Here's the Thing...

A Rough Picture

2010-09-19T22:37:00.002-04:00

So, it's been a few months — maybe just three, or two and a half — since we moved in, and Beth and I have settled into our new apartment. In fact, it feels like we've been here a long time. Just thought I'd explain a bit about what it is.

First of all, we have a blocky L-shaped living/dining room. The small kitchen is near the toe of the L, and a sliding glass door is at the heel. At the top of the L are two bedrooms, which we use for offices. One for Beth. One for me. We don't spend much time in the offices, but it's good that we each have one. I imagine that, in winter in particular, it'll be nice to have a variety of places to linger. The living room, we use also as a bedroom. The thick futon we fold up about once every two weeks if we know we're going to watch a movie and play video games.

Tonight, however, I'm sitting in a folding chair on the balcony, which is about six feet above the sidewalk, the sidewalk being about five feet above the street. Across the street is a line of trees. It's Wyman Park, a wooded ravine about 3/4 of a mile long and generally less than 1/4 mile wide. For the city, however, it's pretty good. Sitting here now, at 10:45 p.m. on a Sunday, a car drives on our street only once every five or ten minutes. The later it gets, the fewer the cars go by. Therefore, the majority of the sound is bugs, I think. The sounds are difficult to segregate, so I can't really say, but they all sound like bugs just now.

Jake, our fat orange tabby cat, is lying on the wood balcony with me. He's pretty calm. Seems to like being outside. Sometimes he's a good kitty, but most of the time he's a bad kitty. At this moment, he's silent, a good kitty, looking between the wood rails, scanning the darkness. I imagine the orange streetlights overwhelm his sensitive eyes, but who knows. Maybe he sees something I cannot.

On most nights, Monday through Saturday, an ice cream truck drives up Beech Avenue, our street, around 9 p.m. and stops in front of our apartment complex. A boy or young man in the building to the south usually comes out for something. We hope it's really ice cream, but this is Baltimore and ice cream trucks have a reputation here and elsewhere for selling more than cold treats.

In fact, our neighborhood is Hampden, and it has a funny reputation of its own.

One night a weekend or two ago, a group of about four youths walked up our street late at night. Two of them had pellet guns and they were shooting at street lamps and whatever. Pretty lame, and foolish. If a police officer had driven by, they'd be done for. A pellet gun silhouetted against the orange glow of a streetlamp looks a lot like a rifle.

Sometimes at 10 p.m. and later, large women with loud voices push strollers up the street, bitching to one another about some gossip or drama, trying to convince themselves and one another that they bested someone, that they told someone off and won. The prize being nothing but bragging rights about triviality.

Anyway, like I said, it's quiet now.

We're just plugging away at our jobs. Beth works Tuesday through Saturday and I work Monday through Friday, generally, so we have a shared day off on Sundays. The rest of the time, it's just a competition — us versus insanity. Mostly, we win. Mostly.

That's really all there is to it. I'm looking at the dark trees just now, thinking already about having my grad school application done by December (not due 'til January) and how I'm going to improve it this time around, and wondering what I'll aim for next if I don't make it in.

Statement of Purpose

2010-09-06T18:27:00.005-04:00

I plan to re-apply for Johns Hopkins University's Master of Science Writing program in January and, if accepted, will begin the program in fall 2011. In the mean time, I've been working on a cover letter in case a better-paying position can pull me from my current job. To be sure I make clear in my cover letter what I'm looking for, I took a look at my grad school application materials to see if there was anything I could steal for my cover letter. My statement of purpose seemed the best source of material, but I hadn't looked at it in months.

As often happens, I was surprised by what I'd composed. Some of the facts have changed. Namely, I said that I'd written around 200 newspaper articles. Well, that number is now around 300. Still, my ideas haven't changed.

Anywho, I thought I'd share my "statement of purpose" from my previous Johns Hopkins University grad school application to solicit any thoughts, criticism, and other input my friends might have to offer. At the very least, I wanted to share.

So, I hope you like it. What you're about to read, unedited, got me on a waiting list for a program that only accepts five or six people a year. That said, please feel free to make suggestions as to how I could improve upon it next time:

Humans seem hardwired to fear the unknown, yet we wield an antidote to that fear: the ability to make the unknown known. In that pursuit, we have long been compelled to bring the sky close. We pine for what mysteries are hidden within Martian soil and beneath Europa’s ice. Likewise, we seek to magnify nature’s
smaller, nearer puzzles, such as the fungi wiping out frogs in Panama and bats in the Adirondacks. For the general public, however, these things seem a big fish to fry, and people are used to having their pizza delivered. They need a tour guide or an advocate to make science accessible.

On a Tuesday in October, Maryland’s secretary of disabilities, Catherine Raggio, and state superintendent of schools, Nancy Grasmick, visited Ridgely Middle School in Towson to kick off Disability Awareness Month. There, Raggio asked a class of eighth-graders if they knew who Stephen Hawking was. Because Hawking has voiced a character of himself on the animated sitcoms "The Simpsons" and "Futurama," and has appeared on "Star Trek: The Next Generation,” it was no surprise when several hands popped up. Raggio called on eighth-grader Will Kirsh, who said, "He wrote 'A Brief History of Time'.” Sitting at the back of the classroom taking notes and covering the superintendent’s visit for The Towson Times, I barely
contained the urge to stand up and shout, “what the hell?”

Apparently, Will has found his tour guide.

Hawking has played the role of science advocate through books, documentaries, cameos on television, and a 2007 ride on a Boeing 727 for a series of parabolic arcs to simulate low gravity, making him the first quadriplegic to experience the joys of a “vomit comet.” Yet, while Hawking is a wheelchair-bound
theoretical physicist who speaks only with the aid of robotic-sounding communication software, science’s inherent charisma is not diminished with him as its advocate. Rather, it is strengthened.

Hawking’s story is an “in spite of” story, which provides a dramatic conflict that the public finds familiar, thereby making science accessible to those who would otherwise be tempted by trivial distractions. His amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which has left him immobile, has made him “interesting” and he has exploited that fact because he believes, as I do, that we need science if we’re to survive.
I have neither the desire to bear Hawking’s responsibility nor the potential to match his achievements. I would aspire, however, to the roles of Elizabeth Kolbert, staff writer for The New Yorker, or Dennis Overbye of the New York Times science desk. Overbye, in particular, writes engaging and informative articles, and his essays exhibit passion, eloquence, and a balance between hope for the future and the
reality of the present.

In his Jan. 27 reaction to President Obama’s Inaugural Address and intention to “restore science to its rightful place,” Overbye pondered that rightful place. “If we are not practicing good science, we probably aren’t practicing good democracy. And vice versa,” he wrote. That is, the values learned in science, specifically the study of physics, are “honesty, doubt, respect for evidence, openness, accountability and
tolerance and indeed hunger for opposing points of view.” Upon such a collection of concepts, Overbye’s connection between science and open society is self-evident. Overbye never gets so academic that the conversation about science becomes impenetrable for the average reader. He does just the opposite, addressing the very questions common people ask. In his Dec. 29 essay, “The Joy of Physics Isn’t in the
Results but in the Search Itself,” he responded to an inquiry regarding what good can come from the Large Hadron Collider. In the essay, he explained that, for scientists, the LHC isn’t about developing better medical devices or improving the daily lives of individuals. Rather, he said, “They want to know where we all came from, and so do I.”

Overbye’s frankness and perspective are what I admire most, but while I wholeheartedly share his passion for science and harbor dreams of someday equaling his refined perspective and talent with words, I do not share his background in science. I am naturally curious and eager to learn, but have never been a scientist. This is likely my greatest strength as a potential science writer. As an outsider, I have the same questions as the general public, but I differ in my willingness (or compulsion) to ask those questions. Fortunately, people like to talk about themselves and their interests, so the relationship is symbiotic. While I do not possess an abundance of scientific knowledge, I have a talent for abstract thought, intuition, imagination and communication, as well as a lifelong interest in the sciences. As a youth, I watched little television save for NOVA, National Geographic, and other public television specials. I’ve never tired of air shows or museums, and was even fortunate enough to see a space shuttle launch in person in the late 1980s before the minimum viewing distance was increased to six miles. To this day, I get up early just to watch a launch live online on NASA TV. Additionally, I’ve tasted the wonders of nature, such as being stared down by barracuda while snorkeling in the Atlantic Ocean, visiting the caves and mountaintops of Appalachia, and watching for shooting stars from the end of my parents’ dock on a small lake in rural Michigan.

This interest in science and nature won’t be quenched until my avocation has become my vocation. I want to take the reins off the natural curiosity that has served me so well in two years of community reporting and direct it at the science of the story rather than on the local names and faces that community reporting
demands. Tell me you have a theory about what existed before the Big Bang, or why birds of prey gather in kettles during migration, or anything about cosmology or anthropology and you have my attention.

Having written around 200 news and feature articles, I’ve enjoyed instructive criticism from several editors. However, our newsroom has lost valuable editors and reporters, both voluntarily and involuntarily, and those who remain have little time or occasion anymore to discuss the nature of what we do, how we do it, why we do it, and what to improve. I crave the feedback and criticism the science-writing program has to offer, and am eager to contribute whatever I can to the learning environment. What matters most to me, however, is the science – to be around it, to learn and grow, and to keep putting pieces, large and small, into the puzzle that creates both a sense of reality and a more accurate perspective through which to view that reality.

"Day Trip From the City"

2010-09-02T20:19:00.005-04:00

I just love this time of day. Don't you? she said.
I knew she was right, but her words deserved a moment's attention,
as when a thoughtful toast is made, one must honor the words with silence until having a drink.
Parking the car on that dusty lane between the vineyard and the dairy farm had been her idea.
She insisted we stop before going back to town, to take it in.
We'd walked up the hill and sat in the grass between two fields of grapevines.
I'd poured her a glass of wine and the farmer had appeared.
Oh, is this your vineyard? she asked.
Yep. Do you like it? he asked.
The view is really something, she said.
A tight brace was harnesses around his torso, I didn't ask why.
Did you know it's my grapes in that wine? he said.
We didn't know, she said. Did you crush it with your feet?
Nah, he said. The winery crushed it, but they don't do it with their feet.
Too bad, she said. A little feet would have perfected the bouquet.
The farmer chuckled.
She smiled to herself and poured me a glass, and the farmer tossed a wink at me.
The winery that makes it is just three miles up the road, he said.
We know, she said. We bought this bottle there.
What are the odds, he said.
He smiled and looked at the sunset.
A few seconds we were silent.
Well, I'm off, he said. I just came out to say if you two need anything, to just let me know.
He walked away.
What the hell, I wondered.
She beamed at me.
See, she said, he doesn't mind.
She was right. No one cared — the problem and the solution.
Alone again, she and I sat, watching the sunset paint the valley.
The cows at the dairy farm were silent but changing colors as if in a slow kaleidoscope.
Her sunburned arms were resting on her knees.
The pink and orange clouds set her skin aglow,
a color that stirred a feeling from decades before,
when being alive felt like being a meteor,
streaking through the sky,
aflame by simply moving.
The feeling called out, having pined for me as I had for the feeling.
It traveled through time and joined me once again,
arriving familiar in a rare scent carried into the vineyard on the blowing dust.
It forced my eyes first to the sunset and then to her eyes.
I fought the pain of the present,
the foul years of reading too much of mankind's ills,
of trying to understand, but finding wisdom bitter,
of repeated wishes for our extinction,
hating myself for hoping we make nature's cut.
I studied her face. She didn't look at me but was lost in the sunset and the moment.
Did she survive each day by clinging to the same life-rafts as I?
I took another sip of wine and studied her eyes, forced to crescents from her smile.
The smoldering anger at my existence became untethered,
floated into the sky,
and was burned and consumed in the sunset.
I just love this time of day. Don't you? she said.
How could I not, darling, I said.

No Grad School This Fall

2010-05-30T18:02:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday, it was cloudy and it wanted to rain. You know how sometimes you're talking with someone and you want to say something more? A complaint? A pain? Something genuine, and flattering? To ask them on a date perhaps? That's how it wanted to rain that day, but it just couldn't muster the wherewithal to execute.

I'd been tired, strung out on coffee. Then too much drink on an occasion or three, then too much coffee and not enough sleep again, and again. Lots of anxiety and worries. Nerves frayed 'til they're raw to the touch. But that Saturday, the cloudiness blended with a few glasses of pinot grigio and I found a place I've been seeking for months. In the days since, the newness of the feeling has faded. But, still, I can think again. What was the true source of this relative clarity?

The four months of waiting ended. I did not get into grad school. Most of you already knew but, for those who didn't know, there it is. Yeah, I'm disappointed.

Grad school. What would it have meant?

Since graduating from Grand Valley State University in December 2001, I've spent nearly every day worrying about money or looking for a new job. I've had maybe one real vacation the whole time. Even then, something thing big was always hanging over my head.

That changed a little in late 2007, when I secured a job I cared about and enjoyed, writing for community newspapers in Baltimore County, but the stress has increased over time. The company's been in bankruptcy for more than a year and has bought out employees (they leave quietly with a lump sum, while their responsibilities fall upon those who remain), and my pay hasn't budged since I came on board. At the same time, all my time off has been spent visiting family. I've watched as colleagues, peers, and coworkers went on cruises, took a week off to stay at the ocean, or took long weekend after long weekend to visit this, that, and another place.

So what would grad school have meant? A change. A break from the grind. A fall, winter, and spring of stimulating time in the classroom, a vacation of intense learning, studying the craft of writing about science, participating in critiques, reading, writing, and talking about what matters to me – science, planets, evolution, the environment, plate tectonics, pollen, whatever.

I would have earned a master's degree while mingling with scientists, editors, publishers, other writers, etc., and who knows what those connections would have led to after graduation. It was a fantastic opportunity. So yeah, I'm disappointed.

But here I am. Do I re-apply? That sounds like a hell of a wait. Even if I were accepted into the program, my first day in the classroom won't come along until August 2011, another year and three months from now.

Other options? I could instead pursue an undergraduate degree in something. Or maybe I should put in a solid non-stop effort to find a new job, or try to get some freelance science pieces published?

Well, check this out. I actually made it onto JHU's waiting list. Only five or six of the 20 to 30 applicants are accepted into my program each year, and I made it onto the waiting list. Me. Jay. I had an undergraduate GPA of less than 3.0, but my writing samples, statement of purpose, letters of recommendation, and GRE score somehow added up to a viable candidacy. That's something.

When the accepted applicants confirmed their plans to attend JHU, and the school finalized their enrollment list and sent me my rejection letter, it said that, should I choose to apply to the program again next January, they'd give my application special attention. Wow.

So, what am I going to do? Reapply.

If accepted, I'll be 33 years old when my first day of classes happens. That's a bit later than I'd like to be transitioning to a different career path, but it is what it is.

There is another option. I could face that I'm 31 years old now, that I have a job in the journalism field, and just go with it. I could remain a general news reporter, writing stories about Catholic school fundraisers, adult video stores in violation of county code, and elementary school plays. I could cross my fingers that I'll get a raise, maybe become an editor someday, who knows. I could vent my interest in science by reading Nature and Scientific American and the New York Times science page.

I could give up, settle down, tell myself that this is good enough, and deal with never visiting a fossil dig, or a particle accelerator facility, a moth hatchery in the Rocky Mountains, or a NASA spacecraft launch.

Instead of writing a book about predestination, concerning how the universe is one gigantic, sublime series of interweaving dominos going all the way back to the Big Bang, a direct lineage of cause and effect that has led to me sitting here now, looking like I look, drinking coffee, thinking these thoughts. Instead of that, I could simply read the books of others and stifle regret.

I could do that, but the problem is I don't believe in an afterlife. Nor do I believe in reincarnation. I believe that when I die, it's over for good. Nothing to look forward to after this. It's my only life, and I'm a third of the way through it.

It's a wonderful resource for decision-making, death is. When I'm not sure about some major decision, I need only imagine myself on my deathbed, or even at the age of 65 or 70, sitting on the porch of my house or some retirement home. What would that feel like, to sit there, looking back on my life, knowing what I could have done, what potential I had, and knowing that I'll never get that chance, that I missed out, that I gave up and settled for status quo, a simple survival.

