liebovitz. Some thoughts:
Her portraits show beautiful celebrities, but they also show their humanity. Carly Simon has a bruise on her leg in her portrait with James Taylor. Robert Penn Warren's chest sags. Linda Rondstadt, caught in an unglamourous moment in her California home, is less a star than just one of us. In fact, the relative absence of flaws in the appearance of Calvin Klein seems to reflect some shortage of character.
She spent a lot of time developing picture ideas. She conceived elaborate photo costumes for Mariel Hemingway, Whoopi Goldberg and Bette Midler.

Interdependent

Susie and I watched Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore on Friday. This is a 1972 movie starring Ellen Burstyn, Kris Kristofferson, and Harvey Keitel. I don't want to write about the movie or its significance or its stars, but instead to think about some passing reactions to seeing a film in a distinctly different time.
First, maybe it was the sun soaked views of a far more empty American West or the highly saturated film stocks shot for interiors in the movie -- I don't know what specifically, but images can evoke memories like few other things. I suppose the important aspect of the film is the landscape shots of their small station wagon wandering across a limitless horizon. The image is of small people in a world that seems very big.
People make fun of the 70s. Mainly, that fun pokes at clothes or music or other fashions. Alice, the character whose name makes up the subject for the title, wears clothes that would fit better with a little lycra and drinks beer from cans with peel-top lids.
But say what you will, the 70s had a lot going for it. After the chill of Silent Springand the OPEC embargo, people really shared a sense that they could do something about this big world, if they just got together and did something about it. And they did. They got together and did some things. You can see it in the laws they passed - like the Environmental Protection Act or the creation of a Department of Energy. You can see it in the President they chose -- Carter -- Or, you can see it in the light filled landscape sensitive housing that was popular back then.
It wasn't all great -- I think Generation Y will best them for public service and certainly people coming of age in the 70s consumed some products that are best left not emulated.
Thirty four years later, Alice and her son have finished their journey. We have, too. The world is no longer limitless. In fact, every day it feels as if it is growing smaller. You can choose to forget about it, wall up in an SUV and turn on your IPod, but can you really run from bird flu or President Bush's surveillance? Nope! Globalization and its partner, digitalization, are the things that define this decade.

Rosie stands!

Rosie stood. She released her arms from a nearby rail and held a standing position. It was for the first time Monday, February 13th.

She kept her balance for almost 30 seconds, so this is something that she's been ready to do for a while, apparently.

She does not bend her knees. They are stiff. She lifts her arms up high. She wavers between elated and terrified. Then she claps and smiles.

These pages will hopefully have art to come of the moment. It was recorded.

Rain on Diane

Why doesn't it just turn to snow? It must be 38 degrees and drizzling today. My least favorite kind of weather. Today we need to get out. How and where? How about Hecht's!

Good weather for bean soup. Good weather for chai.

Today would be a good day to go to a matinee on Connecticut Avenue.

Diane Arbus probably liked rainy days. She was that kind of person. You might see Diane at a county fair, but you had better hope that she did not want to take your picture. I can hear it now, "your momma's so...., Diane Arbus took her picture."

We have one of her books. I notice that Diane Arbus didn't start taking photography classes until her late 30s, and didn't have any assignments until she was 42. She only lived into her early 50s. When MOMA put on a retrospective of her work, it was sold out in various traveling exhibitions for seven years.

She is well explained by her criticism -- "her photos are not about pushing the button," to paraphrase Hilton Kramer, "but about the human process that took place prior to the shutter's release." The human process is one way of putting it.

But I wonder what actually transpired. Her subjects don't look radiant. They don't laugh. They look like they're asking to have something repeated one more time. "What did you say, Diane?" The people in her pictures look uniformly taken aback -- as if Diane had said something that made them stop, shudder, stare, or gasp. Her pictures have little to do with where they are taken. Some of her best portraits are in hotel rooms.

Clif Edom would not be pleased. I imagine some big crossed arms on Clif. That's how Diane would photograph Clif. Looking unsatisfied.

