Monday, January 31, 2005

Notes from the Road - Day 2

1/31/04 10:45pm Denver, CO

A caveat to yesterday’s lesson: it depends on the city. The downtowns of major metropolises are not known for cheap rooms.

I hit the road out of Amarillo about 9:45am this morning. I considered heading over to Palo Duro Canyon, said to be the second largest on the continent after the Grand Canyon, but I was itching for new terrain, and I knew I’d have to get past Vega to see any. Unfortunately, my head still wasn’t on straight from last night, when I crossed the length of Amarillo three times looking for a hotel bargain. I missed the turn at Vega and had to turn around to find it. I might make it back to Palo Duro, as Amarillo’s the only place I’m likely to come through on my way back to Dallas that I will have already seen.

For several miles north of Vega, the terrain began to resemble New Mexico again, with rock formations, deep gullies, and sparse vegetation, but then it flattened out again and led into a couple of big oil towns. One of these, Dalhart, had several businesses with the word “XIT” in the title, and I was almost convinced I had the town’s name wrong when I saw the sign for the XIT Historical Museum. I wondered if maybe it was an Indian word, but it turns out that it’s not a word at all.

XIT was the name of a ranch that had the largest fenced range in the world, from the 1880’s to the 1910’s. It was comprised of 3,000,000 acres of the Texas panhandle that stretched across 10 counties. In fact, some people believed XIT was an abbreviation for “Ten In Texas”, using the Roman numeral X. The real reason it was called XIT was stranger still. It was thought to be a brand that could not be altered by cattle rustlers. The brand on each cow was done in five applications of a straight line: 2 for X, 1 for I, and 2 for T. Other brands were sometimes altered to steal cows from other ranchers by adding lines or curves to the existing brand. In fact, one rustler tried to pull this on the XIT ranch after finding some of the crossings of the “T” at a downward sloping angle. He must have fancied himself an artist when he added a bunch of connecting brands to turn it into a star shape. This could not have been fun for the cow.

In 1875, the Texas State government was in the market for a new capitol building, so they eventually agreed to give the 3,000,000 acres to the Farwell family in exchange for the Farwells spending $3,000,000 on the state’s new capitol building. The legislature got into a pinch because the old capitol burned down in 1881. The deal got even better for the Farwells, since they were to make the capitol out of red granite stone. It was believed that granite would cost more than other possible building materials, but one of the Farwells discovered it would actually cost less. He kept this to himself and pocketed the money saved. The capitol building in Austin is still the biggest state capitol, and only Washington, D.C.’s, is bigger. The dome of Austin’s is a little taller than D.C.’s.

The XIT ranch operated from 1885-1912. The last piece wasn’t sold off by the Farwell heirs until 1963. Now, every year there’s an XIT cowboy reunion celebration in the Dalhart area that draws thousands of people. It’s the largest free barbecue in the country. Apparently, cowboys who worked on the ranch still show up, or at least their families do. One interesting thing about the cowboys was that they didn’t wear blue jeans, because at the time blue jeans were associated with menial laborers. Instead, they used a similar fabric colored brown or black to make “ducks”, and that’s what they wear in all those black and white pictures.

The museum covered a surprising variety of things and a great deal of space for a free institution that subsists on donations. It was right across the street from the courthouse. One thing that caught my eye was a real crow’s nest made almost entirely out of pieces of barbed wire. The delightful old woman caring for the museum pointed out to me that there was a statue of a World War II aviator who she’d gone to school with in front of the courthouse. He had died on a joint U.S.-Chinese mission against the Japanese, flying a route known as “the Hump”. What was interesting about it was that the statue was made and dedicated by the Chinese government, and installed in 2002. The Chinese consul came up from Houston for the ceremony, and the statue has a few words etched into it signed by Jiang Zemin. It’s stories like this that give me hope for a better future between countries still trying to get over past conflicts. Nobody outside of this small Texas town ever heard about it, but it acknowledged respect between the Chinese and U.S. that is easily buried on the nightly news. Let’s see more of this kind of recognition.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I made my way to New Mexico’s northeastern corner. I noticed mountains in the distance, and watched for the Capulin Volcano National Monument, which I had marked on my map. Clouds were rolling in, but I stopped anyway. In the winter it apparently doesn’t get many visitors, and I can see why. The cone of the volcano stands 1,300 feet above the plains below, some of which were formed from the 16 square miles of lava flow from the last eruption. It gets cold up there. A two-mile road spirals its way up the mountain to the lowest point on the rim. This extinct volcano formed a cinder cone, belching up and spitting out magma into the air. The winds blowing at the time caused one side to collect more cinders than the other, so it looks a bit lopsided on the top. There are two trails, one along the rim, and the other that goes down to the vent at the bottom of the crater. This was the second volcano rim I had stood on, the other being in New Zealand, but this one was larger and I wasn’t able to descend into the other one, so I took that trail first.

