Jeremiah's Aunt

How the president is, and is not, like a soccer coach

2009-11-14T18:29:00.000-05:00

Here's a li'l story about my recent adventures in a second grade classroom...
Someone from my accelerated Master's program came to observe me giving a social studies lesson. The lesson had to have something about reading or writing integrated into it, so I decided to craft the lesson around an issue of TIME For Kids magazine. The cover story on the issue I chose was on our new Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor. (I like a challenge.)
I had a little time earlier in the day, before my observer came, so I asked students if they'd ever heard of the Supreme Court. A few could tell me a little bit about court and lawyers, including the tidbit that lawyers cost money. I also asked if they knew what "supreme" meant. I said they'd probably heard it in reference to pizza, and asked them to please not think of the Supreme Court as the Pizza Court.
As I was gathering this background info, one boy raised his hand and asked, "Do they have a president on the other side of the world?" I said this was an excellent question. We talked a bit about different names for heads of government: presidents, kings, queens, prime ministers. They wanted to put "mayor" on that list, and one student asked me if there was a king in Rome. (Not to hear Caesar tell it!)
When lesson time came, I decided before we even read the magazine that we should figure something out about the three branches of government in the hopes of pinning an abstract concept like "Supreme Court" onto something concrete. From prior conversations with these second graders, I knew what interested them most (besides SpongeBob). "Who in here likes sports?" I asked. Everyone in the class raised his or her hand. "Who is on a sports team?" Not every hand this time, but a substantial number. I asked one girl what her grandfather did for her soccer team (again, I knew the answer in advance because of a prior conversation).
"He's our coach," she said.
We went into what a coach does, and then I wrote "Coach" on the board.
"And what do we call the person who decides what happens if the soccer ball goes out of play?"
When the class gave me the answer, I wrote "Referee" on the board.
"And then there must be some group of people who came up with the rules of soccer and who can decide, say, if there should be 20 people out on the field instead of 18." Not knowing the name of this shadowy organization, I put "People who make up rules" on the board.
Then I explained that these were like the branches of our government. The president is like the coach, except less likely to take you personally out for pizza; the referee is like the Supreme Court, and the people who make rules, Congress.
I think they got it, but even if they didn't, at least it was an introduction to the concept, which is what an awful lot of second grade is about.

School notes, mid-October edition

2009-10-19T06:08:00.002-05:00

I woke up early this morning. I try to be up early when I can--I like to go out for a morning walk--but this morning when I checked the forecast, I elected to go curl up in front of the space heater instead.
This last week of school, in terms of the courses I'm taking, has been the sort of experience that makes you understand how one can get addicted to stimulants. (Don't worry; this is not a confession. I never resorted to anything harder than Mountain Dew.) I am not someone who has developed, how shall we call them, "good" study habits. You know the ones--like doing a little bit of work every day instead of waiting for the last moment. And last week a couple of my classes came to the end of their eight-week span, so I had something like six assignments to complete and turn in. (And that may be lower than the actual number, because I got tired just trying to remember them all and stopped at six.)
Now, part of the reason my work had piled up was that during this term I took trips out of town two weekends in a row. The first was to a family reunion for my father's side of the family. No way was I going to miss a gathering of 125 happy Italians and hangers-on. The next was the first-ever academic conference on U2, which just so happened to take place on the same weekend just down the road from a U2 concert, can you imagine that? Next to Italian relatives, U2 fans are my favorite group of people to be around, so no way was I missing this, either. But all of this gallivanting did lead to my assignments stacking up such that they were taking turns joyfully jumping off the high dive, so to speak. The good news is that everything due last week has been turned in and my next round of classes do not begin until, oh, Tuesday.
As for my adventures in observation at the grade school--it's been the educational home of the walking wounded. You may have heard that there's some nasty sickness floating around. Grade schools being disease factories to begin with, it may not surprise you to learn that on days last week up to eight kids (in a class of twenty-one) were absent. (One of my fellow intern teachers had ten kids out of a class of twenty one day.) Interestingly, a different set of kids was gone each day; this did make it easier to help the previously-absent set catch up with their work, but it also meant there was little point moving on with lessons to cover new material.
And now I must dash to get to school to begin the new week, but I will leave you with this anecdote--the seven-year-olds had an assignment in handwriting to write a sentence about the continent they live on. One little fella decided he was going to be clever and wrote, "I like North America so much, I don't know where to begin."

Ninety-seven, coal car, boxcar, caboose!

2009-09-19T11:20:00.004-05:00

I'm working with a small group of second graders doing reading work for a half-hour. This week was my first week.
I have six second-graders in my group, two boys, four girls. One boy shows definite signs of wanting to be the small group clown. On Wednesday, I tried channeling his energy into more positive areas; I had him lead the group in some exercises in reading expressively. We also talked a bit about enunciation and pacing (one girl tends to rush). With all that in mind, I decided to bring in something special on Thursday.
I'd hinted about doing something cool, so when everybody saw the sheets of paper I passed out, they said, "Is that the fun thing?" But I instructed them to keep the pages turned to the back until we finished other activities.
Our small group clown dallied. I let everyone else who had finished turn the pages over while he continued to work. "If we don't get to the fun stuff because of you, the group's gonna be mad at you!" I warned. He picked up the pace.
At last he was done. I explained to the group that when I was just a little older than they are, I had discovered this poem and committed it to memory. I told them to pay attention to what happened as I recited it. They all had copies; I didn't, but our small group clown still thought I was cheating and looking at a page until I looked him dead in the eye as I rattled off my lines.
The poem was Crossing, by Philip Booth, and it goes like this:
"Stop Look Listen/as gate stripes swing down/count the cars hauling distance/upgrade through town:/warning whistle, bellclang,/engine eating steam/engineer waving/a fast freight dream:/B&M boxcar/boxcar again,/Frisco gondola/eight-nine-ten/Erie and Wabash,/Seabord, U.P.,/Pennsy tankcar,/twenty-two,three,/Phoebe Snow, B&O,/thirty-four,five,/Santa Fe cattle/ shipped alive/red cars yellow cars,/orange cars, black,/Youngstown steel/down to Mobile/on Rock Island track,/fifty-nine,sixty,/hoppers of coke,/Anaconda copper,/hotbox smoke,/eighty-eight,/red-ball freight,/Rio Grande,/Nickel Plate,/Hiawatha,/Lackawanna,/rolling fast/and loose,/ninety-seven,/coal car,/boxcar,/caboose!"
What happened, of course, was the poem sped up as the train sped up. "Do that again!" they said. This time I suggested they try reading along with me as I recited it. I asked them to guess how many cars were on the train; what was the last number and how many cars came after that?
They all took their copies with them. One little girl said, her eyes shining, "I'm going to take it home and memorize it this weekend and then I'll say it to you on Monday!"