Super Bowl Sunday

Super Bowl Sunday is poorly named. Maybe Super Big Blowhard Deal Sunday. Or maybe, Not My Kansas City Team again the year Sunday. Or maybe, What Patriotic Theme can we Adopt to Sell Beer and Gas Guzzling SUVs with Sunday.

But if you had to explain it to a person from the community formerly known as the Bruderhof, how would you describe it? (It deserves better than those descriptions.) And the hype needs to be explained as well. I have tried today to make a case for how this event is some kind of thing that unites us, that we all have in common, at a time when we are otherwise fragmented as a society. Also, that the advertisements are great.

What was Super today?

• roly polies down the hill at Overton School.
• Annie's apple crisp
• Getting an A1 Sunday article in the Salisbury Post on CRA-NC
• new pictures of Rosie
• Dark Beer Advertisement: players playing pickup football the way that drink their beer; darkly.
• Sharpie click-pen Advertisement with Captain Hook.

Was your day Super?

First Words

Rosie uttered her first words yesterday. I know what you are thinging -- but yesterday was Groundhog Day! True. On the same day that Punxsatawney Phil called for six more weeks of winter, Rosie said "MaMa."

Now, I was hoping for a different outcome, but the result is promising and encouraging. Also she is up to just south of 15 pounds. She crawls everywhere.

Now that Susie is teaching at Duke, Rosie has a lot to say whenever she's left in the room with Kathy or myself. Most of it is not positive. Rosie loves peas. Also, Rosie can make her way through a lot of cheerios, even ones filled with cream cheese.

the trajectory of organizing

Did you ever notice: organizing communities matches with the trajectory of documentary photography. Maybe you have noticed that, but people like the organizer Reuben Warshovsky in Norma Rae are a lot like W. Eugene Smith or Eugene Richards. They spend a lot of time in people's living rooms, sharing afternoons with people on their owns terms as they gain the trust needed to ply their craft. I think that Robert Coles is one of the people who manages to straddle the top of two careers, and those careers happen to be the fields of organizing and documentarianism. Then again, before Richards was a photographer, he was a VISTA worker in the Arkansas Delta region.

Samson Doggie

Big Heads

"You will notice," Jenny said, "that the serval differs from the caracal by the head size. Head size is a good indicator of where a carnivore stands in the food chain -- either in terms of being a predator, or being prey."

Rain had already drenched my leather coat. This was surely the worst kind of weather -- 35 degrees and very wet. Why not snow? But no matter, I was feeling confirmed. Because, you see, Jenny, a tour guide at the Carnivore Preservation Trust, confirmed an existing theory of mine: that big heads matter. Big heads are not random. Big Heads are as much a blessing for their possessors as are those with height or with beautiful faces. You can pretend that they do not influence human perception. Your head is in the sand. In reality, people respond to them.

My favorite set of big heads are those people most like predators in human zoology -- corporate executives. I can think of very few CEOs with small heads. I spend a lot of time looking at 10-Ks. All of those pictures of Ken Lewis, of Sanford Weill, of Richard Kovaciech -- those are some big heads.

Even politicians have big heads. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Lyndon Johnson -- some large brains. The club is not exclusive to women. Margaret Thatcher. Nevertheless, neither W nor some of his cabinet members (Michael Chertoff) have large brains. But look at the heads on Cheney and Rumsfeld!

Actually, a place where small heads seem to do alright is professional sports. But sports differ from most things in the extent to which they put people in level playing fields. Perceptions matter less in basketball. What matters is speed and agility.

Of the three greatest basketball players of my generation (Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan), only Magic had a big cranium. In baseball, head size is possibly altered by the presence of steroids. Barry Bonds has a huge skull. But it grew as he got older, and that growth is one of the things that makes people think he took performance enhancing drugs.

It is not that a big head makes you more threatening. Only that a big head gives a person some kind of unsaid edge. Its a matter of perception.