Snow had accumulated in many places the sun didn’t reach including part of the trail, but it wasn’t deep. Still, I pictured myself flat on my back with no one around in the middle of a volcano with a broken arm or leg, then decided to pick my way very carefully across it to reach the viewing ledge at the bottom. It looked as if many boulders of various sizes had tumbled down to the bottom from the surrounding walls, but the marker said they were broken and thrust up from the crater when the vent finally cooled enough to harden and seal shut, trapping too many gases beneath. On my way back up the trail, I noticed the footprint of a wolf in the snow.

Walking up the rim, the first thing I noticed was how cold it really was with the wind gusting over the lip and down to the plains below, where many cinders and boulders from the size of your fist to the size of your house still poked up through the dried grass vegetation like black fleas on a yellow cat. The sun shone through the darkening clouds here and there, but gave no warmth. I pulled up my collar and covered my mouth with a gloved hand to warm my chapped lips. There were many incredible views and I took lots of pictures, but it was the little things that stand out, like the lava formation visible at the base of the volcano formed when the top layer of rolling magma cooled but the liquid underneath kept going until it cooled, followed by the next layer. Picture a stack of pancakes, each one off center farther from the bottom one in the same direction. One marker identified the extensive lichen growth on the rocks as “Time stains”, so-called because the colonies of grey, green, and brownish orange combinations of algae and fungus are believed to be as old as 20,000 years. They secrete a subtle acid that slowly breaks down the rocks into soil, making it possible for plants to take hold, including the capulin plant, Spanish for “chokecherry.”

When I was out of film, I made my way back to my car and took off for Colorado. Part of the Capulin National Monument is in Colorado, and four states are visible from the top. It wasn’t long before I was passing mesas and steppes rising above the plains, formations I had seen from the top of the volcano, but they looked different, more imposing, from this perspective.

The foot of the Rockies rose up, and so did the speed limit. The highest it got in Texas was 70mph, 65 in New Mexico, but in Colorado the interstate speed limit was 75mph. I made good use of it since dark was coming on. I stopped in Trinidad to eat and look around. It was an old town that kept growing and changing, and it reminded me strongly of San Antonio, new buildings mixed in with the old, streets that made no sense. By the time I was ready to go, I’d heard “the weather” was moving in and there was only one corner of the sky unclaimed. I had seen it coming, had even stopped and taken a picture at the Raton peak, a landmark for early settlers, when I saw a cloud that appeared to be caught on an adjacent peak, like a cotton ball stretched out over a finger.

Soon I was witnessing the hardest snow of my life, at least that I can remember. I was only a baby when the Blizzard of ’77 hit my hometown in Indiana. People around me started slowing down, but I thought to myself, “It’s going to take at least half an hour to build up on the road.” Ten minutes later, visibility was no more than a mile and snow completely covered the ground. I couldn’t even see the Rocky Mountains off to the left. The road had come back down to the plains briefly, but then ascended again. I knew the peaks were there, and I could feel the grade of the road, but it was like being underwater and opening your eyes. Particles obscured everything and shapes just faded out in the darkness behind, or appeared from out of the cloud in front of me. Headlights hung like stars in the mist.

Suddenly, we began a sharp descent. The walls of the canyon closed in close enough to be visible and I realized I must be dropping out of the mountains for another stretch. At the same time, my windshield wiper fluid wouldn’t come out anymore. I stopped on the outskirts of Pueblo, CO, and bought some more. It was due for a fill-up, but when I got back on the road, it still didn’t work. I pulled off again and discovered ice plugging the nozzles. Even after I removed the ice, nothing would come out, so I just poured the fluid out of the jug onto my windshield and hoped for a thaw tomorrow.

Colorado Springs went by in a flash, and I couldn’t even see Pike’s Peak because of the storm and the dark. Shortly after that the storm broke, and I saw my way into Denver. Tomorrow I’ll explore the city a bit before moving on up.

Sunday, January 30, 2005

Notes from the Road - Day 1

1/30/04 10:55pm Amarillo, TX

Today I set off on a journey through the Western states of the USA, leaving my Bedford, TX, apartment behind to spend a month on some of the many roads I have not yet traveled. A month ago, I was laid off from my job in accounting, which I had held for the past four and a half years. As compensation for my time, I was given a generous severance package including wages and benefits. This was amenable to me, as I had grown sedentary in my comfortable lifestyle. Here was a chance to start something new, and beginnings are the best part of pretty much any experience.

After spending the holidays at home with friends and family in Indiana, I decided I would use some of my new freedom and the time before the lease on my apartment was up to get in a car and drive. At first, I considered driving all over the country, perhaps for a couple of months, but reality eventually set in, as it pretty much always does. When I was passed over for a promotion to a position at work that I was already successfully, if unofficially, filling, the writing was on the wall. So, I began saving money for the inevitable. I had already paid off my car, and I had been flirting off and on for a couple of years with simply quitting and moving to Austin, a city I love, having spent many weekends there visiting my friend Phil. The predicament I found myself in was far preferable. Instead of quitting my job and forgoing all of its benefits, I got to keep the benefits for months, along with a perfect excuse to leave town.

