Pete 'n Lo's binding legal contract of bliss

Hell (not a Yell) in my Hair

2008-11-15T12:30:00.005-07:00

Lola and I are gearing up for a rough block of teaching and dealing with lots of minor emergencies. Today, my preparations for this and other notable events brought me into contact with what may be a Spanish neologism. At the end of my haircut at the Durango barbershop on Fillmore, the stylist, a Mexican-born woman in her late fifties, asked me, "¿Quiere que le ponga gel en el cabello?" For a moment, I didn't understand her, and when I realized what she was saying it just struck me funny. Research has brought me into contact with such borrowings as "colcré" in the Spanish-language press of the early twentieth century, but I haven't seen this one. My hypothesis is that this term has entered the Spanish language through the circulation of beauty products with English-language labels (hence its rendering as "gel" rather than "yel". I would guess that it makes sense to speakers who have the word "gelatina" already. Whether "gel" is replacing words like "pomada," or whether its use extends beyond hair care professionals is unclear. The image here is from the TAT foundation.

2008-10-23T20:46:00.003-06:00

We just received this notice from Sananto Cultural Arts. Manny Castillo, the Executive Director, has just undergone surgery for cancer. Here is the notice from Sananto.

October 21, 2008
Dear Friends & Supporters of San Anto Cultural Arts:

As most of you know by now our Executive Director, Manuel “Manny” Castillo, was recently diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery yesterday morning. His immune system is healthy and he is recovering well. The doctors are restricting visitors for at least a couple of days while Manny recuperates from his surgery. The latest conversation with Manny’s immediate family was that Manny is in excellent spirits and ready to take on the fight of his life. The doctor’s prognosis is good and we ask everyone to maintain positive thoughts for Manny and to please keep him in your prayers daily. The Board of Directors and Staff have come together to make sure we maintain programming levels that Manny would expect us to continue in his absence. If anyone wishes to send cards or letters of encouragement we request that you send them to San Anto Cultural Arts located at 1300 Chihuahua Street, San Antonio, TX 78207 and we will make sure Manny receives them. Should you desire any further information we request you speak with Heather Eichling, Development Coordinator and she can be reached at (210) 226-7466. On behalf of the board of directors and staff of San Anto Cultural Arts, we thank you for all your calls and gestures of support during these times and we ask you to please continue to keep Manny in your prayers.
Sincere thanks,
San Anto Cultural Arts’ Board of Directors and Staff

I first met Manuel back in '93 when he was working alongside Mennonite volunteer friends of mine at Inner City Development by day and playing with a punk band called "El Santo" by night. Over the years, he has shaped Sananto cultural arts into a truly grassroots, service oriented arts organization. Sananto works intensively with youth from the West Side and has filled a niche that I suspect some didn't even know needed filling when the organization started. Let's all keep Manuel in our thoughts and send gestures of support as outlined above.

Where to Eat in ABQ during ASA

2008-10-15T09:48:00.004-06:00

OK, folks, time for the shamelss family plug department. We wish we could go to ASA this weekend in 'burque, but it's just not going to happen. For those of you who are going, we hope you'll check out Cafe Green. You may recall our earlier post about cousin Camille and Kyle's wedding. They trained in Aspen as chefs and really seem to be making a good go of this restaurant, which they recently acquired and re-opened. As we've watched the stock market on its roller-coaster ride and watched Bush try to scare us all into accepting his bailout plan, we've been praying they can ride out the storm with their new business intact. What do the reviewers say about Cafe Green? Here' s a particularly eloquent one.

Yummy!!!

By babsormom, 11/04/06

For th best food around, no doubt this is the place!

Hey, you know babsormom can't be wrong. Go get some truffle fries. You deserve them. Cafe Green is at 319 5th Street SW, at the corner of 5th Street SW and Silver (map).

Breaking Tomato News

2008-10-02T17:32:00.011-06:00

After my last post on tomatoes, I got merciless about picking flowers off the plants, hoping that this would push them to put their energy into ripening existing fruit. That effort appears to have paid off, with help from some unseasonably warm weather. Here on the left is a mixture of tomatoes from the volunteers and some from the plants we bought. I have no idea where the seed for the yellow ones came from. This is stuff that has been ripening inside for about a week.

Today, I picked a bunch more. Here (right) is what came off the volunteers today.

And then below, in the black bowl, is what came off the commercially started cherry tomato plants today. So far, there is one tomato on the Pennsylvania heirloom plants that is starting to turn orange, but the rest are mostly green. Finally, there are three volunteer butternut squash (below left). Tomorrow we have dinner with a colleague of Lola's, and we'll be using some of our harvest in a pasta salad.

Today, the man who put new gutters on the house came to do the same to the garage. When I saw him out back, he asked what I had done to make the tomato plants grow so large. "Those bad boys are goin' crazy," he said. We ended up talking for a bit about gardening. As a gutter-installer, you see a lot of yards, and our man says we have some of the best tomato plants around.

REPORT ALL LIBERAL PROFESSORS

2008-09-27T09:56:00.002-06:00

Yesterday at the Chemo Lounge, I picked up the local paper only to find the letters to the editor dominated by angry responses to the letter by a new faculty member in Ethnic Studies at UCCS.

GENDER AND RACE
Professor says Palin gets pass for being white
Despite several commentators' assertions to the contrary, Sarah Palin's candidacy has virtually nothing to do with valuing women's lives since she holds women and children in such low regard. In the case of Palin, we see a candidate who says that she believes in children's rights and yet is carrying her infant around as if the child were some kind of trophy. Disability rights activists are, understandably furious to see the way the infant is being used as some kind of poster child even as Palin has no history of supporting social services, education and quality of life resources for people with disabilities. The media frenzy that is flittered around Palin has also failed to address the many ways that her white privilege has made her candidacy possible. Only someone white could get away with having such shockingly thin credentials when it comes to the economy and world policy. It is both cynical and frightening that the Republican Party is using her gender as an excuse to promote a person who is so poorly prepared for the job. It is another case of white affirmative action with a gender twist. It has been a long time since I have seen so many women in my life so upset (perhaps not since the Anita Hill hearings when Hill's veracity, character and honesty were all miserably disrespected).

While Anita Hill had all of the credentials and job experience she should have needed to be taken seriously, Palin has virtually none. The racial discrepancies in how the two were treated are palpable.

Sarah Palin's nomination is certainly not a step forward for women. It is not even a step back. It is a step down into low-level thinking and sarcastic posturing. It is an insult to the principled life that Senator Clinton has lived on behalf of women and children. The public is already seeing through the post-nomination frenzy and is now recognizing that biology is not destiny. Principles are not genetically determined. Life affirming principles come from social movements and working for justice. We are moving way beyond silly talk about lipstick and square eyeglasses. This election must be taken beyond the confines of white snow and retro politics.

A friend at UCCS has told me that the Campus Republicans there are up in arms about this letter and have posted fliers around campus calling on students to report all liberal professors, presumably if those liberal professors say "liberal" things in the classroom. Reminds me of the Young Conservatives of Texas in the 90s. What does it mean when kids are willing to work so hard to limit what they will hear and censor the free exchange of ideas for which they are supposedly paying tuition? And where are the conservative champions of free speech to condemn this "politically correct" witch hunt?

Goodbye summer....

2008-09-22T20:58:00.010-06:00

Lola and I just said goodbye to my folks, who came to visit over the weekend, and goodbye to summer on this Autumnal Equinox. Fall hasn't wasted any time getting here. On Saturday, we were sitting in the living room with the front door open when a sudden gust of wind blew clouds of yellow leaves all over the block. We hadn't even noticed they had turned. Mom and Dad came to keep us company during the first weekend of cycle 4 (of 6). Today, they returned to Clinton with a half-bushel of another fall staple--green chile--in the cooler we had borrowed from them during a visit to Kansas. We used it to transport frozen cherries back to Colorado. Now I guess we have to buy a cooler! No more mooching off the parents...

The summer and spring 2008 were strikingly cool and dry here, and the extreme weather has had drastic effects. For example, a friend of ours who is an environmental scientist says that ladybugs are rare this year, and that the aphid/ladybug interaction that usually happens on wild plants is quite muted. Other tiny predators have entered the ladybugs' niche.

For us, one of the major effects has been on tomatoes. We didn't do much with the garden last year, because the discovery of Jerry's Kids came right at a time when stuff needed to be planted. This year, I vowed we would have tomatoes and put muscle and care behind the vow. A friend who raises heirloom yellow tomatoes gave us seed, and I raised a bunch of little plants from seed and planted them back by the lilac bush. As seedlings, these tomatoes grew slowly, so I broke down and bought some cherry tomato plants from the garden store and planted them where I hoped they wouldn't cross-pollinate with the heirlooms (right--Mike-n-Ronda, note Suzie's new garage in the background). Then, something unexpected happened. In the cold frame where we had lettuce and spinach, volunteer tomatoes that I didn't pull up grew like gangbusters. I swear I did nothing to help these plants except allow them to grow and give them something to climb on when they got big enough. They appear to have come up from the compost I spread in the cold frame this past March, and they are likely to out-produce the plants I actually worked to create (below left).

I say "likely" here, because most of the tomatoes are still green. Gardeners who know this area say that everything is about three weeks behind. It won't be long before we make a panicked run on our poor tomato plants, cutting the green fruit down and letting it ripen in paper bags on the windowsill. I'll try to photograph the haul when this happens. According to the Weather Channel, we will have at least 10 days of temperatures between 40 and 80 degrees. Let's hope they're right and that frost is slow in coming!

In the meantime, we have spinach and lettuce growing under the makeshift cover I made for the cold frame out of an old box spring and some plastic. I guess Lola's "ReadyMade" magazines rubbed off on me.

From the Boda to the Baca

2008-09-05T13:42:00.004-06:00

Is it unwise to advertise that we'll be on the road? Hey burglars! Over here!

Congratulations to Lola's cousin Camille, who is getting hitched to longtime beau Kyle. The happy couple met in chef school, and now they are running a restaurant in downtown 'burque. If you want to try some lovely truffle fries, check it out if you're in town for ASA. We'll provide more details. We'll be at Lola's aunt's house Saturday for the big celebration. Why they had to get married in the middle of the Block we can't figure. Don't they know the world revolves around us?

Then we're off to the College's campus-away-from-campus in the San Luis Valley for a couple of days with Lola's students. We will be tourguides and disciplinarians for some people who are over 21, so wish us luck.

Mini-Symposium in SA

2008-08-07T16:08:00.006-06:00

Folks, I will be headed to San Antonio tomorrow night for a weekend trip. The occasion is a mini symposium at the Bihl House Gallery that will mark Adriana Garcia's first solo art exhibition. You may remember Adriana from our earlier post about her mural on Zarzamora. This month, she is exhibiting paintings based on stories told by her grandfather Rodolfo, a carpero whom I interviewed extensively. The portrait at left, which shows Mr. Garcia after he lost both feet to diabetes, should give you a sense of her aesthetic. I will join Adriana and Michaele Haynes of the Witte Museum on a panel from 2-4. Come on down! Here's the information.

Entre La Carpa/Inside the Tent continues though August 30, 2008. Gallery hours are Fridays and Saturdays, 1-4 pm. Bihl Haus Arts (www.bihlhausarts.org) is a not-for-profit contemporary art gallery located at 2803 Fredericksburg Rd., on the premises of Primrose at Monticello Park Senior Apartments, an affordable housing community. The gallery is made possible with the generous support of The Potashnik Family Foundation and Primrose. This exhibit is an official CAM event. For more information, (210) 383-9723

Adriana's folks have been kind enough to offer to host me, and I won't have a car. If at all possible, I'll try to head up to Austin to see Rachel read from her new book, Elijah's Farm. Whether you can make the reading or not, buy the book!!!

Unfortunately, I'll be leaving before the big Steve Jordan Tribute at the H&H Ballroom on the outskirts of Austin. Lola and her family and I went there to see the Latin Breed before we moved to Colorado. It's a great dance hall that serves Budweiser beer in sleek aluminum bottles. Alas, you can't do everything.

Two Years

2008-08-06T10:34:00.001-06:00

Happy Anniversary to us! We're celebrating with a nice dinner and the traditional second anniversary gifts: instant cocoa and sweatpants.

At Long Last, Los Lobos

2008-08-01T11:22:00.006-06:00

One of the hardest parts of being a graduate student in Austin was the knowledge that while other people were out making the scene, I was in my study at home cramming out papers, grading, and fretting about my dissertation. I experienced the famed nightlife of the World Capital of Live Music the way most people do: I read about it on the internet while procrastinating from the work at hand. I got used to missing shows from some of my favorite bands, and reading the rapturous reviews of these shows in the Austin Chronicle. And after a while, I developed a sense of pride in not going out; if I missed an occasional show, at least I was pursuing my degree and my passions. Furthermore, to be fair, I did on occasion get out of the house and see some memorable shows. Pixies reunion, anyone?
This sense of equanimity did not, however, extend to the feeling that destiny had permanently uncrossed my path from that of the legendary L.A. band Los Lobos . When it came to seeing them live, there always seemed to be something in the way of my making it to the show. They would come to Austin the exact same weekend that I would be away at a conference. Their tour date would converge with a pressing family obligation. They had a monster show the night before one of my major grad school deadlines. I never caught a break, and then endured happy reviews from newspapers and friends, all about how much fun the show had been. On one particularly icky occasion, Los Lobos played the Albuquerque Zoo Amphitheater on the same day that I got an injection of Adriamycin. All of my sisters were in town, and they took the kids--- Aaroncito got to go see them at the age of two. I got to stay home and watch reruns of the Ozzy Osbourne Show (btw, I really miss that show. Nothing warms my heart like the memory of Sharon Osbourne threatening John McEnroe with a "bollicking"). When it came to the number of times I just barely missed seeing them live, my heart was filled with dark, dark rue.
So when Pete asked me if I wanted to go see them at World Arena, I shouted through my lingering cough, "Yes! Kof! Kof!"
So last night, I finally finally saw Los Lobos live. Hooray!
I've been to World Arena before when it was used for Colorado College hockey. So the first funny thing I saw last night was this:

Sorry the picture is blurry. I also have to explain: this is a bar situated in the spot where the Zamboni usually emerges during hockey games. I kept glancing at it, expecting this bar to start moving around the floor of the arena, smoothing the concrete and distributing overpriced beer. A barzoni, if you will. And although I am easily amused, the quality of the entertainment definitely picked up:

and a good time was being had by all, most especially Pete and Lo:

Now, I wonder if the show in Denver tonight will be a better venue, since the start time last night (7:30 on a Thursday?) struck me as a little bizarre. Still, I'm so happy I saw them here in the Springs, because the crowd was just so awesome to look at. Every kind of Southern Colorado/ Northern New Mexico Chicano and Chicana was there. There was the guy who makes his zoot suit casual by wearing chinos instead of the pants that match the jacket. There was the woman who decided at St. Bernadette's in 1988 that a wall of hair and black lipstick made her feel beautiful and powerful, and who has never changed her look since. There were the biker dudes with rattails and t-shirts that announce them as old farts. There were adolescent girls out with their parents, wearing brand new fluorescent finery. I swear to god, I even saw Tere Avila there, running from one barzoni to another in a black micromini and knee high black leather high heel boots.
I had a blast, and I'm so happy that my Los Lobos luck has changed!

Monday Morning Pictures

2008-07-21T10:31:00.005-06:00

New Dad Enrico takes the night shift. New person Eleanor looks like a medieval pope, and also acts like one on occasion. Count me among those converted for the sake of her soul.

Ricola: Breakfast of Champions.

Panza Monologues Hit LA

2008-07-16T07:52:00.006-06:00

Congratulations to Vicki of San Antonio. A show she co-authored with Irma Mayorga is headed to LA in early August. This I discovered through the show's facebook site. Too bad Aaron ("button") can't see it. In case you were looking for the corner of Nepanzla and Panza Positive Politics in San Antonio, the site has a link to the google map! Let's hope Los Angeles treats Ms. Grise well. She deserves it. We hope the show doesn't ... uh... flop. Get it? Flop?

As for me, I'm one day away from ending my temporary temporary bachelorhood. Lola gets back late tomorrow night, and when we return from the Airport in Denver, the in-laws will be here. We will see our regular doctor and Friday and begin discussing where to go from here. Thanks in advance for your well-wishes.

Little Beauties

2008-07-04T17:33:00.014-06:00

Swallowtail Butterflies are all over the place this summer. This one let me take its picture while it dried the dew off of its wings one morning.

Lettuce in our frame. Spinach, cilantro, and dill, too.

OMG, PONIES!

These are longhorn cattle on their way to the rodeo. There's a cattle drive down Tejon street every year. This is my favorite part, when they're first on their way out of the parking lot of the hippie deli next to my work.