My impressions of U2 in Chicago.

2009-09-13T17:40:00.002-05:00

(Spoiler alert: this post mentions songs U2 are performing on their 360 Tour. If you are trying to avoid hearing about the setlist, you might want to skip the last few paragraphs.)
I had made plans months back to see this show, the opening night of the North American leg of U2's 360 Tour, but sold my ticket once I started thinking about all of my travel obligations this fall (which include going to see U2 in Raleigh, so it's not like I would miss them entirely). Then about a week before the show, I heard the ticket was up for grabs again. I thought, well, if it's going to go to all of that trouble to find its way back to me, who am I to stand in the way of Destiny? So I made some hotel reservations, talked to a Chicago-based friend about meeting her for dinner, and trundled up the highway.
Once I arrived--my first driving experience in Chicago, by the way, though it hardly counts because I basically exited Lake Shore Drive into a parking lot--I could see the top of the Claw, U2's massive stage set, peeking out over the stands of Soldier Field. I could also see the folks in the general admission line starting to go in. One friend had gotten there early that morning and reported 500 people in line at 6:15 am. (U2 hit the stage about fifteen hours after that.)
My Chicago friend and I had dinner at Valencia. We'd been searching for a place to eat and took the recommendation of a passing Chicagoan--she did not steer us wrong. We had gazpacho, I had sea bass with crabmeat and saffron butter, she had mussels drizzled with yumminess. Valencia also served pomegranate martinis, but I figured it wouldn't be smart to indulge in one of those. All in all, a lovely way to celebrate making it to Chicago.
We said our goodbyes, I joined the throng streaming into the stadium, and then I was in. I had a general admission ticket, but my first look at the Claw in all its glory was from up in the stands. I've heard folks say that you have to see it in person to appreciate the scale of this setup, and it's true. I'd seen lots of pictures but I was still well and truly gobsmacked. The legs stretched from one of the field to the other--a football field!
I'm gonna go off on a tangent here for a sec but stay with me. I've got a recording of a fake folk song, a parody of the genre, about the custom of hunting the wren. In the course of it one singer asks why anyone would hunt such a small bird: "It won't need much stuffing/I don't see the sense."
"Of course it's not big though," the other singer responds. "It's one of the salient features of wrens."
I bring this up because this week the Washington Post had a piece about this tour which basically criticized U2 for being ambitious. Reading it I found myself singing, "It's one of the salient features..." I mean, come on. Has the Post been paying any attention over the last 33 years?
One thing I will say for the article, however--the writer did manage to capture the Claw's unique presence: "When the band performs beneath this hulking piece of technology, it appears as if planet Earth has decided to sacrifice its highest-grossing Irish rock troupe to our new alien overlords."
As for the concert itself--I was near the "back" of the field (with a setup like this, it's hard to talk seriously about back or front) both because I wasn't on the field until opening act Snow Patrol were gone and because I wasn't interested in being in the crush of bodies at the "front."
When U2 took the stage and the screen high above us flickered to life, I was disoriented in a way I haven't heard anyone comment on as yet. Remember--I was in a football stadium, a filled football stadium, three-quarters of the way down the field or more, several thousand people in front of me, sky overhead. But the sound was crisp and clear and perfect, like I was in Sheldon Concert Hall, except way way louder.
I had known on an intellectual level that the whole point of designing the Claw was to get the speakers out of the way of everyone's sightlines. Now I took a good look at them. I counted eighteen speakers in a column, six columns across, two arrays like that (one on each side) between each leg. And the screen in the middle. The very convincing illusion provided by this mustered woofing and tweeting power is that it's the 50 foot tall Bono, Edge, Adam and Larry making all the noise, not their tiny counterparts far beneath. This messed with my head.
There's a very high percentage of songs performed from the three most recent albums. Once I realized this, I also realized that none of them have been played in a US stadium before--or indeed in a show specifically designed as a stadium show. And speaking of hearing things in a new way--I also realized I hadn't seen U2 live since moving to Cincinnati. My life is so, so different now; the connections I'm making to the songs are different. Not better or worse, just different. It was not something I consciously realized until I had put the "U2 concert" marker down on this part of my life.
It was an enthusiastic crowd--hey, it's Chicago, one of the top two places in the US to see U2, in my opinion--but it was still fun to watch the waves of "Huh?" roll through it when the band launched into a dance remix of "I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight." People were dancing by the end, though.
During "Ultraviolet," I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned, expecting maybe one of the folks I knew who were attending the show. No--it was a guy I didn't know. "I love this song!" he said. I have him a thumbs up. There are worse encounters one can have with a random drunk guy.
There is much more I can talk about, but there is also being home, and sleep.

My first report card, as it were.

2009-09-07T18:01:00.002-05:00

I have a Dr Pepper within reach, I've gotten my assignments completed for tomorrow and the day after, and in a little while I should begin my reading assignments for the rest of the week. It's the best possible time to catch you up on what the last couple of weeks have been like.

Our story so far: at the beginning of summer I enrolled in the College of Mount St. Joseph's Accelerated Master's Degree program for Inclusive Early Childhood, which will certify me to teach young'uns from 3 years old to 3rd grade, with an option to tack on an endorsement at the end to teach 4th and 5th grade as well. Two weeks ago, local public grade schools went into session. Part of our program is a period of observation in grade school classrooms, so my classmates and I fanned out across Cincinnati to kindergarten, first grade, second grade, third grade...

I haven't been in a grade school classroom since St. Thomas of Aquin closed its doors after my eighth grade graduation. Happily, I was paired with a mentor teacher with thirty years' experience (she taught one of the people teaching at her school now when she was in second grade!), and she has made me feel right at home. I'm in a second grade classroom with twenty-one children, with books and dry erase boards and math manipulatives and reward stickers and much, much more. At the start of the day one student is in charge of changing the calendar date to the correct one, and another gives us a weather report. We say the Pledge of Allegiance and try to follow proper protocol when we line up to go from one room to the next.

The first day was really, really tough--long and disorienting, and it didn't help that I knew I'd have my own graduate-level class to attend at the end of it. (I'm in the grade school from 7:30 in the morning until 2:45 in the afternoon, then I have class from 4 to 6:30. That's my Monday to Thursday schedule; on Fridays I have one 5 1/2 hour class and no observation time in the second grade room.) On my way to my own class I impulsively pulled in to a nature preserve and took about a half-hour walk through the woods; that helped. Also, my professor that night talked about how teachers should be in the "ministry of presence" business; "You're adults," he told us, "so you can act like you want to be there even if you're having the kind of day when you don't feel like it! Just get across to your children, 'I am here for you.'" It was a timely message.