I had to limit the length of time I spent on the road, and a month seemed like a good amount of time for several reasons. I would be back in time to pay my bills without penalty. I would be able to travel a large part of the country in that time, without being rushed (hopefully). And rental car companies have monthly rates. I had decided to rent a vehicle for the trip on the advice of several friends, which ranged from “You’re going to be driving on icy roads,” to “You can beat the hell out of it.” I had to admit that the month of February was not the best month to be gallivanting across mountain ranges, but this was the time I had to work with.

A few months prior, I saw a special on PBS about the first man to drive from coast to coast in the early 1900’s. This probably planted the seed for my idea to embark on this adventure, although I won’t be going coast to coast. Instead, I’ll be traveling through the American West, parts of which are well known to me, parts of which I’ve only been briefly acquainted with, and much of which I have yet to discover. I’m quite looking forward to it.

As I write this, I have just completed my first day’s travel. As it happens, I’ve only encountered two states so far, Texas and Oklahoma. With Texas, I got what I expected; Oklahoma was a different story. I had ridden in the back of my parents’ car through Oklahoma many years ago on our way to Albuquerque, NM, but I had no real memory of it. When I asked my dad about it, he told me he remembered it was flat like Kansas and eastern Texas, farmland you can see for miles in any direction. For the most part, he was right. But traveling north on I-35 towards Oklahoma City, I saw a sign for a scenic overlook of some kind. I had noticed the countryside getting hillier, more like the land outside of Austin, with some places where they had blasted through to construct the road. Such places are common in the Ohio Valley, but down here it’s pretty rare because of the flatness of the land, so I pulled over to have a look. All I saw was the same scrubland that had surrounded me for miles, with a few trees sprinkled about, and a sign.

The sign explained that the hills I was passing through and the rocks that were barely visible through the grass were the remains of America’s oldest mountain range, the Arbuckles. Most people are familiar with the Appalachian Mountains, which include the Smokies, and the Rocky Mountains, which stretch all the way from Canada to Mexico, but I had never heard of the Arbuckles. I found out a bit later that they are the oldest mountains in America, which is why they are of particular geological value. All that’s left of them is the stone roots, buried for millions of years until wind, water, and time wore the peaks down to nothing. In school, I remember learning that the Appalachians are much older than the Rockies despite being much smaller, and that is the reason why. Like the Arbuckles, they have been around longer for Nature to slowly but surely whittle them away.

A couple of miles down the road, I saw a sign for Turner Falls. A waterfall in Oklahoma? I had to see this. I followed the exit to the right, then crossed the highway and entered the largest group of apparently dead trees I’ve ever seen. None of them were more than twenty feet tall, and they were utterly bare. They seemed to have even been stripped of their bark, leaving only cold gray bones exposed to the chilly air, although this may have been an illusion. Once I’d passed this ghost wood, the land rose to a point, and I could tell there had to be a cliff on the other side. On the left, I saw the Turner Falls visitor center/convenience store. As I pulled into the cracked and pitted parking lot, one thought occurred to me: “This is what the ruins of America will look like in another thousand years.” The nature of its location was undoubtedly part of the problem, but it seemed no effort was made to smooth out the surface when it had been built. Navigating it was like parking on top of a cement cupcake with blacktop icing. The store sat level on the peak, and the parking lot seemed to slide away from it on all sides, as if across the surface of a bubble. There was a metal grate around the Coke machine, and the doors on either side of the shop were covered in the same protection. A sign said the road was built by convicts from 1925 to 1926.

I was pretty skeptical the place was even open, but I hadn’t stopped for the visitor center. There was a scenic overlook at one end of the parking lot, and men’s and women’s restrooms at the other end. I looked over the edge and saw the 77-foot Turner Falls cascading down the cliff face directly opposite the one I was standing on. I also noticed a set of stone steps leading down to a lower level, so I took them. The balcony had a better viewing area for a picture, and it too was seemingly falling apart, or being split from beneath, but it was navigable. Where the steps first left the cliff side and turned right onto the balcony, there was a clear but treacherous path down to the right. A twisted tree had sprung out from the rock face below and formed a small hollow where beer cans and other garbage was visible. I could easily imagine what a popular hangout that would be in warm weather.

Now that I had a better view, in addition to the falls I could see several stone structures, almost castle-like in appearance, on the valley floor below. Where the stairs continued down the cliff side, an overlarge, rusted, piece of chain link fence had been placed to block the way. The sign attached said not to proceed past that point, but I was amused to see the natural rock formation formed another path a few feet below the steps, which was not blocked at all. It should have been, because it was clear that the path and steps continued all the way down, but the steps were falling apart and wildly overgrown. One piece of the graffiti carved into the steps said “Siempre viviramos en mi corazon”, which means “We will always live in my heart” in Spanish.