If all we choose to do is live, reproduce, throw our kids at little league and college, survive to old age and die, then what's the point? Are we ants? Tapeworms? Fungus? Is our only purpose to perpetuate the species, use up resources, destroy the planet and die when the sun dies? No. We've been given an intelligence and an opportunity. We can think, reflect, make choices and, not just live or thrive, but soar through this reality.

So many stories, books and movies, as well as role models, tell us in our youth that we can be anything we want to be, do anything we want to do. Then we grow up. We take what we can get. We settle on something and accumulate regrets.

Well, I've bought into idealism. I'm jaded but not broken. I'm going to soar. I will taste food, drink deeply, dream big, and chase those dreams.

I did not get into grad school this year. Boo hoo. Just watch me try again.

Lego-Man

2010-05-29T18:08:00.004-04:00

This is not what I meant to post. I'd written a long piece that was intended to be optimistic but took a nose dive and became a foul tirade that, upon reflection, I do not believe in. Therefore, we're going with the following:

I am made of Legos. When the pieces are disassembled against my will, I stack them up again, better than before. I add new pieces and insert plates in strategic places to add strength. And I add wings, a jet-pack, and more of those colored, semi-transparent pieces used for headlights and space stations. That way, people will freak out because they'll think I'm made of lasers and that I can fly.

And when someone walks by and mutters, "Legos? That man's made of Legos? A toy? How childish!" I stop, stare them down and say, "childish? Thinking that Legos are a toy is childish. Prepare to meet your doom via my Lego lasers!"

But instead of lasering them, I'll fly away using my jet-pack, which will confuse them and make them reflect upon the meaning of life. Mostly, they'll think about Legos, and how cool it would be to be made of them, like me.

Didn't Forget To Draw

2010-01-25T17:36:00.004-05:00

The months before the holidays and the weeks after the holidays were unusually busy this year. I would write all about it, but that would be annoying for both the reader and me. The short version is this: The last few months of my life rank among the top five most stressful periods in my life.

As a result of my bare and functional state of mind during that period, I made little time for creative output or stimulating input. It was work, grad school app, and then a few hours now and then to drink a few pints and play video games. There was usually little brain fuel left for recreation. I didn't read any books or magazines and I didn't draw...much. I did draw a little however, and I like to share my drawings, so I've selected some of the more interesting ones and here they are. Don't forget, if you want a closer look, you can click on the drawings.

The following sketch represents the majority of my drawings over recent months - rough and disappointing.
Still, it served a purpose. It was me saying to my hand and mind, "we do this drawing thing from time to time and it's kind of important, so don't forget how it works."

A few of the less rough drawings turned out pretty good. Not worth putting on the wall, but still good enough to serve as a reminder that I'm not awful at this. For example:

By the way, the guy below actually sat for me for ten minutes (with a ten minute break in the middle) and he actually offered to model for me...yes, this happened at the pub in Charles Village.
The guy below I've drawn before, but for some reason the result has consistently gone beyond the exaggeration features I usually exhibit due to lack of skill. Instead, the poor guy ends up cartoon-ish. Still, I like the finished product.

But I didn't just spend my free time over fall and winter at the pub, drawing strangers. As money has gotten tighter and tighter, I've had to stay home more. Still wanting to draw, but disliking inanimate objects, I drew Beth reading in our living room. It's rough, but it has more background than usual, a thing I intend to practice more.
A few times, I went to the Baltimore Museum of Art or the Walters Art Museum. Usually, because my mind was a festering lump of overheated gears that had melted together, I was disappointed with my efforts. But every now and then, I got a little lucky. The drawing below is from one of those occasions in which I pushed the stress aside, took a few deep breaths, and wiped my mind blank.
I did a few drawings in ink too. Or, at least, I tried.
Beth and I took an overnight trip the day after Thanksgiving to get out of town, just the two of us, before the holidays got us all crazy. I hope to write about it at some point (I have pictures!), but for now, here's a super-fast sketch I did at our hotel. I remain very much pleased with it.
At one point in recent months - I guess it was August - I reverted to my middle school self and drew robots. I recommend it to anyone.

Just wanted to share. I hope someone out there enjoyed them, or at least enjoyed the last one.

"Plop-Plop-Fizz-Fizz..."

2010-01-24T12:53:00.008-05:00

On the Thursday before last, shortly before Midnight, I submitted my graduate school application online. Friday morning, I went to the post office and mailed the supplemental materials - letters of recommendation and official transcripts - and that was that.

The relief started sinking in on Friday night. Beth and I spent most of the night at home in the living room, playing video games.

The next day, we left Baltimore and drove out to the old-town Main Street of Sykesville, a two-block strip of old storefronts occupied by new businesses. The tiny town butts up against railroad tracks and the South Branch of the Patapsco River, the border between Carroll County and Howard County. The town of Sykesville held no specific attraction for us except that it was a spot in the country to wander around for a few hours until we met some friends for dinner in nearby Eldersburg.

So, we walked along the unused rails, next to some still-used rails.

Beth took pictures of a rusted caboose and other things. We balanced on the rusted rails while we walked, trying, with brag-worthy success, to not fall off. I also looked for old chunks of coal.

* * *

My family moved to LaPorte, Indiana in 1991, I think. My dad's job required him to get started at the LaPorte office before our house on the south side of town was finished being built, so, for the first year or so, we rented an old farmhouse across State Road 39 from the Cassidy Motel and RV Park, a couple miles north of town. The house was on a property bordered on the north by the Interstate 80/90 toll road. Half a mile west of the house, beyond the corn fields, was a set of railroad tracks. My dad and I went on at least one or two walks back to, and along, the tracks. We talked about all kinds of things, though I can't remember anything specific now. We also picked up and fiddled with discarded railroad spikes and other rusted, but fascinating, junk. What surprised me most while wandering along the tracks with my dad was the abundance of coal mixed in with the gray stones along the tracks.

Even though diesel-electric train engines have been around since the 1930s, and basically replaced the coal-fired engines during the 1950s and 60s, no one apparently ever walked all the tracks in the country to pick up the coal. So it's still out there, hunks the size of a plum, spilled from the wayward swipe of some fireman's shovel.

* * *

Two weeks ago, such a memory would have entered and exited my mind with the urgency of a cricket landing and jumping again while fleeing a predator. Now, with the months of preparing a graduate school application behind me, I can think, talk, and linger over the experiences, conversations, and memories of this vast, multi-dimensional reality.

In this state, I walked with Beth along the railroad tracks in Sykesville. I think I only found one lump of coal, but I guess I wasn't searching with much intensity. Beth and I were talking about one thing, then another, and another, just relaxing.

We heard a train horn when we were about a tenth of a mile down the line. I probably said something like "uh-oh" when, two seconds later, the train horn sounded again, way closer than the first time.

Something like half a dozen young people have died in train-related incidents in the greater Baltimore metropolitan area over the last year - some on purpose, some not. Near where Beth and I were walking, there were a couple of big rocks a few feet up the embankment along the rails, so we moved swiftly and climbed up the hill and onto the rocks so that that engineer would see, if he noticed us at all, that we were giving his tons upon tons of train a wide berth.

Apparently the engineer saw us, because Beth said he waved at us as the engine passed by.
Here's the train:

I liked seeing the train. It was kind of like staring into a campfire. It had a simple, wholesome sort of appeal.

After the train passed, Beth and I headed back toward Sykesville's Main Street. There, we each had a pint of beer at E.W. Beck's, a tavern. We read a little and talked about the articles in the Discover magazine I'd brought along.

Speaking of which, here are three things I thought were particularly neat-o, in case you didn't get a chance to read the "100 Top Stories of 2009" issue of Discover:

1. Researchers from the University of Notre Dame reported in June that they discovered 11,000-year-old grain silos on the shore of the Dead Sea in Jordan, "a millennium before humans were thought to have domesticated crops."

2. "Wild animals and plants that are hunted or harvested [by humans] evolve three times as quickly as they would naturally," according to a study from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

3. A species of palm, discovered last year and native to northwest Madagascar, "is so huge that individual trees can be spotted via Google Earth." The trunks can reach 60 feet in height and the palm leaves grow larger than 15 feet across.

There's a lot more cool stuff, but those were among my favorites.

Anyway, we left E.W. Beck's and met friends for dinner at Kyoto Japanese Steakhouse, and then went back to their house in Westminster to watch the Baltimore Ravens get embarrassed by the Indianapolis Colts. At the beginning of the game, I thought the Ravens had a chance because Payton Manning (Colts QB) looked hungover or tired. Turns out he was just concentrating really really hard. Also, he was trying to trick me.

On Sunday, Beth and I each did our own thing for a while. and then met friends at a new-ish wine bar in Hampden, Baltimore. I drank too much. We left the wine bar and went to a neighborhood bar, where I drank more. Suddenly, I was tired and figured I should go home and stop drinking. I didn't want to make Beth leave just because I was tired, so I told her I'd walk home (it's only about a mile) so she could keep hanging out with our friends. Beth told me that I was not, in fact, going to walk home. I said "okay," after which the tiredness went away and I probably drank another beer or two.

Monday, with both of us a bit hungover, we drove down to Harbor East, a neighborhood on the north side of Baltimore Harbor. There, we caught the 11 a.m. show of "Avatar" in 3D. We destroyed a large bag of popcorn. I loved the movie. I thought it would be fun and pretty, but it was way better than I expected. I'll be happy to go toe-to-toe with anyone who picks that movie apart and says it's overrated.

Also, I now want to be blue, bio-luminescent, 10 feet tall, and in touch with nature, as long as it's just like Pandora.

Much else has happened, of course. For example, just before the holidays, my company lost two reporters. One gave us lots of warning. The other reporter did not. So, I now work for the two papers those two reporters were writing for: The Arbutus Times and The Catonsville Times. You can click here, or here, or here to see what I've been writing about.

Given that I haven't written a blog entry since early November, there's plenty more to tell, so I'll try to play catch-up here and there soon.

The biggest thing on my mind, though, is that in March or shortly after, I'll find out whether or not I got in to Johns Hopkins University. Can't wait to hear. For now, however, I think I'll make some popcorn in the Whirley Pop and maybe watch "Watchmen." Such a relief to be able to relax.

Inspirational Sonic Blasts

2009-11-08T10:52:00.004-05:00

A few days ago, I wrote a chunk of fictional journalism to entertain a friend and to make a point...though I no longer remember the point. I didn't finish the fake article, but after re-reading it, I thought someone out there might enjoy it.

So, here's the crap I made up, unedited:

Two scientists at Flatulence University's Legume Acoustics Research Institute are midway through a study that aims to answer the age old question -- are beans, in fact, the musical fruit?

Of the two researchers, Jane Stinkenheim is the skeptic.

"I hope that this 18-month study can put an end to the old adage," Stinkenheim said.

"I concede that nearly all previous research has shown an association between the ingestion of legumes and an increase in flatulence volume and frequency of occurrence, but association continues to not be causation," she said.

Her partner in the project, and longtime friend, is Heindrick Bellibomben.

Bellibomben predicts the study will conclusively show that combustion of beans in the human gastrointestinal system causes flatulence.

"I am trying to remain objective," Bellibomben said.

"However, personal observation -- or should I say personal experience -- has all but proven to me that legumes are the cause," he said.

The pair began their study only a month ago but already look worn out. Much of their initial efforts were spent securing the 2,500 human subjects for the study.

"We were not getting volunteers, so we set up six tiger-traps across campus to gather enough people for the study," Stinkenheim said.

Bellibomben added, "we prod them with electrified rods a few times a day to keep them from screaming for help too much, but don't worry, we feed them every day - the bigger problem has been finding innovative ways to ventilate the lab facilities."

Stinkenheim said that the two spent a little over $150,000 on a used Pratt & Whitney low-noise turbofan.

"It sounds like a lot of money, but the fart smell down her was making me nauseous and we needed something to suck it out," she said.

Bellibomben agreed.

"The morning I came in after the first bean-feeding, I threw up six times before I could get even a window open - a person simply cannot work in a fart-filled lab," he said.

In spite of the odor, Bellibomben hopes the current research will spawn more. He said that if this project does indeed prove his hypothesis, he will pursue funding for more specific research into whether different beans provide different toots.

"My dear colleague continues to laugh at my theory, but we have observed an association between the characteristics of legumes and variations in the attributes of their corresponding flatulent sounds," Bellibomben said.

"Assuming this study is successful, I hope to follow up with a study to discover a correlation between the legume consumed and the pitch, volume, and tone of the subject's flatulence," he said.

Though Stinkenheim rolled her eyes while her colleague spoke, Bellibomben told of a recent trip the two recently took to South America, where they hoped to collect samples of the Columbian frijoles negras exploxivas, a flavorful bean with a noisy reputation.

While wandering an open-air bean market during an unscheduled layover in Nacho Villa Grande, the two were cornered by an old woman who insisted they listen to her story. The old woman, who never told the two researchers her name and who disappeared shortly after sharing her tale, told the pair about a legendary bean that grows deep in the Amazon Rain forest.

According to the woman, the bean is legendary for one reason -- every time someone consumes the bean, the resulting flatulence is characterized by exactly the right wavelength to create a powerful lower-digestive harmonic. The result is that the person explodes.

"It's preposterous," Stinkenheim said, after her colleague finished his story.

"The fart is an external sound - it could not create an internal harmonic. Plus, the wavelength needed to create a harmonic in the large intestine would be an extreme outlier in comparison to the frequencies we've experienced in the lab. On top of that, the wavelength would have to vary from person to person because different people have different-sized intestines," she said.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

She's Not Mine.

2009-10-03T14:31:00.011-04:00

In early September I made a trip to my parents' place on Lake Leelanau in Traverse City, Michigan. The purpose of the trip was to meet my niece, who was born in March.

So, I hereby present Katherine Thompson, who will hereafter be referred to as Kate and who drooled all over my wrist shortly after this photo was taken.

Ben and Nicole, my oldest brother and his wife, drove up to my parents' place from the outskirts of Indianapolis. They live down there on a huge piece of property bordered on the rear by a river. They just finished (or are still finishing) the house, and it seems they'll be living there for a while, maybe for the rest of their lives. So, I guess Kate's going to grow up in the countryside in a big house with a big yard, being neighbors with deer, foxes, coyotes, etc. Maybe she'll climb trees. Maybe she'll hunt deer. Maybe the local accent will rub off on the girl so she sounds funny.

"How yuh derrin, Unkuh Jay? Thar was a kai-yote in ow'er yard t'other naht so I fed um lay'ed an ad paw grillumup."

Nah. She won't sound like that. She's being raised by a couple of real Midwesterners, a people not known for having an accent. Plus, Ben and Nicole talk like educated people.

So she'll probably sound like this:

"How are you doing, Uncle Jay? There was a coyote in our yard the other night. I elected not to feed him lead - shoot him, that is - or have dad grill him up. Rather, we stood at the window as a family and marveled at nature's graceful..."

You get the idea.

Anyway, when Ben and Nicole arrived at Lake Leelanau, Kate was sleeping. So my first experience with Kate was her making faces while she slept.

Check it:

And be sure to MUTE it because it's all echo-y and stuff.

I wish my dreams were that good. Or maybe she's not dreaming but simply exercising her face.

Later, Kate had to eat. She eats all the frickin' time. It's crazy. I wanna eat too! But I don't want Kate's food. It's gross. Here's Nicole feeding Kate, who's looking kind of full. Kind of too full, like she's about to fall out of her chair.

After the binge, Kate sleeps, completely satisfied with her lifestyle. It's total bull. I wanted to sleep too! In fact, I want to do most of the stuff the Kate does. But I'm not supposed to eat, sleep, and poop all the time. So Kate gets to have all the fun.

In my jealous rage, I conspired to disrupt Kate's one-girl utopia. When she ate again later I made stupid sounds with my mouth (thbt-thbt-thbt) to distract her from her feeding. It worked, sort of.