One more thing. There is an incredible range of proficiencies in the classroom I'm observing--both in terms of academics and behavior/social skills. If it hadn't been for this program, I wouldn't have had the chance to see how a dedicated teacher can work with each child, meeting each child where he or she is, and coaxing him or her to take many more steps forward. Just in the short time I have been in the classroom, I've come to a new appreciation of the patience, the perseverance, the commitment it takes for teachers to do what they do all day. It has been a tremendous privilege.

St. Joe's at St. E's

2009-06-26T14:51:00.003-05:00

When I step out of my house and look up the street, I see stone towers with filigree-work windows; I see a green copper dome; I see all of this topped with crosses. (Well, mostly topped with crosses. One cross is missing one-half of its crossbar, so one tower is topped with a sideways T. But this is what happens sometimes with old churches.)
St. Elizabeth's church is a heavy presence to have in the neighborhood, dominating the skyline, drawing people in. I think people here love her the way sailors may love a ship--I know I do. She's the reason I'm here, in a way. I would not have moved to Cincinnati had I not heard of the intentional Christian community that had restored St. E's to a worship space after the old Catholic parish had merged with two others. The Vineyard Central community had situated themselves in the parish buildings--the church, the rectory, the convent. I thought if I moved in, I could help explain the symbology that was their most immediate environment--the statues, the stained glass, the sign by the bell-ringing mechanism that said "Angelus."
In truth, there wasn't much about Catholicism my new neighbors and friends didn't already know--my faith has as heavy a presence on the cultural landscape as St. E's has on the geographical one. I ended up learning lots more about the Protestant world. Many Sundays I'd start at St. E's singing worship songs at my friends' service before ducking out to drive to Mass. I called it my "Jesus progressive dinner."
The Catholic church I attend is St. Joseph's. I sing in the choir of the 11 am Mass, where the liturgy is solidly in the Black Catholic tradition. We in the choir lead gospel songs, and sway, and every few weeks or so someone is so overcome with joy she shouts and testifies to the greatness of God. I found it all a bit startling at first, as I grew up in a church that was decidedly nondemonstrative. But that church of my childhood was later the home of Vietnamese liturgies which I also attended. I've gotten used to Mass being something outside my normal cultural sphere.
My joy would be complete if my Vineyard Central friends and neighbors and my St. Joseph church family were all connected. It's tough to belong to two congregations at the same time (even if, technically, I never joined VC--I spend way too much time with folks who are VC or loosely-VC-affiliated for this to be anything more than a technicality). Some ties already bind--a VC house church has gone to Ash Wednesday Mass at St. Joe's for the last few years, for example, and I've taken choir friends for a tour of St. E's. Still, I'm always hoping for something more, so you can imagine how excited I am about this Sunday night, when the St. Joe's choir will come sing in gorgeous St. Elizabeth's, up the street from my house.
Let me say that again: St. Joe's choir is singing at St. Elizabeth's this Sunday night. A full-on gospel choir, whose director happens to have once been the rehearsal pianist for La Scala, who reveals, when he smiles, that he is actually one of the cherubim, is coming to blow the copper dome off the church up the street.
I don't know what we'll be singing. Wylie, our choir director, never tells us in advance. The decision is left to the Spirit, who's never failed us yet.
I hope my VC and loosely-VC-affiliated friends, as well as friends from other parts and curious bystanders, will sing along. I think they will.

Giant's Causeway

2009-05-03T01:50:00.004-05:00

I am visiting my friends Cat (whom I know from high school) and Christy (her husband) at their home not far from Belfast. Generally I'm an easygoing traveller, happy to go along with other people's plans, but there was one sight I insisted on seeing on this trip: the Giant's Causeway on the Antrim Coast. I'd been to Northern Ireland once before--ten years ago this year!--on a backpacking trip, and had planned to visit this peculiar rock formation then, but I'd gotten ill and scotched the idea. There'd be none of that this time!
Cat, Christy and I set out on a whole-day expedition--not just to the Causeway but to Dunluce Castle (a majestic ruin on the cliffs which my friend Desiree had recommended I see) and the beach at Ballycastle (where Christy had gone many a summer whilst growing up). I was completely dumbstruck by Dunluce, it was just so gorgeous and wild. Mighty waves crashing against rocks below sheer cliffs, a roofless manor house and loggia and battlements, a sign describing an outer wall that had slid into the sea.
Fortified with salt and vinegar crisps, we headed next to the Giant's Causeway. Christy asked if I'd heard the legend of its formation. I had, but I'd forgotten key details.
"There's this Irish giant and this Scottish giant who decide to get together to fight," he began. Apparently they'd never met before--perhaps they'd just shouted insults back and forth, as Scotland and this bit of Northern Ireland are only, what, 37 km removed at this point. "So they start building a causeway so they can meet in the middle to battle it out." But then the Irish giant catches a glimpse of the Scottish giant--Christy used a colorful colloquialism to describe the terror the Irish giant felt at this point-and he hurriedly retreats. "Back home, the Irish giant dresses up in baby clothes and gets in a baby carriage sized to fit him. The Scottish giant meanwhile is angry he didn't get to scrap, and he comes looking for the Irish giant--" and finds instead what he takes to be the Irish giant's not-so-wee bairn. "He thinks, 'if that's his baby...!' and he runs back home, destroying the causeway as he goes."
All this Cat and Christy and I talked about on the long slanting road down to the Causeway. Christy also said that, though he himself thought the legend was a sufficient explanation for the stones, "naysayers" had formed a theory about a volcanic eruption some 60 million years back when basalt had rapidly cooled in the water. The expansion and contraction of rock made it take hexagonal shapes for reasons I've read about on the Wiki page but don't quite understand. "But the evidence in favor of the legend is that there are similar formations on the Scottish side," Christy pointed out.
Once we actually reached the Led Zeppelin album cover, I again felt overcome by how extraordinary it was. It's always fun to go stepping from stone to stone on a shoreline--multiply that by the surreality of the stones being hexagonal, and at all different heights, and some of them loose. "D'you have good health insurance?" Christy wanted to know. I laughed but started stepping more carefully, though I still found myself drawn to go as far out toward the sea as I could. Most people were scrambling up a ledge flanked by long columns of these rocks, but this was closer to the shore. There was a wide shelf of black rock (the inner rocks were brown) that was lonelier. I headed that way. My path would be blocked by small pools of water or boulders, but I found ways through. I didn't see where Cat and Christy went.
I found what seemed to be a good outpost--not too close to the crashing waves, not too close to the shoreline--and sat on a rock. I wasn't content there long, though. I soon noticed that, since the hexagons were all different heights, a natural high-backed chair was right beside me. I slid into it gratefully. It was even tilted back a little--a natural Barcalounger. Perfect. Mysterious stones and great green cliffs and wheeling seagulls and the roar of the sea. Happiness.
I watched the waves as they smashed into the rocks and broke into spouts of spray. I felt like I could have watched this for hours and hours. Just a few minutes in, though, I heard a deeper roar and saw a bigger wave approach. Wow, I thought. I wonder how far in it will get?
...as it flung itself in and drenched my corduroys and socks and shoes.
I stood up, squealed "AAA!" or something like that and looked around. I started squelching back to the brown rocks. (I was beginning to vaguely grasp what the difference in color might have meant.) I wanted to find Cat and Christy, but I was also hoping they hadn't seen this.
As I looked around I heard a whistle. "Don't worry," Christy said from the ledge where he and Cat were sitting. "Nobody saw that. Not many people, anyway."
For the rest of the day, when Cat broke into giggles, I knew the mental picture that prompted them. But I didn't mind. They were gracious enough to provide me a place to stay on this trip--the least I could do for Cat and Christy was to provide them some entertainment.