I took a couple of pictures, then walked up to the restroom. To my pleasant surprise, the water was on, so I walked out and tried the door to the visitor center, which turned out to be more like a convenience store. Inside, the place was clean and tidy. I learned about the Arbuckles, mentioned above, from the woman behind the counter and picked up a couple of brochures on Turner Falls Park, one of which says it is one of only three places that has such an insight into the geological history of our country, the other two being the Grand Canyon and the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The clerk, a middle-aged woman with curly brown hair, told me years ago the park had been free admission, but they closed the steps I’d seen leading into the park when they began charging, and also for safety concerns. She also said many Texans come up to picnic and camp in the park, and I can see why. Today, however, there was almost no one there. The temperatures stayed between the high 30’s and the high 40’s, even when the sun came out.

I hit the road again, leaving the way I came. I was struck again by the denuded trees lining the way, like silent sentinels protecting this ancient landscape’s secrets. I wondered if such a thing could ever bloom in the spring and bear fruit, or if they simply waited for a time when Nature would finish them off, like she had the Arbuckle Mountains.

Such a somber note leads me to my next stop, Oklahoma City. I had asked my friend Lyndon if it was worth seeing for anything aside from the memorial, and he said “There’s not much of anything there.” But there is the memorial, and it is enough. I clearly remember the day of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building. I was a freshman attending Purdue University, and I came back to my dorm room from my 8:30am class to find my roommate plastered to the television. My arrival reminded him he had his own class to attend, but he filled me in on the basics before running out the door. The reporters were freely speculating on who might have done such a thing, and the consensus was Islamic terrorists, probably Osama Bin Laden. His first attempt to bring down the World Trade Center in New York City was less than two years past, and the stories were still fresh in everyone’s mind. There was an eerie echo of this on September 11th, as many reporters immediately assumed Bin Laden had done it, but others were quick to cite the Oklahoma City bombing as evidence of the truth of the old adage about the word “assume.”

Timothy McVeigh’s crime was the worst thing many people in America could ever imagine. Innocent women and children killed by the dozens in an instant, and for what? The only remotely satisfying outcome of that experience for the nation was the national rejection of the militia movement as a legitimate political force. This was necessary, but the cost was impossibly high. The other effect to benefit America was to, however briefly, make terrorism a topic of public conversation. Unfortunately for all of us, the first time didn’t take.

It’s easy to write the above paragraph now, sitting in an Amarillo hotel room, but seeing the site for myself moved me in ways I didn’t expect. There is a field of empty chairs, one for each victim. The names are hard to read with the sun shining in from the west, but they’re not necessary. They represent a part of each of us. I was 18 years old at the time, and it was the first event of my life where I actually felt the pull of history, the depth of the things we know reflected in my own experience. The memorial brings back that feeling.

Despite its appearance, the reflecting pool that stretches between the two memorial walls is only about an inch deep. On each wall, there is a time, the minute before the blast and the minute after. There was a child playing in the water as it ran over the small lip and spilled into the unknown below. Only minutes earlier, I had taken a picture of the playground where the children who were babysat in the building would play. I wondered if he will remember his visit to this hallowed ground. I wondered if he will ever get to see it again. There was some loose change lying on the black slabs beneath the water.

The wall of the building next door that faced the federal building was moved several inches by the blast, causing the roof to collapse. That building now contains a museum documenting the events, but the wall is mostly unchanged from its state after the explosion. The fire escapes are still there, and it looks like an abandoned building from that side. The other survivor is an 80-year-old elm, now called the Survivor Tree. Portions of a chain-link fence line the entrance in front of one of the two walls at street level. Pictures, mementos, and writing cover it from one end to the other. It is an emotional experience.

I traveled west from Oklahoma City on I-40 and came across a sign that said Red Rocks Canyon. Since there was still plenty of sun in the sky, I pulled off and followed the signs to what looked like a driveway. It led back to an extremely steep hill with two different 180-degree switchbacks in about 100 yards. At the bottom was a small park surrounded by red walls. Some were growing lichen, some were covered in vines all the way to the top, but everywhere the color red peeked through. One wall had what looked to be a chimney standing next to it but not quite attached. The shape of that one reminded me of the Titanic, so I took a picture.

In fact, I took a lot of pictures. I went through most of a roll on my first day. This does not bode well for the trip. I’ll need to start buying film in bulk.

Even the dirt in the park was red, not just the rock walls. And just like Indiana dirt, when it’s wet it gets darker. There was one area set up for performances where the wall loomed over the speaker in a semicircular shape, but the aluminum bleachers ruined the effect. There was a rock for the speaker to stand on and orate. Why not rocks for the audience to sit on? I was quite impressed by the range of different landscapes I encountered in Oklahoma.