All in all, I came through my first experience as an uncle unscathed. I never got dragged into changing a diaper, at no time was I the target of spit-up, and I never made her cry. That means I won. Though she did drool on my wrist once, so maybe it was a draw.

Seriously, though, Kate's awesome. She doesn't make a whole lot of noise, but she's active and seems to be good-tempered and smart. I guess being an uncle is going to be fun.

The Stars

2009-09-21T15:38:00.007-04:00

Hey, did I tell you I met Ray Lewis the other day?
Well, I met Ray Lewis. Now you know.

For those unfamiliar with him, Lewis is a linebacker for the Baltimore Ravens and is understood to be the emotional keystone on the team. A good player too. I seem to recall...when was it? Oh yeah, Sunday. Last Sunday, Lewis ended the game by stopping the San Diego Chargers...you missed it? Okay, just watch it here.

Now, I don't really follow the names and stats and stuff when it comes to sports. Also, I'll admit, I talk trash from time to time about the institution of professional sports - the money, the ticket prices, the pacification and distraction of the masses, etc. But I concede that it's fun to watch sometimes.

Back on track...A couple of weeks ago, my editor asked me to cover a media event up in Hunt Valley. Lewis and two of his friends were announcing their plans to open a bowling alley at the Hunt Valley Towne Centre, the primary shopping hub for those living in northern Baltimore County, from the Pennsylvania line to Towson.

But it wasn't just a bowling alley. It'll have an adults-only section with a bar, so that the rowdy teenagers can still bowl but won't intrude on the elegant ambiance of the bowling grown-ups. It'll also have an outdoor patio and "upscale" restaurant, and the bowling lanes will be teared to reflect stands in a stadium.

It's going to be called MVP Entertainment. I'd already interviewed Lewis' business partners and written about the new business the week before, but my editor had held the story for space reasons. I was just going to the groundbreaking ceremony to pick up any new details or good quotes.

I knew Lewis was going to be there and I knew that he was one of the Ravens' star players, so when I exited Interstate 83 onto Shawan Road toward the mall and ended up behind the newest-looking Ferrari I'd ever seen, I had a sound theory as to whom I was following.

Most of what I do as a community reporter is talk to locals -- small business owners, community leaders, county elected officials, parents, school principals, and little kids for some reason. Having the locally relevant excuse to interview a celebrity or pro athlete just doesn't happen but maybe once a year. In fact, a former astronaut is the only one who comes to mind that I've interviewed in two years who could serve as an example.

The MVP Entertainment event was boring until it was over, however that makes sense. That is, people made speeches, praising one another, Ray Lewis talked about his god and then it was over and the mingling began and I was able to interview Lewis briefly. Nice guy. Excellent smile. He has several inches over me in height, as well as several hundred pounds more than I do in muscle. Shook his hand at the beginning of the interview and at the end. Maybe from his perspective his grip seemed like a "firm" handshake. On my end, the pressure was worrisome. Fortunately, I was apparently not the first stringy reporter he's interacted with, so he knew when to stop increasing pressure.

Anyway, I thought it was cool of Lewis to take the time to speak with me, with a smile no less, even though I'm just a community news reporter from The Towson Times, rather than the sports writer for the Washington Post or a local television news dork.

What was cooler, though, was watching the game last Sunday, not thinking about the interview with Lewis. Beth and I were at the pub trying to watch the game. We got there early, got good seats in a booth, and were certainly ready to just chill out and be 'Merkin for a few hours. However, a group of late-comers -- super unaware, unthinking clowns -- decided that they would stand behind the people sitting at the bar so that Beth and I couldn't see most of the game. That wasn't the cool part. The cool part was when we were watching and I saw Lewis on the screen and heard the commentators talking about him and how great he was.

I wasn't thinking to myself "well, that must mean that I'm great by association."

No. Well, maybe a little...wait, no.

What I was thinking was, "Oh yeah, I met that guy that's on the television. I talked to that guy. That guy was nice to me."

It sunk in that, because of my job, I have the privilege of access to people that regular Joes don't have access to. I mean, it's not like Lewis just acknowledged me long enough to sign an autograph. No. I asked questions about his business as well as his charity organization and he answered my questions.

Here's a picture I took of Lewis, along with Baltimore County Executive Jim Smith and a bunch of other people.

So, that was cool.

Cooler still was something I found today in the October issue of Astronomy. Astronomer Bob Berman writes a column called Strange Universe and in this issue he just listed a bunch of space trivia he'd collected on scraps of paper on his desk. He put them in his column so he could throw the scraps away (a motivation I totally respect).

I will now share with you my favorite trivia from Berman's column because we all need to know this stuff. Please note that I'll be shortening and paraphrasing as much as possible because I don't feel like using quotation marks today.

- Neutrons last forever inside their atoms. Really. Forever. If removed from the atomic nucleus, however, such as in a nuclear reaction, they decay and vanish in about 10 and a half minutes. WTF!?

- You probably know that if you drilled a hole through the earth from one side to the other, and jumped in the hole, you would fall and speed up and speed up until you reached the center of the planet and then you'd slow down and slow down until you got to the other end of the hole in China or, in the case of Baltimore residents, a few hundred miles off the southwestern coast of Australia. You probably also know that if you removed wind-resistance from the equation and took away the fatal temperatures at the center of the earth, you'd actually keep falling from one side to the other over and over for eternity (or until you died of vertigo or something). The part I didn't know, though, is that it would take about 90 minutes to make one trip. Interesting? I think so.

- The sun weighs 4 million tons less every second because its nuclear fusion process, which so courteously provides us with light and heat and stuff, is actually converting 4 million tons of the sun into energy every second. Sounds like a lot to lose every second, but the sun has lots to lose. It's weight is currently estimated at 2 octillion tons, which looks really funny when you write it the long way: 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 tons. Comprehend that? Me neither.

- The coldest place in the universe (known to humans) is at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts. There, German physicist Wolfgang Ketterle set a world record for the coldest temperature. In his lab, Ketterle reduced an atom's temperature to 810 trillionths of a degree Fahrenheit above absolute zero. I guess he won the Nobel Prize for some reason.

Yeah, that's pretty cool stuff.

Also cool are the little hubcaps on my Volkswagen. They're not normal hubcaps that cover the entire rim. Instead, they're about the diameter of softballs and only cover the lug nuts with a fancy VW symbol.

Not cool is that I realized about a half hour ago that the three remaining hubcaps on my Jetta had been stolen sometime in the last 12 hours. I assume they are now part of some kind of underground Frisbee-golf rave thing.

I guess I don't mind much, as long as the music they're playing Frisbee to is all techno and cool with lots of beeps and boops and robot sounds.

Catching up...

2009-09-18T14:51:00.009-04:00

Hey!

Yeah, I know. Besides yesterday's post, it's been a while. I'm trying to catch up.

On that note, I traveled with Beth to Clarkston (a village in Michigan that some of you have heard of) for her family reunion back in...

...was it August?

Yeah, August. Pretty sure.

It was a good time. With Beth's extended family, we hung out in her aunt's mansion on Parke Lake fore ane afternoone ofe storiese, laughse, ande me beinge the strangere.

(Do you like how I added "e" to the end of everything in that sentence? Parke Lake actually has an "e" so I wanted to be consistently olde timey - it didn't work out like I hoped. Okay, back to the reunion.)

No one seemed to mind Jay the stranger. In fact, it was fortunate I was there. When it came time for the family portrait, I, the non-family member, was there to hold the camera and press the button and I'm all about pushing buttons.

The house really was a mansion, by the way. I don't care what anyone says. It was a mansion. Not huge, but lots of rooms with rugs and paintings and a piano and fantastic decor and huge columns on the back of the house, which faced the lake.

Mansion or not, it was a comfortable place. I could ramble about it. I am rambling. Now is the part of the program where I stop and just post some pictures.

What you see below is from what I think was the Friday we arrived. Beth's parents, Larry and Carol, allowed us to partake of the local custom of picking things from plants. Apparently, the ground is where food comes from. Food. It grows in dirt. Strange, I know, but in the Clarkston culture it's considered normal to pick things attached to plants that're growing out of the ground, so we participated to blend in with the natives.

In the fenced-in garden at the Forbes estate, Larry and Carol, along with Beth and her niece Zoe, picked green beans, squash, some onions (I think), and other things I neither recall nor understand. It was actually a lot of fun - the Forbes family always treat me well.

Here's Beth messing with some plants while Carol, in the background, looks for dingo tracks.

Below you'll see Beth holding a basket of stuff that grew on the plants in the ground. Try to guess what the veggies are called (no prizes for right guesses - I just don't know what they're called and want someone to tell me).
Below is Beth and her mom chilling at the swing set in the inner keep of the Forbes compound. Beth's younger niece, Lainie, whose name I don't know how to spell, is the one in the swing. So, what are they looking at?

They're looking at Zoe, who showing off for us on the monkey bars, with Larry, on the left.

Study Zoe's face. I don't know what it's saying. Regardless, Zoe rules the monkey bars of Clarkston.

What else? We sat by the fire pit one night and made s'mores. Zoe's first time, if I recall. I think both she and I ate the most s'mores. Zoe appreciates the good things. Also, we're both kids.

Anyway, more to tell soon. Hopefully tomorrow. Rock on until then.

No Regrets?

2009-09-15T10:51:00.011-04:00

[Illustration by Me]

While Beth and I slept Monday night, a Johns Hopkins University undergraduate student killed an intruder with a samurai sword two blocks north of our apartment.

You can read the story on The Baltimore Sun's Web site here.

Today, I walked into One World Cafe, about six blocks from where it happened, and the place was relatively empty for a cafe across the street from Johns Hopkins University at noon on a weekday during the school year. I asked the barista if he knew why the place was so empty. He said he didn't know, but joked that maybe everyone was at home hiding because they're afraid of getting cut with a samurai sword.

My point is, it's three days later and not only does everyone know about the incident, but they're still talking about it. Understandable, I guess. It's a fascinating story. When I first heard what had happened, I was awestruck. Kid hears someone break into the garage so he grabs his samurai sword and confronts the intruder. The sword is sharp enough that the student almost cuts the intruder's hand off. It's no less shocking (at least to me) that the student wielded the blade with enough skill to inflict such severe wounds. After all, the intruder died at the scene.

I often wonder what I would do if someone broke in to our apartment, and I imagine I'm not alone in that. In fact, one of the reasons I brought up the story of the Hopkins student with the samurai sword is that the same night he killed the intruder I woke up at 4 a.m. to the sound of what I thought was the doorknob of our apartment turning.

Our doorknob makes a specific metallic squeak and I was half-asleep when I heard it, so who knows, but I woke up, sat up, and listened.

I guess it would be possible for someone to sneak up the stairs to our door without us knowing. I sleep heavily enough anymore that the creaking stairs might not make enough noise to wake me and at the bottom of the stairs the door to the front porch isn't always locked because our downstairs neighbors don't always (or ever) have the common sense to push the door all the way shut so it locks. So, someone could have made it to our third-floor apartment door unnoticed.

I knew, however, that it was more likely that my mind misinterpreted another sound for the doorknob. But how to be sure? I could not go back to sleep wondering if 10 feet away was someone trying to break in. I had to know for sure.

We don't have a peephole, so I figured the best thing to do was turn on some lights. A burglar standing just outside our door would hear the floor creaking under my feet and would see the light under the door. They'd know we're awake and would (hopefully) flee back down the stairs and I would hear the steps creak as they left.

But I walked around, turned on lights, and no sound on the steps outside the door.

I looked underneath the door and couldn't see any legs, so I was left with no choice if I was to be sure. I grabbed a can of pepper spray, undid the chain and deadbolt, and opened the door. Nobody there and nowhere for them to hide. It was my imagination after all.

I've been having a lot of dreams lately and I remember having been dreaming just before waking Monday night, though I couldn't recall the subject matter. I'd had a few glasses of wine and a buttery dinner, which were the likely combined cause of the waking at 4 a.m. Maybe my mind even dreamed the sound.

How could wine and butter cause my mind to think someone is trying to break in? That's a tough one. Experience is my only clue. If I eat too much popcorn (on which I put real butter) or too much wine too close to when I go to sleep, I often have nightmares.

I don't usually remember the nightmares, but those I do remember are unpleasant. Usually, they involve a little violence. In the dreams, I'm not being chased, or drowning, or falling, but participating in some sort of physical violence. On one occasion, I dreamed I was in a warehouse and someone was trying to kill me. That's where the dream began. It was almost pitch black, but I grabbed nearby and caught the person, a man about my age (no face of course), and eliminated him as a threat in a way so tactile and hands-on that I won't tell it now. Immediately I woke up. This is normal for me and has been going on for years. Avoiding eating too much popcorn or too much wine near bedtime seems to have reduced the frequency.

Anyway, the way it works is I wake up in the middle of the night sweating and terrified that someone is in the apartment. I don't hear them or see them, but I'm just afraid. It's irrational. At first I don't want to move because they might hear me, but I can't go back to sleep wondering if when I close my eyes I'll be stabbed or suffocated.

So I get up as quietly as possible, not so much to prevent the imagined intruder from hearing me (they'll hear me, no doubt) but so that I can hear them shift their weight, bump something, or even breathing. At this point, I usually notice that my neck feels tight, like the blood in my arteries is swollen, if that makes sense. I then grab something to use as a weapon - nothing that could be accidentally lethal - and go from room to room. I stand in each doorway, listen for a moment, turn on the light, and scan the entire room as quickly as possible so no one gets the jump on me. After all the lights are on, I return to each room, open closets, look behind the shower curtain, and check in every nook and cranny in the apartment. "Where would I hide?" I ask myself.

First, there's relief that no one is in the apartment. Second, there is something like "what the hell is wrong with me?" Then, I usually open the bathroom window and lean on the sill, listening to the city while I wait for the sweat to dry and for my heart to slow down enough to allow me to go back to sleep.

Some of the procedure has changed since moving in with Beth. I don't usually have all the lights on at once because I don't want her to have to wake up just because I'm a little nutty. She knows of these episodes and tolerates them, though I can't remember the last time it really happened all the way like that. I've been careful for a while. On more than a few occasions in the last couple years, we've come home from the pub and popcorn sounds like the perfect thing, but Beth or I talk me out of it. The nightmares aren't worth it. Maybe it's something in popcorn shells that causes the episodes.

Monday night was a little weird because I didn't have popcorn and I didn't have the sweat and fear as soon as I woke up. It happened after I registered what I thought was the sound of the doorknob.

Anyway, because of those middle-of-the-night wakings, I've run through the scenarios in my head several times. What would I do? We have a fire escape someone could use to get to the third-floor and a ledge goes all the way around the apartment. It's not sturdy, but someone could probably walk on the ledge if they were motivated enough. So, really, any window is a way in.

How far would I be willing to go?

It's all pretty silly to try to prepare for. I'm smart enough to know that if someone really broke in, I'd do what it takes to eliminate the threat. A shove out the bathroom window to the asphalt three stories below? I'm comfortable with that. Pounding someone's face against the doorframe until their limbs stopped flailing? Sure.

Would I want them to die? No. Would I be comfortable with it? Comfortable enough. Would the memory of the act haunt me? Almost definitely.

I worry about this sometimes. I don't ever want to have to face the moment where I don't want to do something but must do it because logically I don't have a choice. That is, if someone did break in and I tried to reason with them, maybe they'd kill me. If I tried to wrestle them or knock them out or something I'd probably fail. I'm only 150 lbs and under no illusion that I can take on just anyone. Plus, it seems a reasonable assumption that anyone willing to break into a home is more likely to have experience with hand-to-hand combat than I. I've never thrown a punch at a person in my life.

It must be everything I've got. All my force, as swiftly and brutally as possible. Can't give 'em a chance. Logic says so.

So what of the consequences? Don't know.

The Sun's article about the Hopkins student said it's up to the State's Attorney whether or not to bring charges against the student. If that happens, I hope the student doesn't regret his actions. Moreso, I hope he doesn't end up dreaming about it. One can consciously reason through one's actions after the fact, to make peace or rationalize or whatever, but dreams don't come with a steering wheel. At least mine don't.

What would you be willing to do to defend yourself and your loved ones?