2009-03-15T14:47:00.003-05:00

Really? My last post was in Advent? Huh. Well, it's Lent, so I guess it's time I post again...
Friday I was not well. I was the sort of "not well" that wakes one up at 3 am and lets one know that despite all previous plans, one is not going to go to work, one is not going to the awesome Hartzell United Methodist All You Can Eat Fish Fry and one is not going to the CD release party for the spectacular new release by the amazing Pomegranates, Everybody Come Outside!
Twelve hours after this realization, I decided to risk a walk around the neighborhood in the interest of a change of scenery. I was feeling a bit better, so I stepped out of the apartment with my long black leather jacket over a red ribbed sweater and my favorite gray pants and started out on the forty-minute circuit I like to walk.
I was almost finished--I'd turned my third corner--when a cop car pulled up and two cops came out of it and they said, "Put your hands behind your back! We have a warrant!"
Um?
I put my hands behind my back. They handcuffed me. All I could think was, "I hope wherever you plan to take me has a bathroom."
"What are you doing out here?" they asked.
"I'm on a walk," I said. "I have a forty-minute circuit I like to walk."
"Have you been arguing with anybody?"
"No."
"Do you have any identification on you?"
"No. But if you take me back to my house, we can get it."
"We had a call on a domestic dispute involving a woman with a red sweater and a black leather jacket."
As the cop was saying this, I could see "maybe this isn't the right chick" cross his face and the face of his partner. One kept looking up the street, muttering things like, "She should be coming round the corner any second."
They asked for my name, social security number and birthdate. I gave all of this information, and one got on his walkie-talkie and relayed it. They both sighed in exasperation as the woman on the other end got the numbers wrong, they repeated them, and then we waited. While we waited, one cop decided I didn't pose enough of a security risk to warrant the metal, so he released me from the handcuffs. I put my hands in my pockets and then remembered policemen want to see your hands at all times, so I took them back out again.
We waited, the one cop continuing to look up the street. I stared off into the middle distance.
The cop who kept looking up the street looked at the red lion emblazoned on my necklace and said, alluding to the birth date I'd given him, "I wondered if that necklace meant you were a Leo."
"No, it's actually from Chronicles of Narnia," I said.
Trying to find me in their system was taking too long for their tastes, so finally they said, "Let's just go. Sorry, ma'am." And they got back in their cop car and drove off.
The whole thing probably took no more than ten minutes. I've been having some interesting "Yeah, I've been handcuffed by the police" conversations with random folks because of it.

Advent, Active Waiting, Love of God and Love of Neighbor

2008-12-02T22:02:00.002-05:00

At some point I read a story which illustrated the concept of "active waiting." It seems there was a woman who desperately wanted to have a baby. She decided that there were some things she could do to become a better mother, if and when the time came, and she didn't have to wait until she was pregnant to get started on them. So she quit smoking, she got more exercise, she read parenting books, she sought to improve her relationship with her husband. By the time she did have a baby, the baby was incorporated into a well-integrated life--it was not the be-all and end-all of her life; it wasn't an idol, as it might have been had she not done all that preparation.
I like the idea of "active waiting," particularly in Advent. One of the practices I have taken from the idea is the practice of asking more advice, soliciting more opinions, about whatever it is I am actively waiting for.
This Advent I have decided to actively wait for wholeness. From what I understand of Christian teaching, the two commands we are to follow are to love God with our whole heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Wholeness would spring from these. So because I like to solicit opinions as I actively wait, I've been asking around: "What does 'love God/love neighbor' look like to you?"
Some of the responses I've gotten so far:
--One person remembered how it used to be common for people to bow their heads or tip their hats when they'd pass a church. Now this person bows--just a quick li'l head bob, nothing fancy, but it's always packed with personal meaning--upon meeting anyone for the first time.
--One person said "love your neighbor" meant something quite concrete: "love the people living right by your house."
--Still another said that the "love God" part of the command could be fulfilled by doing the "love your neighbor" part. And that the secret to the latter command was in actions like cooperation, apologizing when wrong, matching talents to needs.
So I'm throwing the question out there. What does "love God/love your neighbor" look like in your own life? Do you have any specific practices that flow from these commands that you can recommend to someone who wants to get better at them?

U2: A Diary: The Matt McGee Interview

2008-10-04T08:30:00.005-05:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Matt McGee, founder of @U2 and author of U2: A Diary, answering five questions about his new book.

1. Once you committed to making U2: A Diary happen, what sort of adjustments took place in your daily schedule? (In other words, where did writing a book "fit" into your life?)

I remember chatting with my wife (and the kids to a lesser degree) before committing to do the book, and saying, "If I'm gonna do this right, I'll be at my computer every waking moment of every day." We generally share the parenting duties -- we both cook, clean, help with homework, etc. So I had to ask her to handle all that stuff whenever she could, so that I had time to write and research. I also had to explain to the kids that Dad may not be spending as much fun time with them until the book was done. God bless Cari -- she basically ran the house just so I could fit the book into my life. And God bless the kids for letting me be an almost absentee Dad for a while.

And I should mention, too, that I basically stepped away from @U2, too. The staff ran the show so I could focus on the book, and they did a better job running things than I do when I'm around. That's both cool and scary. Cool that I'm not needed ... and scary that I'm not needed. :-)

2. What were some of the reactions you got when you told people you know--fan and non-fan--"Hey, not only am I running this U2 fan website, but I'm writing a book about the band, too"?

"You must REALLY like U2!" was a common reaction. And then I also heard a lot of, "I tried writing a book once" or "My best friend/cousin/brother/sister is writing a book, too." It's amazing how many people are either writing a book or know someone very close to them who's writing a book. Those were probably the most common reactions from non-fans. The U2 fans just about always reacted with things like "Awesome!" and "Let me know how I can help," which was really awesome. Everyone was really supportive that way.