Shortly before I re-entered Texas, I saw a Route 66 Museum. I’m not sure if this is a chain or the small Oklahoma town has the only one. It had closed about fifteen minutes before I got there, but I could see a red and white ’57 Chevy hardtop inside, and there was an old fire truck outside. I proceeded to cross over into the panhandle of Texas and in the distance saw some towering rock formations to the south. I’m not sure if these were in Oklahoma or Texas, but they wouldn’t have looked out of place in New Mexico.

When night had fallen, somewhere east of Amarillo I drove by a huge white cross, more than fifty feet tall and lit up on both sides with spotlights. There was no church nearby that I could see, and I was too late to snap a picture or I would have.

I actually passed Amarillo and went on to Vega, but turned back around when I heard the prices on motel rooms there. I probably spent more on gas driving around Amarillo looking for a cheap room than I saved. Important lesson: if you want a cheap room, stop in the city.

Notes from the Road - Introduction

To celebrate the one year anniversary of my trip around the western United States last year, I've decided to publish the journal I kept on the road in this space, one day at time for the next month or so. I managed to write something every day, some days more than others, and this first one is pretty long. I realize I already sent the file to everyone I know, so you may have read it already, but if you haven't here's your chance to catch up in smaller pieces you might find more digestible. And if you're a publisher (or just a stranger) and like my writing, shoot me an email by clicking the link in the right-hand column. Hope you enjoy it.

P.S. I'll continue to post new thoughts as well over this period, so keep checking in even if you've read the journal.

Friday, January 28, 2005


Winter sky. Posted by Hello

Thursday, January 27, 2005

Songs to bridge the divides

Every once in a while I experience a song that completely overwhelms my sensibilities and brings tears to my eyes as I sing it. When this happens, I can't seem to get enough of it, and I listen to it and play it on my guitar over and over until the effect inevitably lessens, which is both good and bad. The song that's currently stuck in my head to that effect is "King's Crossing" by Elliott Smith. It's not a heartwarming song by any means, but hearing him sing it with so much passion and sincerity is a moving experience, especially since it essentially served as his suicide note.

Other songs on that list would include Radiohead's "Letdown" and Bruce Robison's "Traveling Soldier" (also covered by the Dixie Chicks), which I saw performed at the last two Austin City Limits Music Festivals. Different songs affect people in different ways, but for me these songs and several others have been the ones that I think of when I consider popular music an art form. Which I do, on occasion.

It's popular to bag on the songs that make the radio these days as being inferior to those from the '60's and '70's (and sometimes the '80's, depending on who you're talking to). It goes without saying that there has always been good music and bad, and with the rise of teen pop and boy bands in the '90's, a lot of people tuned out with good reason. But if there's one thing fashion teaches us, it's that everything old is new again. The music that was popular in any given period of the last half-century has seen it's fortunes rise and fall, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

One thing popular music gives us, like other forms of entertainment, is a point of reference for the culture. If many people have heard a given song, whether they like it or not, they have at least that much in common. Multiply that by a dozen songs or a hundred, and there's a conversation waiting to be had. This is just one example of how we are staying connected as a people in an age of increasing isolation. As narrowcasting becomes more prominent, the number of these points of reference is going to decrease, and our feeling of commonality with it.

It's true that when one orients his or her creative impulse towards the "mainstream", the originality and peculiarity inevitably gets reduced in order to appeal to the most consumers. This is what's happened to Hollywood movies over the last 25 years. But this is just one extreme end of the pendulum swing. At the other end, if we're all creating something so specific to our age groups, races, or political persuasions as to exclude everyone else, the likelihood of maintaining our relationships and conversations with the rest of the world around us can only decrease over time, possibly to the point that we no longer recognize each other.

Monday, January 24, 2005


What Made Milwaukee Famous. Posted by Hello

Friday, January 21, 2005

"A Deep Wound"

A young man walks into the emergency room with a blue washcloth wrapped around his left middle finger. He’s slightly overweight, unshaven, and sullen. It’s almost 11:00pm. The first thing they ask him to do is fill out a form. Luckily, he’s right-handed, and he writes his name, what happened, and a couple of other pieces of information on the strip of photocopied paper and hands it to one of the two women manning the desk. They were talking when he walked up, and it took them a few seconds to recognize he wanted anything.

He’s instructed to sit in a chair at the far end of the kiosk with a small, low table built in. He has no insurance, and he’s unemployed. “I just want someone to look at it and tell me if I need stitches,” he says. “I hope the answer’s no.” A man with a vaguely Asian-looking face-perhaps he’s Latino?-sits down across from him to have a look. As soon as he removes the washcloth, the young man knows he’s made a mistake in coming here. A single drop of blood oozes slowly out, where only ten minutes before it had run in a steady drip, too much to get a band-aid applied over the sink, where it had splattered and pooled as the cat watched. Now it has almost stopped.

With white rubber gloves on his hands, the technician squeezes the area around the slice, and the blood begins to flow a little more freely as he smears it across the finger. The cut is about a centimeter long. “The doctor might use one or two,” he says, explaining that the palm side of the hand is full of little veins or arteries-he says one, then corrects himself with the other, leaving the young man confused as to which it is-and one may have been hit.