Private Compulsion

2009-08-04T11:30:00.005-04:00

First, let us define our terms.

As for compulsion, it's an irrational impulse, of course.

And private? Well, there is public, which is everybody's business; personal, which is between friends and loved ones; and then there is private, which is, as I define it, nobody's business but one person and maybe the one that person loves most.

Example: you're giving serious thought to skipping out on work, buying a bottle of wine, stuffing it in a paper bag, and walking to some park to spend the day drinking, reading, and listening to your iPod? That's private. I would not recommend sharing that with anyone unless it were disguised as 'kidding around'.

However, given that ideas for this blog lately pop in to my head one moment and pop right back out of it the next, I'll just write what's on my mind. After all, sometimes it feels good to ignore the layered bubbles of social etiquette and share a little weirdness with everyone.

So, lately, meaning this morning, I've been compelled to make a list of every kind and patient mentor, every dear friend present and past, every former crush, and every ex-girlfriend - well, not every ex-girlfriend - and then write letters to tell them the difference or impact or influence they had on my life, or just why I thought they were neat. I would only include the positive stuff.

It's a compulsion, and the motivation is a little hard to place but I have an idea.

I work from home. I don't leave often. In fact, sometimes I don't start my car for four or five days. The most frequent out-of-the-house activity is walking down to Eddie's, our neighborhood grocery store, or walking two blocks to the pub a few nights every week.

The pub thing is now less 'in the picture' because I've been wasting too much money on booze. So the goal now is to only drink on the weekends. That's a powerfully good thing, but there's a down-side. Now, during the week, I'll only be leaving the apartment to get the mail on the porch or going to Eddie's for milk, juice, or some other necessity missing from our fridge at home.

So I don't get out much. Lah dee dah! A lot of people don't get out much - what's the problem?!

Well, I look back into my past and see images and scenes of myself and friends sitting in living rooms watching South Park, the Daily Show, playing Grand Theft Auto. You know? The glory days of the college years. I see cafes, taverns, and a wine bar in Grand Rapids, with long conversations prettified and powered by caffeine or alcohol. I see the movie theater where I worked when I was 15 years old in LaPorte, Indiana, where my co-workers and I collected all the cheap colognes we had at home (Brut, Sierra Mist, Old Spice, etc.), brought them to work, mixed them together in an empty spray bottle and named it "the shit" or something, and then wore the crap whenever we were at work. By the way, when we came up with the idea for the cologne mixture, standing in the closet where the ice machine was housed, we laughed so hard we couldn't talk anymore. Then our boss took the bottle away. She didn't think "the shit" was funny. Not. At. All. That made it funnier still.

Anyway, looking into the past is like looking at a forest. If you walk into the forest for an up-close look, the trees are pretty spread out. From a distance, however, the trees seem so numerous and thick that you can't see through them, as if they're all close together.

What I mean is, from the present, it seems like the past was full of action, friendships, and great times. It's because I'm looking backward from a distance that it all seems bunched together. But if I could go back and stand among the past as it was when I was there, I'd see that the good times were plenty spread out, just like the trees.

It's an irrational thing. The compulsion to contact people of the past seems to be a desire to reach out, to remind people that I exist, to recapture what I think I had in the good old days, when in reality, things weren't so great.

So, I won't do it. I haven't the time to write letters and the people would just be weirded-out. The gratification would be limited in both volume and time sustained. If I'm really honest, I know I don't want to reach out to most people of my past anyhow. I want them to stay where they belong, in the past, so they can't weird me out either.

Instead, a few minutes ago, I took a walk to Eddie's, where I picked up some tomato soup, some bread to dip in it, some shredded cheese to sprinkle in the soup, ice cream for after dinner, and a cup of coffee. I talked to the middle-aged cashier for about 45 seconds about the changing world of grocery bags (i.e. plastic versus re-useables) and then came home. I could have made the coffee at home, but a sign in the window at Eddie's says they have the best coffee in Charles Village.

Predicting the future is impossible, I know, but I'm gonna give it a shot. Someday, about five years from now, maybe more, Beth and I will look back on these days with fondness. A walk to Eddie's to pick up a few essentials along with a cup of the best coffee in Charles Village will seem pretty darn cool. Today will eventually be the good old days.

What about you? Nostalgia? Strange compulsions? Concocted colognes? Speak up.

Chillin' Poolside

2009-07-12T17:05:00.007-04:00

Over the Independence Day weekend, I visited my parents at Lake Leelanau in Michigan. My younger brothers, Randall and Bradley were there, but my older brother, Ben, and his wife, Nicole, couldn't make it up from Indiana where they're busy with the joys of their newborn daughter, Kate. Even without them, we still had a pretty good time.

However, it's 88 degrees here in Baltimore and Beth and I, trying to keep expenses down, don't have the air-conditioning on. Due to the temperature and my usual Sunday afternoon energy lull, I'm too lazy to elaborate on the activities at the lake with any real color.

Instead, I'll summarize. We ate well, drank much (I did at least), roasted marshmallows over the fire pit every night, went for a 22-mile bicycle ride, and my brothers and I stayed up late enjoying the moon's reflection on the water and watching satellites cruise across the starry sky.

Randall, the second youngest of us, worked until 11:00 or 12:00 every night while Bradley and I were visiting so, because of a lack of planning on my part, he isn't in any of my pictures. I'll get him next time though.

My parents (Rick and Sera in case you're wondering what their names are) did all the work and pretty much spoiled us all weekend. Here's a picture of them sitting where they spend much of their time, at the end of the dock.
Here's Bradley, the youngest, and my dad doing a high-speed pass in tight formation on jet-skiis.

And the other direction (they made several passes).

And here is the most important activity we do at the lake. After dinner, we sit by the fire and watch the sun go down over the lake. Left to right, that's me, Mom, Dad, and Bradley.

Perpetual Knight

2009-07-11T08:52:00.004-04:00

On Friday I went to an animal hospital in Hunt Valley, a few miles north of Baltimore, to do a story about a program called "So You Want to Be a Vet?", in which kids come and get a behind-the-scenes look at the veterinary business.

The idea is that there are a bunch of kids in the world who think they want to be vets when they grow up. Let them see what the day-to-day business is like and their enthusiasm for the dream will either be defeated or stoked.

A group of three 9-year-old girls - Hannah, Lilly, and Christa - met in an examination room. They were each given a file folder with a fictional "primary complaint," X-rays, blood analysis, a photo of the animal, and other information. Then, Rebecca, one of the veterinarians at the animal hospital, guided the group through the process of finding the root cause of the complaint.

Throughout the two-hour program, the girls were exposed to videos of endoscopic procedures (I cringed and looked away but the girls watched), they helped hold down a cat while an EKG was done, they learned to use teeth-cleaning equipment, and they even used an endoscopic camera and surgical tools to remove foreign objects from a stuffed animal in a real operating room. About a half-hour into it, they looked like a miniature team of doctors, taking notes in their files while walking from the centrifuge (blood-work) to the operating room (surgery).

Before that all got started, however, they met Rebecca in the examination room, and to make the fictional scenario of root cause analysis a little more real, Rebecca brought in a cat.

The cat's name is Sir Winken (last name: No Blinkin'). Sir Winken has no major health problems - he just lives at the animal hospital and, being calm and well-behaved, serves as the "patient" during the "So You Want to Be a Vet?" program.

For a few minutes, Hannah, Lilly, and Christa took turns putting on a stethoscope and listening to Sir Winken's heartbeat and learning to listen for ten seconds and multiplying the number of beats by six to calculate the approximate beats per minute. They lifted Sir Winken into a small scale and he sat there, hardly squirming at all.

I thought Sir Winken No Blinkin' looked tired when he was brought in to the room. His eyes weren't even open. The longer I watched him, however, I realized that the spots where his eyes should be were smooth.

Early in the kitty-exam Rebecca asked the girls if they noticed anything unusual about Sir Winken.

"He's blind," said Lilly.

Rebecca asked why she thought that.

"His eyes are...out," Lilly said.

Indeed, Lilly was right. Rebecca explained that when Sir Winken No Blinkin' was born, he had a condition that caused his eyes to be underdeveloped. They were just little specks, basically, and would never function or grow to normal size. So, what did Rebecca and her fellow animal doctors do? They removed the undersized eyes and sewed Sir Winken's eyelids shut.

It all sounds weird, but Sir Winken seemed pretty content. He likes being held. He sniffs at the air, he moves his ears around like radar dishes, and uses his whiskers to feel for the edges of the exam table. He didn't freak out when the girls picked him up incorrectly or clamped the EKG wires to him. He was a good kitty.

Sir Winken's lack of eyes and eye-sockets didn't seem to freak out the little girls. In fact, any chance they got they volunteered to pick up Sir Winken and take him to the next examination area. And after a little while, I decided I liked Sir Winken too. I decided he was awesome.

At the end of the program, I asked Rebecca for a picture of Sir Winken. She gave me a copy of the picture that was included in the files the little girls got.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Sir Winken No Blinkin':

He's a tabby cat, he has no eyes, and he rules.

A Journalistic Folly

2009-06-23T11:29:00.007-04:00

It all started May 28.

At 9 a.m., I interviewed Sister Kathleen Feeley, 80, former president of the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and a nun of the School Sisters of Notre Dame. I was interviewing Feeley because she was keynote speaker the previous day at Notre Dame Preparatory School's graduation ceremony in Towson. I don't know why she was selected as keynote speaker, but I can guess it had to do with two things: she's an alumna of the school and she has a resume the length of a novella.

You can read more here in the story I wrote.

It was a long interview, but Feeley's had a fascinating life so I didn't mind letting some slack into the reins, but by the time we were finished, I hardly had time to drink a cafe mocha before my 1 p.m. interview with Milton Albert, a 100-year-old-man.

No, I didn't get his name backwards. His first name is Milton and his last name is Albert. The humor of his name isn't lost on him. In our interview at Lorien Mays Chapel, an extended care and rehabilitation center in Lutherville, Albert told me that many years ago, when he showed up to register for classes at Baltimore City College, he was afraid they'd lost his application. The registrar said he didn't have a Milton Albert file. Fortunately, someone eventually thought to look in the "M" section of the filing cabinets, where someone had filed Mr. Albert's paperwork, thinking Milton was his last name rather than his first.

Anyway, that was the first subject I addressed when I walked into his room. I said something like, "Mr. Milton Albert? Or is it Albert Milton?"

His daughter, Jane, who was present for the interview, didn't laugh at this, though she smiled, and Mr. Albert's hearing was so bad that he missed the joke completely. Though, by the end of the interview, I was convinced that if he had heard my little joke, he would have laughed. He had a quick sense of humor.

I scheduled the interview with Mr. Albert because he'd recently turned 100 years old and apparently he was serving as a sort of role model in the center's therapy gym, all motivated and stuff. Mr. Albert didn't live at Lorien Mays Chapel - he lived in a condo, unassisted, in Northwest Baltimore, which is sort of the unofficial Jewish district of Baltimore, but he was staying at the center to recover from a fall.

So, the high-strung, flamboyant 30-year-old kid with a lunchless stomach and shaking with a .06 percent blood-caffiene level interviewed the almost-deaf, spunky 100-year-old man. I don't usually do two lengthy interviews in the same day and I wasn't sure it went well. Though I bring a list of questions to an interview, I must stay on my toes, control conversation, transition from one subject to another, and ask the right question at the right time...such as, "In a century of living, what is your biggest regret, Mr. Albert?" I also asked him his fondest memory, but that was easier than the one about regret.

Anyway, the old man was smart and fun. I enjoyed listening and he seemed to enjoy talking.

That was a Thursday.

Then, Monday, deadline day, I checked in with Milton Albert's daughter, Jane. She had said on Thursday that she expected her dad to go home in a week or so and I wanted to get the latest information from her to make the story as accurate as possible. She said she still expected him to go home in a few days.

Then, Tuesday, I was talking to my editor about my story budget for the week and he told me he'd held the Milton Albert story. The story about Sister Feeley ran that Wednesday. It had to run that week because it was graduation-related and therefore "timely." The story about Milton Albert, however, was held because there wasn't room with all the graduation stuff in the paper that week, and that story was considered "evergreen."

I called Albert's daughter, Jane, and said, "sorry, but the story was held until next week."

I have to call people and tell them this because otherwise they get their hopes up and grab the paper and look through it and ask, "WTF? Where's that article that guy interviewed me for?"

Then they call me and interrupt something important. It's just easier for me to call them first. They're always nice about it and seem happy that I called at all.

Anyway, a week goes by, and it's Monday again. Deadline day. I check in with Jane to see if her dad has been released from the center and gone home to continue living independently. She said her dad had come down with pneumonia, but that he seemed to be recovering and would probably be going home before the end of the week. So, I sent a note to my editor to add that detail to the story.

Then, on Tuesday, I called my editor to talk about the stories for the next paper and he said he was rolling the Milton Albert story over again...so I called Jane and left a message. At this point I was embarrassed. I had a rapport with Jane and her 100-year-old dad and it was being nibbled away by budget constraints/page limitations. We don't often hold a story, and hardly ever for more than a week.

The story was held a third time, but my editor said he'd run it on June 24. Then, it was Monday, June 22, and my editor asks me to find out if Milton Albert had gone home yet because the story is definitely going to run. Full of shame for whatever reason, I didn't want to call Jane anymore, so I called Lorien Mays Chapel where Mr. Albert was recovering.

My contact at the center was out or eating lunch or something, so the front desk put me through to someone on Mr. Albert's floor and she was pretty sure Mr. Albert wasn't there anymore. I asked if she was sure. She said she'd make sure and put me on hold.

She came back on a few minutes later. She said Mr. Albert had passed away.

I'm certain I said something like, "seriously?" as if she would have joked about it.

This was new to me. I write this story about an old man and he dies before he gets to see his picture in the paper.

It only took me a moment after hanging up the phone to find my inner selfishness, though. I thought, "shit, now I have to rewrite that story and after all that delay I have to call his daughter Jane for comment!" And of course, because it was Monday, deadline day, and the story required so much rewriting because our subject is now deceased, my editor holds the story AGAIN to give me time to rewrite it.

Anyway, here's a link to the story I wrote about Milton Albert.

The saga continued, however. I think I had the story about Milton Albert mostly rewritten by Wednesday - I wanted to take my time with it. Then on Thursday, I was on my way out the door to do an interview for something unrelated when the phone rang. Some lady in Towson said her 6-year-old daughter had found a racing pigeon from an Ohio race in their backyard the previous day. WTF? A racing pigeon? Okay. Cool. Interview the little girl and her mom and the little girl's friend who was there when they found the pigeon + take photo of two little girls with pigeon = standard-issue community newspaper story. I could already see the cheesy headline...something like "Hot-Rod Pigeon Makes Pit-Stop in Towson" or something. Easy, fun, and cute.

The lady told me that two men were coming to pick up the pigeon that afternoon, so if I wanted to see it and take a picture, I had to stop by ASAP, so after my scheduled interview, I raced over to the house in Towson to get a shot of the girls with the pigeon. I met the pigeon, then I sat on the floor in the family's living room and interviewed the two girls about the pigeon. Coolness.

Friday, I was polishing the story about Milton Albert, so I didn't get to the pigeon story until Monday morning. I called the lady to make sure the two men had picked up the pigeon on Thursday afternoon as planned.

She said that less than an hour before they were to pick up the pigeon it died.

Check out the pigeon story here.

Them were a fun couple o' weeks. Anywho, it was a little adventure.

A Visit to the District (of Columbia)

2009-05-27T21:08:00.013-04:00

My mom (her name's Sera) and my youngest brother, Bradley, met me and Beth in D.C. a couple weekends ago. I hadn't seem my mom or brother (or my other brothers or dad for that matter) since the holidays, so it was a joy to have them around for two days. We stayed in a classy hotel and mom bought us a few nice meals. In fact, she basically paid for everything, which brought a real sense of vacation to our fun little weekend. Beth and I needed a guiltless break from reality.

Here are some pictures...

First, Bradley holding a friendly little roach at the Museum of Natural History. The museum was crowded, but the exhibits we could get close enough to see were awesome. Science rules.