3. One of the aims of this book, as I understand it, is to provide a corrective for some of the lazier reporting out there about U2. Is there any particular U2 myth you would hope would be mythbusted by this book, and if so, which one?

I don't know if myth is the right word, but I'm really proud of how the narrative of the early Christianity/Shalom/band disruption era turned out. For years, there was very little written about that time period, and the band seemed to avoid it or play it down when the subject came up. Then, within the last 4-5 years, they've talked about it more in various magazine interviews, books, and so forth. But the stories didn't always fit with what we'd heard before. So it was really tough to get the story right, to get the timing right, and I wanted to make sure the wording was right, too. Thankfully, I had great help from friends like you, Scott [Editor's note: Scott is organizing an academic conference on U2--check it out], and Beth [co-editor of Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalog], and I think the book will have the most accurate version of those events possible.

4. If there was more than one version of events which changed up the timeline, how did you decide which one to go with, or did you provide all the "alternate histories"?

On some occasions, you'll see words in the narrative like "reportedly" ... "possibly" ... "believed to be" ... "other reports" ... and things like that. Without going through the band's personal diaries (if they even have such things), it's impossible to tie some things down definitively. So when necessary, I try to offer the alternate histories, as you say.

In other situations, it's just a matter of deciding what source to trust. For example, Paul McGuinness was recently talking about the death of Greg Carroll, and he said the whole band was in a bar in Dublin when it happened. But back in 1987, Bono gave a quote to a New Zealand magazine about how he had just landed in Texas when he heard the news that Greg Carroll had died. Bono was due to appear the next day at Farm Aid II, but had to get on a plane and go right back to Dublin. In the book, I decided to believe Bono's version of events given one year later over Paul McGuinness's version of events given 20 years later.

5. Was there any particular time period which was harder to research, and if so, for what reason?

Anything pre-1980 was very tough, because you can't find many online news archives that go back that far, and many of the people who were involved back then are impossible to track down. I was lucky enough to have a quick email exchange with Meiert Avis, who was part of the Windmill Lane crew in the late '70s and 1980 when U2 was there, as well as Chas de Whalley, who produced U2's first studio sessions and recordings. Chas, in particular, gave me a great interview. He also helped me track down some other people on the scene who helped flesh out some of what was going on then. That helped a lot with the early days.

Brandon Dawson

2008-09-03T15:23:00.003-05:00

New interview with Brandon Dawson for Thunderstruck can be found here.
"When it comes to music of all genres, Dawson is contagious enthusiasm personified. With the dominant music-geek stereotype that of the elitist snob, it’s refreshing to spend time with someone so filled with curiosity and joy. Which is why it’s surprising, as we talk about his debut album Becoming Human, to hear him discuss the tough process of renouncing fear."

For Don

2008-08-14T06:12:00.004-05:00

My friend Jim's dad died this week.
Don was a quiet guy. I used to go to Jim's house all the time, but I can't say I can remember many conversations with his dad. The impression I have was that he was kind of shy, maybe didn't really know how to make small talk with one of his son's friends. But in his quiet way he was kind. He could make me feel at home.
He called me "Angie," which is not something a lot of people do. Jim doesn't even call me "Angie," so I'm not sure how he got into the habit. I tend to reserve that nickname to people who've known me a very long time, but with some people, it just sounds right when they say it. I can hear Don now: "How are you, Angie?" I guess because he had this hesitant manner otherwise with me, the use of the more private nickname was especially...right. As though just because he was shy didn't mean he liked people any less.
...It's strange. I started out thinking that I didn't really remember that much about Don, but all evening memories have been surfacing. I was thinking of something else a few moments ago when suddenly I thought of Jim's cousins calling Don "Uncle Duckie," in honor of his spot-on Donald Duck impression.
And earlier I was remembering wanting to watch one of my favorite movies with Jim, but he nixed Lawrence of Arabia as soon as I suggested it. It seems it was one of Don's favorite movies too, which meant it was on in the house so often, Jim developed an allergic reaction to even the thought of watching it again.
Don could be so surprising. Like at Jim's mom's funeral a few years ago, at the end, when people got up to share their memories...Don got up and gave the most beautiful, the most gentle, poignant and heartfelt testimony about his wife, at a time when it would be most painful to do such a thing, at a time I could hardly imagine I could have even formed a coherent sentence, were I in his shoes. He just quietly talked about his wife and how much he would miss her and all the fun they had together.
There's a picture Jim has of his parents where they are playfully trying to wring each others' necks. This is the picture Jim has framed, on display. The cutest couple.
I hadn't really seen Don much since Jim's mom's funeral, but there are still sweet things I remember. Like how Jim's boyfriend Greg crocheted him an American flag afghan (Don was a Marine). Or how I'd hear Jim talk to him on the phone and end the conversation with "I love you, Dad."
I think these things stood out for me because I adopt fathers where I can, having lost mine when I was 13. And for all the complexity of their relationship (I'm sure all father/son relationships are complicated, but Don and Jim had a few extra twists and turns in theirs), there was such love, and they could even use the word "love" with each other--it was a privilege to be a witness to that, as it's now a privilege to write about it.
One of the last times I saw Jim's dad was when he came to a show Jim's boyfriend Greg was in. (In, or directing, or both? I can't remember now. And maybe Jim was stage-managing it too.) I was sitting in one of the back rows and in walked this man I didn't recognize, partly because the lights had already gone down and partly because it had been years since I'd seen him. But he looked over at me, and then he came over to me and whispered, "How are you doing, Angie?"

Pomegranates

2008-05-19T14:17:00.005-05:00

An article I wrote about the Cincinnati band Pomegranates is now available on Thunderstruck.

Speaking of Faith

2008-05-06T14:38:00.003-05:00

The radio program Speaking of Faith solicited comments about Catholicism. I submitted my comments, and now they are on this page.

Where the Streets Have No Name

2008-03-19T11:44:00.001-05:00

I seem to only be updating this when U2 is involved...!
Here's an essay I wrote for @U2.