I'm trying to focus on the little beauties this week, since I talked to my doctor. I tried to talk to as many of you as I could before I posted this, since news from my doctors is a little upsetting.

It seems that while my friends Jerry's Kids are not growing or moving, they are awake. My bone and ct scans were as good as could be expected- in fact, the bone scan was better than any I've had in recent years. However, the PET scan showed some intense metabolic activity, which shows that my current chemo is no longer working. I have to go on a month long chemo holiday, and then start a new chemo. I'm back at square one.

You want to know something? Xanax helps.

But it also helps to have you lovely people in my life- my parents and sisters have been here, and my in-laws are here right now, watching goofy tv with me.

Also, massive longhorn butts are a cure-all for the blues!

Wanna see mine?

Blast through the burn and ride the zone!

2008-06-24T22:08:00.003-06:00

Do you remember that episode of the Simpsons, where Homer is trying to climb the Murderhorn? When he thinks that he's finally reached the top, he looks up and sees another humongous cliff to climb. D'oh!
That's what I feel like now, coming to the end of chemo 19. I thought that getting through chemo 18 would leave me with a sense of accomplishment, and that being halfway through my clinical trial would leave me on a downslope. I wanted to coast to the finish where Rainier Wolfcastle would greet me.
Instead, I'm staring into the face of more PET scans, bone scans, and CAT scans. I've got fatigue, body aches, and GERD. I despise the discipline of being an unwilling participant in the medical research world. And I've gone through three jumbo tubs of Aquaphor in the past nine months, including the one that was taken from me at the Denver airport. I guess I'm just feeling really bitchy- at once appalled by the fact that I still have a year to go, and terrified that the treatments will stop working and that I won't even make it to the next chemo.
Can I turn this bad mood around and unleash the power of apples? Check in after July 7, when I next see my doctor.

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

2008-06-11T15:34:00.005-06:00

Tiny and downy!
So pretty!
I can't wait to meet her!
See more pics here.

Hey Stranger!

2008-06-09T16:47:00.004-06:00

I'd like to shout out a huge "Congratulations!" to our friends Margarita and Enrico, who welcomed a new baby girl to their family today.
Welcome, querida Elinor Kathleen. I can't wait to meet you!
Pictures forthcoming, of course!

Home, With Tornadoes on Our Heels

2008-06-05T19:57:00.006-06:00

This isn't Lola in front of the tornado, but we came damn close today. After visiting my folks in Kansas for several days, we spent this day driving back to Colorado. Mom is recovering nicely from a knee replacement operation, and we enjoyed keeping her company. Sometimes when I go home I slip half-consciously into "adolescent" mode and leave the heavy lifting to the parental units while I lounge around. Not this time. This visit was all about being a caretaker, and Noemon will soon replace us in that capacity.

We were originally planning to return Wednesday, but we decided to stay an extra day. Little did we know we'd be driving through what weather forecasters predicted could be a "historic" storm. The one piece of good sense we displayed was leaving early in the morning after hearing that tornadoes were possible in the evening. Going West on I-70, we hit Trego County just as a line of storms was approaching. Judging from what we heard on the radio, we were about an hour's drive ahead of the storm that hit WaKeeney and Colyer.

Early press reports, suggest that not much happened in Central Kansas this afternoon other than some roof damage and a couple of circus elephants getting spooked. But you can imagine how scared we were driving through this weather. The looming front, the lightning, and the radio announcer trying to be calm all had Lo shouting, "Where the heck is my divan?" She was referring to Mom and Dad's late dog, who always stuck his nose under the couch when there was thunder.

I have always heard that if a tornado approaches and you're in your car, you should get out and lie on the ground if there's nothing else you can do. This is the closest I've been to having to do that since the big storm that hit Jarrell Texas came down IH-35 while I was driving around Austin. All I can say is we were damn lucky we didn't get our windshield smashed in by golfball-sized hail or worse today. We're glad to be home and glad we're not camping out at Wakarusa Fest. Hope the storms that are hitting northeast Kansas as I write this don't do anything but get all the concert-goers wet. Thanks to robinstorm for the image.

Steve Jordan is Ailing, the Accordion's Still Wailing

2008-05-11T12:02:00.008-06:00

Manuel of Sananto Cultural Arts has let it be known that Steve Jordan is in chemo now and needs a new liver. Manuel's message also notes that "somehow," Jordan played a concert on May at Salute, a hipster venue on the St. Mary's strip. You gotta admire the man's tenacity. Valerio Longoria played right up until the end, and it looks like Jordan's dedication to his art is just as strong. Does anybody remember the low turnout when Jordan played the Texas Union a while ago? I couldn't believe more people on campus didn't come. Those of you who are still in Texas should wish him better health and be sure to catch him again if he's able to play. In the meantime, there are bootleg videos of him on youtube. Thanks to Those Darn Accordions for the image.

People Find Me

2008-04-30T19:39:00.003-06:00

Four years of less-than-successful job searches have forced me to think hard about what I do and what it's worth. I keep cranking out the articles, but so far nobody wants to pay me to do it. And with the country and the world in the state it's in, I sometimes find myself looking back on what I've dedicated the last sixteen years of my life to and thinking, "so what?" And then I get communications like this (which I have redacted in the interest of anonymity):

I am the grandaughter of **** of the Carpa ****. I have been anxious to get my grandfather's story out for a long time, having heard tidbits here and there, but only recently have been able to get my father to open up about his family life in the Mexican circus. He is going to be 8* years old on [DATE] and I believe he realizes that a lot of cultural history will be lost with him if he doesn't get it out. Thankfully, he is relatively healthy and his brain is as sharp as a tack and he remembers things as if they happened yesterday. I read the 1984 article by Nicolas Kanellos then the web site on the Carpa Garcia which lead me to your dissertation paper which I have also read. My father knew every single person you mentioned and some you did not (for example the man who played the scooped out antifreeze cans (two of them tied together) as a violin was ****. Since your paper is so long I wondered where I could get two copies of it one for me and one for him. I want to have him read it at his leisure and get his feedback.. He still lives in ****, Texas and I live in ****. I understand that there is a new readex data system to access old newspapers (La Prensa) pertaining to mexican culture but I have not gone through them yet. My grandfather was a very big presence in the carpa **** and a formally trained musician at the University in Mexico City. He was fluent in both english and spanish when he came to Texas and wrote entire scores of music. He did fairly young exact date unknown my father was 9 to 12 years old. I think it is a little strange that he does not remember the dates but that he remembers vividly other details.. I know this is an area of interest to you and thought you might help me tell my story or give me some ideas. Thank you for your responses

That's right, I just got an e-mail from the granddaughter of a clown that everybody I interviewed in San Antonio revered. Over the years, I have gotten a steady trickle of communications like this, and even now they keep coming. Recently an oceanographer tracked me down through my dissertation advisor, looking for an article from La Prensa on a cartoonist he thought might be his uncle. I mentioned the article in the diss, and because of me he now has grainy microfilm copies of some more of his uncle's drawings. Those of you who are dissertating right now, remember that those UMI dissertations are now accessible through Google searchers. So it's not hard for people to track you down. And your work will touch somebody.

Congratulations to Chris and Katie!

2008-04-26T10:51:00.002-06:00

Katie of TSEU and her beau Chris are getting married in San Antonio this weekend in the middle of all the Fiesta revelry. We wish we could be there. Today we're transplanting heirloom tomatoes in honor of the festivities.

Good-Bye to the Seem-to-Be Players

2008-04-24T00:35:00.003-06:00

I think stories shape who we are and how we see things. Scratch the surface of any of us, and you’ll find layers of narrative underneath. For many of us, the stories that shaped us come from television or other forms of mass communication. We have grown up in a world where Muppets, comic book heroes, and plastic dolls are at least as real and immediate as the deceased relatives we met only through talk. And for many of us, the fictional characters that populate our childhood are so standardized that we can share memories with people who grew up far away from us. I’m not really different from anybody else in this regard, unless you count the fact that my childhood was shaped not only by Bert and Ernie but also by Nyphrim the Sprite and Grub the Greezledurn. And now they’re gone.

Nyphrim who? Grub who? I don’t actually know how to spell the names, but these were all characters from “The Adventures of Nyphrim the Sprite,” a fantasy-adventure serial performed by a children’s theater group in Lawrence called the Seem-to-Be Players when I was a kid. Of course, the performances I saw are by definition gone, because that's how the theater works. But I’m writing about them because after 35 years, the group is finally disbanding. Nyphrim was Genie Averill in an outfit that reminded me of Disney’s Peter Pan, and Grub was reptilian somehow, played I think by Jeff Dearinger. If I remember right, the Greezledurns were Nyphrim’s antagonists, but Grub was her friend, if not always a trustworthy one. The stories that the Seem-to-Be players brought to the stage have mostly left me. Images, rather than stories, remain—the lanky Dearninger dressed as a spider with extra arms hanging from his by threads, a turbaned Caliph who constantly announced, “I’m the Caliph!” human actors working together to become “machines.” Above all, I remember the treacherous walk up the metal staircase to the Jazzhaus, a club that still brings musicians to play in its tiny space above the downtown storefronts. The Seem-to-Be’s performed there in the mid-1970s, and every time we went to see them, I was sure I was going to fall to my death through the gaps in that staircase.

By the time I hit high school, Genie Averill was teaching theater there, and she never did give me a decent part. When I think of all the money I could have made as an actor, I curse her name. As an adult, I found my anthropological research taking me back to territory the Seem-to-Be players had covered. When I talked to Mexican American vaudevillians it was hard not to think of Ric Averill, his friends, and their schtick, although the carperos did not do Donald Duck voices. And in conversations with veteranos of Chicana/o and Mexican popular theater groups from the 1960s and 1970s, I realized that this whole thing of a group of bohemian actor types converging around a writing, performing guru wasn’t alien to my own past. The Seem-to-Be’s weren’t referentially “political” in the way Mascarones, El Teatro Campesino, or Bread and Puppets were, but they were definitely a product of the northeast Kansas White counterculture. And once I got up that shaky staircase, I had a chance to absorb what was vital, noble, and creative in that counterculture. I’d like to think it’s still with me. The Seem-to-Be Players themselves are gone now but many people who earned the group awards over the years are still making Lawrence the kind of place where it’s possible to grow up with stories that aren’t exactly what’s being told anywhere else. And for that we can be thankful. By the way, the Lawrence Journal World has some great pics of the group that are worth checking out.

Sixteen Going on Seventeen

2008-04-15T14:20:00.002-06:00

I'm happy to report that I've started chemo 16, and I am almost halfway done with this clinical trial. No news is good news from my doctor, so knock wood.

I'm having a weird day today. It's tax day, and I'm having the really weird experience of knowing exactly where I was this afternoon ten years ago.

I was in Pennsylvania. I was coming to the realization that my graduate program was not going to work out the way it had been sold to me. Also, I'd been dumped a couple of months before. I was feeling very tender and bruised, and also lonely. My graduate peers were all developing these fantastic relationships with the faculty with whom they were going to produce ground-breaking dissertations. I, meanwhile, was adrift in a boggy pond of required courses, none of which were going anywhere for me. My friends were all married or in relationships, and not really in the mood to entertain my teary singletonhood. Between my emotional sogginess and my too-big apartment with the abused german shepherd puppy living in the apartment above, I don't think that a day passed when I didn't think of packing up the car and taking off.

That day I came back from another wretched graduate seminar to feed Kuku and irritate him with my weeping. In my mailbox was a notice that I had received a letter from far off exotic land-- a missive from my dumper. The letter was at the post office, but it was short $1.73 of postage. In my feeble emotional state, I made a beeline for the post office. Communication! And I completely forgot that it was April 15. When I got to the post office, the line was around the block. But desperate as I was for news and a friendly gesture, I stood in line for two hours to pay that postage and collect my precious letter.

It's funny looking back, how pitiable that pitiful little person was me. Ten years ago exactly, I was standing alone in line in the rain at a post office in Pennsylvania. Right now it's a gorgeous spring day in Colorado. The sun is shining, and the trees are all budding. Tomorrow or the next day I will prune back our rosebushes, in preparation for them to bloom. My life has changed so much-- the only constant is Kuku, who remains irritable with me. I love my house, I love my husband, I love my kitties. I have a job, and a pretty good dissertation waiting for my further attention. I am currently sick, but when I look back at that girl at the post office, you couldn't pay me to trade places with her.

Oh, and the letter was a "Dear Jane" letter. Just in case the first one hadn't taken.
Oi.

I'd just like to give my love and gratitude to every person who made each of these past ten years an improvement on the last. I plan to stick around for awhile, and make the next ten years better yet.

Back from Texas

2008-03-05T16:43:00.002-07:00

It was wonderful to see a plurality of our readership at the final R-K bar mitzvah in Austin this week. Strange to visit Austin after eighteen months. It feels so much like going home, but of course it isn't. Best wishes to Lola, VA, and Lilia as they tear up the TSHA meetings in Corpus. I was just talking to Lola while snow was coming down here. She was looking at palm trees.

She and I pretty much saw the primary through the same media, though. There's been a video of a mariachi band doing a corrido about Barack Obama making the e-mail rounds lately. Now, an online magazine called Reason has an interview with fellow anthropologist Margaret Dorsey. Dorsey wrote a book on political pachangas in South Texas and has interesting things to say about the Obama corrido.

Adiós, Tapón…

2008-02-13T23:16:00.007-07:00

The other day La voz de la esperanza came our way with the sad news that Lydia Mendoza had died back in December. I was shocked that it had taken so long for me to find this out, sad that I never got to talk to her with a recording machine going. Today, news of Raul Salinas' passing comes from Manuel Castillo of Sananto Cultural Arts. It feels like yet another landmark is gone, y nosotros...a navegar.

La bloga has an early story of Texas' unofficial raza poet laureate and his trip through this world. As he embarks on "otra excursión," let's all pray or do whatever we do when an elder statesman passes on. I can only imagine what's happening in Austin and especially at CMAS right now. Fortunately, it looks like a rich, well-attended celebration of his life and work took place last summer. Not everybody whose life merits an event like that gets to see it.

Salinas always seemed to me to have a troubled relation with institutions of higher learning. He joked in public readings of doing "graduate work" at Leavenworth and always radiated disdain for us academics. If you had a Ph.D. or were pursuing one, you really had to prove yourself to the guy, something Louis Mendoza managed better than most. Bolillos like me ... pos olvídate. On the other hand, Salinas seemed to desire and appreciate the recognition that the institution could provide and the way it could amplify his voice. Sometime I felt that he needed us and that this bothered him. His work never stopped being movement poetry, and I don't know of a movement poet whose early work has aged as well as his. We wish we could be in Texas to mourn his loss with friends who knew him.

Expanding our Horizons in the Springs

2008-02-07T19:32:00.000-07:00

This story from the Gazette is just too perfect. We thought we had the whole themed subdivision thing taken care of with Canturbury Trails back in Texas. This one takes the cake.

Congratulations to Katie and Chris

2008-01-17T08:10:00.000-07:00

We just received a lovely card with wonderful news from one of our wedding guests. Katie was invited to the wedding but didn't know until the last minute she was going to make it. She ended up having a blast and getting caught in the rain with Noemon during a hike in the mountains. Now, it looks like she is tying the knot herself, in San Antonio during Fiesta, no less! If you got an invitation to Katie and Chris's wedding, pay attention to their advice to get a hotel room early. We still have to figure out whether we can afford another trip to Texas, because we are already headed to Austin this Spring to complete our collection of commemorative Raymond-Kolker bar mitzvah yamakhas. I really hope we can make it. Katie and Chris already have a wedding blog, but there's not much on it yet. We'll watch the space.

A New Twist on "Multitasking."

2008-01-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

As I was walking to my "Cooking with Pepper-Spray" class yesterday, I felt unsafe, doughty, and sorely lacking in background music. How could I have known that the Taser company could solve all my problems at once? Ain't modern technology grand?

The Duclod Mystery Solved--or Is It?

2008-01-06T20:18:00.000-07:00

My Grinnell alumni magazine came last week and with it an apparent solution to a mystery more than twenty years old. When I first arrived on campus in 1987, I was struck by a series of cryptic jokes written in permanent marker, all in the same handwriting, along the sidewalk leading to my dorm,. These were the jokes:

Q: What makes a duclod turn blue?
A: Airtight closets.

Q: What do you get when you cross a geek with a Greek?
A: A duclod.

Q: What do you get when you cross a closet capitalist with a closet communist?
A: A red duclod who says, “oink.”

Later, on a stall in the men’s bathroom in the library basement, I saw the words, “DDT = Duclods Die Twice.” Then, during my third year, I saw this riddle on a bathroom wall in the basement of what was then the new science building:

There once was a zhloip named Art
Who couldn’t get much of a start.
First he f***ed his stepfather,
Then he f***ed his stepmother.
Now he f***s no one else worth a fart.