I held the roach as well. It was warm, but not because it naturally has a high body temperature or anything. Rather, the lady that held it for a while before Bradley and I came along had really warm hands and the roach absorbed the heat, according to some official-looking guy with a cart full of insects. I hope he worked for the museum and wasn't just some psycho inviting people to play with his bugs.

Here I am with Bradley (he's the youngest of my three siblings but also the most towering), as well as my mom in front of some dude's house.

Below is a photo from the second day of our visit. It was morning and we were on our way to the Corcoran Art Museum or Institute or something. Mom, Bradley, and Beth posed in front of the very same house as the photo above. Whose house, you ask? Obama's house.
Below are the other three (i.e. not me) many hours later outside the Hirshorn, one of the Smithsonian's art museums.

We didn't go in, but were taking a break deciding whether there was anything we really needed to see before we left. Turns out we were tired enough that there wasn't. One of the big causes for tiredness was a walk from the National Mall to the Jefferson Memorial and back. Here, see? Can you find Beth? Can you read Jefferson's quote?

The next day I found out that shortly after we left the memorial the statue came to life, all cyborg and stuff, and attacked the more conservative people wandering around. As the story goes, Jefferson's statue would pick up each person by the scruff of their neck, ask them a series of philosophical questions, which they would inevitably answer poorly, and then he'd punt the person into the Potomic River. Also, he had laser-eyes.

Below is one of the things I found coolest during our visit. The house actually turned faster than I could walk around it. Totally annoying, but cool.

I know. I'm not posting every week like I planned, and my posts are more image heavy than content heavy. I guess I've been confused about some things, but I'm developing a plan. An awesome plan. I'll say more when the plan moves beyond being just a plan.

Convince me that I'm not serious...please.

2009-05-23T13:11:00.004-04:00

Sometimes one is struck by an idea so stupid and hilarious, that one must rush home and share the idea with one's friends. That is precisely what just happened to me.

I raced, literally raced, home. I pushed my Volkswagen to the limits of its performance (way fun) to get home and share my stupid idea.

Here are the mathematics of the idea:

Beth is driving directly from work to the airport this afternoon to catch a flight to Michigan to visit her family until Tuesday.

+

I have a perfectly good passport.

+

I have a ridiculously high limit on my credit card.

+

I'm off work today, tomorrow, and Monday.

=

I could theoretically throw a day's worth of clothing into a bag, take my passport, drive to the airport, and catch a flight for anywhere in the world and be back Monday evening.

Yeah. I could.

Then, come Tuesday, when Beth returns, I could be all "hey, did you want to see some pictures from my weekend? You'll never guess where I went."

Of course, she'll probably read this sometime before she returns on Tuesday, so the proverbial cat would be out of the bag. But still!

More realistically, I know that Japan and Austrialia are basically on the opposite side of the planet and I'd waste a lot of flying time. So, I couldn't go "anywhere in the world." But I live on the east coast, so a flight to anywhere in Europe isn't such a bad idea. If I left right now, I'd arrive in Europe early Sunday morning. Then, I could enjoy a day in...Paris? Barcelona? London? Prague?

...I could have a few drinks, check out the sights, get a hotel room, and wake up Monday morning for a leisurely return flight to the U.S.

Now, convince me not to do all that stuff.

Also, has anyone out there ever done such a thing? Something terribly spontaneous like that?

Three Miles of Walking

2009-05-13T17:29:00.011-04:00

When there's nothing to say, there's nothing to say, so I hereby choose to share a few photos from a recent walk I took around town. I think it was Monday. Maybe Tuesday. I don't know. But I went for a walk. About three miles, I think. Here are the pictures. Not great, but at least it's Baltimore.

A mysteriously symetrical cave...okay it's a tunnel.

A funny tree (really a tall weed).

Dump trucks.

The light rail and downtown.

An "Auto Shop" on Sisson Street.

That's all. I'll write something when there's something to write.

...I think this template is making me nauseous...

Just a thought...

2009-04-23T08:55:00.003-04:00

As usual, I had the radio on this morning while I got ready for the day. Between preparing for the shower and actually getting into the shower, I heard the middle bit of a story on NPR of a woman who wanted to be doctor, but who was discouraged by her father from pursuing the career.

The interviewee on the radio was the woman's daughter, who'd written a book or something about her mother's life after discovering journals or diaries written by her mother.

All that is detail, though. What caught my attention were two things:

1. The interviewee said her mother grew increasingly depressed, less and less functioning as the years passed. She became bi-polar, the interviewee said, went to a bunch of psychiatrists and was prescribed oodles of pills. She was not happy with her life.

2. She lived to be 83 years old.

After hearing this, and not knowing the rest of the story, I asked myself how a woman, so depressed all her life, so disappointed with her reality, survived until she was 83. The first answer that popped into my head was that she was waiting, always hanging on to the hope that things would change, that something would happen.

Maybe that's not how she felt, neither consciously or unconsciously - I don't know - and maybe I was just projecting. I probably was. More likely, she was living for her children or something.

Given my initial answer however, we can come to a fair conclusion about how I feel.

Now the question is, how does one avoid it? How does one, unwilling to give up on a dream, achieve rather than sulk?

Make a five year plan and follow it?

Find other things to make oneself happy just in case?

Bite one's lip, stop being a sissy and a procrastinator and just try like mad?

Just some wanderings. What are your thoughts?

April Showers

2009-04-11T14:52:00.008-04:00

It's about 3 p.m. and still sprinkling out - the rain started in the middle of the night and hasn't stopped since. I'm happy the sky is doing something though because it's action - something happening - and since I'm among the living, it feels as though I'm somehow participating in this action.

Perhaps it's a sort of psychological projection or perspective caused by a sense that I've stagnated lately.That is, something happening like rain seems (falsely) like progress in life, in the world, in time. From that, realizing that I'm seeing internal things in the external world, I'm tempted to wander into the metaphorical forest of "I'm 30 and the next stop is 40, and what am I doing with my life" and all that, but I won't. After all, it's a pretty nice day and why ruin it?

Two days ago, I buzzed all my hair off. Felt good. It's like being naked, but without freaking everyone out. So silly though. It's just hair, yet its removal is freeing, as if the hair itself were a burden. I'd recommend it to everyone, man or woman. In fact, I would recommend it particularly for women because the look is so shocking, and it looks cool. Think Sigourney Weaver in "Alien 3" or Natalie Portman in "V for Vendetta". The effect is bold as hell.

Anyway, I'm feeling pretty good today, relative to recent months. In fact, I had it so together today that I did a few good drawings, which I'll share with you presently. Please note, however, how big a difference a good mood and clear mind makes. Here is a drawing I tried to do last week when my brain was broken and distracted:

Yeah. That was junk. I just couldn't get it together.

Now, is it just me? Or is the following drawing like a million times better? Check it:

Same subject - a sculpture at the Walters Art Museum on N. Charles Street in Baltimore - yet my mind was right. I even did a smaller, faster drawing on Bristol paper, while standing (so I could draw from a different perspective):

No, they're not masterpieces, but it feels good to be on the right track again. I've been drawing in ink more and more and enjoying it a little, but haven't been "in the groove" until today.

That said, I now return to a previous subject without a proper transition...I order you to get to the barber shop or salon RIGHT NOW and chop all your hair off. Just sit down and tell the hair-smith, "I'd like the whole thing buzzed with a Number Two guard - no, make that a Number One."

They'll probably say, "Are you sure? That's really short."

And you must say, "whose effing hair are we talking about? Mine? Good. Cut it!"

And they'll hook you up. Cool thing is, when you wake up the next morning, there's no need to brush, comb, or style your hair. You just wake up, maybe take a shower, and you're good to go, all intimidating people and stuff. So? DO IT!

I Am Not a Dolphin

2009-04-04T14:54:00.005-04:00

When I lived in Jupiter, Florida back in the late 1980s, we had a pool. Everyone did. We didn't have a huge house or anything - just a one-story affair - but we had the right amount of space for a family of six and we had a pool. Sure, we went to the ocean from time to time and that was fantastic, but we could swim in the pool any time.

My dad showed me that if we exhaled most of our air we could rest on our backs on the bottom of the pool with little effort. There, he also showed me that if we filled our cheeks with air and let brief bursts of it out, we could make bubble rings.

I don't know how it works, but it works, just like smoke rings. Somehow, we made doughnuts of air. It tumbled over itself and remained a ring until it reached the surface. Fascinating stuff, no doubt, but a joke compared to what dolphins can do.

Check out this video of dolphins:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuVgXJ55G6Y

Yikes. Bubbles traveling sideways? No problem for the sea mammals. They put my dad and myself to shame, but we gained quality time from our own bubble-ring making. That pool was a lot of fun. How many laps could we do without coming up for air? How long could we stay under water? Simple. Fun. Hot and Humid. Florida.

Man, I need a vacation...a REAL vacation. Damn the Porteguese man-o-wars! I want to body-surf until I catch a big one and get tossed head-over-heels into the coarse sand of West Palm Beach. I want to get a tan! I want to see baby sea turtles crawl out of the sand from their nest below the surface and watch 'em scramble for the ocean. Did you know I've actually seen that in real life? It was...baby sea turtles! Loggerheads! Wow!

Oh, Nothing...

2009-03-29T18:17:00.007-04:00

It was foggy in Baltimore this morning, right into the early afternoon. Then it was 73 degrees and sunny. Then there was a downpour and wind. Now the sun's out again, but the wind is still blowing and it's in the mid-60s.

Beth's cleaning the apartment while I sit and drink Yuengling - we're each doing our part to feel good.

The windows are open here on the third floor. Beth's ambitious cleaning process - reorganizing CDs, dusting the living room, etc. - is kicking up the dust, which tumbles and swirls through the apartment, made extra visible by the evening sunlight coming in sideways, illuminating every cat hair and dust bunny.

The framed poster on the living room wall is moving severely in the wind. I think it's going to fall if another big gust comes along. I should close the window some of the way, but I'm in the mood to wait and see what happens. The suspense is fantastic.

Don't know what to share. Life is but a dream, I guess.

I've been playing with fire lately. Figuratively, of course. Though the winter has dragged on longer than usual, affecting my disposition, I decided for whatever reason to read "American Psycho."

Dumb idea. Dumb dumb dumb. The tale is a little too much for my wobbly mind, as well as a little too descriptive for my squeemish humanism.

Anyway, good book. Captures the shallowness of a certain segment of our culture. It's a bit dated now, I guess, but still relevant.

Funny though how the protagonist, Patrick Bateman, along with his posse of Wall Street nut-jobs can name from any distance the brand, style, pattern, or scent of every attache case, business card, cologne, perfume, sock, tie, suit, shirt, hair gel, or skin cream. Yet at the same time, none of the characters seem to ever be sure about who's who. They're always calling one another by the wrong names and saying things like, "who is that sitting at the bard? Is that McWilliams? No, that's Crestwood. The guy sitting next to him, is that Buxworth? Or perhaps Denton?"

It seems all their names are similar and confusing to the reader as well, and I wonder if this is intentional, that the author, Bret Easton Ellis, is making a point, like Shakespeare using the names Helena and Hermia in "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I think the message is that they aren't individuals, or at least don't have individual character, and perhaps they are intended to be interchangeable and unimportant.

Anyway, they all hate each other. Even those sleeping with one another are playing manipulative games and jockying for social position or financial gain. It's disturbing.

I think that when I'm done with "American Psycho," I'll go back and reread the entire "Harry Potter" series, much as I might choose to view a Pixar film after seeing "Why We Fight" or "An Inconvenient Truth". Not that "American Psycho" is real life. I know the difference most of the time. It's just that it reminds me too much of real life, mimicks it too well. It FEELS the same.

Anyway, I think I'll take a dive into fantasy after this. Just a healthy little escape. Feel free to join me.

That's Uncle Angry Mr. Jay to You!

2009-03-23T11:29:00.002-04:00

So, working from home now...weird.

In other news, Sheila Dixon, mayor of Baltimore, graced our neighborhood's sidewalk last Friday in the middle of happy hour. My fellow reporter, Adam, had to be there to cover the event - a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the city's first on-street bicycle parking. I brought my camera like a good reporter and took 70 pictures for the Baltimore Messenger.

At first, I thought the mayor wore a helmet because she cycled to the event and wanted to set a good example for the kiddies. But then she kept the helmet on throughout her speech. This makes me think she was wearing the helmet for reasons other than cycling.

Here's a picture of the mayor wearing her "special" helmet and apparently whistling an olde tyme cycling tune.

In more important news, I became an UNCLE on Friday evening. Nicole, my sister-in-law, had a 5-pound 10.2-ounce girl. The baby was a little early, but there were no complications with Nicole or the baby...or with my brother, Ben, for that matter. He seemed to be taking it well enough when he called on Friday night. Ben and Nicole have been building a house near Lafayette, Indiana for the last year or so and they're now just putting the finishing touches on the thing. Good timing.

Called Nicole on Saturday and she said they named the girl Katherine Grace Thompson. They're thinking about calling her Kate for short, Nicole said. I think Kate is a good name, like Jane, or Jack, or Bullit. Those names have power. Good power. Effective power. Like a fist. Yeah.

Anyway, I'm an uncle. Good experience - I'd recommend it. Problem is, reality hasn't sunk in because Ben, Nicole, and Katherine are 650 miles away, so the face-to-face thing isn't happening. I'll probably see her for the first time in July, when we all get together at my parents' place in Michigan.

Still, a baby...wow. Congratulations Ben and Nicole (and Katherine for your obvious ambition and initiative - go baby go!).

Pre-Flight Cape-Check

2009-03-14T17:56:00.002-04:00

The sky is overcast today - the kind of clouds that don't appear to have any definition or distance. I imagine it's the same all over. I feel closed-in. Winter has dragged on too long. That's where the claustrophobia is really coming from. The clouds, I guess, just put a face to the enemy, albeit a blurry one.

I think what I need is to be able to fly really fast, like Eve in "Wall-E" or Neo in "The Matrix" or Hancock in "Hancock." Even better, I could be like Ironman with the cool weapons and armor and stuff.

It would be a relief and a great way to blow off steam right now, to just push off the ground and break the sound barrier, shatter windows, and burst through the cloud layer. I haven't talked to my mom for weeks, so perhaps I'd soar to cruising altitude and drop in and visit my parents for dinner. They're in southern Florida right now visiting friends. Maybe while there I'd visit good ole Set'n'Sun Court where we had a little house with an in-ground pool back in the 1980s. My dad built a killer treehouse around the great big Austrailian pine tree behind that house. We're talking 2x4s and plywood. That thing was solid - Dad's a hell of a carpenter.

A tire-swing hung from one of the branches of the pine tree and one afternoon I remember climbing up the rope, which had knots in it for that purpose, and when I was ten feet or more above the ground I lost my grip for reasons that now escape me. Anyway, I fell flat on my back and the air was squeezed out of my lungs for what felt like a whole minute. Was probably really just five seconds. Still, it was scary. I don't think anyone was around or saw what happened. Lucky I didn't fall onto a fire-ant nest. Being unable to breath and being stung would've done bad things to my mind.

Anyway, if I could fly, I'd also go and visit my brothers in Michigan, Indiana, and Virginia. Just a quick visit to say hello and catch up a little. Wouldn't want to show up unannounced and interrupt everyone's whole day or anything.

Then I'd head to Chicago and harrass Shaun and Truly for a pint. That'd be great, but again I wouldn't stay for long - sorry but I wouldn't want the cold to have time to sink in to my bones. Don't wanna know how cold it is in Chicago.

The weather in Santa Monica, however, is probably pretty nice right now, so I'd definitely make a burden of myself at Ally and Jesse's place. Maybe I'd even go for a brief swim. Never swam in the Pacific before. Would have to do a quick flyover first to check for great white sharks.

Then I'd head home to Baltimore. Beth would be getting impatient.

"Just because you can fly doesn't mean you get to take a vacation whenever you get the inkling," she'd say, all jealous and stuff.

But I can't fly.