U2 3D

2008-01-24T16:57:00.000-05:00

Isn't it clever? They came up with a movie name that matched their whole "one letter, one number" pattern in reverse. Maybe the technology was developed solely so that one day U2 might utilize it...
I attended the Cincinnati premiere of U2 3D with Bocce Bill last night (not to be confused with Pente Bill, though Bocce Bill plays Pente with Pente Bill). At first it was somewhat frustrating--there was what appeared to be a crack running down the frame. When the lighting was just right you could see it was actually a bit of film strip. Wha? Various members of the crowd made noises, and Bocce Bill went out to talk to someone in charge. At first the only result was that one could see a hand wiping at the obstruction, which was of course even more annoying and not the least bit effective, though the hand made its attempt several times. Finally, about halfway through the second song, the film was stopped, someone came out to inform us that a piece of film was stuck to the lens, and that they were taking care of it. They turned the movie back on (not starting from the beginning, as we requested) with the volume up higher (as we requested).
Then we could all relax and enjoy ourselves.
And how enjoyable it was. Things I particularly enjoyed:
* The song selection. One reviewer had a minor gripe (and so far all the gripes have been minor; the lavish critical praise has been something to behold) that it's mostly a collection of greatest hits. Yes, well, it's rather hard for it not to be, at this point in U2's history. And it would be one thing if it was just a collection of nostalgic hits; quite another for it to be their hits of 1983, 1987, 1991, 2000 etc.
* The sound. Unbelievable separation of the instruments. I was hearing things in these songs I'd never heard before, and given how many times I've heard these songs...! Also, props to whoever did the sound mixing, given that the audio (and visuals) was taken from several different shows. I could tell the difference when they'd cut to the sound from a stadium show, but it was done in such a smooth way, it seemed more a part of the narrative than anything else (the narrative being "Here's where we're sharing something intimate, and here is where we are opening up this intimacy to 100,000 people.")
* Adam.
* Edge. The worshipful tone of Variety's review (sample: "The Edge is a still presence, a cornerstone, a man who quietly revels while a wild celebration unfolds around him.") makes a lot of sense when you watch this. I'm on the record as saying I don't think Edge is very interesting to watch live--what he does is all interior, he's not playing to the crowd at all--but this was different.
* Larry, particularly during "Love and Peace or Else," when Bono starts stalking him.
Which leads us to:
* Bono. Everything you need to know about how to give a great performance can be learned by watching this movie. That's all I'm saying.
* My free movie ticket. Because of the technical difficulties at the beginning, we all got free tix at the end. Yay!

NaNoWriMo

2007-12-15T18:22:00.000-05:00

I've been meaning to write about my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) experience since its conclusion, but seeing as it's the middle of December now, I guess you already know one key fact about it: it has not upped my literary output.
NaNoWriMo is a simple idea: try to write a 50,000-word novel in thirty days, specifically November 1st to the 30th. I've tried in previous years but never got very far. (The first year, in fact, was when I got diagnosed with Crohn's; nothing like getting a colonoscopy in the middle of the month to render one less excited about producing a novel.) This year was the first one in which I actually signed up as an official participant at the NaNo website. It wasn't to give my attempt more credibility and thus to motivate myself to stick with it, although that proved to be a side benefit. No; I signed up because Neil Gaiman had agreed to be among the writers who would send out pep talk emails over the course of the month, and the thought of getting an email from, you know, NEIL GAIMAN was irresistible.
I started the month full of enthusiasm (I think; I can't really remember back that far). I bought a couple of new notebooks and a couple Pilot Precise V5 Rolling Ball pens--my favorite. The notebooks were the toughest to pick out. I like the Mead Fat Lil' Notebook (known in Spanish as "Cuaderno Fat Lil'," according to the back) because they fit well in my purse, they've got lots of pages, and they're spiral-bound, but they are kind of bland, with solid-color covers in conservative shades. I was sorely tempted to buy a notebook whose cover featured a big-eyed Siamese with an elongated neck and the caption "Yes, I am that fabulous." But the Fat Lil' won out in the end because the Siamese was kind of disturbing.
I wrote in the mornings before work; I wrote faithfully, purt near every day, but had a tough time reaching the target daily word count. This may have been because I was writing and not typing, but I compose better that way. I think my thoughts arrive at writing speed, not typing speed. Later in the day I would enter my work into the computer to get a word count. This was a distressing exercise because usually, when I am working on a story, I use the typing stage to create a second draft--I'm altering as I go. (This entry is a case in point--its original draft was written in the Fat Lil' and is ever-so-slightly different.) But I wouldn't let myself do this for my NaNo project lest I lose precious words in the editing process. I had to just grit my teeth and type whatever I'd written, regardless of my low opinion of its quality.
And the quality was very poor indeed. I'd begun the project with one plot in mind--a second attempt at a story I'd thought up for last year's NaNo, plus a twist I was really jazzed about, an idea that had fallen from the sky in late October. I could hardly wait to begin. But in the actual process of writing the idea lost its savor. To keep myself going I started importing more and more from my own life, changing friends' names and barely fictionalizing details. The last 10,000 words, my desperate race against time, were a dream sequence only vaguely related to the rest of the plot.
Oh, those last 10,000 words...I had been plugging away, as I said, every day, falling further and further behind where I needed to be to keep pace. I wasn't being very faithful at typing up my work, however, so for a long stretch I didn't know my word count. On Thanksgiving I had a marathon typing session and discovered I was at 20,000 words--more than I'd ever managed in previous years, but far behind where I needed to be. So over the holiday weekend I abandoned the notebook and typed. And typed. And typed. Over three days I got out 15,000 or so more words--again, not quality stuff by any means, just quantity. Sheer verbosity, with the occasional glimmer of something interesting (but not enough to make me want to go back and read any of it).
Now I'd done 15k in a weekend. Could I do an additional 15k over the course of five weekdays--when I was at work during the day and had class and other obligations at night? When I was already feeling some ill effects from sitting in front of a computer screen most of the weekend?
I managed 5000 more words Monday through Thursday. No problem, though, right? I had until midnight on the 30th. At peak over the weekend I found I could churn out a thousand words an hour if I really, really pushed myself. I got off work at 4:30...at some point I'd have to eat...I figured I had seven uninterrupted hours in which to write. Maybe I could do it. I was too close to give up now, anyway. I had to give it a shot.
That's why the last 10,000 or so words were a dream sequence, really several of my own dreams strung together with some other elements--the Corpus Christi Carol, for one--thrown in. I'm sure it would make a fascinating psychological study if I could ever stand to let someone read it.
At 11:59 and 30 seconds I dumped the whole thing into the NaNo website's word counter and...
49,681.
Five more minutes and I coulda made it. That's all right--I got lots of sympathy from my fellow NaNoers at that weekend's Thank God It's Over party. They felt my pain.
That's another great aspect of the experience (and yes, I think it was a great experience, my griping about so-close-and-yet-so-far notwithstanding)--the chance to meet other Cincinnati writers. Throughout the month we had "write-ins," announced in the website forum, where folk could come together and work. There's nothing like a whole bunch of people all feverishly typing to keep you on task for a couple of hours.
Interestingly, the first write-in was held at the Speckled Bird, the neighborhood cafe, so of course I went. And there of course as I was sitting with this group of writers I did not know, I kept seeing people I did know--friends in the neighborhood. So every few minutes I'd look up and wave to Chris, or Bill, or Des--and after a while I wondered how this looked to my new writer friends. Did they think I was like Norm from Cheers?
I'd also mentioned to one of the writers that I lived down the street--and pointed in the direction of my house. But when I was leaving--at the same time that she was--I didn't go in that direction. I went over to the JFCCCH to walk Cori. Luckily she didn't ask me about this. I would have had to say, "No, I don't live there. I just occasionally go in their house and walk their dog."