A nurse walks up as they talk and fastens a plastic bracelet around his right hand. He explains that he was standing over the sink and dropped a glass mug, which shattered as he grabbed for it, slicing his finger. It was over in a split second, and all he could think was, “Please don’t let me have to go to the hospital for this.” And here he is.

A nurse leaving her shift leads him through a maze of doors and halls to a room, washcloth reapplied. Another nurse or technician, a quiet black woman wearing glasses, wheels a computer terminal contraption over to him to get his information. She has trouble with the name of his mother’s town, who he’s listing as an emergency contact. He doesn’t have the patience for her, as all he can think is “This is going to cost me so much money.”

The doctor comes in a few minutes later, young and smiling. He looks Indian, but is obviously American by his accent. He asks “When was your last tetanus shot?” but the young man doesn’t remember. The doctor looks at the finger and wavers over whether or not stitches are necessary. The young man says he'd like to avoid it if possible, and explains his situation. The doctor says he could use “steri-strips”, but he’s hesitant because of the location of the cut. Without stitches, it could be torn open easier. He decides if the wound does come open, the young man can always come back in to get stitches later. The doctor mentions that in cases like these, he usually takes x-rays to see if there’s any glass under the skin, but since the young man doesn’t feel any he lets it slide. But he still orders the tetanus shot, and after reading the laminated card explaining the symptoms of that disease, the young man doesn’t blame him.

Once he’s taken care of, he waits for his paperwork. Ten minutes pass, then twenty. He realizes this hospital has no smell, and wonders how they managed that. All the nurse did was put on the equivalent of a band-aid. They gave him the gauze and left over “steri-strips” as well, since “you’re paying for them.” At the dismissal desk, an overweight woman with long, dark, brown hair and a wide-eyed look calls for the estimate since they sent him on his way without the “blue sheet”. If it’s a level one, the hospital will be charging him around $200.00 including the tetanus shot. If it’s a level two, it will be more, she says.

The call comes in that it’s a level two, with a category one. If he pays it all now, he gets 20% off. Otherwise, he can pay the full amount over time. Even though he doesn’t have the money, he makes a quick calculation and decides to pay the discounted rate up front with his credit card, since the interest on what he can’t pay should not be more than 20% of the total. The hospital is charging him just under $400.00 for a shot and a band-aid. The doctor’s bill will come later. “He didn’t do anything,” he tells the dark-haired woman. “He’ll bill you anyway,” she replies. “If this is a level two, what’s a level one?” he wonders aloud. “When they look at it and tell you to go home.” Madness.

As he tries to make his way back to his car through the long halls and double doors, he remembers the voice of the Boy Scout in the back of his head as he watched his blood run down the drain. “Apply pressure,” it said, and he did. They’ve sent him to the wrong parking garage, so he has to walk to the street and around the building. It’s now 1:00am, and he remembers his father’s thoughts on the state of health care today. “They used to overcharge people with insurance to subsidize the ones without it. Now they overcharge the ones without it to subsidize the insurance companies, who simply refuse to pay half of what they’re billed.” As he drives home, he knows one thing for certain. The pressure’s on.

Thursday, January 20, 2005

Forgive, not forget

In December, US News & World Report published an article on 50 ways to improve your life in 2005. The last one was "Forgive". The article told the story of how a white aid worker was killed by a mob of black men in South Africa, after which her parents moved over there to continue her work, even eventually employing two of their daughter's killers. This is amazing to me, all the more so for all the revenge fantasies that played out in my and other Americans' heads after 9/11. You know the type, where you were on one of the airliners being hijacked, and like Todd Beamer and the others on Flight 93, you stand up and attack the evil men who are about to kill you and everyone else on the plane because of their twisted beliefs.

People don't talk about this much, but it was a common reaction, possibly fueled by the Dirty Harry, Arnold Schwarzenegger mentality that has suffused violent entertainment over the past 20-30 years. Or maybe it's simply an innately human failing, the belief that causing others pain is useful for assuaging our own in the face of tragedy. After all, you don't see a buck in the forest attacking a hunter dragging its mate back to the pickup truck. It's a consequence of intelligent thought that we realize vengeance is even possible, one of the things that indeed separates us from other animals.

Some proponents of the death penalty argue that even though there is little or no evidence that executing people is a deterrent to violent criminals, it should still be done in order to do justice to the victims' families. Leaving aside the growing evidence that innocent Americans have been executed by the state for crimes they didn't commit, this is an Old Testament mentality unworthy of Christians, and since rejected by the Jewish faith as well. I don't know enough about other religions to comment on their stance, but US News points out a couple of suggestive passages - the angel Gabriel telling Mohammed to "set aside vengeful anger", for instance.