So, I guess the only news worth reporting is that the newsroom is almost packed up. My co-workers and I have cleaned out our drawers, packed up our files, and cleared the cork-boards. Tuesday is the last day we'll be able to work from the office. On Wednesday and Thursday, a moving crew will dismantle the cubicles and desks and load them into trucks. Don't know where they're taking all that stuff. It's not really needed anywhere. With all the people who were laid-off, bought-out, or who quit, there are plenty of empty desks and offices at the Columbia office where the editors and copy-editors are going.

Anyway, the newsroom has been more and more somber as the week rolled on. The 50s and 60s crowd in particular have been pretty sentimental about the whole thing. They've worked at the Towson office for years. It's gotta be tough to leave something behind after so long, and the sense of instability and insecurity must be almost overwhelming.

I'm kind of excited, personally, but among all of us is some tumult. We reporters still haven't been provided company laptops or cell phones. So we'll be working with our own equipment - those of us that have it. Also, any telephone interviews will be on our own cells, so our phone bills might go up a little until the company takes action. It ain't right, but we all still need the paycheck so complaints and protests haven't been above a certain volume or frequency.

In the mean time, my mind is in grid-lock. It's rush-hour and all the routes are blocked with thinking and re-thinking the details of working from home. Don't want to miss anything, so I go over things again and again. Thoughts and motivation for recreational reading and writing have had to take the back-roads, full of potholes, mud and fallen trees.

BUT! The transition is almost over, spring is on it's way, and Beth and I are going to one of my co-worker's houses tonight for dinner. So, things are looking up, I guess.

Also, saw "Watchmen" on Monday. Awesome. Wanna see it again.

Beware Trying New Things

2009-03-05T19:11:00.007-05:00

That's a picture I included just for fun. Beth took it earlier this week.

Feeling mopey today. It's above 70 degrees today and more humid than it's been in months. Yet I'm not really feeling it. Something's just off today and I can't get into this kind of writing, so please bear with me. Something put sand into the gears in my head and what follows is not my smoothest prose.

Years ago, I thought that being a professor might be a rewarding vocation. This was probably about a year after graduating from Grand Valley State University with a B.A. in English. The dream of being a novelist for a living was becoming tainted by the reality of the working world. That is, spending time finding a job, getting that job, working, spending free time looking for a better job all left seemingly little time to write.

I graduated with dreams, became jaded, sold furniture and appliances for a while, decided that being a professor was an attractive vocation, then ditched the idea for whatever reason.

But why a professor? I missed and continue to miss the energetic, well-exercised minds, always trying to solve problems, always criticizing. I remember my university classmates, at least a few of them, being terribly engaged - such a contrast with most of the co-workers and general public I've met since.

Somewhere along the way, back when I lived in Grand Rapids, Mi, I went to an introductory session for people who wanted to substitute teach for the local public school system. I thought maybe it would be a good way to dip into the teaching thing without a ton of commitment. The requirements of the job were: possess 90+ credit hours from a college, come to the intro session, fill out some paperwork, and you're good to go...or something.

But at the introductory session, we the prospective substitutes were all sitting in a school auditorium and they started this presentation that's about blood-borne pathogens. That's all they talked about for the entire session. Blah blah blah latex gloves. Blah blah blah blood. Blah blah blah vomit. Blah blah blah influenza. Blah blah blah AIDs. Blah blah blah cooties.

This, of course, turned me off. I didn't want to be a f#cking nurse! I wanted to try teaching!
Oh well. I figured that being a professor would end up different from how I imagined it. So, instead of finding out for sure, I just gave up on it. Plus, I'd probably never get into grad school in the first place because of my undergrad scores. Boo-hoo whatever...

Then, this past Wednesday, March 4, I returned to Parkville High School (remember a few blog posts back how I went and played guest speaker?). This time, I was interacting with the Journalism III & IV students - all seniors - who write and edit the school newspaper. Their teacher was an English teacher with no journalism experience (though she knows the fundamentals pretty well).

Each of the students printed out one of their stories and I busted out the red pen, marked the story up, and discussed it with the students, telling them what they should consider improving and why. I offered both criticism and positive feedback, and when our hour and 20 minutes were up, I was disappointed that we'd run out of time.

I had so much more to say, much more to offer: Interviewing technique and nuance, journalism ethics, the research process, making a good article an interesting article, securing interviews from reluctant sources, diplomacy with the general public, paragraph length and structure, etc.

And the students, at least half of them not suffering from senioritis or thinking about prom, seemed interested and engaged. I started thinking maybe I could teach journalism at the high school level. Maybe I could teach English too. I'd certainly get a lot out of reading the classics and having discussions in class. And what about the three months off every summer? Or the fact that I'd probably get paid 50 percent more than I currently get?

Oh, what to do?

The kids seemed to like me well enough. And I think I could be a good teacher. Hell, craploads of people have told me for years that I'd make a good teacher. I don't just trust them - I know why they say it. I would be a pretty good teacher. Until now, I just didn't want to go after it because I thought I didn't like kids. These kids weren't stupid or annoying though.

If I were a teacher, I could write a book every summer. In his book "On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft," Stephen King wrote, "...I believe the first draft of a book - even a long one - should take no more than three months, the length of a season. Any longer and - for me, at least - the story begins to take on an odd foreign feel, like a dispatch from the Romanian Department of Public Affairs, or something broadcast on high-band shortwave during a period of severe sunspot activity."

Sunspots aside, King's book spoke to me. Of all the writing books I've read, his seemed the most frank and the most about the actual writing process. I mean, he's ruthless. He thinks a person should write every day of the week, 2,000 words a day. Awesome. That's, in fact what inspired me to throw together that bit of fiction a post or two ago (that post was only like 1,500 words though).

Anyway, maybe it could work. Maybe I could have the patience for the students. Maybe having three months of vacation to look forward to every year would make the early hours and public schools politics worth it.

Hell, I don't know.

Has anyone out there ever been a teacher of teenagers for more than a week at a stretch? How was it? Why do YOU think a person should teach. What do YOU think should keep a person from becoming a teacher?

Spring Cleaning (how original)

2009-02-28T13:53:00.005-05:00

So, do y'all like the new look of the page? I know spring is three weeks away, but it was in the 50s here yesterday and it got the blood flowing. Really, I was just tired of looking at the same old design on the page.

When spring really comes, I'll probably change the blog's appearance a little more. That banner is a bit bleak.

Speaking of the coming season, I have the habit of trimming all my hair down to a quarter-inch when things start warming up. Part of it is to stay cool, but more than that, it is simply an excuse to make a change. See?

It feels good.

Two or three times in my adult life, I've even lathered it and taken a razor to my scalp. It feels fantastic, like having nothing to hide behind, like being mentally naked.

Anyway, I wanted to write something meaningful, but I've got nothing today.

Instead, I was wondering if anyone out there had a spring habit. What do you usually do? Clean? Mothball the winter coats? Wash the car? Change your hair style or color? Take a road trip? Write haiku about cherry blossoms?

Tell me!

I'm tired - hows about a story?

2009-02-26T20:22:00.003-05:00

At two o'clock, Keri, the bar manager, seemed impatient.

"Wilson," she said quietly, "I'm sorry, but we're closed."

Wilson sat at the bar, but didn't look up from his beer.

"Are you?" he said.

"We've been closed for fifteen minutes," Keri said, "I've gotta let the wraith out."

The 'wraith' was Keri's Labrador retriever. While the dog retained its nickname from its energetic and quick-footed youth, it was old and growing more and more prone to a laziness of the bladder muscles.

Wilson had met the wraith several times when Keri walked the dog by the bar in the afternoons. It was a stout, slow-moving, black lab, with graying whiskers on its chin. Wilson wondered why everyone seemed to have labs. He also wondered about Keri and how the bright sunlight of the early afternoon, which should make a person's imperfections more obvious, always seemed to sharpen Keri's features and made her more striking and attractive than this dark bar ever could.

But, it was late, and while Wilson was inclined to look Keri in the eye and say something clever, he didn't want her dog to pee on her floor. So instead, he put ten bucks on the bar.

"Sorry, Keri," he said. "I was lost in thought and wasn't watching the clock."

"Forget it, Wil, it's just the dog that makes me worry," she said, "and, hell, I'll be here tomorrow night. See ya then?"

"Of course," Wilson said, wondering if she knew about his infatuation, hoping that she guessed but didn't know for sure.

He stood up and threw on his hoodie, wondering where one goes at two in the morning on a Tuesday when one wants to daydream. The city does sleep, he thought, except for places he didn't want to visit. Dark places where careless people behaved as careless people do, where stupid mistakes were the norm.

Out the door then, Wilson glanced back at Keri, only able to look at her when she wasn't looking at him. He thought he could smell lightning, though it hadn't rained in weeks. He turned left up the sidewalk, passed the bagel shop, the closed-down cafe, a hair salon that saw so few customers that Wilson thought it should have gone out of business months ago.

He'd only had two drinks - a beer and a beer - and was hardly feeling a buzz having drank too slowly, but the air was humid and warmer than it'd been lately - warm enough that it was invigorating to be awake and walking along the abandoned street. There was a slight breeze and Wilson felt that the air and all its smells were sticking to him as he moved.

Only one car went by in the minutes that he climbed the hill. Wilson moved with heavy legs, like a runner after a marathon, and he stared at the sidewalk while he walked - orange, then dark brown, almost black, then orange again, a buzzing overhead, then darker again, some birds stirred and flapped in a magnolia tree across the street.

At the top of the hill, the street stopped at a T and continued only as an alley, but Wilson was feeling lazy so he kept on going straight. The alley was narrow and darker than the sidewalks along the street. A single orange lamp illuminated the half-way point of the alley, and when Wilson approached, a gray rat flew out of a pile of trash bags on the bag steps of a row-house. It moved like a cartoon rat, erring out of fear, flying through the air in an awkward pose, then landing and rolling over a few times, silently on soft fur. Then, on its feet in a blink, the rat scraped its claws on the smooth concrete, stationary for a moment like a car spinning its tires. Then, gaining traction, the rodent disappeared in a blur, straight into the blackness of a drain pipe.

Wilson didn't even stop to watch the drama of the rat. It all happened so fast that he only slowed one or two of his steps before the rat was gone, and then he walked on.

At the far end of the alley, Wilson paused. The alley stopped at a T, but this time nothing continued - not even a sidewalk. There was just a street going right to left and a wooden fence ahead. He had to decide. Left or right. Wilson wondered why all the bars had to close so early - maybe he could have complimented Keri on her new bracelets.

Wilson chose a direction and walked. It was the road to the park, all oak and maple trees, no cedar or pines. It was a boring place during the day. At night, perhaps it would be an adventure. One of being mugged, climbing out of some ditch, stabbed half to death, threatened with various acts of physical humiliation, shame, and permanent emotional damage.

At the end of the block, now facing the park with its many hiding places, Wilson turned again, this time toward the museum. It was seven blocks away, but Wilson was pleased at a destination other than the park, and back on a real street, back in the slight breeze. The temperature seemed to be going up for whatever reason, and Wilson took off his hoodie and tied it around his waste as he had as a teenager.

At the museum, Wilson walked up onto the steps and sat in the shadow of one of the big columns, hoping the police wouldn't bother about him. He just wanted to sit for a few minutes and not think.

He didn't want to go back home to that basement hell-hole of an apartment, so damp, so many dark corners where he could hear but not see the monstrous cockroaches. The neighbors above him smoked pot constantly - they never seemed to sleep - and the insulation and seals between the floors kept little of the smoke on the first floor. It all seemed to seep through the floor like rain through a wooden porch.

The apartment and the neighbors, were only one item on a long list of Wilson's recent irritations and disappointments. People, job, weather - none of it turned out like it was supposed to, or like they said it would. At least tonight the weather is nice, Wilson thought.

He leaned his head on the column and stared at the sky. The clouds reflected a peach version of the city lights, as if the clouds interpreted it rather than objectively reflecting it as they saw it. In between the clouds was the dark sky beyond full of stars of rare brightness for the city.

The clouds and stars disappeared from Wilson's mind and he fantasized about Keri, about gathering the courage to say something that would give her a hint - the hint - something that would coax her into talking about her pet peeves, her favorite books - Wilson always saw her reading something when business was slow at the bar - and, of course, her hopes and dreams.

He just wanted her to share, wanted to make a connection, wanted to try to find that understanding that two people can find in the fencing of two wits, the chess of two individuals competing to win one another's affections.

Then Wilson was dragged with much resistance from his daydream by the sound of keys...no, he thought, it was the jingling of tags on a dog collar.

And there she was, rounding the corner, on the sidewalk, thirty steps below where Wilson sat in the shadow of the museum's column.

Maybe if I don't move, she won't notice me and won't get startled, Wilson thought.

Keri walked further, turned her head slightly and must of noticed, Wilson thought, because she straightened up and walked a little faster. Then, when she was almost past the museum's front steps, she turned her head further, apparently to make sure she wasn't being followed, but she stopped and turned all the way around.

She took a few steps closer, the wraith looking at her then at Wilson, probably a dark blur to the old dog.

"Wil?" she said.

Wilson stood up.

* * * * * * * * *

Sorry about that, everybody. I just felt like being creative and didn't want to plan my way through it. A tough day at the newsroom and all that, ya know? So, now that I'm home and fed, and there's no booze in this house, I had to do something with no real rules - like fiction. Hope it wasn't too boring. I just made it up as I went along.

Anyway, I'm gonna draw or read or something. Or maybe I'll go for a walk.

I'll try to get around to a "real" blog entry this weekend.

Guest Speaker

2009-02-18T20:00:00.008-05:00

Well, it's been more than two weeks (I apologize to those who care) since my last blog post. I would have posted over the weekend but my computer started misbehaving. I'll reformat the hard drive tonight though - that'll teach it a lesson.

Additionally, it seems like there's been much to do. Don't know for sure what I've been doing. Anyway, I'd like to throw a shout-out to all the pregnant people in the house.

Truly, our chick in Chi-town, has a mantis in the oven - due in the fall!
Nicole, my sister-in-law, is due in April!
Mary, Beth's co-worker, seriously? You too?

Oh, and why not a shout-out to Jess and Steve out in Catonsville, recently engaged. You guys rock (by the way, I know it's our turn to host game night...we'll talk soon).

But back to the baby thing. I don't know why this popped into my head, but it did. Twice last week, just after showering, I was drying off my hair with a towel and it's cold in the apartment most days because the heaters are...not good. Because of the cold air, the process of drying off is more fast-paced than it would be in the summer. I mean, I wanna get dry and and put on some clothes and be warm again. Naked, wet, and cold are bad things...at least when combined.

Anyway, trying to dry oneself quickly means pushing the towel hard and fast, and the hair, being the most sponge-like body part, doesn't want to let go of the water and therefore requires bold action. So, I'm rubbing my head with the towel really really hard and fast and suddenly remembered the pleasure of being a child and being dried by my mom and dad after a bath. They dried me aggressively. I mean, it was like they were wiping off the kitchen counter after a big dinner. It was such forceful drying that I would have been knocked over if they didn't have such perfect control. I teetered one way and suddenly the towel was on that side, pushing me the other direction. I was knocked all over the place. It was nice. It was attention. It was quality time. But mostly, it was rough. Of course, drying the kids quickly is paramount. Parents, after all, must get the kids clean, dried, pajamafied, and in bed so they can do taxes and talk about the future, or whatever parents do after they put the kids to bed.

Anyway, it was awesome. No good explanation, I just liked it. And, I wanted to take the opportunity to recommend to all the soon-to-be parents out there that y'all should do the same. Fear not the towel. Be aggressive, especially with the hair.

Anyway, what's been filling the time?

Wednesday morning (Feb. 11), I went to Parkville High School, usually a rich source for stories for my paper. But this time I wasn't working. I was invited to talk to the Intro to Journalism class about the process of writing a hard news article, from news tip to investigation to the editing process. It was at 7:45 in the morning when I began, but a slammed cup of coffee made it all okay. I even put together a Powerpoint presentation for the lecture and spoke for over an hour. Fascinating experience, making a real presentation. What added color to the experience was that I didn't hold back my Jayness or pretend to be a grown-up - I was, instead, acting the way I always do, and it was way fun.