Eulogy

2007-11-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

A buddy of mine died today. He was the guy I felt closest to at Our Daily Bread--we had a good rapport. He was our porter, which meant mostly he sat by our receptionist's desk and did little odd jobs for her. He helped her stuff envelopes, or would bring the mail to those of us in the office, shuffling across the floor. When I'd come in at the start of the day I'd smile and say hi to him. And he'd turn around like he was trying to figure out who I was talking to. And if I was walking through the place I'd hear him sing out "Ann--gela!" But of course if I looked over at him he'd be looking behind him again. (He played this game with his nephews too. Several times a day I'd hear him give that same kind of teasing call to one of them. It was one of the ways I knew all was well with the world.)
I remember probably my first week of working there, or close to it, I sat next to him at the front door in an effort to get acclimated to the soup kitchen environment. He greeted everyone who came in, usually with a nickname. "What's up, Grumpy?" "How's your kid doing?"
"How many of the people here do you know?" I asked him.
"I don't know any of 'em," he said seriously. Then he went back to greeting everybody.
Two things he was known for in particular. One was his Li'l Rascals face. He didn't have any teeth, so he had no problem getting his lower lip all the way up to his nose, pouting it out as he did it so his lower face was all frowny lip. Then he'd turn his baseball cap to the side, squeeze his eyes shut and slump down so his stomach stuck out. He adopted this pose if anyone tried to take his picture, and often he did it just because.
The other thing he did was set off the loon call in the office. Our volunteer coordinator had bought a stuffed animal loon who would give its weird call--ooOOOooo--if you pressed down on its back. This my buddy enjoyed doing. He never grew tired of hearing it. We got treated to a lot of loon calls when he was around. Not too long ago he started doing something new--slowly tipping his head back and opening his mouth wide as it'd go when he set off the loon call, so it seemed like the noise was coming out of his own throat. Then it became an in-joke greeting between us--I would mime his loon call move, he would mime it back to me. This was especially great in the middle of a crazy day (it's always a crazy day in a soup kitchen). My desk is so positioned that I could look out the office door and see him sitting by the front door, clear across the lower dining room. On a tough day I'd catch his eye, tip my head back, open my mouth as wide as it would go--ooOOOooo. He'd do it back. We'd giggle and I would get back to work.
Sometimes I'd look up from my computer and see him standing expressionless in the doorway of his office--no telling how long he'd been standing there. I'd roll my eyes and he'd crack up. Or he'd be behind the door and would slooooowly come peeking out, only to duck right back. (This was another sign he spent a lot of time entertaining his nephews.) I would mimic him then too, playing hide and seek behind my computer, until we'd both crack up. "If I can make you laugh, I know I've done something right," he'd say. He seemed really proud of himself when he said it, too, and I knew this laugh during a tough day was his gift to me, and he was glad to be able to give it.
He had a lot of tough days--he was sick a long time--and there wasn't much I could do to lighten them for him. "I'm not feeling too good, Angie" was something he said often. And sometimes when he'd be walking out of the office after bringing us the mail (holding it out and then snatching it out of reach a few times before relinquishing it), he'd stop and close his eyes and wobble a little before continuing on.
A couple of weeks ago he gave me a little white teddy bear that's sitting now on my desk. "What are you gonna name it?" he asked me later that day.
"I don't know. I don't think I ever really had a teddy bear as a kid. My favorite stuffed animal back then was a rabbit named Bunny Baby."
"Then name it Bunny."
So I have Bunny to remember him by.
He gave our volunteer coordinator a musical snowglobe that he won at one of our weekly bingos. It "snows" iridescent sparkles on a pair of giraffes, and it plays "Everything is Beatiful." When he came in for a visit to the office, often or she would wind it up, and he would dance. So she has that, and the song will make all of us think of him when we hear it.
Everything is beautiful in its own way.

On the absolute last day I can get away with posting this

2007-10-31T14:14:00.001-05:00

A poem by Dylan Thomas.

Especially When the October Wind

Especially when the October wind
With frosty fingers punishes my hair,
Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fire
And cast a shadow crab upon the land,
By the sea's side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I mark
On the horizon walking like the trees
The wordy shapes of women, and the rows
Of the star-gestured children in the park.
Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,
Some of the oaken voices, from the roots
Of many a thorny shire tell you notes,
Some let me make you of the water's speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clock
Tells me the hour's word, the neural meaning
Flies on the shafted disk, declaims the morning
And tells the windy weather in the cock.
Some let me make you of the meadow's signs;
The signal grass that tells me all I know
Breaks with the wormy winter through the eye.
Some let me tell you of the raven's sins.

Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)
With fists of turnips punishes the land,
Some let me make of you the heartless words.
The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurry
Of chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.
By the sea's side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

---
Why do I love this poem so much? For one thing, it sounds so good recited. The line about the "wordy shapes of women"--you start smiling as you say it and the smile comes through in your voice. Try to count how many times a letter ends one word and begins the next: "sea's side," "and drains," "Shut, too"--these combinations force you to slow down, to linger over each word as you speak. And all the alliterations make music as well.
It took me a long time to notice the rhyme scheme, since it's full of near-rhymes. It also took me a while to figure out that each line is ten syllables long.
This site goes into this poem into a bit more detail.

Actual In-Print Writing

2007-10-24T15:34:00.000-05:00

A review I wrote of Stephen Catanzarite's book on Achtung Baby is now up at CityBeat.
I had to shorten it to get the word count to something reasonable. One cut broke my heart--I very much wanted to quote Inigo Montoya in the section describing how Catanzarite cites Yeats' "The Second Coming": "I do no' think it means what you think it means."

Peculiar Hypotheses I Tend To Credit

2007-09-21T20:34:00.000-05:00

When I was a wee lass my mom and dad took me on a trip to New York because my dad was going to a special training there in the summer. I think this took place in the summer between kindergarten and first grade, which would have made me five, but I don't remember exactly. I do remember that before the trip I had befriended a neighborhood cat, an orange tabby I called Tiger. I was heartsick about leaving St. Louis without saying goodbye to Tiger, and I was sure he wouldn't understand my absence. Sure enough, I never saw Tiger again. When we returned from New York in the fall, my sister told me that Tiger had come by looking for me several times, and then finally gave up.
For many years after that, no neighborhood cat would give me the time of day. I'd try to coax them to me, but they would just run off. I was convinced it was because they had all heard how I'd misused poor Tiger.
I tell this story because there's a cat named Thomas who hangs around my new place. He would always dash into the shrubbery or under the parked cars when he'd see me coming. This went on for weeks until I decided to put some effort into making friends with Thomas. Now that I'm a grownup, I know the way to a cat's heart is through his stomach, so I bought some cat treats. It still took a while, but he's gone from total disapproval of me to wary friendliness to being outright demanding.
And since becoming friends with Thomas, I have noticed something curious. All the strays I've encountered lately have been exceptionally cordial. As soon as I stoop down and do the "here kitty" routine, they come right up to me to be petted--and I'm not carrying around any cat treats, either. I'm beginning to wonder if my childhood theory is right, and cats do spread the word about the trustworthiness of particular humans.