None of these graffiti was understandable or even funny in itself, but taken together, the common themes of sexual relations with both sexes, the union of opposites, and closets led me to assume that a “duclod” was a closeted bisexual man. A zhloip, then, would be a subset of the duclods—a duclod who slept with both step-parents. This didn’t make the jokes funny in a "ha-ha" sort of way, but it did give me the feeling that I had solved a darkly amusing puzzle.

Then, while I was at home after graduating and before moving on to Texas, I received an anonymous letter in the mail in a small envelope. It contained at least twenty duclod jokes printed from a computer onto a large sheet of that stripy old dot-matrix paper, then folded into tiny squares. I think I kept it at my folks’ house, but I don’t know if it survived the fire of ’98.

Over the years, idle web-searches for the words “duclod” and “zhloip” have revealed nothing but posts on random chatrooms and a couple of “urban dictionary” entries confirming my suspicions about the words’ meanings (although challenging my understanding of the taxonomic structure). Then, a couple of years ago, I found an article in the campus newspaper summarizing the state of knowledge about the “duclod” phenomenon. It appears that a number of Grinnell seniors have received letters like mine. But what struck me as a pleasing piece of vernacular surrealism seemed to others like a threat, in part because of the perception, now questioned, that the letters were being sent to Gay and Bisexual students. According to the article, Student Affairs had kept a file of these letters and was worried that someone might be stalking students. Nobody had reported being hurt in connection with the letters, but that didn’t stop people from being afraid.

This year, however, our knowledge appears to have taken a giant leap forward. In a pair of thoughtful articles in the Advocate, 2004 alum Sarah Aswell chronicles her obsessive and apparently successful search for the author of the “duclod” letters. After a couple of years of careful web-searching, following the links to posters on the kind of chat-rooms I had found and responding to leads from recipients of letters, she finally made contact with a man she calls “Richard.” According to Aswell, “Richard” lives alone, suffers from autism, and is the son of a University of Kansas chemistry professor. He has attended Grinnell reunions for years with an aunt who is an alum and has sent the anonymous “duclod” letters to Grinnell students from cities where his relatives live for at least sixteen years. She asked him to stop, but he continued, so she contacted relatives of his, and they persuaded him to take some of his more disturbing web pages down and apologize personally to Aswell.

There’s a lot to admire in Aswell’s writing and her careful research. I particularly like the way she describes herself beginning to behave like an online stalker during her investigation. Her description of the man she found behind the letters is compassionate, especially given her earlier fear of him. Still, I think I agree with “Marshall Poe,” a poster on a recent MetaTalk thread on Aswell’s articles.

Glad she wrote it, and did the digging, but there are some things I don't understand. First and foremost, the Duclod thing was alive and kicking when I was at Grinnell from 1980 to 84. There was graffiti all over campus. We put it there. And it was the habit of some Grinnellians to leave it wherever they went. A kind of mark of the school, an inside joke. I remember finding a Duclod graf in a Village bar once. It meant "Someone from Grinnell was here." Other than that, we never knew what it meant. So this guy didn't invent it, if that's the claim …

Clearly “Rick” is what a folklorist might call an “active bearer of tradition,” perhaps even a hyperactive bearer, but it’s hard to believe he’s the only source of the graffiti and the only one “in” on this joke. I am not female, so I can’t know what it feels like to be a woman, alone in an apartment, who has just received an anonymous letter with “Duclods Die Twice” scrawled on it. I guess it makes sense that some people feel threatened. But for me, the duclod jokes and the anonymous letter were more intriguing than frightening. Part of me is a little sad that the mystery is gone and sad that a magazine dedicated to sexual non-conformity as a political cause would promote fear of eccentric jokes that don't make sense. I'm not sure our lives will be the richer for her having shut down an ailing autistic man's exercises in wierdness. I hope that the reports that "Rick" is now receiving harassing calls himself are wrong or exaggerated. I do take some consolatin, however that "thestocker," posting at the new “duclod” blog has brought a little of the mystery back.

How Many Ph.D.'s does it Take to Screw in a Lightbulb?

2007-12-30T18:11:00.000-07:00

We are back from a somewhat stressful holiday whose highlights included Vietnamese food with La Rebelde and dinner at ABQ's famous Flying Star with M&R . Happily, our Landlord is in town visiting his mom, a professor emeritus, and was available to do some repairs. We have been living in what nephew Asher calls "darkaness" ever since the ceiling lights in our dining room conked out for the second time. Last time this happened, the Landlord had to replace a failed dimmer switch, and we were disappointed that the new switch hadn't lasted longer. He agreed that perhaps installing a conventional on/off switch would be best. When we returned home from dinner last night, however, we found a note on the dining room table saying, "Dear Pete-n-Lo: Coincidentally the light bulbs all burned out at the same time. I have replaced them for you and will get to the cold frame soon." We didn't even think to try new light bulbs.

So how many Ph.D.'s does it take to screw in a lightbulb? I guess three. Two to recognize that the old light bulbs don't light and one to raise the guy who can actually screw them in. The image is from here.

Heard at a Veterans' Open Mic

2007-12-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Veterans in our town have organized a monthly open mic event on Thursday. It's open to all, and so far participants include Iraq veterans, active-duty personnel, and older Viet Nam vets. In general, I hate open mic events, especially when poetry is involved, but this one is valuable. It's becoming a place where people who feel they can't talk about what they have seen can testify about it, and I'm hoping more people will start coming.

Toward the end of the evening, this poem by Andrea Gibson was read. I had never heard it and was quiet moved. "For Eli" is apparently becoming one of the most important articulations of the emotional trials of those who were asked to fight in Iraq, in part through electronic posting and forwarding. Here it is. Check out the links in this post for more video from the event and more poetry by Andrea.

for eli

Eli came back from Iraq

and tattooed a teddy bear onto the inside of his wrist

above that a medic with an IV bag

above that an angel

but Eli says the teddy bear won't live

and I know I don't know but I say, "I know"

cause Eli's only twenty-four and I've never seen eyes

further away from childhood than his

eyes old with a wisdom

he knows I'd rather not have

Eli's mother traces a teddy bear onto the inside of my arm

and says, "not all casualties come home in body bags"

and I swear

I'd spend the rest of my life writing nothing

but the word light at the end of this tunnel

if I could find the fucking tunnel

I'd write nothing but white flags

somebody pray for the soldiers

somebody pray for what's lost

somebody pray for the mailbox

that holds the official letters

to the mothers,

fathers,

sisters,

and little brothers

of Micheal 19... Steven 21... John 33

how ironic that their deaths sound like bible verses

the hearse is parked in the halls of the high school

recruiting black, brown and poor

while anti-war activists

outside walter reed army hospital scream

100, 000 slain

as an amputee on the third floor

breathes forget-me-nots onto the window pain

but how can we forget what we never knew

our sky is so perfectly blue it's repulsive

somebody tell me where god lives

cause if god is truth god doesn't live here

our lies have seared the sun too hot to live by

there are ghosts of kids who are still alive

touting M16s with trembling hands

while we dream ourselves stars on Survivor

another missile sets fire to the face in the locket

of a mother who's son needed money for college

and she swears she can feel his photograph burn

how many wars will it take us to learn

that only the dead return

the rest remain forever caught between worlds of

shrapnel shatters body of three year old girl

to
welcome to McDonalds can I take your order?

the mortar of sanity crumbling

stumbling back home to a home that will never be home again

Eli doesn't know if he can ever write a poem again

one third of the homeless men in this country are veterans

and we have the nerve to Support Our Troops

with pretty yellow ribbons

while giving nothing but dirty looks to their outstretched hands

tell me what land of the free

sets free its eighteen-year-old kids into greedy war zones

hones them like missiles

then returns their bones in the middle of the night

so no one can see

each death swept beneath the carpet and hidden like dirt

each life a promise we never kept

Jeff Lucey came back from Iraq

and hung himself in his parents basement with a garden hose

the night before he died he spent forty five minutes on his fathers lap

rocking like a baby

rocking like daddy, save me

and don't think for a minute he too isn't collateral damage

in the mansions of washington they are watching them burn

and hoarding the water

no senators' sons are being sent out to slaughter

no presidents' daughters are licking ashes from their lips

or dreaming up ropes to wrap around their necks

in case they ever make it home alive

our eyes are closed

america

there are souls in

the boots of the soldiers

america

fuck your yellow ribbon

you wanna support our troops

bring them home

and hold them tight when they get here

If any of you know of similar events in your communities, please go!

Today

2007-12-10T22:55:00.000-07:00

I walked home from work today. A couple of blocks from the office, I looked over to my left, into the yard of a cottage. There in the yard was a little fox, all orange fur and elegant black socks. He looked up at me with his big yellow eyes, huge ears cocked to attention. He was trying to decide whether or not to run as I stood there and said, "oh, hello!"
He decided that whatever it was that he smelled was more compelling than I was frightening. I stood there, watching the fox dig in the snow, marvelling alternately at how tame it was, and then how gentle my aura was, that this fox felt no fear in my presence.
That's when the fox dug up a frozen dog poop and started to eat it.
First thought: well, so, at least they're good for something.
Second thought: Gross.
Third thought: I totally have to share this.

Because Isa Must Be Copied in All Things

2007-12-05T07:05:00.000-07:00

Well, what do you know about that:

id="testResultInfoImg">

You are Juniper Berries!

You're a drunk. No, really. Cool it with the hooch.

Just kidding. You're really good at adding flavour to boring old life. You can be astringent at times, but once the harshness passes, you're quite relaxing. And you smell good, too.

Link: The Which Spice Are You Test written by jodiesattva on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test

I'm actually sitting here with my beverage of choice (Coffee, black), and for the record, the last time I had an alcoholic drink was a beer at the airport, several days ago, and that accompanied a large meal. How and why this test calls me an alcoholic I don't know. I do know that I do like the smell of juniper berries and their associations, but I'd probably use essential oils of juniper to get a whiff of it just as soon (or sooner) than I'd break out the gin, because I am a lightweight.
But other than that little feeling of defensiveness, yum, juniper!
I got this test from copying Isa, who is apparently a habanero pepper, and also, insane. Judge much, spice test?

Destroying my Grandmother's Blanket

2007-11-04T12:31:00.000-07:00

As the craft bloggers churn out one unique handmade object after another, you have to wonder where all those objects go. How many of them end up in the trash after being given as gifts? If people keep them, how long do they last? How much vomit can a baby blanket absorb before repeated washings take it down the drain? What happens when you wear a hole in a sock somebody knitted specially for you? In light of these questions, I have decided to challenge craft bloggers to write about unique handmade objects they have destroyed. I’m no craft blogger myself, but here’s my swing at this.

Lola and I recently retired a purple blanket made by my great grandmother from bed-service, and I must admit that I felt a little funny doing it. I grew up with this blanket, and upon leaving home, I took it with me without asking. Mom didn't care because she thought it was ugly. I, however, always liked the way the pattern of hearts, flowers, and cherubim interacted with the tufts of red acrylic yarn. This blanket was with me before I graduated from college, so it’s been keeping me warm in winter for seventeen years at least. No longer. Repeated washings have finally made the batting it is stuffed with clump together, and holes have started to form in some of the worn spots. In the gaps in the lining, the blanket is just two thin pieces of cloth, so it’s not very warm or even comfortable to sleep under anymore.

My parents think my great grandmother made the blanket sometime in the 1920s for the hired men who worked on my great grandfather’s farm. These days, I imagine those family farmers who are left buy cheap blankets at Wal-Mart or some such place for hired men who need them in winter. Back then, however, the wives of male farmers were expected to tend to the needs the hired help not only by cooking but also by making blankets. Hired laborers in farms like that were and are mixed bunch. My Dad, for example, worked as a hired man for my uncle Delos, and farmers then often hired (and some still hire) nephews, nieces, and cousins for seasonal jobs. Farmers also employed (and employ) nonkin laborers on a long-term basis for a wage. My grandfather, for example, had a family that lived and worked on his farm their whole lives. Joining these relatives and long-term employees was a shifting mass of landless rural workers, many of them hoboes. I don’t know for sure who my grandmother made this blanket for, but if it had been for the family that lived with them, it wouldn’t have been passed down to us. I have to assume, then, that it was made for temporary laborers.

The blanket itself is not a quilt, and my parents don’t know if there’s a word for what it is. Quilts, as we all know, are made from small sections of fabric pieced together with painstaking precision. This blanket, by contrast, was made on the quick and cheap. Big grandma didn’t do a bad job, but neither did she put a great deal of thought into what was essentially a utilitarian object rather than a conduit of love or a future family heirloom. It’s basically two sheets of identical patterned fabric, cut into bed-sized rectangles, sewn together along the edges, and stuffed with a white batting that is about the consistency of cotton balls. For at least seventy years, knotted stitches of yarn held the lining in place and gave strength to the blanket as a whole. Had I known more about taking care of delicate fabrics in my young adulthood, they might still hold that yarn in place, but alas, it took me many years of error in many crappy Laundromats (or “washaterias” as they’re called in parts of Texas) to learn how to wash things correctly. I admit that ruining a couple of Lola’s angora socks also taught me a few lessons. Today, the blanket keeps moisture in and animals out of the compost pile in our back yard, or at least it will until I catch it on a rusty nail and render it useless for even that task. And just as I didn’t ask my parents when I took it with me so many years ago, I didn’t consult with my wife before putting it over the compost pile. Lola objects vociferously to my decision.

So that’s how I destroyed a unique, handmade object. Let’s see if others will take up this theme. I tag Olga, dissertation be damned.

I can't say it didn't please me

2007-10-31T22:54:00.000-06:00

So we're sitting around last spring, waiting for the world to unfreeze, when Pete's brother Jake calls up and asks us, "So, what are you doing in October?"
At that moment, our social calendars are not, as they say, fixed. Still, you have this moment when you thing about all the things that youcould be doing in October: climbing all of the fourteeners in Colorado, conducting the philharmonic, apprenticing as an international jewel thief. From March to October, the possibilities seem almost infinite. And then you get ahold of yourself, think honestly about your thoughts and aspirations, and realize that what you will really be doing in October is watching old episodes of "Dr. Who" in your jammies and torturing the cat. Rather than be completely honest, you just say, "I dunno."
Which is a roundabout way of saying that Jake bought us these tickets to see David Sedaris, and last night we got to use them.
We had a lovely time. David Sedaris is as scatological as ever. He's also quit smoking, which is amusing to think about.
Which is a very long way to say: Thanks, Jake!
You can't tell, because I didn't use the flash, but here is a picture of Sedaris peeking elfinly over the podium.

Where's Andy Warhol When We Need Him?

2007-10-17T23:21:00.000-06:00

Like this shopper, whose picture recently appeared in the Pueblo Chieftain, we were recently assaulted by a wall of pink Breast Cancer Awareness Campbell's Soup cans at our local grocery store. Each of these cans will nab the Susan G. Komen fund a big 3.5 cents. Coming as it does in the wake of Al Gore's Nobel win, this campaign seems somehow fitting. Here we have a comestible nonfood being sold to raise a nonsum of money for a nonsolution to the problem of breast cancer. It all fits. And when you think about it, what could be better than Campbell's Chicken and Noodle Soup for this? After all, those dessicated little squares of meat are probably cut from the breasts of chickens, right? Chickens with their beaks cut off, pumped full of hormones and antibiotics, fed their own feces for life. What better symbol for our food system's carcinogenic squalor?

Now if you were thinking that canned soup and M&M's are the Susan G. Komen Fund's worst excesses, that's because you haven't seen Jingle Jugs (h/t to Jeanne Sather for this last find). These life-size boobs raise awareness about breast cancer by bouncing around while playing either a canned prerecorded message or the sound sequence of your choice. Fifty bucks gets you one pair, and you can send "a rack" to some lucky soldier in "Eye-rack" for a mere $32.99. Breast cancer awareness AND support for the troops at the same time! Who woulda thunk it? The thing I don't get is this: if the goal is to raise awareness of breast cancer, why have two "jugs"? Why have them looking so intact?
UPDATE: I should add that the AP article that appeared in the Chieftain and elsewhere actually covers the controversy surrounding the marketing of breast cancer "awareness," and devotes more space to the critics of the Susan G. Komenites than you would expect.

Bicycle Accidents Across the Decades

2007-09-30T21:10:00.001-06:00

Today, my Mom opened up the Daily Urinal to find the following piece in the "100 Years Ago" section of the "Old Home Town" feature.

From the Lawrence Daily World for Sept. 30, 1907: “As Claire H**** was going to school this afternoon on his bicycle he collided on the corner between the city library and Central Hotel with W.W. Everett’s automobile. Claire was badly bruised but probably escaped death by catching hold of the car. …

Clair H**** (note the misspelling of his first name) was my grandfather. In 1907, he would have been sixteen. Dad says he never mentioned the incident, but it has to be him. There just aren't that many male "Clair H****'s out there."