I wore a tie and talked fast, interjecting upon my monologue with tidbits and tips that popped into my head as I spoke (picture a laser coming out of my mouth the way Cyclops of the X-Men has laser come out of his eyes and you get the idea about how fast I talked). Most of the kids were bored and had their chins on their palms, but one kid, Dan, was totally into it.

Dan wants to be a photojournalist and was taking photos of me during most of the presentation. He paid pretty close attention and participated in the brief Q & A at the end. After the lecture, he was hanging around with his camera and chatting. I said something like, "man, I could have gone on for another three hours," surprised that I had so much to say about what I do for a living. And Dan said, "and I would have loved every minute of it."

What a nice thing to say. Still, I went back to work after the lecture and by about noon that day my brain was toast. I'm probably going back this week or next to talk to the school's Journalism III and IV students. It probably won't be a presentation thing though. Rather, I'll probably help them work through actual stories for their school paper. Should be fun.

The next night, Beth and I went to a reception at the Walters Art Museum. The Howard County Arts Council, where Beth works, has a sort of partnership with the art museum, so they do this annual reception with county politicians, artists and staff from the arts council, some staff from the Walters Art Museum, and the friends of all of the above.

Anyway, it was a small affair with free wine and cheese and crackers. The county executive gave a short speech and so did the museum's director, Gary Vikan. He's a knight. Everyone I spoke with that night seemed surprised, but I looked it up. Vikan is a chevalier. It's right in his bio on the museum's Web site. It says he's a "Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres," an honor bestowed upon him by the French Minister of Culture and Communication in 2000. Anyway, I got a chance to speak with him about it, but he said he doesn't wear his ribbon and that people in France do give him no respect for it. Nice guy though, and a good sense of humor.

What else...

On Valentine's Day, Beth came home from work, we ate dinner, and then spent the night drinking a bottle of wine and doing a puzzle while listening to some 1980s station on iTunes. I think we played Mario Kart after that on the old Nintendo 64, but now I can't remember.

Probably the biggest news is work-related. My boss's boss's boss dropped into the Towson newsroom on Monday to tell us some funny news. The company is closing the office. The lease is too expensive in these tough times so they're closing it. All the editors, editorial assistants, and copy-editors are moving to the Columbia office (about 25 miles away from the Towson office). But, the reporters (i.e. Jay, etc.) are going virtual.

This all must be done by March 18, for some reason, but I'm not complaining. Going virtual means that the company is going to provide a company laptop, maybe an air-card so I can get internet anywhere (even at weird places like gas stations, zoos, and cat-food processing plants, where I'll do most of my work), maybe a cell phone, and I'll no longer have to drive to work. I'll work from home.

I'll still have to drive the 20 minutes to Parkville when I have a face-to-face interview to do, or if my editor wants to meet once a week, but I won't have to drive to Towson ever. And on days that I don't have any on-site interviews or events to cover, I can just stay home, save gas money, and make calls and write e-mails from the home office. Yup. No one looking over my shoulder, no commute, and I can schedule any face-to-face stuff at certain hours so that I never have to deal with rush hour. Suh-weeeeet!

That's about it. Just an update. Way more on mind right now than what I put down, but I'll save those thoughts for when I've worked through them a little more.

For now I'll just say I have two suggestions.

1. See the film "Why We Fight"
2. If you decide to so, be sure to drink some booze while you watch. It's enraging.

Oh, also, remember that fire I wrote about a few weeks ago? The one in which a 97-year-old woman named Mabel died? Well, since then, northeast Baltimore County has seen two more early morning residential fires. One was an apartment fire that left a few dozen people without homes. The other was a house fire. Interesting. So much fire, and so strange to visit the scenes after they're out. this last one left the nearby houses with melted siding because the winds were so high that morning. Check it:

A 54-year-old grandfather, Yan Chen, died a day after the fire. He suffered severe "thermal injuries" and smoke inhalation when he went back in to save his wife, his son, and his granddaughter. Yan only made it into the foyer before passing out. Neighbors helped rescue the rest of the family of six. Yan's wife, son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren all survived.

Anyway, until we meet again, stay alive and rock on with your socks on.

Picture Day!

2009-01-31T14:51:00.008-05:00

To deviate some from my previous post's tone, I'll lighten things up.

In the newsroom on Thursday, four elderly men in white sport coats came in and met our intern photographer, Go Takayama, in the conference room. He set up some umbrella flashes and the four men began to sing. They were a barbershop quartet.

Apparently, one of our reporters was doing a story on these guys because they do valentines. That is, if you pay them, they'll dress in their white sport coats, go to your sweetheart's house, deliver a single red rose, and sing a song on the doorstep. Then, they give the proceeds to charity. Very cool.

Speaking of photos, here are six pictures of stuff from the last six months, just for fun.

That's Beth standing atop a rocky cliff back in the mountains of Virginia. We drove out to Fairfield to stay at my friend JB's house while he and his wife and kids were out of town. During our stay, we took one afternoon and drove a half-hour to a really high waterfall. We walked up a path full of switch-backs for two hours, but almost the entire time the path stayed near the waterfall. It was nice.

The above ocean scene is from September when Beth and I drove to Stone Harbor, NJ, near the southern most point of the Jersey shore. We were there for the wedding of friends. It was wonderful to take a few walks along the ocean. Those little birds were awesome - they ran really fast to avoid being eaten by the waves, but their bodies seemed to hover while their legs scurried and scurried.

The above is a melted playground toy. There were a row of them that hung from an overhead support, and kids could walk on these. What happened? One day in December, when I was almost at the office, I saw black smoke going way high up in the sky. I took my camera and drove around that part of town, but the smoke quickly disappeared. So I parked at a gas station and called the spokeswoman for the county fire department. She didn't know of any fire (she usually only knows about the big ones) but said she'd call around. She called me back a few minutes later and told me it was the playground behind Immaculate Conception Church in Towson. A discarded cigarette butt had caught some of the mulch on fire and the mulch, in turn, caught the playground on fire. The playground equipment was coated with recycled tire rubber. Hence the black smoke. When I got there the fire was already out, but I took some pictures anyway. The Towson paper put the photos on their Web site.

That was just a picture I took last Saturday when I stopped down to Fells Point. The seagulls were chillin' on the ice and I was chillin' on the sidewalk. It was cold that day. In fact, it's cold today too. What's the deal with winter?

If you look closely at the above picture, you can probably find a red fox. We had like 1/4-inch of snow here on Tuesday and they closed all the schools. Then we had freezing rain that night, so they closed schools again and no one was in the newsroom when I got there at 9 a.m. on Wednesday. Doors were locked and lights were off. Anywho, my managing editor showed up eventually and decided that I should go out and sort of capture the weather in photos. You know, people scraping their cars, shoveling driveways, etc. She said I could be creative too, and take pictures of whatever. I found some kids sledding, a girl cleaning off her car, and some other stuff. We put eight of my pictures in an online slideshow on the company's main page: explorebaltimorecounty.com. Anyway, this fox was one of the subjects of my photo expedition. I took the picture in Cromwell Valley Park on Wednesday.

Same park, different animal. The above is, of course, a white-tail deer.

On a very different note, Beth bought a car yesterday. It's a Hyandaiyaicqi Elantra (sorry I can't spell Hyandai). Nice enough car. Low mileage, only two years old, and lot's of cool compartments inside to put stuff in (my favorite part). Anyway, she's relieved to finally have a car again and I'm thrilled for her. Yay!

A Fire and My Career Path

2009-01-27T21:03:00.009-05:00

Because I'm a news reporter for a relatively small newspaper, I sometimes interview a guy because he started a new business, or some lady who did a fund-raiser to help kids with cerebral palsy, or I cover a school board meeting, or I go to a community input meeting for a piece of property that the owner is trying to develop, but which residents don't want developed.

It's usually pretty light fare.

Every month or two, however, I get a story like this one (don't forget to click on pictures to enlarge).

A 9-1-1 call was placed this morning at 2:01 a.m. about a residential fire in the 3000 block of Edgewood Avenue in Parkville. A woman was found dead inside. The fire was determined to be accidental, but the specific cause has not been discovered.

That's about all the statement from the county fire department said. Not much there. I called the spokeswoman for the county fire department around mid-day but she said she was "swamped" and would have to call me back.

So, I changed into my reporter hat. I had to leave the office to visit a restaurant, about which I'm supposed to do a small business feature story for next week's paper. Edgewood Avenue was practically on the way to the restaurant, so I stopped over to see the burnt house.

I took pictures, some notes, and recorded the exact address.

Usually, police and fire department spokesmen don't give out the names of victims very quickly. So, assuming I wasn't going to get that information from my contacts, I returned to the office, hopped on my computer, and plugged the address into Maryland's Real Property Data Search. This is a collection of public tax information about who owns what property, what its estimated value is, what it sold for most recently, who sold it, etc.

According to the results of my search, the house was 1200 square feet, the primary structure was built in 1938, and was most recently owned by one Mabel Heim.

Who was Mabel? Well, who dies alone in a fire in the middle of the night? Kids aren't usually left alone, nor do they tend to own houses, so she probably wasn't young. The 20s and 30s crowd don't usually have a house to themselves. They live with a friend, a parent, or a boyfriend or something.

The property data also said that Mabel Heim had owned the house since 1985. The previous owner was listed as Luther Heim. The price for which Luther "sold" it to Mabel was listed as $0. So, the picture became more clear.

Mabel and Luther were both Heims and since the house changed hands from Luther to Mabel for $0, the house was probably willed.

So, here's the whole picture as I assume it. Luther and Mabel Heim were husband and wife. Luther died in 1985, leaving the house to Mabel, who then lived alone for the next quarter-century, until this morning. Then, being elderly, when she finally realized that there was a fire, she just couldn't make it out before the smoke got to her.

Then, the fire department spokeswoman called me back with more information. Here's what I found out:

Firefighters arrived shortly after the 2:01 a.m. 9-1-1 call. Twenty pieces of equipment responded and they had the fire under control by 2:55 a.m. When firefighters first arrived and attacked the fire, they found one Mabel Heim deceased in the dining room. She was 97 years old.

Her birthday was last week.

By 1 p.m. today, when I dropped by the house, a contractor was boarding up the windows with plywood already. The firefighters were long gone and there were no police, so I wandered around trying to get photos for the paper. Snow had fallen mid-morning, covering some of the roof and the debris that'd been pulled from the house into the yard. The neighborhood had the smell of a campground in the morning, like soggy burnt wood.

Here is the view through the front door:

Here's one through the side window of the front porch:

And here's a shot taken from her rear sun room, which probably was enclosed as sort of a three-season room. See the space heater just to the right of the window? See the melted cordless phone sitting on the lower shelf of that table on the left? She probably hung out back here and read the newspaper. Maybe she read my newspaper.

It's weird, sometimes, what I do for a living. I went to Mrs. Mabel Heim's house, where she died alone this morning in a fire, and I lurked around taking pictures like a vulture.

Then tomorrow, the county board of education is having a meeting (unless it's canceled for snow like it was tonight) and I'm supposed to go to the meeting. If there's a story to be found, I have to move on and write it like it's important to me as it is to the readers.

But my mind will probably wander back to Mabel, a woman I never met, who died in a fire this morning before the sun was up. She lived for nearly a century and I hope that someone knows more about her life than I do, because all I know is what I wrote here, and that ain't much for 97 years of livin'.

Big O's First Full Day!

2009-01-21T17:41:00.006-05:00

Yes, it was Obama's first full day as President but, contrary to this post's title, I have nothing to add about it. A lot of smarter people with more informed perspectives have already said all that stuff, so I'll let it go for now. I'm a little relieved that it finally happened. I'll just leave it at that.

Instead, here is a picture:

My mom went to Big O's inaugural ceremony and stopped in Towson, Md today on her way out of town to have lunch with her handsome son, Jay...me...the guy with the totally awesome glasses.

This is what my glasses say:

"Welcome to 1950s Hollywood. Yes, I'm a producer. Please hop in my ragtop hotrod with sparkling whitewalls and I'll sweep you away to my oceanfront bungalow where I'll give you a tour of the most spacious bedroom you've ever seen."

The specs are new, of course, and have lenses that darken in reaction to ultraviolet light. At the time of the picture, I had just walked in from the sunshine and the lenses hadn't completely lightened yet.

Here's another picture:

It's a drawing I did over the weekend of a tiny vase of Beth's. I don't do a lot of inanimate still-life drawings, especially with colored pencils, but there it is. Not too bad, not too good.

Meh.

Does anyone out there ever have one of those days when you just feel like...I don't know...like you just want to go home after work, drink a can of beer, perhaps indulge in a binge of M&M-eating, and curl up in bed with the curtains/blinds shut to sleep until further notice?

I felt that way this afternoon.

Was it the foul dreams I had last night, which I can't remember but which left an angry-sad mood in my mind when I woke?

Was it kitty's persistent meowing disturbing my sleep and leaving me cranky?

Was it just that it's the middle of winter?

I don't know the answer.

I mean, it was sunny today! It was cold as a dead witch's you-know-what, but it was sunny!

Life isn't too bad...is it? So why the gloomy mood?

Again, I say meh.

It makes me mad when I'm down, because I don't want to be. Fortunately, this anger usually carries me back out of the depression and back to...wherever I usually am.

Beth will come home in a bit, we'll eat dinner, drink a beer, and everything will seem better. Yeah! Take that, bad mood!

The Final Countdown

2009-01-20T06:54:00.006-05:00

On work days, I set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. or so and end up getting out of bed around 7:00 or 7:30 a.m. Maybe I get to work at 8:30, but usually it's closer to 9:30. I can get to work whenever, as long as I get my job done.

I used to be different, and was getting up before 6 for jobs where I HAD TO be there by 7 or 7:30. But, I'm not who I once was.

Part of this is Jake, the cat. He meows songs to us for a few hours each night - sometimes right after we get in bed. Then, he'll go at it for a big more at 3 or 4 in the morning. After a break, he warms up his voice again and performs a final encore around 6-ish until we someone gets out of bed - usually Beth.

Though Beth and I appreciate Jake's effort, we lose sleep every night. We go to bed with enough time to get seven hours of sleep before our alarms, but only ever end up getting five or six hours of disturbed sleep. This means that we're almost always short of sleep, in an unhealthy way.

Another part of my late sleeping is that I've treated my body poorly over the last couple of years. I hardly exercise anymore and I drink. Last night, for example, I casually drank four National Bohemian beers over the course of a few hours. It wasn't hard-drinking by any standard, but it still makes crawling out of bed in the morning a little tough.

I tell you all of this so that you understand how big a deal it is that I'm up right now.

Two weeks ago, I requested off work for today, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009, specifically so that I could sit at home with Beth and watch the Presidential inauguration on television. The inauguration isn't to begin really until 10 a.m., so in theory I could sleep in until 9 a.m. Yet, I set my alarm last night for 6:45 this morning and I actually got up when it went off.

I don't have to work today and I could have slept-in, yet here I am, typing before I've even started up the coffee maker.

It's a big day - a new day - and I AM hopeful.

Maybe Obama isn't going to change the country or the world. Maybe (and probably) he won't be able to deliver on most of the ideas he talked about during the campaign. I know this, and I'm okay with it. Hell, on some issues, I didn't even agree with his platform.

I'm excited still. Even if he can't make everything change, he is himself a change, a different set of ideas and a different method of management, and though some argue that he's not black, he's still non-white, damn it, and that should call for some kind of celebration. I look forward to seeing what he accomplishes, what he tries to accomplish, and how the country changes in the process, for better or worse.

So, I'm up. It's just about time for sunrise, a shower, some coffee, and a new beginning - I sincerely believe that's what today really is. It certainly feels new now that we're actually here.

[EDIT]

Our dear friends Ally and Jesse live on the West Coast, a three-hour time difference from Washington D.C. Jesse told me last night that they were planning on getting up in the morning to watch the inauguration ceremonies anyway.

Gotta give 'em props.

My Momma and Obama

2009-01-12T12:10:00.003-05:00

I received an e-mail from my mom today saying a good friend of hers secured a couple of tickets to the Jan. 20 Presidential Inauguration.