Lectionary Stuff

2007-09-18T07:43:00.000-05:00

Here is what we read Sunday at Mass. Some things struck me on this go-round that I hadn't noticed before:
1. Isn't it interesting how there's a molten calf in the first reading and a fattened calf in the Gospel?
2. That numerical progression in the Gospel is great: one out of a hundred sheep, one out of ten coins, one out of two sons. I can imagine the original hearers going, "I wouldn't leave ninety-nine sheep to chase one!" but having no such trouble with the coin story, and then by the time the story of the sons comes around they're totally sucked in.
3. Before we got to the readings Father mentioned how God and Moses sound like parents when a kid has gotten in trouble: "Let me tell you what your son did today...!" First God complains to Moses about "your people," and Moses answers by giving them back to God by calling them "your own people." Same motif in the Gospels, but the situation is reversed if we equate the prodigal son's father with God: this time, the elder son calls his brother "your son" when he's talking with their dad but the dad turns around and calls him "your brother."
By the way, the woman who did the first reading at our Mass did a marvelous job. When she got to God's line where he's quoting the Israelites worshipping the calf--"This is your God, O Israel,
who brought you out of the land of Egypt!"
--she gave it such a mocking tone, like one kid on the playground repeating another kid's words in singsong, that she got a giggle out of the congregation.

Continuing Adventures Of This Week

2007-09-06T15:08:00.000-05:00

Lured by the promise of an ArtsyFartsyJesusFreak Woodstock, I went camping this weekend to an event known as "GratisFest." It featured bands like Jake Speed and the Freddies and The Pomegranates and The Psalters; primary-color-themed art projects; and a half-pipe for young skater dudes and chicks. I haven't been on a camping trip since I was, oh, one. But I had a supremely easy time of it--all I had to do was buy a sleeping bag and a cooler and borrow D.'s flashlight. My friends G. and T. let me sleep in their tent and eat their food; I didn't even have to drive, I just bummed rides to and from rural Indiana.
The first evening I helped serve ale in the makeshift pub (Price: "a penance a pint"). I stepped outside when the dusk was all gone and only night was left. There were STARS. There was even a MILKY WAY. Jake Speed and the Freddies paid tribute to the sight with a lovely rendition of the Woody Guthrie/Wilco classic "California Stars." I had brought along an H.A. Rey starbook borrowed from the library (growing up I had a copy of his Know Your Stars); I used it to make exceptionally futile attempts at identifying constellations. Over the course of the weekend, I managed to find Scorpio--that was all I gained in constellation knowledge.
The first night, Friday to Saturday, I did not sleep well, so my Saturday passed as follows:
Got up
Sat in a chair
Ate tasty food (eggs and cheese in a bagel)
Napped in the tent
Sat in a chair some more
Ate tasty food (pasta salad with tomatoes and green olives)
Napped some more
...You get the idea. I also went for a couple of walks in the fantastically picturesque woods, trying to identify elm and black walnut trees.
Saturday night The Pomegranates staged a triumph. They made me miss Pants terribly though, because she was the one that introduced the band to me, plus there was a redheaded girl dancing in front of the stage and for a fleeting moment I thought Pants had come to town to surprise us all. Alas, it was not so. But The Poms were simply incredible, particularly considering the audience was probably 75% musicians, so it would have been rather an intimidating show to play, I'd think. I expect great things from this band.
Walking back to the campsite (which by the way consisted of most of my friends and neighbors) after the concert I happened to look up as I wandered through the corn fields and saw some shooting stars. I thought--not for the first time--that I've been given a great life.

When The Stars Fall From The Sky And The Moon Has Turned Red

2007-09-05T07:46:00.000-05:00

I've been waiting to post until I have time to write a full account, but it doesn't seem like I have the luxury of time, so I'll just have to do this in snippets.
Last week I watched the moon cease to exist. The lunar eclipse was very odd, here in Ohio. Unsettling. My friend K and I wandered through Norwood, camping out on one neighbor's porch after another, trying to keep it in sight as it sunk in the sky. When I left the house at 4:50 am, there was already a tiny bite out of the top, like out of a glowing chocolate chip cookie; the bite grew larger and larger as we watched but not very quickly (the earth it moves fast, but not all that fast) so mostly we paid it little attention, we just chatted amongst ourselves. But when there was only a tiny sliver of light left at the bottom, we kept our eyes trained on the moon, even as we had to keep finding higher ground since it was sinking fast into the trees. Then it was red, like a coal after a fire--streaked with red like that. We watched and waited for the sliver of light to return at the top but the earth it is very very large. The sky meanwhile grew lighter, the moon sank lower, and it grew more non-descript. Think of seeing the moon out in daytime, and then imagine the light cast on it by the sun is gone, and you'll get a sense of how not-bright it was. There came a point where we weren't sure we were looking at the moon at all, and so we went home without seeing it return. We wondered if it would ever come back.

Stormchasing

2007-08-25T19:32:00.000-05:00

It continues to be--to use the technical term--darn hot in Cincinnati.
My friend Charlie has been trying to convince me for some time to listen to Mr. Rhythm Man's show on WNKU, which goes from 6-9 on Saturday nights. I can't get 89.7 in my house, so I decided to go out driving and tune in on the car radio. There were dark clouds off in--well, I don't quite know my directions here yet, let's call it "the southwest." They were clearly rainclouds, and there was clearly rain in them, and they were clearly passing my neighborhood by. So I decided, having no particular place to go, to follow the storm--with the hopes of feeling even just the most incremental bit cooler.
I learned a few things. One, Charlie was right, Mr. Rhythm Man does him a mean show. It made an excellent stormchasing soundtrack. Two, Cincinnati is not the sort of city where you can say "I think I'll drive southwest tonight" and have your desire reach fruition. One road I followed for a while terminated in a park. Another steadfastly refused to permit me a left-hand turn. There seem to be a great many parts of the city that are only accessible from one street, and if you don't happen to know exactly where that street is, well, too darn bad.
So it was an informative as well as an entertaining evening. Never did catch up to the storm, but I got to watch the steam rising off the asphalt in thick clouds.