I have not lost someone to this kind of crime, so I'm not speaking from experience. The article notes Jesus Christ's "radical forgiveness", an apt description, and one that seems impossible to embrace. After all, what would have happened if there had been no military response to 9/11, or the invasion of Poland, or any number of other things? There's truly no way of knowing, but one suspects there would have been more death, more suffering, and on and on. But there was all of that anyway. Would the people have abandoned their leaders if they were told to forgive and embrace their attackers? Almost certainly. As an interviewee puts it, "To ask a victim for radical forgiveness can be unrealistic and morally unjustifiable." To offer it, on the other hand, is grace.

Monday, January 17, 2005

Naming conventions

When I first started writing stories as a child, I based them on toys I was playing with at the time, mainly Legos. At the time, they came in three settings: town, space, and medieval. To incorporate them all, I had the characters from the space setting travel back in time to the other periods, including the pirate era when that setting was introduced, and have adventures while trying to return to their own time. It was all very much inspired by cartoons and movies, rather than Jules Verne or H. G. Wells, and I even wrote out character profiles of the kind you'd find on the back of G.I. Joe boxes. The irony of creatively applying the marketing strategy for one brand of toy to a different brand of toy was probably lost on me at the time.

Anyway, to fill out the profiles of these characters I had to have names (and codenames, of course), and I just pulled them off the top of my head, whatever I could come up with. This resulted in some pretty bland entries, as the concept of naming a character in such a way as to reveal his nature was something I learned much later, while I was studying creative writing, and especially Syd Field's books on screenwriting. This isn't exactly common in movies, but you do see it sometimes and it can be illuminating if done subtly.

I tended to pick names haphazardly in my fiction, as well, until I realized names do have meaning outside of the individuals bearing them. In particular, you would not want to give a Nazi a Jewish name, or an Irish character an Italian name. Even if you assign no qualities to people of a certain background, you have to acknowledge their heritage to be believable. Inconsistencies like those above would be distracting, because readers would want to know the story behind them. In the melting pot of America, it took me until my teens to actually pay attention to these differences in any real way. At the time, knowing someone's name didn't immediately tell me anything about them - I had no preconceived notions, no immediate reactions to learning someone's name. In the adult world, this is impossible - both because we know more about where we came from, and because of what we learn through the media about the world around us.

We enter the world with a series of blinders over our eyes, and as we get older they are slowly stripped away until we see the world as it really is, with an inescapable history of struggle and division over trivial differences, and some wounds that never heal.

Thursday, January 13, 2005

Apply here

So I've been considering jobs around town for the last couple of weeks, and I've been surprised at how many places won't give you an application anymore. Time and time again, the response has been, "Go to our website and apply online." This is a rather strange development, considering all the work involved in filling out an application is done by the person applying. Surely these companies have to print the applications anyway at some point, at least for those they intend to interview, so they can't be saving much on printing costs.

There are a couple of things that bother me about this. Number one, by denying walk-ins a piece of paper to fill out and return, they are automatically filtering out those who can't afford or just don't have internet access. Sears and some others get around this problem by providing a computer terminal in the store for this purpose, if you're willing to stand there and go through the process in public for twenty to thirty minutes. Yes, you could do it at the library, but once again you're in public and it's a hassle you don't have to worry about with a paper form.

Number two, you're providing a host of sensitive personal information to them over the internet, and if you're applying to multiple places, you're doing it over and over again. I'm not paranoid when it comes to the internet, but I have had my credit card number stolen once and it's not fun. Yeah, big companies probably have lots of security on their end, but what about the person sending it? There are keystroke loggers and nasty things now that many people do nothing to defend against (even though they should). At least in the past you could believe the computers your social security number and address and phone number were being entered into inside the company were relatively safe.

In spite of the above, I realize it's much more convenient to type up an application and hit a button from home than to go get the form, fill it out, and return it. I just think you should still have the option if, for whatever reason, you ask for the paper application. Two choices are better than one.

Monday, January 10, 2005

Radio daze

I met a guy named Radio Mike last week, and we've hung out a couple of times with my roommate. Mike just moved to Austin from New York City, where he was doing a streaming radio show over the internet. He rips some tracks from his CD collection into an audio recording program, records his voice on a separate track from the music, mixes it down into a one-hour wav file, compresses that into an mp3, and then uploads it to his host for anybody to download and listen to. It's do-it-yourself broadcasting for the digital set.

The newest Entertainment Weekly has an article on the decline of the album as a musical form due to both legal and illegal mp3 downloading. The evolving mindset we have as a nation is that we can have any song/tv show/movie that we want whenever we want it, thanks to Tivo, Kazaa, iPods, and all the rest. Green Day's fantastic American Idiot is pointed to as the current exception that points out the rarity of concept albums these days, since people will listen to the songs in whatever order they like, and whatever meaning the order had to the story will be lost. Radio Mike's show gives the lie to the idea that concept albums can't be released digitally, however, since a band could release a file containing the whole album, with no track separation and therefore no skipping. You could always fast forward through, but that's always been true anyway. Convenience is the key here.