OK, but here's the creepy part. MY bicycle accident in which a car "buzzed" me, causing me to fall with my full weight onto my left elbow and beginning an excruciating year of surgery, physical therapy, and insurance headaches--that happend in 1997, ten years ago this past June. So Grandpa and I were three months shy of 90 years apart in our encounters with horseless carriages. How weird is that?

All I have to say to the W.W. Everetts of the world is above and to the left. OK, that's about not opening your door when a cyclist is going by, but the spirit's there. I am happy to report that ten years after my own accident, I have full flexion and extension in the left elbow. If my grandfather had been similarly hurt, I expect he would have had a stiff arm all his life. Although traumatic, the injury might have kept him out of World War I. Funny how these things work out.

Laughing to Keep from Crying

2007-09-25T20:57:00.000-06:00

What a hilariously sad irony. There is a website devoted to the Good News from Iraq. That's right, these are dedicated citizens trying to cut through the mainstream media drumbeat of gloom with news all the victories and handovers and infrastructure projects that just don't make it to ordinary Americans. They have a number of topic sections, and when you click on infrastructure, this is what you get.

Don't believe me? Try it yourself!

Seeing Cowboy Hats

2007-09-20T21:14:00.000-06:00

In a recent forum on immigration held to the north of us in Greeley, the county's District Attorney whipped a crowd of some 600 mostly white citizens into a fury by flashing a slide show with mug shots of ethnic Mexican men convicted of crimes. The Weld County Sheriff's Color Guard also did a presentation. Even the relatively conservative Denver Post felt compelled to condemn this nativist race-baiting and urge the white citizens to look for common ground with their neighbors.

Rather than point out how much different "they" are, as Assistant U.S. Attorney Cliff Stricklin coyly did when he said he was glad to see so many "cowboy hats, boots and American flags" in the largely white audience, it would be far more productive to highlight the things we have in common. We want safe neighborhoods. We want our children to be well-educated. We want friendly communities.

I guess the scene at left, from a Texas dancing site, is not what the Assistant U.S. Attorney had in mind when he complimented the audience on its attire and flags. The Denver Post wants long-term citizens of Greeley to "highlight the things" they "have in common" with their new ethnic Mexican neighbors. I say, why go further than the hats? And the boots? Those Mexicans, so unlike us. So alien in every possible way. Why I hear the eat barbecued beef! Whatever will we do in the face of such cultural incompatibility?

Update

2007-09-16T14:30:00.000-06:00

Sonneteering notwithstanding, the CT process is rarely all that much fun. I have to skip lunch (on tamale day this time, insult to injury), drink barium, and be injected with luminescent dyes. All things considered, I'd rather be in Philadelphia. While being pelted with monkey poo.
But, fortunately, there is good news from the latest scan: there is no longer any sign of lymphadenopathy anywhere in my chest. I'll still be in chemo for two years, but all signs point to the fact that my chemo is working.
Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me, and thank you for your thoughts and prayers,
Lo

Dude, I said I was Sorry...

2007-09-11T13:21:00.001-06:00

I have a massive cold today. Apparently, my immune system is taking John Donne's side on this.

In Which we make beautiful music

2007-09-10T20:42:00.000-06:00

First, Lo:
(With apologies to John Donne in particular and the English language in general):

Batter my palate, banana flavored barium for thee:
A refreshing yet mellow nectar of luminous splendor!
Let no earthly fruit sully thy chalky radioactivity,
Nor paltry luncheon interrupt thy furious temblor!

No lesion, tumor, nor button half-digested
Can hide itself before thy god-like brightness;
Thy savor like the dust from tin roofs crested,
Illuminate my colon with thy clear whiteness!

O, potassium-free seeker! Thou fruit-free pathfinder!
Let me not sojourn without tamales in vain!
Behold me and murmur: Her gullets I'll wander,
For the flavor of nanners always beats plain!

Nine weeks without barium face me, tra-la
What about next time: perchance, vanilla?

[enter Pete] OK, so that was Lola's creative outpouring. Here's mine, which came to me all at once as I was cleaning cat-sick off her blue suede shoes (no joke!). This is, of course, what husbands are for.

I'm cleaning vomit off your shoe
Because I care for you.
I'm cleaning vomit off your shoe.
It's what I like to do.
I'm cleaning vomit off your shoe
Because our love is true.
And when the vomit's off your shoe,
Your shoe will once again be blue.

Give me a call, and I'll sing it for you. I could transcribe the tune, but wouldn't you rather hear me sing? You can call me any time, because I'm quitting my day job to be a crooner.

Goodbye to Mary Douglas

2007-09-02T21:34:00.000-06:00

Dame Mary Douglas has joined Freddy Fender and Clifford Geertz in the great beyond. She passed away back in May, and I can't believe I didn't hear about it. I am guessing that other than Jennifer, few of our readers know Mary Douglas's work directly. We've all been touched by it, though. If you found Monty's analysis of the Anglo belief that "Mexicans are Dirty" compelling, or if you took the Director's suggestion that the sexual and scatological jokes of working class mexicano men express anxiety in the face of an encompassing, alien social order, you are in dialogue with the Dame. The AAA news seemed to take a long time to get Geertz's obituary out last year, and it has repeated this pattern with Douglas. At least Geertz got decent copy-editing. In the obit for Douglas, arguably the most influential British anthropologist of the late Twentieth Century, we get this howler.

When her mother died at the age of 12, she was sent to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in South London where she found security in the hierarchical and relatively secluded world of the boarding school and the Catholic faith.

So was Douglas born to a woman younger than twelve whose corpse found solace in religion, or did somebody have a problem with their antecedents here? Come on, AAA, you can do better than that! All this is no big deal for the Dame, of course. Her body is in Dirt. May she rest in System. And for the rest of us, let's hope Heaven has more grid than group.

The Mysterious Professor Zero

2007-09-01T12:38:00.000-06:00

Thanks to Professor Zero for supportive and insightful comments.
We're waiting to hear from General Halftrack.

When You're Strange

2007-08-29T13:38:00.000-06:00

People from Austin often claim to be oddballs. "Keep Austin Weird" is practically the town motto. But a year in Colorado Springs has done nothing to quell my feeling that this is the strangest place that I have ever been. I tell people that this town of normal houses, a local symphony, churches and dive bars has everywhere else on the planet beat in terms of strangeness, but I have been hard pressed to explain how.
Then last week, I was talking to someone who had moved here from Berkeley. She too had thought that this is an odd community, and she too had had a hard time articulating why she found it so. After a few minutes chatting, we each realized that the thing that we miss most about our former homes is not the strangeness, but the feeling of being normal.
In Austin, everyone is normal, from Leslie the cross-dressing city council candidate to the commisioner of railroads. Walking out of the house dressed as yourself, you don't feel excessively judged, because no matter what you're wearing it's probably pretty conventional and maybe a little too dressed up. But here, I think, everyone who is not you is bizarre- the urge towards conformity in this town makes the smallest things look positively rebellious- say, voting Democrat, or riding a bike while not dressed in sporty spandex. It's all the normal that makes you feel strange. And the pressure of all of this normality makes the strange appear in some of the most unexpected places. For instance, did you know that this town has more tattoo artists per capita than anyplace else in the country? Something tells me that the Ted Haggard scandal of last year is just the tip of the iceberg.

Happy Birthday, Alex!

2007-08-26T14:56:00.001-06:00

I can't believe that you are already eight years old. And I can't wait for you to come to see me again.

Mistrial for the St. Paddy's Day Seven

2007-08-25T09:36:00.001-06:00

You may remember our post about what in my opinion amounts to a minor police riot at the St. Patrick's Day Parade earlier this year. This past Thursday, the seven parade-goers who got roughed up for wearing peace T-shirts went on trial for obstruction of the parade. After two days of testimony, a jury of four women and two men failed to reach a verdict, and the judge declared a mistrial. We don't know yet whether the city will decide to prosecute again, but as the local entertainment paper said, one prosecution is enough of a black eye on Colorado Springs' reputation. The trial has caused a lot of tension on all sides, and I worry that those of us who stand for peace and justice have let it distract us rather than using it to make us stronger. For now, however, we can breathe a little easier and get back to work. For law geeks out there, the prosecution referred in its arguments to the 1995 Supreme Court case Hurley vs Irish-American Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Group of Boston (94-749), 515 U.S. 557. The free speech issue didn't end up being central to this case, but it's interesting to see that decision cropping up here. Perhaps more on this later.

A Bolt from the Blue

2007-08-17T17:36:00.000-06:00

Just like New Mexico, our part of Colorado gets monsoon rains in the afternoon during the month of August. Today, I was on campus when the regular storm came, and when I heard the first thunder, I left my office so I could make it home without getting dumped on. As I was walking to my bike, I heard a deafening explosion, followed by the sound of falling rock and a chorus of car alarms. Moving toward the college chapel, I saw a cloud of what looked like smoke or dust. As I rounded the side of the chapel, it became clear that lightning had struck the south tower. At left (a view facing southeast,) you can see a dislodged stone.

Here on the right is a second view, facing northwest from the other side of the chapel, showing the damage more clearly. The lightning hit the spire, knocking heavy stones from the top down. As they fell, they dislodged some of the roof tiles. Here is the rubble below. This is actually the second lightning strike on campus this week. The other building struck was a house that contains administrative offices. Somebody told me which one, but I can't remember the name.

Of course, this is no freak accident. As some of you may have heard, Shove Chapel is now the meeting place for the faction of the St. Stephen's Episcopal congregation that remains loyal to the Anglican Communion. Some members of the congregation voted to secede and join the breakaway faction that opposes the ordination of Gay and Lesbian bishops. This faction is led in Colorado Springs by St. Stephen's pastor Don Armstrong, who has been accused of financial misdeeds by the Diocese of Colorado. I think that this lightning strike is a clear sign of divine will. It's as clear as day. God hates f***. And he loves thieves. [/fred phelps].
Or maybe he was trying to say something about the wedding that was being rehearsed in the chapel...

Blessing for a fantastic Mural

2007-08-16T09:56:00.000-06:00

Our readers in Central Texas whose heads are still above water should try to check out the blessing of of the new mural at the Center for Health Care Services near Guadalupe and Zarzamora in San Antonio next week. It's a Saturday, August 25th from 10am to 12pm, so you can make it a day trip and go have a puffy taco afterwords.

This is San Anto Cultural Arts' 34th mural, one of many lovely ones they have put on West Side Walls. Our friend Adriana Garcia is one of the painters, and when we were in Texas for Lola's graduation we were lucky enough to get a preview of the mural in a warehouse on South Flores (rather than painting it directly on the brick wall, they are painting panels that will be attached to the building). Adriana and her collaborators did considerable research on the neurobiology of mental illness and spoke extensively to mentally ill individuals who use the Center. The result is a vivid, dreamlike painting that combines an exploration of the emotional trials of madness and recovery with otherworldy images of neurons.

It is, in other words, a socially engaged work of art by grown children of the Chicano movement that eschews the masculinist triumpalism that you see in some of the 1970s murals and aspires to an emotional depth that was foreign to earlier muralists. We'll post pictures as they are available. Too bad Jennifer, who presented thoughtfully at this past year's AAA meetings about post-Chicano visual art in the Rio Grande Valley is all the way out in Califas. We won't be there for the blessing, but we can't thank Adriana and her parents Pancho and Evelyn enough for taking us to the mural in May. We've got images from the mural tour up on flickr, in case you missed them.

Guess What Day It Is!!!!

2007-08-06T08:24:00.001-06:00

That's right. It's the 62nd anniversary of the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima. Which means it's also Lola's and my "paper anniversary." We debated about getting married on this day, which in the end was dictated by our choice of location. We finally decided that people should do hopeful, optimistic things on August 6th, like the Japanese survivors who released the birds you see in the picture. So just think--one year ago today most of the readers of this blog were in the lobby of the Albuquerque Museum watching me enter into a binding legal contract of bliss with the love of my life. So thank you, Lola, for saying "I do." Thanks to all of you for helping to make the wedding such a blast and for staying in touch after our big move. And thanks to those who couldn't make it but were with us in spirit.

I guess when you pick Hiroshima Day to get married, you open yourself up to lots of jarring juxtapositions of life and death. Unfortunately, that's exactly how this anniversary turned out. I'd like to say goodbye to my Aunt Helen, who died this past weekend in Wichita just about two months shy of her eighty-ninth birthday. A year ago today, she was too frail to travel to Albuquerque, but she shared our celebration in her own way. Many generations of schoolkids in Wichita will remember her as an enthusiastic and engaging children's librarian. I'll always remember breakfasts in the screened-in porch of the house on Oliver street that she and her husband Orvel, who preceded her in death many years ago, shared when I was a boy.

Still a visionary

2007-08-02T08:06:00.000-06:00

The test says so!

Isa has a link to this page of Keirsey Temperment sorter tests.
This test fills me with nostalgia, since it reminds me of the house where I lived the year after I graduated from college. Me and my housemates developed a fascination for the test, and so we sorted ourselves, the cat, all of the household furnishings (the tv was an extrovert, surprise) and eventually, natural processes (is photosynthesis an extrovert or an introvert?). We speculated about the personalities of people that we didn't like.
I liked being an INFP, and though I am now a little creeped out by the Jungianisms that premise this, I'm relieved that my results are consistent.
Finally, when I was living in Pennsylvania, I used to see this old Honda with a vanity license plate that said "INFP." I was scandalized, since sharing your test results is so not an INFP thing to do. Oh, wait.... whoops!

Another reason to be happy here in Colorado

2007-07-28T17:50:00.001-06:00

Hatch green chile! Hooray!
Bonus points for Colorado: it was sold at a roadside stand, by a group of people with a real roaster.
The first summer I was in Austin, Central Market had this huge Hatch green chile promotion. They roasted it over mesquite, which I found perverse. For one thing, the mesquite smoke covered up the wondrous smell of roasting chiles. For another thing, the fire was way too hot, and half of the five pounds that I bought turned out to be char. Finally, they had CM staff outside on a sunny July day, turning these things over by hand over a grill (wrong). I wrote an angry letter to the management, and I got a gift certificate and an apology from them, and for some reason they never did this promotion again.
But now I'm back in the region where people know how this sort of thing is done! I can't wait to buy a chest freezer so I can stock up for a year.
By the way, Pete's folks just got through with a lovely week-long visit here, as visitors to our Flickr site should already know. They brought with them a huge ice chest full of tomatoes, sweet corn, beets and ... some green chile they had grown themselves! I guess the visits to New Mexico have rubbed off on them. The chiles they grew are quite mild, but they have a nice flavor, and we're still enjoying them a week after they left.

Just to confirm I'm actually 13 years old...

2007-07-15T21:48:00.000-06:00

We move from the excitement surrounding the ensuing end of the Harry Potter series, to the new excitement that they are making a movie out of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The first movie comes out in December. Hooray!
As part of the promotion for the movie, they've got a website that helps you to find out what your daemon would be. Daemons are the physical manifestations of the human soul, and their animal forms reflect the true nature of the human being. Children's daemons are constantly shifting, but the daemons of adults settle sometime around puberty.
So my result was a crow daemon, but I guess you can change that:

Well? I have to say that I felt quite smug about the crow outcome, considering that many of the scholars in the book have bird daemons. However, the first time I took the quiz I got a snow leopard daemon, like Lyra's father. That outcome, as it made me look adventurous and dangerous, was pretty frickin' awesome. Since then, I've taken the quiz over and over, but I haven't gotten the snow leopard response again. pooh.
Like most academics, I guess me and my soul will just have to settle down with the books again, and be content with getting our adventures second hand. Or maybe you all will reclaim my snow leopard daemon for me?

Yeah, I got yer wand right here!

2007-07-11T13:42:00.000-06:00

Suppose, dwindling readership, that I were trying to jack up my masculine street cred. How much do you think a story like this would help me?

OK, so Cho and Harry finally kiss, right? And right then the punk starts kicking the back of my seat so I just get up and say, ‘Hey bitch! You want a piece of me? Let’s go!’ And he’s, like, ‘Yeah let’s go,’ but he just sits there and I’m, like, ‘If you want I’ll fuck you up right here in the theater, bitch!’

Are you slavering over my manliness yet? Well, sorry to disappoint, but for the record, I didn’t pick a fight at the midnight screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the Chapel Hills Mall this morning. The guys sitting to our left and in the row behind us did, however. The frat-boy photograph of the "brothers thug" at right isn't of them, but it captures their attitude. They were shouting out stupid crap before the lights went out, and after the previews were over, they started passing around a fifth of something. By the time Dumbledore’s Army had finished its first round of illicit Defense against the Dark Arts practice, these young white toughs were showing just how bad they were at holding their liquor. The women in the group seemed embarrassed when one guy finally jumped into the aisle and challenged his comrade to a fight. Some date, huh?