I think shows like Radio Mike's could have an opportunity for much broader exposure if satellite radio catches on. It's not a big leap from receiving the satellite data signal and decoding it to play over car speakers to receiving an mp3 file via wireless streaming download. Many new car stereos will play mp3 files already. It's only a matter of time before innovation makes the consolidation of these elements possible, and if the audience is there, a whole new world could be opening up for longform music with a point of view.

Thursday, January 06, 2005

Criticism for the masses

I’ve been reading the movie critics’ discussion on Slate, which has almost degenerated into name-calling on a couple occasions, and hasn’t been enough about movies, but does offer a little insight into the state of professional criticism today. It also got me thinking about movie-making as an art form, and what direction it may or may not be headed in the future.

For many years now, movie criticism has been splitting into two camps, and this split has been exacerbated by the rise of amateurs on the internet (like Vern). To perhaps unfairly generalize, one side takes the view that movies are an art form that should be viewed as such, and that movies – and by extension, criticism of them – should be taken seriously and studied for meaning (or lack thereof). The other side views movies as mostly entertainment that it’s ok to just sit back and enjoy – that mindless stuff that leaves you smiling can still be considered “good”, and worth your time and money, if you’re on a date, killing time, whatever.

I think both camps would agree that movies themselves can be differentiated into “art/foreign/independent films” and “Hollywood films”, but they might disagree as to what this distinction means. After all, there’s a lot of crap out there, period, and plenty of failures in both groups. This is a consequence of the very nature of filmmaking as a collaborative enterprise. Art as a whole has historically largely been a solitary creation and criticism of it reflects that, even theater to an extent – one has to differentiate the run being performed today from the run a play has had in the past, under different direction and with different actors, but still all performing the same written work. Movies are different, in that all the different contributors lead to too many variables for any single person to reliably control the quality.

I find the group that believes the “blockbuster” subset of Hollywood films to be inherently inferior to smaller films that take on different (i.e., non-action, non-glamorous) subject matter to be a lot like art critics who write about paintings, sculpture, etc., in that they are writing for a smaller audience that is only looking for engaging material, or perhaps simply trying to engage with everything they see. This is not, in my opinion, the majority of people going to see movies, and that’s ok. But it’s a little disconcerting when these critics try to argue that they are writing for that larger audience, and that if only they could make their arguments loud enough or persuasively enough, the masses would discover what they’ve been missing and flock to the great little film about wine-tasting while ignoring the silly superhero-of-the-week movie. And it’s disappointing to hear them heap scorn on critics in the other camp who (they believe) don’t try hard enough or speak loudly enough for these smaller films.

The way I see it, the division between Hollywood movies and non-Hollywood movies (perhaps better characterized as “big” and “small”) reflects the growth and evolution of the art form. Big movies are becoming more like television shows (times ten or a hundred) before reality TV took over, and small movies are becoming more like the art found in galleries, which has to be sought out. Big movies want and need big audiences, so they’re designed to appeal to the masses. Small movies don’t necessarily want or need big audiences (although the financiers can always hope), so they’re typically highly stylized, or controversial, or just plain art (when they’re not porn, straight-to-video, or made-for-TV specials – I'm talking about theatrical releases here). I side with the critics who aren’t afraid to put Spider-Man 2 on their best-of lists next to Tarnation and Sideways. If a movie succeeds at what it’s trying to do, it doesn’t bother me if all it’s trying to do is entertain its audience for two hours.

Sunday, January 02, 2005

Kicking off the New Year

Well, back into the swing of things. I had a good visit with the family and friends in the Indiana-Ohio-Kentucky region, despite the winter storm that brought between one and two feet of snow to the entire area the second day I was there. At least I didn’t have to fly into that stuff, since it was beautiful the day I got there. There was no going anywhere for two days leading up to Christmas Eve, with a layer of ice on top of the snow so thick you could walk on it without breaking through the crust in most parts. In Columbus, everything plant-like was covered in a centimeter or more of solid ice, as if it was encased in glass, and the trees continuously crackled as they swayed in the breeze. Of course, when I flew back to Texas, we were getting 60 degrees and all was good.

My brother came to see me for New Year’s and we had a good time seeing the sites and trying the local cuisine, including Stubb’s, Hyde Park Bar & Grill, and Kerbey Lane. We saw Scott H. Biram play a scorching set at Trophy’s, and someone building a house on Mt. Bonnell that blocks part of the view (reminds me of the unsightly apartment complexes built on the quay leading to the Sydney Opera House that now obscure the view from the city-I signed the petition to stop them when I was there in 1997, but they were already mostly done, so I’m sure they completed them).

We took my camera out to 6th Street on New Year’s Eve to film the festivities as well as participate in them, and got a few revelers’ resolutions, as well as a do-over of the countdown when something went wrong the first time. Oh well.


The rare glass plant. Posted by Hello