And here we were expecting to be surrounded by enthusiastic thirteen-year-olds in wizard costumes with parents in tow. Turns out that the crowd was mostly groups of unsupervised teenagers. A few wore bathrobes and carried light sabers, but only one lone teenager put any effort into a costume, and the crowd made him feel silly. The idiots next to us appeared to be in their early twenties, and I thought I heard one refer to himself as a college student. Hmmm.

As for the movie, Lola and I were a little disappointed. Imelda Staunton gives an inspired performance as Dolores Umbridge, but the film as a whole doesn’t establish a coherent narrative line or maintain a compelling atmosphere. If you have read the book and would enjoy seeing scenes from it rendered in film, by all means go. But if you want a film that stands on its own and conveys the emotional turmoil of Western adolescence and the pettiness of Neoliberal education policy with the book’s effectiveness, you will have to look elsewhere.

Up Poop's Peak

2007-06-10T13:48:00.001-06:00

Can you see our house? Our sobrinos came to town this weekend and thought up the above nickname for our region's most famous geographical feature. So much for the historical society's efforts to promote the positive side of old Zeb's expedition.

We rode to the top of said peak yesterday, which was a treat for the boysitos, although sometimes it seemed to me that Ash would have been just as happy riding on the glass "alligator" at the hotel. The views were striking, although all the adults felt like mushed bananas afterwards. Altitude does that. We took a picture like the one above, and Lola will be putting more on her flickr site.

Alex composed a song about our new home state. It goes something like this.

Colorado! Colorado!
The people there have the feen
To burn gasoline.
I met somebody named Dean
Who likes to eat beans.

I think there was more of the song the first time I heard it, but this would seem to be the "emotional core." For the record, the song was composed on the drive north, and I don't know of our meeting anybody named Dean.

I didn't recognize the word feen, but here are some definitions from the "Urban dictionary."

1) feen is when you think about something 24/7 and you cant get it off your mind
2. To crave a drug that you habitually use. This induces stress and behavioral abnormalities. When the drug is administered, symptoms subside.
3). To crave anything. ("Man, I been feenin' fo a hit o' crack all day!" )

The "eye dialect" here is theirs, not mine. So it looks like Alex is using "feen" in a more or less idiomatic way. Am I getting old?

Response to La Rebelde

2007-05-29T15:03:00.000-06:00

Apologies to our dwindling readership for our recent blog silence. La rebelde has tagged ME with a meme, but we were so busy traveling that I only now discovered it. Here it goes.

I am sorry to say that we spoke too soon. Welcome back, Jerry, you f***er.

I am all misty-eyed after reconnecting with our dear friends in Texas and seeing my former students walk at the Mexican American Studies graduation.

I am still seasick after seeing the Birthday Movie, Pirates of the Caribbean III, which buries a subversive allegory about the Terror War under a load of special effects, fight scenes and frivolous plot twists.

I am picking dirt out of my fingernails after planting ten potato plants that sprouted from scraps in the compost pile.

I am putting off writing my syllabus for a summer anthropology course that starts next week.

I am suspicious of the commodity fetishism implicit in the term "meme."

I am getting ready to drive my wife to begin her training under the cruel tutelage of the masters Xeloda and Bevacizumab (tomorrow). Everybody says to fight, but they don't remember that you have to go through an apprenticeship first.

I am not buying canned cat food anymore.

I am smackin' my lips after finally opening and using the little gas grill we got as a wedding present.

I am disappointed to learn that the big gas grill that came with the house we are renting requires a type of cylinder that is now obsolete and un-fillable.

I am unable to fit into half of the shorts I wore last summer.

Finally, I am tagging Noemon, Ben, and la cantante maravillosa . Thanks to la cantante for livening up the party last weekend and congratulations to Ben on his new job and move. Noemon doesn't have a blog, but I will be happy to reproduce his interpretation of the "meme." Thanks to everybody for your friendship and for your words of encouragement.

Enough already!

2007-03-29T16:47:00.000-06:00

We thought that spring had sprung in the springs- pansies were out in bloom everywhere, poppies sticking out their noses, rose bushes feathering out.
But guess what? It's snowing. Again.
Oh great god Miracle-gro, please make it stop. Amen.

But for the udpdatey goodness for the Eastern Screech owl nestbox webacam in Austin, I might despair that spring would ever come!

My first Gmail Poem

2007-03-21T15:19:00.000-06:00

Here is a found poem based on the ads Gmail generated for a recent message of mine.

Say no to Amnesty
Migrate to Australia now

Authentic Mayan hammocks

Date Liberals now

Pro Comedians for Hire

Theatre of the Absurd

I challenge our dwindling readership to come up with found Gmail poems of their own. I tag "Noemon," who may send me his poem since he doesn't have a blog. By the way, the rules are that you have to use the headlines but you can rearrange them.

Colorado Springs' Finest at Work

2007-03-18T19:54:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Lola's family was in town to visit, so I ended up not going to the St. Patrick's Day parade downtown, and I feel guilty now. The parade is apparently a big deal in our town, full of the kind of well-supervised rebellion that I tried to avoid during this season when I lived near South Padre Island. So when I heard that a group of local peace activists were planning to get their message out in the march, I was a little skeptical. Privately, I worried about people perpetuating the idea of the peace movement as a bunch of killjoys. It seemed to me that the movement's own event, a rally downtown that happened today, would be the more important action. Boy was I wrong.

Activists got a permit to participate in the march yesterday under the aegis of the Bookmobile. They wore lime-green shirts with peace signs and carried signs related to the upcoming anniversary of the illegal and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Although organizers of the parade allowed candidates for city council to march unmolested, they asked the police to remove
the peace marchers, who were accused of having a "negative" message. People I talked to at the rally today said that after giving the demonstrators almost no time to respond to their "official notice," the cops started dragging people with green T-shirts to the sidewalk.

One of them was Elizabeth Fineron, above. She is in her 60s and walks with a cane. She had to be hospitalized after the cops were through with her.
We saw her today at the rally. She said she was sore but had no serious injuries. Nevertheless, what a cowardly thing for a cop to do! These photos are from the Toilet Paper blog.

For today's rally a crowd of about 100 gathered to hear speakers, a performance by Our Town's own First Strike Theater, and the musical stylings of a blues/funk group who managed to insert the phrase "work for peace" into their rendition of "Brick House." The cops were present but didn't seem to be interested in any funny business.

Elizabeth, along with some friends, runs a group called Alterni-Tees that prints some fantastic topical T-shirts (example on left). If you want to show the local cops what you think about what happened, why not order a T-shirt? All the shirts are extremely professional-looking designs in multiple colors, and many are printed on interesting and attractive colors of fabric. They wouldn't have been out of place at Lo's shower.

On a darker note, a man wearing a rainbow-colored "Gore 2000" hat and a tie-died shirt was walking around today's rally collecting signatures on a petition calling for an end to the war. He wasn't affiliated with the organizers of the event, and when I asked him about this, he said he had just started his own petition drive. He continued to circulate, and after getting a large number of signatures, he left the rally. On his way he stopped to talk to the cops. I saw paper in his hand and I couldn't tell whether he was asking them to sign the petition or giving it to them. A mole in our midst?

Things to do in Denver when yr dead Tired

2007-03-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

Well, we're wrapping up teaching here and settling in for Spring Break next week. One lucky thing that I had to carry me through to the end was the prospect of a visit from Margi and Enrico. Enrico was coming to Denver for a physics conference, and Margi was coming along. And although I didn't get to see as much of Margi as I wanted to (boo, snow!) I did get some nice hanging out time with Enrico, some great dinners, and a trip to Denver's new art museum building to boot.
Now, I'd been to the old part of the museum when I was a wee lass of 14. I always remembered it as a repurposed corporate skyscraper, which is unfair, I guess. Nevertheless, the new Liebeskind-designed wing really blows the other wing away. Super wow.

It was a really great day to be out and about-- sunny and warm for the first time in months. We walked all over downtown, and then around the art building. The angles in the main hall are so freaky, standing in the third floor mezzanine made my knees start to shake.
As for the art, I saw a Yoshitomo Nara, two Takashi Murukami sculptures and a large silver painting, and a photorealistic painting of an infant Hitler being venerated as the Christ Child. I saw a sculpture of a naked man hiding under a cardigan, which I liked, but I can't remember the name of the sculptor. All of this was in a rotating gallery, someone's personal collection.
In the permanent gallery we saw all of the greatest hits: Taos modernists (Marsden Hartley! Woot!), Manets and Monets, and even (in Denver? Shocking!) Whistlers. I saw a Braque that brought back memories of grapes, and a Juan Gris that brought back memories of Braque. Had a debate with Margi over who is the best cubist- didn't come to a conclusion, but we both decided that Picasso needs to go away for a century or two. Tried to draw Enrico into the discussion, but he claims not to care for any art that's pre-surrealist.
Finally, we visited a rotating gallery that was showing the John and Kimiko Powers collection of 14-18th Century Japanese art. First: if you're going to show off your collection of oldoldold art, it's a pretty neat gesture to use an Andy Warhol portrait of yourself as the obligatory "meet the collectors" entryway thingy. Second: I realized just how bumpkinly ignerent of Japanese art I am. But also, I could not pull myself away from the calligraphy part of the show. I love calligraphy: I love how you can still sense the hand that made each brush or pen stroke. I love how you can see the choice of tool. I love how vital each line is. Myself, I'm a lousy calligraphist. You can see me overthinking each line, a hesitation that cramps everything up (this might also be the reason I'm lousy at crochet, but decent at knitting). So I spent about 40 minutes standing in front of a calligraphied banner, trying to follow the swoops in one ideogram by waving a rolled up piece of paper in front of me. The gallery security guard hardly left my side for the whole time. When I finally moved on, I found an even grander sight: poems written onto a gold foiled screen. The screen itself was so carefully gilded, but the calligraphy seemed almost off-hand and graffitti-like, done with a skinny brush. Unlike the paper and cloth banners, the poems just seemed to stop and begin, without any urgency to fill up the beautiful gold space. It just blew my mind that there was once a person who was so lucky/ batshit-crazy-in-a-good-way as to have something so magnificent and yet so casual somewhere in his or her daily life. Here's the curator's translation of one of the poems:
When I consider
How fleeting is this world
That knows no tomorrow;
Very bitter is the count
Of days not spent in love.
-- Fujiwara Teiku, 1162-1241
This one made me sigh, and resolve to try to live a more beautiful life, one in which I appreciate my surrounding, my family, and my friends more. What a gift to have had a chance to see this screen. I feel grateful to the Powers for their loan to the DAM.

After the art museum, we find an Italian restaurant that is not crammed with physicists, and have a good meal. After that I drove home, and collapsed in bed.
What a great day. Thank you both, Margi and Enrico.

Ethical dilemma

2007-03-06T23:11:00.000-07:00

Leslie Magnets:
Exploitative or super-nifty?
Please share your thoughts.

________
UPDATE

Pete here. I called Book People's 800 number, and according to them, Leslie was consulted about the magnet, and he gets a portion of the sales. The employee was sketchy on the details but said that he thought it was around 20% of sales. The buzz is that Leslie has bought a new shed and a TV with this money.

Off to the Obscenity Conference

2007-02-26T20:37:00.000-07:00

This week, without Jerome Around, Lola is really going to be by herself. I am going to a national conference on obscenity to participate in a panel on Mexican obscenities. Mexico and Japan are the only countries that got their own panels for this one. I tried to do a "google" image search for something to include with this post, but the results were disappointing. Among the things that come up early when you search google for images related to obscenity are:

A photo of a peace demonstration in which a protestor holds a sign saying "Definition of Obscenity, that 4000 National Guard Troops from Washington State are sent to fight the private war of a man who used the National Guard to avoid a war.
A photo of war protestors arrested on obscenity charges after demonstrating with a sign bearing a cartoon of a Bush supporter with his head in the sand and his other end ... shall we say, uh, serving as a base for a U.S. flag.
A conservative cartoon accusing the media of hypocricy for holding conseratives to a higher standard of "decency" than liberals.

And lots more of that sort of thing, including a version of Goya's "Kronos eating his children" with Bush's face. Further down you get the following:

Links to Danish and Polish death metal bands.
Articles about a scandal surrounding singer/actress Mallika Sherawat's shocking New Year's Eve performance at the Mumbai Mariott. She wore nothing but a "body hugging skin suit and a silver bikini to top it." The horror!
The symposium!
Darfur protestors saying the violence there is obscene.
Yet another Indian scandal, this one revolving around a scene between Aishwarya Rai and Hrithik Roshan in the movie Dhoom-2. Why don't people just protest temple carvings? Those puritanical Brits really got under people's skins, didn't they?
A story about controversy surrounding a sculpture by California artist Daniel Edwards of a nude Britney Spears giving birth on a bear rug. Finally the good old USA is fighting back! Edwards has also sculpted MLK and Bobby Kennedy but not like this.

In the above it's remarkable how much we in the states are using the word "obscenity" to talk about politics and violence rather than SEX! One of the themes of the conference is whether obscenity as a concept even makes sense in an age of widespread permissiveness.

For the last three years, conferences for me have been part job meat market part job meat grinder. Even when I've presented, I've spent most of my time preparing for interviews and pacing around the placement center, hoping I'm not sweating too much in my suit. This conference is going to feature prominent speakers in the social sciences and humanities and bring together researchers working on issues as diverse as pornography and censorship, comedy, torture, and the politics of the disposal of sewage sludge. I'll miss my Lola, but I'm psyched to be at a real academic gathering.

Happy Anniversary to Me

2007-02-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

Just in case anyone's counting, it's now been four years since I parted ways with Jerome. Wouldn't it be great if every break-up ended with horrid-removed-thing spending rest of eternity in a hospital freezer?

Thank You. Thank You. Very Useful. Very Useful.

2007-02-20T12:54:00.000-07:00

Over the last four years I have become a connoiseur of search committee behavior. It has become clear to me that some people out there know how to do an academic hire and some people don't. One thing I have noticed in the last two years is the proliferation of on-line job application processes. Although some community colleges seem to have gone totally paperless, most universities that require electronic applications also make you send a paper letter, CV, etc. So the online stuff just doubles the work a job applicant has to do--not to mention multiplying the number of passwords to remember (this is for the bank, this is for the credit card, this is for email, this is for Podunk State, this is for University of Podunk...). In some cases, I have received requests for paper documents from search committees that were unable to access their own university's electronic system.

But a school we'll just call Hancock State University has figured out a new twist to this whole thing. About a week after my rejection letter from HSU came, I received the following electronic message (edited to protect the innocent):

Thank you for your interest in the position of [number] Assistant Professor in the [XXXX] department at [Hancock State.] Unfortunately, you were not selected for employment in this position. Please do not let this discourage you from applying for other positions that interest you. Your application will remain active for 12 months and can be updated during this period by logging on to [URL] and clicking Manage Application.

[Hancock State] appreciates that you want to become a member of our employee community and wishes you success with your job search.

Sincerely,
[Hancock State] Personnel and Human Resources offices

This is an informational message only. This e-mail address is not monitored, please do not reply.

This is the first time I've received both a paper and an electronic rejection message from the same people. And you've gotta love the timing, right? Hit you once. Wait a week. Hit you again. Just wait till they see my groundbreaking article "Winter Skincare Do's and Don'ts!" Really, it's almost finished. I at least have my @#$%^ together!

Happy Valentine's Day from the Man of Love

2007-02-14T09:23:00.000-07:00

It's not quite our blogaversary yet, but the Man of Love is back for Valentine's Day to remind our dwindling readership that Diamonds are special, but love is more precious. Thanks once again to our ring "burier" Alex for this image and to our other ring "burier," Aaron for a drawing we never posted.

Before the wedding, I was looking for love poetry, and I decided to see what the Interwebs had to offer. Here is a shining example, a shout from the Global South. Hope you're sitting down, colonizer!

Gravity of Love

Submitted by Seyi Oshijirin Nigeria

Mathematicians build the world
Mathematicians rule the world
Nothing without mathematical _expression in the world,
My believe is in codes and numbers
My believe is in logic and equations
That leads to logical reasoning.

Many problems I ve solved by codes and equations
All equations I ve solved by logic, symbols and numbers
Yet I m not satisfied by my lifetime pursuits.
One day, one day I asked myself

What is the right number or symbol?
What is the perfect equation?
What truly is LOGIC?
And who decides right reasoning?

In cause of no answer to my quest,
I traveled through the physical and metaphysical,
I traveled through the delusional and mystical
And at last back to the physical.

I made most important invention of my life career
That it's only in the mysterious equation; logic of love
Any logical; mystical and psychological reasoning can be found.
It's you in me I only believe that s true and real

Your love is mysterious as an echo in my heart
Your love is natural as life in my heart
Forever will you be new as day in my life
You're the only reason why I live and continue
In my logic, equation, number, symbol and code.

Happy Valentine's Day, all! We miss you.

2007-02-13T09:16:00.000-07:00

We are back from a weekend trip to a mountain getaway that the College owns southwest of here. Sorry, Virginia, but charming as the Llano Estacado may be, we’re stuck on the whole mountain sublime thing. Lo is planning to teach a class out there in April, so in some ways this trip could be seen as work … nice work if you can get it! The townhouse we stayed in was built in the 1970s in that cozy rustic style--you know, a couch with removable square cushions built into the wall, a wood stove, lots of rich, brown wood accents and pieces of earth-colored pottery sitting around. Our families decided they couldn’t afford the transportation to get to this spot for Thanksgiving this past November. This year, we’re going to twist some arms.

The place is nestled in a valley between two mountain ranges on an old Spanish land grant. In the nearby small towns, boutique-ish hippie craftspeople, various flavors of New Age spiritual seekers, and a few Tibetan refugees rub shoulders with real estate speculators and a dispossessed rural underclass. We got to mingle with a cross section of these crowds during a delightful afternoon at the local hot spring. Actually, there are two prominent hot springs in the valley--the $12.00/day one which offers yurt rentals, massage therapy, and private pools; and the $6.00/day one that looks like a swimming pool and sells chili dogs and cheese steaks, along with the odd vegetarian entrée. We went to the latter spot and spent the afternoon basking in the hot water, watching the clouds recede over the mountains, alongside local moms and dads with kids, a crowd of punkish teenagers, and a few corpulent German tourists.

In this community even the fire department playfully adopts Buddhist symbolism (left), but we were struck by the economic inequality evident amid all the mysticism. When Laura went to the hyper-expensive grocery store in the small town near the satellite campus, she stood in line behind a father buying food with food stamps. When the man’s daughter asked to buy a Valentine’s Day card for her teacher, he said, “No, honey, it’s too expensive.”

Yesterday was a beautiful day for the return drive, and we did it just in time. We arrived to find all the snow in our backyard melted and Mike-n-Ronda’s pansies still blooming after nearly two months on ice. We won’t see them long, however. Another three inches of snow are expected today, and it will probably be around until Friday at least. This is our last week of relative “freedom” until we both start teaching. Wish us luck!

Hi, Isa!

2007-02-05T00:33:00.000-07:00

Hey! I've been tagged! By Isa!
It's a "Cinco Cosas" thing that all the elite Chican@ bloggers are doing. I'm partly giddy at the attention, since no one here knows me and I'm feeling a little forlorn. But also? I'm feeling a little worried about exposing my five horrible secrets. And also? A little worried that they're not as secret as I think.
Here goes!
1) I am a Battlestar Galactica freak. I often use the word "frak" to express displeasure.
2) I learned how to knit after graduating from college, mostly to distract my parents from noticing that I wasn't really looking for a job. Knitting helped me to look almost constantly busy. This tactic worked for almost a month and half, and my niece got a sweater.
3) Did you know that you can have arthritis in your sternum? I have found that my old war wound responds to cold in a frakkin' painful manner. When will I ever reach the bottom of the bucket of side effects?
4) I really like to eat tomato paste out of the can.
5) I just made a new pillowcase out of lime green flannel festooned with sock monkies. The beauty part of sewing is that you turn it inside out, and all the parts that you messed up are hidden.
Hooray!
um. I tag you. Ur it. Specially if yr. Olga.

At last, answers

2007-01-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

I am:

Frank Herbert

His style is often stilted, but he created what some consider the greatest SF novel of all time.

Which science fiction writer are you?

We all knew that it had to be something. Apparently, it's my authorship of Dune that has been holding me back. Also explains irrational anger at Sting.

BREAKING UPDATE: Hey, Pete is also Frank Herbert! Destiny!

Everybody's Happy, Everybody's Old

2007-01-21T22:34:00.000-07:00

OK, folks, I'm going to do Laura one better. I didn't even have to leave the house to feel old. Here were my wife and I, watching TV like a well-domesticated couple, and all of the sudden, along comes a commercial for the AARP using ... the Buzzcocks' Everybody's Happy. OK, so the song is 28 years old, but the BUZZCOCKS in an AARP commercial? I'm not the only person who has commented on this, as you can imagine. Popmatters even mentions the AARP in their discussion of the Buzzcocks' comeback efforts. So much for my street cred. All I can do is note that the commercial played only the refrain, "Everybody's happy nowadays," skipping over the lines "Life's an illusion, Love is a dream," that come before it.

Signs that I am getting old

2007-01-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday I was downtown buying some long underwear, using freezing weather as a reason to support local business. I found a nice, comfortable pair at a mountaineering store, at a reasonable price. So I then felt a little free to walk into this schmancy downtown boutique, seeing as I hadn't spent my budget and there was a big SALE sign out front.
I soon discovered that the word bargain is a relative term. This store sells perfumey house stuffs, some pretty dresses, and, of all things, furniture. They also sell cotton hoodies printed with butterflies-- sale price, $78, original price, ninety something. For a cotton hoodie! So I gravitated instead, to the sock rack, where I picked up a pair of iridescent merino stockings for less than ten bucks. Such a good bargain seeker, and remember, I am supporting local business.
Now, the entire time I'm looking at the sock rack, there is a song playing on the P.A. I know what it is, but I just can't place it. The singer is a piano-bar style singer, crooning so seductively into here microphone. It reminds me of the Driskill Hotel Bar. You can practically see the big brandy snifter for tips, and her fakebook. The song is so familiar, but it's been transposed into an unfamiliar key, and the tempo is way different, and I just can't place it! So I'm standing in line at the cash register, and I'm kind of spacing out because what is that song? And then finally, one line of the verse sheds light: ...and I'm huuuuuuuungry like theeeeee woooooooolf.
Of course, I instantly spaz out. "Oh, my God!" I shout at the woman in line ahead of me and at the women at the cash register, "It's Duran Duran!"
The woman in line ahead of me takes my shoutiness in stride, saying "I don't know if I would have placed that." She's a little nonplussed by my eagerness to share, but she knows that she'll be out of the store soon and that she can hide from me if she must. But the woman behind the counter looks me directly in the eye. She's young, with sleek black hair and thoughtfully applied eye makeup. She seems to have cultivated a kind of coolness that I suppose one must have in order to exchange a cotton hoodie for close to a hundred dollars. She looks at me and says, "I don't know if I'm familiar with that band's work."
Now, is this a snotty putdown for someone who is only buying socks? Somehow, I doubt it. Something tells me that this is my first experience of a generational divide from the perspective of an elder, that my popular culture references are somehow losing their gleam. I think that this is a woman perhaps too young to remember the head thrills of hearing "Rio" and "A View To a Kill" on the MTV videogram machine. Perhaps she's too young to even remember when there was actual music on MTV.
I left with my socks, which she wrapped in purple crepe paper for some reason. I'm still a little embarassed, but hey, nice socks.

Happy Christmas from Alex and Aaron!

2006-12-24T23:11:00.000-07:00

Jingle bells! Batman smells!
Robin laid a gun,
Shoot a tree and make it pee
In 1981!

(This is from the poetic and political minds of our nephews. Both claim responsibility for the piece. Alex says, "When you think about it, it just makes sense, but I can't really explain it." We are choosing to read it a a stinging rebuke of the nation's turn to Reaganism, and it's step back from the environmental movement of the seventies. You cannot stop us from reading it this way). Happy holidays to all our far-flung friends and relatives.

Help the Families of Arrested Swift Workers

2006-12-20T11:26:00.000-07:00

By now all of our dwindling readership has probably heard about the dramatic Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids on a meat-packing plant in Greeley, a few hours north of us. You have probably also heard that the relatives of those arrested don't know where their loved ones are being detained and that there are kids who are staying with aunts, uncles, and neighbors because their parents are in detention.

Here are a couple of ways you can help the familes of the workers. the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, which represents the workers at the Swift Plant has a hardship fund for its members, and The United Way of Weld County (Greeley) has also set up an assistance fund. As we gather with our families in the next couple of days, we might think about showing solidarity for those whose families are forcibly separated. You can find out how to make a donation at the links above. the UFCW site has a good set of links to coverage of the raid.

God Answers My Question

2006-12-18T11:27:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I asked what the next great public display of hypocricy and corruption would be. We've had some answers. Keep 'em coming!

In the meantime, it looks like God has answered the question for us. Looks like there's been another prominent resignation at New Life Church here in the Springs over sexual misconduct. This time it's Christopher Beard, a pastor with a business degree from Oral Roberts University who, among other things, was reprimanded four years ago for staging "a missionary training drill using fake assault weapons," according to the Denver Post. Quoting Associate Pastor Rob Brendle, the paper noted that the drill caused something of a disruption.

A SWAT team was put on alert after a passing motorist thought the guns were real. Brendle said that incident played a role in Beard's departure.

What kind of "missionary work" was he training them for? For better or for worse, the Post has no information about the gory details of the really important indescretion (remember, it's sex, not violence, that matters), except to say that it wans't with Ted Haggard or with a minor. Cara DeGette at Coloradoconfidential notes that this resignation is the result of an ongoing purge, as NLC tries to clean house in the wake of the scandal. Heading up this effort is a national panel of "Overseers" (yikes!) who are charged with "provid[ing] spiritual protection to the Church" and protecting "the hearts of all involved in matters of pastoral discipline." These Overseers are asking members of the congregation to rat discreetly on any staff members or senior leaders who are suspected of any kind of moral lapse. What a nice way to create community and trust in the wake of such a traumatic event!!

In other news, Squarestate links to more irony from the Rocky Mountain News. It seems an unnamed retired state prisons official could face jail time for helping a private prison firm called the Geo Group get a contract to build a facility in Colorado. This official started working as a consultant for Geo BEFORE he retired from his state position. Jeez, whatever happened to the "revolving" door? These guys put Texas and the whole HB2292 flap to shame!

Life Imitates Comedy, Irony Gasps for Breath

2006-12-15T15:14:00.000-07:00

OK, folks, this will be a short one, but given my history with immigration stuff I couldn't let this one pass. Months ago when the nativist Right was making noise about a border fence, the Austin American-Statesman's humor columnist John Kelso wrote a funny editorial asking, "Who would build it?" George Lopez apparently had the same idea. Now, NPR reports that, yes indeed, the contractor hired to erect the border fence is being fined for hiring undocumented workers. Its executives may face jail time as well. OK, so first we had "Brownie" becoming a hurricane preparedness consultant, then a Congressman who championed stiff (no pun intended) prosecution of child molesters caught engaging in sexy on-line chat with underage pages, then Ted Haggard and the other evangelist in Colorado confessing to secret gay liasons, now this! And we thought Irony died when Henry Kissinger got the Nobel Peace Prize! Leave a comment with your predictions for the next big colorful explosion of hypocricy and corruption will be.

Holiday Travels, Memories, and Serial Killers

2006-12-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

The fact that we haven't updated for almost two weeks should be a sign of how hectic things have been for us. Laura has been teaching a 25-person Chicano lit class. At UT this would be a nice, small size, but here it's the upper limit for a class, and handling this number of people without a TA and on the intense all-day-every-day schedule of the Block Plan is exhausting. I have been trying to get a couple of publications out before the end of the year.

We won't be in Kansas over the holidays, but we did make it there for Thanksgiving. Here is a picture of the two of us with my folks, my brother, my Aunt Rita's family, and my cousin Sarah's boyfriend's family at the Clinton Lake, not far from my folks house.

And here is a picture my aunt took of my folks' house as she and my uncle were leaving.

Thanks to Chuck & Rita for the pics!!

While in Lawrence, we did some early Christmas shopping at the Bizarre Bazaar, a craft fair that appears to have become an annual event in the years of my absence. Lawrence has grown and changed much since I left in 1987, but every time I return I see signs that the small college town I knew isn't entirely gone. One of these was the fact that I could walk into the fair and see for sale on the wall a picture (left) of the family doctor in Tonganoxie who treated me as a child AND pictures of a late record-store cat who once belonged to my best friend from high school. Of course, it wouldn't be Lawrence without a touch of strangeness. In Northeast Kansas and Western Missouri, the phrase "Bizarre Bazaar" inevitably evokes memories of the serial Killer Bob Berdella, who sold skulls, shrunken heads, and eerie occult paraphernala from a booth called "Bob's Bizarre Bazaar" at the flea market in Westport when I was in high school. In 1988, a man bearing signs of torture and wearing only a dog collar escaped from Berdella's Kansas City house, and Berdella was later discovered to have murdered and mutilated six people. The case has acquired a "cult" status, and films have been made. The thing I can't figure out is, how does this name pass to a crunchy-chewy craft fair in Lawrence where a friend of ours sells childrens' clothing made from used fabrics under the label "Wee-cycle?" Somebody has a sick sense of humor.

Memories of "Memories of East Texas"

2006-12-02T10:49:00.000-07:00

Do you remember when the record reviews in Sassy magazine were good? When I was fifteen, you could find a couple of decent albums in there every month. I can remember saving up spare cash, or begging my parents for it, and then spending it at Natural Sound on the latest sounds of teen alienation. No wonder my older sisters thought my taste in music stank. Still, every once in a while, a Sassy would point me to a real gem: point in case, Michelle Shocked's Short, Sharp, Shocked.
Now, the cover has a picture of Michelle being held by a helmeted policeman in what appears to be a very painful pressure point restraint. One of my older sisters looked at that cover and instantly assumed that it would be a full tape of angry noisecore. This album, instead, is an earnest, stripped down collection of songs about the lonely lives of small town kids. I listened to it almost constantly, and related to it so throroughly that I sometimes have a hard time separating my memories of highschool from her lyrics. And then my older sister, the one who had sneered at the cover, heard the tape for the first time. She was shocked, shocked I tells you, that she actually liked a record that I had bought. And for some reason, right about that time, my copy of Short Sharp Shocked disappeared. I consoled myself by sharing the Pixies' Surfer Rosa with the entire neighborhood, and eventually moved on to other musical fields. When Arkansas Traveller came out, it filled all my Michelle Shocked needs for a long time. I didn't really think much about the the first album for years.
Last week when we were in Lawrence for Thanksgiving, my brother-in-law gifted me a copy of Short Sharp Shocked. I hadn't listened to it in years, but it instantly transported me back to highschool. I felt the lift that I used to get from the song "Hello Hopeville." This is a song about running away, something that I wanted to do almost every day at my Catholic highschool. Every day, the song ran away from home just for me. Also, the song "Making the Run to Gladewater," about a thirty minute beer run, was nothing like I ever experienced in my own teenage life. However,I did dream of a day when I would have enough friends to lose the toss and have 15 minutes to make a thirty minute drive.
But, for me, the song "Memories of East Texas" is the one that remains most poignant. Listening to it now, I wince at how thoroughly I appropriated the lyrics of this song into my own personal psychodrama, especially this verse:

Memories of east Texas.../
Looking back and asking myself/
what the hell did you let them break your spirit for/
you know, their lives ran in circles so small/
and they thought they'd seen it all/
and they could not make a place/
for a girl who's seen the ocean...

At the time, I really did think so much of myself that I equated the loneliness that I felt with possession of some grander vision. Now, my classmates did not live in what most people would call small worlds. Some of them have moved on through some very expensive educations to prominence in professional fields, as did I. However, I experienced highschool as a very constraining place. I saw my peers as living lives ruled by clothing labels and drunkenness. As someone who had little fashion sense, and less social sense, I never did feel like there was a place for me in the grand scheme of my school, and that until I got out of there I would always feel alienated and weird. This song takes me back to a place and time where I could blame them for how weird I felt, for their smallness and lack of vision. I could still dream that I would escape, that I would someday find myself in the land of people who read Tolstoy for fun, of brainiacs and bookworms, where we would all get the attention that we so craved and talk about stuff that really mattered to us (a wish that proves that axiom that when the gods want to curse you, they give you what you want). It would be years before I finally realized that if you want a place in the world, you have to carve it out for yourself. I'm happy with the place that I've made for myself, and proud of my accomplishments. And I'm a little embarassed for my teenage self, and the pomposity with which I used Michelle Shocked's music as a lens on my own life. Still, it's nice to visit with that teenage self, nostalgic for the days in which I actually believed that I could escape who I was, and reemerge into a world in which I was truly appreciated.
Bye-bye, baby girl, I know they're gonna treat you wellwellwell.

Evaluate me!

2006-11-29T21:15:00.000-07:00

Like Lisa Simpson, I feel like its been a liitle too long since I received an honest Grade. As a lifelong teacher's pet who has become a teacher, I'm starting to jones for the heady thrills of being so very, very right and so very very smart and having this fact recorded for all to see.
Well, thank Jeebus for the Inntertubes! Behold:

You paid attention during 100% of high school!

85-100% You must be an autodidact, because American high schools don't get scores that high! Good show, old chap!

Do you deserve your high school diploma?
Create a Quiz

Phew!

Welcome Back Cotter!

2006-11-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

Welcome back to teaching Lo! I hope all went well!

While we're on the subject:

2006-11-20T13:58:00.000-07:00

I am no longer anything close to an Oregonian:

You are 64% Oregonian.

You're not quite an Oregonian yet. Go stand in the rain some more. Better yet, sit in a rose garden, sip some Pinot Noir, and read something by Raymond Carver.

Are you from Oregon
Create MySpace Quizzes

And I'm not yet an assimilated Coloradoan:

You are 46% of a Coloradan!

You probably have no idea why you took this quiz...but, you took it and you now know you are not at all from Colorado

How Colorado are you?

I think that what this really proves is that New Mexcianness is so ineffable, no one quiz could truly capture it. It can only be approximated by what I am not.

Oh, God Help Me

2006-11-18T11:54:00.000-07:00

I stole this from Olga.

You are 89% REAL Texan!!

High five, you're a complete Texan. People from other states should tremble in your presence because they're simply not worthy. Let them bow before you and convey their undying adoration to you while they announce their true desire to be Texan.

How Texan Are You?

Oh, my, sweet, Jeebus, no! I'm a colonized manita!

(I wonder how Carlena would do on this one.)

A meme. for Ms. Jennifer

2006-11-14T20:15:00.000-07:00

Because Jennifer sent this to me, and because we have to generate content until we get another call from Arnold Schwarzenegger:

48 Things You Could Care Less About

+++

1. FIRST NAME? Laura

2. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Lara from "Dr. Zhivago."
3. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? Um, who's keeping track?

4. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? yes.

5. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCHMEAT? salami.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? No, cause I'm pretty stuck up.

7. DO YOU HAVE A JOURNAL? No

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? Yes, but I am missing other significant lymph nodes.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? Not if the lowest point in the jump was my only chance to grab for fabulous riches and true love.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? Shredded Wheat and Bran.
11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? I just bought pretty new winter boots!

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? As the trainer at the YMCA said, "There's a difference between muscle and strength." So yes.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR? I really love frozen custard with chocolate and vanilla twisted together.

14. SHOE SIZE? six and a half

5. RED OR PINK? Both?

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF? I am envious.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? If I don't say, "My Mom," I'm going to get a phone call.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? Sure.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS, SHIRT AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? Brown pants, red sweater, and grey socks with turtles on them. I am a walking fashion crime.

20. LAST THING YOU ATE? Fideos.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? The tv is on.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? I like the pea-soupy greens. And teal.

23. FAVORITE SMELL? Cedar lotion.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? My mom.

25. THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE YOU ARE ATTRACTED TO? How they react to the people around them.

26. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON you stole THIS from? Jennifer is okay. She'll talk to anyone, she's not snobby or stuck up or anything, for a popular girl.

27. FAVORITE DRINK? Caucasian.

28. FAVORITE SPORT? Watching the cats chase squirrels.

29. EYE COLOR? very dark brown.

30. HAT SIZE? I like droopy hoods.

31. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? Contacts wear me.

32. FAVORITE FOOD? Christmas feasty stuff.

33. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? I hate em both.

35. SUMMER OR WINTER? Autumn!

36. HUGS OR KISSES? or?

37. FAVORITE DESSERT? natillas

38. WHO IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? I'd be surprised if anyone did, since we are bums about posting.

39. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? ???

40. WHAT BOOKS ARE YOU READING? I finally found "The Master and Margarita"!

41. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE Pad? Souls in the torment of Purgatory. Thanks, Virginia!

42. WHAT DID YOU WATCH LAST NIGHT ON TV? Oh Brother, Where art thou?

43. FAVORITE SOUNDS? The cats chittering, laughter, springs, The Soft Boys' "Have a Heart, Betty."

44. ROLLING STONE OR BEATLES? Stevie Wonder

45. THE FURTHEST YOU'VE BEEN FROM HOME? The Black Sea.

46. WHAT'S YOUR SPECIAL TALENT? I make awesome fideos.

47. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? East L.A.!

48. WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? Ms Jennifer

My Folks Speak Truth to Power

2006-11-07T22:18:00.000-07:00

Our dwindling readership knows, of course, that I hail from what is now a more or less safely "red" state. Recently, our Dear Leader visited Kansas to stump for Republican candidates who seemed to have a chance. Guess who was there to welcome him? The Lawrence Urinal-World has it all.

Topeka — As hundreds of cars filed by, Carlena Haney held a hot pink sign bearing the message “Bush = War Criminal. God Forgive America.”

“The administration is the worst I can remember,” said Haney, office manager at Kansas University’s journalism school.

Haney joined about 30 other demonstrators, including several from Lawrence, who stood late Sunday afternoon across the street from the Kansas Expocentre, where President Bush spoke later.

Cars filed past them slowly, trying to get in to see Bush speak at the Republican campaign rally for U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun, Kansas’ 2nd District congressman. Several cars and trucks passing by honked in support.

“I’m tired of having our role in Kansas just be a rubber stamp for the administration and not represent the people of Kansas,” said Barney Haney, Lawrence, a retired teacher who held up a sign saying “Impeach Bush.”

Protesters were not allowed on the Expocentre grounds with anti-Bush or anti-Ryun signs.

Yay Mom and Dad!! Sounds like almost everybody there was from Lawrence, actually, which is not surprising. My Mom is a KU employee, and let me make it clear that no state resources were used in this particular exercise of what is left of her rights as a citizen.

Cheney came to Colorado Springs on Friday but I did not pay my respects, believe it or not, even though I had heard there was a group of folks coming out in hunting garb. Be vewy vewy quiet. I am hunting tewwowists.

I called it!

2006-10-18T17:22:00.000-06:00

Yesterday morning, I had to get up early to go to the dentist one last time. If you scroll down a bit, you can see the view of Pike's Peak from my dentist's parking lot. But yesterday, there were many dark clouds hunched around the peak, and anyone could see that it was threatening to storm.
When I got home, Pete told me that the forecasters were calling for rain. I responded that the air was too dry, and that it was going to snow.
Now, when I lived in Oregon, there wasn't any trick to calling the weather. Odds were good that it was going to rain. However, when I moved to Pennsylvania it seemed like the weather had freaked out on me. I could never tell when there would be precipitation, and I was confounded by the atmosphere's insistence on staying cold all the freaking time. I preferred the heat of Texas to freezing, but I could still never tell when the sky would open up and pour buckets down on me. I remember several instances of being trapped in the union or my office, trying to kill enough time that the cloudburst would have passed. Some days, I carried a battered umbrella around with me, only to see the day through without a drop of rain. Other days, I would forget the umbrella at home, and lo and behold here comes a front. Somehow, I just never got the hang of Texas weather.
So here I am in Colorado, back in the southern part of the Rockies, near to where I grew up. High desert, as it is known. And I know what the feel of the air means: low, dark blue clouds, dry air, and it's cold, but not too cold. I knew that that adds up to snow, after which the air temperature would plummet. Time to go home and put on a pot of beans.
So it snowed, and I called it. It means more to me than just being merely right; it means that I am back in a part of the world where nature makes sense to me, and where I can feel myself fitting in in the one, small way.

Snow, and a Sunflower's Progress

2006-10-17T19:11:00.000-06:00

Today we had our first big snow of the year, a little early we understand. This is what our block looked like when it was coming down. There has been a surprising accumulation, and everything is absolutely covered.
The trees and power lines are loaded down with snow, and we called the fire department after seeing sparks in the alley. They arrived quickly, but the sparks had already stopped.

On the right is Mike-n-Ronda's prize sunflower,
the way it looked when we arrived here in August. It was in full bloom then and bent over with the weight of its developing seedhead. The birds didn't give it a chance, though. In September, they pecked it clean, not even waiting for the seeds to mature. The result is below.
Now the whole thing, like the rest of our backyard, is covered with snow. The pansies and some of the wildflowers survived the first frost and the first dusting of snow we got. We're hoping they'll last a little longer.

As some of the wildflowers and weeds have thinned out in the backyard garden, we have found some treats that the previous tenants left us, including some healthy looking garlic plants and a chile plant that yielded four chiles!! Not much in them for the capcasin addict, but they've got a nice flavor and a lovely crunch. We brought them in tonight, anticipating a hard freeze. Luckily, neither one of us is teaching this block, so I expect tomorrow will be a day of writing and course planning in a warm house. We're certainly lucky to have that.

...And Speaking of Mourning

2006-10-15T01:07:00.000-06:00

San Benito, Texas lost one of its most famous sons and one of its sweetest voices yesterday. Freddy Fender, born Baldemar Huerta, is dead at 69 of lung cancer. That makes two members of the Texas Tornados who have gone to the big concert hall in the sky. Maybe he's re-united with Boni Maroni there. She wasn't looking too healthy last I heard. When I started the project that became my dissertation back in 1990, the Tornados "Hey Baby Que Paso?" was an enormous local hit in San Antonio. I remember laughing with the other summer interns at the Institute of Texan Cultures as we walked to the museum, hearing the song blaring from car stereo after car stereo. Freddy didn't write that one, but his music has gotten this "hijo de Sue" through many wasted days and wasted nights. If I were in Texas today, I expect I'd be going to a memorial concert somewhere with Laura and some of the readers of this blog.

Mourning, Organizing, Organized Mourning

2006-10-13T10:25:00.000-06:00

Yesterday marked the debut of the American Friends Service Committee’s “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit in Colorado Springs. Intended to commemorate Iraq war deaths, the exhibit features 2700 pairs of boots, one for each fallen U.S. soldier, lined up in Arlington-style rows. Nearby there are photographs of the civilian devastation and winding paths made from pairs of non-military shoes, each representing a known Iraqi death. Every pair of shoes or boots has a name tag, and the number of “name unknown” tags on the Iraqi side is disturbing. The stories of U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians are posted next to some of the pairs of shoes and at information tables. Some survivors of soldiers seem to be using this exhibit the way people have used the Vietnam Memorial, and some of the pairs of boots bear small mementos that have accumulated as the exhibit has traveled. There are also photographs, journals, and ephemera of the dead on display.

Colorado College is hosting the event, because the Colorado Springs City Council voted not to allow it in a public park, a fact which today’s Gazette article fails to mention. The general consensus on the City Council seems to have been that this display seeks to undermine the “War on Terror.” So public mourning now happens in privatized space. A thousand points of light, eh? Although I’m proud to be associated with the institution that agreed to host the exhibit, I’m also disappointed. I haven’t lived here long, but I already get the sense that too many things that fall under the rubric of “peace and justice” are centered on this boutique-ish little college, at a time when outreach in communities like Colorado Springs is desperately needed.

Last night I went to a candlelight vigil at the exhibit. Although volunteers said they were happy with the number of visitors they had received, the vigil itself was sparsely attended. After a brief reading and a speech by a CC freshman who is serving in the Air Force and who recently lost a friend who was serving in Iraq, we were called to walk through the boots and meditate. As we did so, I noticed security guards chasing away a fox who, I later learned, had tried to make off with a pair of shoes. CC’s security guards, many of whom are Mexican American veterans, appear to have responded enthusiastically to the call to protect the boots from vandalism and animals. The exhibit left me with mixed emotions. On the one hand, it’s a powerful statement. On the other hand, I find myself thinking, “Is this all that’s left of the peace movement?” I worry that it was too easy to walk through the exhibit without talking to anybody, too easy to walk away without committing to anything. On the other hand, it's clear that some kind of public mourning is needed. Any thoughts?

By the way, Laura is at the American Studies Association’s annual meeting in Oakland, California this weekend, so I am blogging alone for today. Her parents came up for a lovely weekend last Friday, and this weekend is looking pretty quiet by comparison. Laura also has the digital camera, so no photographs of the night’s frost on our flowers until she gets back. The year’s first freeze was Tuesday, and we woke up to a dusting of snow. Amazingly, our paintbrush and pansies still survived. There was another frost last night, and I am wondering how long the flowers will hold out.

One final note: Congratulations to my Dad who turned 72 this week!!

Maybe This Guy Broke our Windshield

2006-10-04T17:55:00.000-06:00

Things are getting wierder here in C/S (yes, non-Chicanas/os really use that abbreviation here--probably not knowing what it means!). This afternoon, while Laura was away at her first meeting of the CC Women's Faculty Caucus, I got a call from the voice of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I picked up the phone, and a voice sounding very much like the Gropinator said, "Hello, this is Arnold Schwarzenegger." When I said, "Who?" it repeated with identical intonation, "This is Arnold Schwarzenegger," and then asked "What do you want me to do?" I asked, "Who is this?" again, and the voice answered, again with identical intonation, "This is Arnold Schwarzenegger." When the "What do you want me to do?" question came again, I said, "Resign." The voice asked, "What do you want me to do?" and when I repeated, "Resign," it said, "Don't bullsh*t me." At this point, thought of telling the voice some things I would like for it to do with Jesse Ventura in Kinky Friedman's bed, but thought better of it and hung up.

I could chalk this up to a prank easily enough, but it had a wierd, automated sort of feel to it. So I traced the number ($1.00 more on my phone bill) and then thought of looking this sort of prank up on the Interweb. Turns out that there are quite a few people out there using their computers to do joke calls with recordings of Schwarzenegger's voice. Here is only one of many sites that offers sample calls to download. This site offers calls involving other celebrity voices. I've listened to a few of the Arnold ones, and the "don't bullsh*t me" line does occur.

I would think this was funny if it weren't for the windshield. Could this be a coincidence? We'll see if this wierdness continues.

Learning a new place

2006-10-02T15:06:00.000-06:00

Well, I have to say that I'm a little disappointed in our new neighborhood today. I've lived in a some dodgy places, where your neighbors changed from one week to the next. I've once had someone try to break into my apartment while I was sleeping in the next room. I've had radios, and laundry, and even a gas grill stolen from my property. But this incident from Saturday night really takes the cake:

Some joker took a flag from the golf course down the street, and used the heavy, weighted end to bash three divots into the windshield of our truck.

Pete and I heard the noise on Saturday night, but we didn't investigate at the time. On Sunday morning, this was waiting for us. Now, to me, this has all the markers of random teenage mayhem. It's going to take a couple of hundred dollars to fix. Still, if I'm going to be on the experience end of crime, I think that I would rather be robbed. Robbery, to me, is motivated by things that make sense to me. But this is just a stupid waste.

It's too bad, because I was busy last week taking pretty pictures. I'll share them anyway, even if I am in a totally pissy mood.
Here's a picture of Pikes Peak. I took it a couple of weeks ago from the parking lot of King Sooper's.

Here's something in my neighborhood that always makes me laugh. The people who put it up must know how awesome it is, because they have locked it down-- preventing a crime that I could totally understand.

Quick response to meme from Jennifer

2006-09-26T15:47:00.000-06:00

Jennifer tagged me with this meme last week.

1. One book that changed your life: Who can name one? William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse, Ron Arias' Road to Tamazunchale, and for better or for worse, Ana Castillo's So Far from God.

2. One book that you've read more than once: I have to agree with Jennifer, Loving Pedro Infante is a pretty great, rewarding read, even when you're doing it for work. Does it count if it's in my diss? If not, I can reccommend Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series and Garth Nix's Abhorsen series for good old-fashion YA fantasy fun.

3. One book you'd want on a desert island: Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Wonderful Sundays! Not only would I never get bored, this book is so huge I could probably live underneath it. So having avoided dying from exposure, I could efficiently move on to dying of starvation.

4. One book that made you laugh: Vladimir Nabokov's Pnin is about a bumbling, conceited, broken-hearted academic. I wasn't laughing at him, I was laughing with him.

5. One book that made you cry: Cleofas Jaramillo's Romance of a Little Village Girl made me weep, but only after a long, internal confrontation with the circumstances of her life and difficulty with being truthful. Jenn can attest to hard I cried when I did. A book that makes me cry right off the bat? Leslie Marmon Silko's Ceremony.
6. One book you wish had been written: A Colorado Version of The Texas Bug Book. Entomologically speaking, here in Colorado I'm at my wits end.

7. One book you wish had never been written: I'm a book nerd. I can't imagine wanting a book not to exist. However, I think that Madonna's Sex, the Chicken Soup for the Blah-blah Soul series, and Ann Coulter will be judged by the souls of the trees that gave their lives for these wastes of time.

8. One book you're currently reading: From Dissertation to Book by William Germano.

9. One book you've been meaning to read: I got half way through The Master and Margarita, but I lost it in the move. I'll have to replace it and finish it, since when I was last looking Margarita's husband had just been turned into a pig!

10. Six people to tag: I think that if you're one of the three people likely to read this, you've probably already done this thing. A meme reaches its natural death.

Jennifer Aniston is the One that Better Dresses

2006-09-26T14:48:00.001-06:00

Today marks a milestone of sorts for me [Pete], as it was the last formal meeting of my Block 1 Chican@ Literature class. Once I grade their essays, I will be done for the block. Meanwhile, my thoughts are turning to very silly things...

As some of you know, this unexpected class has, unfortunately, coincided with some publication deadlines. One of these was an entry on the carpas for the Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. The editorial assistant asked me to supply six references to that, and then asked me to translate Spanish-langauge titles. This included an article by Tomas Ybarra-Frausto titled "La farandula chicana: Carpas y tandas de variedad." How to translate "farandula?"

For those non Spanish-speakers among our dwindling readership, "farandula" might be translated roughly as "the world of frivolous entertainment." To find a single word for this, I tried doing a Google search for the term and then using Google translator. I had never used this device before and was a little unprepared for the droll results. Here are some choice examples from the MSN "farandula" page.

Jennifer Aniston is the one that better dresses, according to “People”
At the time of dressing, nobody like Jennifer Aniston, according to assures the magazine “People” that already its annual list of the best ones published, and the worse ones, dresses of Hollywood. Aniston is “most natural” of all, in opinion of the readers who this year were in charge to elaborate the annual list that publishes this weekly. Its reign in the fashion is followed close by by Halle Berry, also nicknamed “the classic one” by its style at the time of dressing. And thirdly the Hispanic young person Jessica Alba locates itself, also considered like “last” in elegance and the one that is more in fashion.

Or how about this?

Jennifer Lopez loves a baby
The actress and singer, who is been working in several projects with his husband, Marc Anthony, said that now she wants to do it in one special one: a baby

Or finally...

Britney Spears has another man
Spears gave to light to its second son early Tuesday in a hospital of Los Angeles, according to several magazines specialized in the world of the entertainment.

OK, folks, I admit to being a little punchy, but you would be too if you had just prepared and taught a semester's worth of an entirely new class in three weeks, all on four days notice--while preparing an article for publication.

Seeing the Devil

2006-09-23T13:32:00.000-06:00

As many of you know, I (Pete) found out that I would be teaching an introductory Chicano literature course four days before the semester started. Since then, I have been struggling to keep my head above water and, as a result, haven't been blogging. Recent comments by Hugo Chavez about the current U.S. administration, however, made me remember my promise to post the James Baldwin quote from our wedding ceremony in context. So here it is, from a commentary on The Exorcist.

The film terrified me on two levels. The first ... involved my deliberate attempt to leave myself open to it, and to the extent, indeed, of reliving my adolescent holy-roller terrors. It was very important for me not to pretend to have surmounted the pain and terror of that time of my life, very important not to pretend that it left no mark on me. It marked me forever. In some measure I encountered the abyss of my own soul, the labyrinth of my destiny: these could never be escaped, to challenge these imponderables being, precisely, the heavy, tattered glory of the gift of God.

To enounter oneself is to encounter the other: and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and, if I can respect this, both of us can live. Neither of us, truly, can live without the other: a statement which would not sound so banal if one were not endlessly compelled to repeat it, and, further, to believe it, and act on that belief. My friend was quite right when he said, "So, we must be careful--lest we lose our faith--and become possessed."

For, I have seen the devil, by day and by night, and have seen him in you and in me: in the eyes of the cop and the sheriff and the deputy, the landlord, the housewife, the football player: in the eyes of some junkies, the eyes of some preachers, the eyes of some governors, presidents, wardens, in the eyes of some orphans, and in the eyes of my father, and in my mirror. It is that moment when no other human being is real for you, nor are you real for yourself. This devil has no need of dogma--though he can use them all--nor does he need any historical justification, history being so largely his invention. He does not levitate beds, or fool around with little girls: we do.

The mindless and hysterical banality of the evil presented in The Exorcist is the most terrifying thing about the film. The Americans should certainly know more about evil than that; if they pretend otherwise, they are lying, and any black man, and not only blacks--many, many others, including white children--can call them on this lie; he who has been treated as the devil recognizes the devil when they meet. At the end of The Exorcist, the demon-racked little girl murderess kisses the Holy Father, and she remembers nothing: she is departing with her mother, who will, presumably, soon make another film. The grapes of wrath are stored in the cotton fields and migrant shacks and ghettoes of this nation, and in the schools and prisons, and in the eyes and hearts and perceptions of the wretched everywhere, and in the ruined earth of Vietnam, and in the orphans and the widows, and in the old men, seeing visions, and in the young men, dreaming dreams: these have already kissed the bloody cross and will not bow down before it again: and have forgotten nothing.

So that's the context for the quote, in which the "us" in "Neither of us, truly, can live without the other" refers as much to groups divided by ideologies of race as to any two individuals. There's a lot that can be said about this quote, but one thing I think we can take away from it is that Baldwin then knew the Devil better than either Bush or Chavez does today.

The source is Baldwin, James. "The Devil Finds Work" In The Price of the Ticket: Collected Nonfiction 1948-1985,pp/ 635-636. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985. Someday I may post the story of how I bought this book for $10.00 in downtown El Paso, but this is enough for now. The only other thing I can say is that everything I have read about contemporary life in Vietnam suggests that the generation that has grown up there after the war is all too happy to forget the past. I wonder if this will be true of Iraqis.

Call a waaahmbulance.

2006-09-06T17:56:00.000-06:00

Okay! I know that anyone reading this will play "Cry Me a River" on the world's smallest violin, but I have made a Scientific! discovery.
I now have three points of data that suggest that the beginnings of fellowships are kind of depressing. Consider:

1)Fall, 1997. At the beginning of fellowship # 1 I watch reruns of "The Golden Girls" obsessively, and force college boyfriend to reconsider my worth as a girlfriend. Am deeply shamed when said worth comes up to not much, considering "Golden Girls" obsession, and also, fear of busdriver.

2) Fall 2004. At the beginning of fellowship # 2, I develop fear of squirrels, and the mailman. I make the mistake of telling people about this.

3) Fall 2006. Fellowship #3. New house, new town, no t.v. The cats hate me.
Nobody in town knows my name, but the student loan people already know where I live.
I find myself repeating the phrase, "un tejon tejano tejiendo" over and over in my head, but not being able to proceed from that.

So, three points of data is a trend, right? But soon I will embrace my costly isolation, decide that the Golden Girls are better than any dang boyfriend ever could be, and tell the cats to take a hike, and fear no squirell evermore. I shall become the knitting Texan badger of my dreams. The end.

The beginnings of contentment

2006-08-30T00:08:00.000-06:00

This is a picture of our new home. Sorry that it is so blurry, but the effect of the flash was kind of ghastly. Baby gets a tripod for Christmas, I think.
We're settling in to the house, and starting work. We're headed out for new faculty orientation tomorrow.
Here are some flowers. They are growing in the yard right now.

Our Ceremony

2006-08-28T10:45:00.000-06:00

Laura and I won't have regular Internet access at home until tomorrow, so until then, we are forced to use one hour per day at the Public Library here.

Several of you who attended the wedding have expressed appreciation for the written ceremony and asked for copies. Here is the whole thing. We adapted the Judge's customary ceremony with the references to Auden, Baldwin, etc.

Coming soon...the Baldwin quote in context (as soon as I unpack The Price of the Ticket. Enterprising readers may want to check the end of the essay "The Devil Finds Work." Here's the ceremony text:

We have come here today with different memories, expectations, and hopes but with one purpose: to witness and celebrate the marriage of Pete Haney and Laura Padilla, who are about to declare their friendship, love, and loyalty to each other from this day on. We are privileged to be with them and to share their happiness in making this profound commitment, in which each one takes the other as lover, companion, and friend and promises to live in a way that brings joy and meaning to the other's life.

Love is a noble human emotion. If we practice it faithfully, it can enrich our lives, strengthen us, and give us courage to experience life in ways we had not dared before. The novelist James Baldwin summarizes love this way.

To encounter oneself is to encounter the other; and this is love. If I know that my soul trembles, I know that yours does, too: and, if I can respect this, both of us can live. Neither of us, truly, can live without the other, a statement which would not sound so banal if one were not endlessly compelled to repeat it, and, further, believe it, and act on that belief.

If love is about reaching out beyond our skins, marriage is about making it legal, declaring our love before society and committing ourselves to the "follow through" that makes love something more than a passing fancy. The poet W.H. Auden tells us that it is easy for a poet to declare, "I will love You forever" but wonders whether it is so easy to swear, "I will love You at 4:15 p.m. next Tuesday." There, in the journey from "forever" to "4:15pm next Tuesday" lie the challenge and the promise of marriage. If love is the mutual recognition of two souls vibrating in sympathy, then marriage must be a commitment by those two souls to build a life together inspired by that vibration. A marriage can only begin with the kind of open-ended pledge—"as long as we both shall live"—that Auden found too easy. But when 4:15 p.m. next Tuesday comes, the lovers must do something that will keep the trembling of their souls in synch and make that vague pledge real. And it's the sum of such Tuesdays that makes or unmakes a marriage.

Auden also wondered how a statement like "I love You" could actually be true. Could we really verify the existence of the "I" and "You" involved? Auden thought a private detective might be able to help with that one. Ultimately, though, he was most interested in what he called the "I-feeling" and the "You-feeling," of "being responsible for" or attributing responsibility to someone else. Without this, nothing like love is possible, and though Auden never talks about a "we-feeling," it's hard not to see marriage as the creation of just that. Without disappearing into the "we," without dissolving their individual senses of responsibility, "You" and "I" seek to make ourselves into joint projects. "We" also accept that the "I" that "You" started out with might not be exactly like the one who reaches the end of the journey with "You." This is a daunting prospect, perhaps, but both members of the married couple willingly sacrifice certainty for a hand in making and being made by the beloved through life's triumphs and catastrophes. In making this covenant with one another, Pete and Laura undertake to compose a harmony of self and union, to create a close, loving relationship as husband and wife.

Finally, Auden notes that the love poet promises, "I will love You whatever happens even though…" and proceeds to list a series of apocalyptic events. Since these events are unlikely to actually happen between the lovers, Auden asks, what has really been promised here? Does the lover dare to promise continued affection in the face of more mundane obstacles? Those of you who know Pete and Laura well know that they fell in love almost five years ago. Since then, they have faced challenges both mundane and catastrophic from serious illness to chiseling legislators to doctoral dissertations to the monstrous cockroaches of central Texas. Laura has weathered these scourges with her characteristic sense of humor, Pete with his old shoe in his hand.

We are here, then, to celebrate the love that Pete and Laura have for each other and to give social recognition and official sanction to their decision to join together as husband and wife.

Pete, are you prepared to make this promise in marriage to Laura?

Laura, are you prepared to make this promise in marriage to Pete?

Please face each other, join hands, and repeat after me.

I take you, Pete, to be my husband. I promise, before these our family and friends, to love you and to be your companion throughout my life. I will stand by you whatever may come. I will respect your dreams and help you pursue them. I will be honest with you always, and I will honor and cherish you all the days of my life.

I take you, Laura, to be my wife. I promise, before these our family and friends, to love you and to be your companion throughout my life. I will stand by you whatever may come. I will respect your dreams and help you to pursue them. . I will be honest with you always, and I will honor and cherish you all the days of my life.

Pete, what token do you offer to symbolize your commitment and love? In offering this ring, repeat after me this promise: I give you this ring as a representation of my love, my friendship, my trust and my loyalty, and with this ring I join my life with yours.

Laura, what token do you offer to symbolize your commitment and love? In offering this ring, repeat after me this promise: I give you this ring as a representation of my love, my friendship, my trust and my loyalty, and with this ring I join my life with yours.

By these acts and words, you have taken upon yourselves the sacred alliance of husband and wife. What will sustain you are the measure of kindness you bestow on one another, the patience and cheerfulness you display, and your ability to accept, and even treasure, your differences.

May you always love each other as much as you do today, and may you find new ways to love each other every day. May your love guide you through life together and give you the strength and hope necessary to make your marriage a success. May you create a home together that is not a place of wood and stone, but a harbor that has within it laughter, silence, color and everything that makes life glorious.

May you be able to say as your lives draw to a close: Because you have loved me, you have given me greater faith in myself; and because I have loved you, I have had greater faith in others. May you always treasure this marriage, and may you always attend to it, as well as to each other, with tender regard.

Now, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the State of New Mexico, but more importantly, through the power of your love, I pronounce you husband and wife.

You may kiss one another.

Thanks again to everybody who attended and to those who sent good words.

brief notes, almost through move

2006-08-18T21:57:00.000-06:00

We don't have email yet, so I'm stealing a moment on someone else's computer to post briefly.
I don't think that I have ever been so entirely tired in my life.
Every muscle is sore, and work starts next week.

Also, what they say about Colorado Springs and churches is true. Churches are everywhere in the springs. What they don't say is that Colorado Springs also has the greatest concentration of liquor stores and divey bars than I have ever seen in my life. Also, there are many many people trying to pull that "I ran out of gas" scam in parking lots all over town.

So, the pictures are all up kevinsweddings.com. Please go and look at them, the password is smile.
Thanks to everyone who made the trip, or who sent their love, for making our day so wonderful and crowded with love.

Three Days Later... The Reckoning

2006-08-09T11:33:00.000-06:00

Coming soon... more snapshots and a link to the professional photographer's site!

The fastest way to get from Austin to Albuquerque

2006-07-29T14:06:00.000-06:00

No joke! This route is scientifically tested and confirmed to be the very fastest!
1) First, drive from Austin to Fort Stockton Texas. This should take about six hours. You'll pass a big wind farm just as you should start thinking about turning north in the next hour or so.
2) Then head north on US 285. This will take you through Carlsbad and Roswell. Carlsbad Caverns are out of your way, but there is a lot of fun UFO kitsch in Roswell to make up for this. Also, if you stop somewhere north of Roswell, think about picking up some Carizozo Orchards Cherry Cider. So good!
3) At Clines Corners, turn left/ west. It's easy to get impatient at this point, because you're so close. But be careful! It's named Tijeras Canyon for a reason, and there are lots of scary trucks on I-40!

The total distance is 750 miles, or so. I find this trip to be kind of restful and nice, and when I drive it in the winter, at night it seems like I am driving straight into the Perseids meteor shower. So this drive is another thing that I will miss about Austin.

Moving Update

2006-07-26T09:23:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm hitting that despair point in the move. I've packed up so many books, clothes, and dishes, and still the house looks completely chaotic. I'm so scared that I won't finish everything that I need to do. Part of me wants to just stay put forever, but I look around me and I know that I've made too big a mess of things to go back now.
On the upside, I have finally found a use for old software manuals: shred them to make packing material!

Book Cataloging Update

2006-07-24T09:09:00.000-06:00

Twenty boxes, 540 individual references in EndNote.

I have to stop.

I have cataloged all the books that have nothing to do with my dissertation, since those are saved in a different EndNote Library. Including those, and the still uncatologed books in my office cube, I'll probably come out with over 700 books.
Double that with all of Pete's books.

Do we have a problem?

In which one girlish dream comes true.

2006-07-22T12:21:00.000-06:00

Thank you, Tracy!

Pete and I threw a little going away party last night, and Pete's union colleague Tracy brought us this wonder of modern cute technology. I will toast with great joy from this day forth!

The party itself was so lovely-- I will miss our friends in Austin so much. Leaving my last place was so much easier, since I really hated the place and couldn't imagine wanting to go back. But now, every time I see a reference to Austin, I will get all misty and nostalgic for all of the wonderful people that I know here. Can't you all come with me?

The commentor from the previous post's news that our favorite doctor is now home has been confirmed by the office staff at his practice. My appointment (regular follow up) has been rescheduled for this week. I was unaware when Pete posted that the good doctor's name would bring up our blog in a google search: when I google my own name, I don't actually show up until a few pages in, but our little post was there at the top of the list. Should I edit his name off here?

Looking at the headlines today, I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a September 1, 1939 kind of feeling around my own personal celebrations. Am I just revealing my gift for fretting myself out of enjoying myself?

At any rate, I'm so relieved that at least a few people are getting out of the line of the fire, and I will continue to worry about our friends who are still there. I can't help it. Keep safe, y'all.

Evacuation Update

2006-07-18T15:36:00.000-06:00

Today we got a note from a friend in Syria who said nothing much is happening there, and conditions are fine for now. That was a relief, but we're still worried about Dr. Abikhaled and family. I had been seeing headlines to the effect that the U.S. was evacuating its nationals from Lebanon, and these had made me hopeful. The latest news, however, suggests that the government is doing "a heck of a job" as usual. Those effete French have already evacuated 800 of their citizens, while the U.S. embassy is saying "I told you so," as in, "The State Department warned people not to travel to Lebanon" and thinking they may get a destroyer that's on maneuvers in the area over to a port in Lebanon some time in the near future. Imagine a night you spent in an airport with the airline not telling you why the plane was grounded and why you coudn't get on the next one, add bombs falling, and you'll have an idea of what those people must feel like.