She and her girlfriend will leave Michigan on Saturday and drive to Riva, Md to stay with some family friends. On Monday they're taking the train to D.C. to pick up their tickets at Sen. Levin's office and the next day they'll be in the standing room near the capitol building with a bazillion other people.

With some help from my dad, my mom (her name is Sera) raised four boys. Somehow, none of us died, none of us ended up in prison or addicted to drugs, and we all graduated from college. The four of us are very fortunate, I know, but more than that I'm just impressed that my parents pulled it off.

My mom retired last year after decades of work, first as an English teacher, then as a teacher for special education students, then an administrator and still later the curriculum coordinator for an entire school district. She worked hard, raised us as best as she could, and now, at 60, she's trying to get what she can out of retirement.

My dad will probably retire in the next couple of years and who knows what they'll do together. Maybe they'll travel the world - I certainly like the idea - but it brings me joy that in the mean time my mom is still doing fun stuff like visiting old friends, taking road trips, etc.

I guess I'm just saying that I'm happy for her, to be jumping in a car with a girlfriend of hers and rolling all the way down here to see face-to-face what many of us feel is a huge moment in American history.

Personally, I'll be taking the day off and watching the ceremonies on television (I don't like crowds of people).

What about you? Where will you be? Where would you prefer to be?

1,868 Miles

2009-01-01T09:11:00.007-05:00

Well, things are finally getting back to normal. Christmas presents have been sent or hand-delivered (most of them anyway), the holiday travel stuff is over with, and we can all get on with our lives.

This morning, a good kami woke me up early, so I made coffee for Beth before she got out of bed, and then I cooked her an omelet while she was in the shower.

Beth needed a little TLC because she's had a tough week - a few days ago, on her drive to work, the cars in front of her stopped suddenly and, because the roads were wet and Beth was driving downhill at the time, she was unable to stop and ended up rear-ending another car. Now Beth needs a new car because hers is crinkled in the front.

Anyway, she liked the omelet.

And here's Beth going out the door this morning to head to work (she works Tues. through Sat., while I work Mon. through Fri.). She's smiling because the omelet was soooooooo goooooooood!

On a totally different subject, the mayor of Baltimore, Sheila Dixon, was indicted yesterday on 12 counts of theft, perjury, fraudulent misappropriation and misconduct. I don't know what all of it means, but a state prosecutor seems convinced that the mayor screwed up in a totally illegal way.

It's funny though. I mean, add them up: Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Detroit Mayor Kwami Kilpatrick, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon, and we have two more locally. There's Baltimore City Councilwoman Helen L. Holton and Baltimore County Councilman Kenneth Oliver. Oooh yeah. They're all going down!

What's funny about this is that there are so many rules that it must be difficult to not break any. And at the same time, they have to know the rules and follow the rules, or else...

Mayor Dixon's attorney, Arnie Weiner, in a press conference yesterday, tried to play down the amount of public money that the Mayor or her office misappropriated. That's more funniness because let's say it was only a couple hundred dollars. Does that make it okay? I mean, there's a law that says you can't misappropriate public funds, ANY public funds. So, I'm trying to imagine this argument. It's only a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars, so what's the big deal? The big deal is the law is the law. If we let government officials decide that one amount is illegal and another amount is okay, then what's the point of having a law? Well, there would be no point. They simply smudge the line in the sand and go on about their business? Not this time, lady!

Oh dear, who's next?!

But, I haven't posted on this page since December, so here's the rest of the goods...

I curse the holidays.

According to Alamo rent-a-car, I drove 1,868 miles between Dec. 23 and Dec. 30, which is weird because I was SUPPOSED TO fly home for the holidays. How did this happen?

Well, driving wasn't the original plan.

(I love and despise those words 'original plan'. Love because they're so familiar; despise because of their meaning and the frequency with which I use them. For, the use of the words implies that a new plan is being followed, which makes what were formerly referred to as 'plans' into 'original plans' and I don't like scrapping plans and making new ones. You get it, me thinks.)

Here is the original plan:

After work Dec. 23, I was supposed to drive to the airport, park in long term parking, and catch a mid-afternoon flight.

Pretty simple? Not exactly.

To allow me to stay at work as long as possible before my flight, I planned to go straight to the airport from work...

[CONTENT DELETED BY AUTHOR BECAUSE IT WAS 1,241 WORDS OF TOTALLY BORING AND LONG-WINDED POO...AND BORING. DID I MENTION IT WAS BORING?]

The concise version is I drove from Baltimore to Traverse City, Michigan. Then down to Lafayette, Indiana to help my older brother, Ben, and his wife, Nicole, move their heaviest stuff into their new house. Then, I drove home from Lafayette to Baltimore in one day. It took me from 6:30 a.m. until around 5 p.m. Total trip: 1,868 miles.

Anyway, if you ever get a chance, take I-70 eastbound, from around Pittsburgh to Breezewood. There's a rest stop called the Somerset Rest Area. Stop there. It's a contrast to the solitude of the road. The rest area is like a bee hive, with all the cars and people coming and going. The parking lot is like an emergency evacuation route from a big city - chaos. But the people have faces, they say 'hello' and 'thank you' when you hold the door for them. They're more than the cars they drive. They're comrades of the asphalt. They're tired too. They have to pee too. They are desperate for better coffee too.

The real gem of the Somerset stop is the view, though. On a ridge of hills to the east are six full-size wind-powered turnbines - those elegant and slender windmills that so many fools call an 'eyesore' while the blades move noiselessly though the air. So graceful and calming.

No doubt a good place to stop, meditate, get some coffee, pee, and roll out.

Anyway, I made it home safe. Hope y'all enjoyed the holiday.

By the way, it took me forever to come back to the blog and write because I've been reading like a fiend.

Before the holidays, I read Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand - good, long, philosophical about socio-economics and hard work - and then The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon - good, short, fascinating piece of fiction from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy with autism - and now I'm totally and completely addicted to the monstrously huge Shogun by James Clavell - a badass novel about Japan in 1600 full of samurai, consorts, seppuku, honor, shame, assassins, kami, Shintoism, the Portugese, etc.

Also, here's a drawing I did last weekend at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore:

It was a relatively quick drawing, but I enjoyed doing it.

I plan to head back to the museum today (in a few minutes) to do some more drawing, but in pastels instead.

Never again...at least not until after lunch

2008-12-21T14:37:00.006-05:00

I had brunch this noon at the Charles Village Pub, our local favorite bar.

While I drank coffee that seemed way better than what I can make, I read an article by P. J. O'Rourke in Atlantic Magazine called "Future Schlock" about Disneyland's new House of the Future. It was an excellent article but about halfway through it my hungover mind skipped like a scratched CD.

Yes, hungover. It's hilarious. Over something like 10 years the headaches have gotten worse, yet the wisdom of experience can't seem to override the desire to have a "good time."

Anyway, this particular good time started yesterday in Hampden, a hip, artsy, gritty neighborhood about a mile from where we live. There, I stopped in the afternoon for a late lunch in the form of a pair of tacos and a pair of beers at Holy Frijoles. The lunch and the drinks were a treat to myself for finishing my last bits of Christmas shopping.

(I'm never short on reasons to "treat" myself. A bad day at work? Pub. My employer files for chapter 11 bankruptsy protection? Pub. Come up with a blog entry idea? Pub. By the way, cheers!)

So, while at Holy Frijoles, I read 25 pages of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - a novel written from the perspective of a teenager with autism.

I then went home, did lots of random little things, sipped wine for a few hours, put off dinner indefinitely, and at 7 p.m. headed to the Charles Village Pub to drink a beer. After the beer, I went across the street for a holiday party I was invited to a few weeks ago. The people there were all strangers save for one friendly acquaintance, Melinda, but everyone was kind to me and we had some low-key fun, mostly chatting and trying to pet Melinda's skittish little dog whose name I never learned to pronounce or spell.

After an hour or two of drinking wine at the party, I realized I was soon to become embarrassingly inarticulate, so I excused myself from the party and, reluctant to go home, stopped across the street at the pub. For reasons that now seem non-existent, I ordered one last beer. However, when I was about halfway through it, better judgment reached across a great distance and said GO HOME! I paid, left the rest of the beer, and went home.

Knowing that going straight to bed would only make a hangover worse, I grabbed a bottle of Vitamin Water from the fridge, parked my butt in the recliner, and began watching Casino Royale. I was just going to watch a half-hour of it or so to give my body a little time to sober up, but I chugged the entire bottle of Vitamin Water, made it to the main storyline of the movie, and promptly conked out. I now realize it was foolish to have put up the recliner's leg rest.

When I woke up, not much was different - it was still dark outside, I was still in the recliner, and the lamp next to me was still on. However, the movie was over and the DVD had returned to the main menu screen. A condensed version of the Casino Royale theme was playing over and over and the clock on my cell phone said 4:30 a.m. In a noble quest, I hauled my carcass to brush my teeth and get in bed.

So, this morning was pretty rough, but I showered, did some grocery shopping, and succeeded in reaching the pub for some coffee and french toast. Anyway, I was reading a magazine article when my brain skipped like a CD, or I guess, more like a record.

As I imagine some of my readers know, this is a side-effect of hungover-ness. The brain is stumbling along, doing its darnedest not to seize up, when a thought jumps into the middle of things and screws everything up. An example of this came when I was eating my French toast. A scene from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas popped into my head - the part where our two main characters, played by Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro, have just begun inhaling ether from an American Flag handkerchief and Depp narrates, "devil ether - there is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge..." or something like that.

I don't want to imagine why I thought of it. Maybe the word depraved served as a sort of beacon that dragged me to the scene.

Anyway, back to the beginning. I was drinking my coffee when my brain skipped. This time, I started thinking about The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and how I wanted to read it. But, I couldn't remember where in the plot I'd left off. I just couldn't picture it for some reason. There was too much booze between the lunch in the past and the brunch in the present.

But something funny happened. I pictured myself sitting at the bar at Holy Frijoles, eating tacos and reading the book, and BAM! The plot came right back to me.

Generally, I'm an image person. When I want to know that I've done the things on my list, I cross them off as I do them so I can SEE what's done and what's left. When working on a complex story or multiple stories in the newsroom, my stacks of papers and notes have to be concisely labeled with post-it notes so I can SEE it.

Additionally, my thoughts are mostly in images, specifically my memories. I don't keep numbers and facts, but pictures. Fortunately the pictures can help me get to the facts and the numbers. But I need the image as a starting point.

In this case, I used the memory of being at lunch reading the story as a tag to search for the memory of where I was in reading the book. All of it happened very quickly - the inability to remember, then the reference process and the remembering - but it was amazing. I find the brain and its workings to be boggling, with all its processes, mechanisms, filing system, tags, flags, etc.

This made me realize what makes The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time so fun to read. It's about a mind - a very logical mind. Now, it's really about a teenage boy with autism who seeks to discover a neighbor's poodle's cause of death. But the real subject matter within is the human mind and how it works, or doesn't. It illuminates the reader.

Now, I'm not going to say, "you've GOT to read this book!"

(In fact, I am trying to get out of the habit of saying that. I really watch myself around Beth anymore. I think if I say once more to her, "this is awesome - you've GOT to read this," she's going to explode at me. I mean literally explode and literally at me.)

However, I will say that it's a fun and easy read, and onloy around 200 pages - and there aren't many words on each page.

It's way easier than Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. That thing is a 1,000-page monster with super-dense 2-point font and hardly any empty space on the page. Some of the paragraphs last for pages. There's one monologue that was, I think, 39 pages long. Or maybe it was 60 pages. I don't know, but it was a long effing monologue. And the book wields philosophy as a drunk viking wields a battle ax. I just finished reading that one last week.

By the way, you've GOT to read Atlas Shrugged.

So, what was the purpose or thesis of this blog entry? I don't know and I don't care. It's almost 5 p.m. and my head still hurts and I seem to be stuck with some sort of perpetual nausea. I need more tea. Where's that freakin' bartender. Yes, I'm at a bar. No, I'm not drinking booze...

...yet.

Happy Holidays to my homies.

Cancel That Plan

2008-12-13T10:42:00.004-05:00

So, there was some talk in my last blog entry about staying home last night and drawing while Beth went out to a concert. It so happens that I had a brief conversation with our friend, Jessica, on the phone just before Beth was to leave. The meditative mood, so unusual for me and so perfect for staying home alone on a Friday night and drawing, evaporated.

I felt sociable.

I went to the concert. Now, I'm hung over. But, before the hangover I had some thoughts while the band played, while sitting on a bar stool next to a table the size of a frisbee. I'll share those with you now...

It's strange, the paths we take toward our dreams - or rather, the paths that take us. Beth, Jessica and I were about to watch a band play in a space the size of a two-car garage.

Beth was taking photos of the band, but before they got started, Beth's new flash burned through the only set of AA batteries she had. She needed more batteries, the band was about to start. I walked quickly to the door, then back a few steps to the bouncer.

"Is there any place nearby where I can get AA batteries?"

"There's a 7-Eleven three blocks away," he said.

He gave me directions - I had studied a map of these particular city blocks before leaving home so I knew the streets he talked about - then out the door and into the cold narrow alley I walked. A few more seconds and I was on the sidewalk, in the open air, a hundred feet below the freeway in downtown Baltimore. I kept walking.

Two police officers, a man and a woman, rode horses out from under the overpass. The horses walked slowly and the police officers chatted with one another over the sounds of the steel horseshoes slamming again and again on the city's asphalt. I thought that mounted officers were for crowd control, but there was no crowd, no one around but the officers, their horses, and myself.

I turned the corner and there, taking up half the sidewalk, was a man lying in a sleeping bag. He had sealed himself in, barricading his life from the cold air. The mounted police greeted the man as they passed, something like, "you doing all right?" or, "you stayin' warm enough?" At the approach of the hoof-beats, the shelterless man had come out of his cocoon and responded in the affirmative, leaving the officers to ride on. They stopped half a block later, to give their horses a rest, and to give their ears a break from the hoofbeats.

I walked on, meeting no one else for a block. I passed in front of City Hall, a monstrous building taking up an entire city block. In front, a car was parked in an area marked "Reserved for City Council," and I wondered if an actual city councilman was working at almost 10 p.m. on a Friday.

Another block and I reached E. Baltimore Street. It was crawling with people, and with block after block of strip clubs. I kept on moving but a big lady with a cane asked me if I had some change to help her buy Christmas presents for her kids - I gave her two quarters and apologized that I couldn't spare more.

I crossed the street, watching the buses, limosines, and fancy cars wait for me at a red light. I picked up the batteries and began a different route back toward the bar. A man with a round face, a round belly and a big gray beard walked hastily and alone among the crowd on the sidewalk. The look on his face said he had just come from one of the strip clubs, and that he didn't want to be noticed, but the contrast of his light beard against his long black trench coat work against him. He looks well-to-do, but lonely and ashamed.

I walked fast, confident that the band had started. The crowd disappeared and I was alone in the side streets.

Back into the narrow alley, through an unmarked door, and into a basement, the band was already playing. I headed down the stairs but my glasses, still cold from outside, fogged up in the warm humid basement and I almost collided with a few people while weaving half-blind through the party-goers. I put two sets of batteries into Beth's hands, but the bar was dark, so Jessica activated the screen of her cellular phone to illuminate Beth's camera while she replaced her flash batteries. We worked together in the dark, disposing of the old batteries, holding one thing, trading another, smiling at one another in spite of our team effort. My nose was running from the long walk through the cold city and I dug out a five-dollar bill and walked back to the bartender for another beer.

Will we remember this night? I wondered silently. Will I remember that walk through the cold dark city simply to get some batteries? All of it just so that Beth can build her portfolio, so that the band might get a few promotional shots?

I received a parcel earlier that day from PRISM International, a literary magazine published by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. I ordered the 2007 and 2008 summer issues of the magazine because they contain the winning short stories of the last two year's fiction contests. I want to submit three stories for the next contest in late January, so I ordered the back issues to see what kind of writing usually wins their contests.

Before I ordered the back issues, I Googled the university's location out of curiosity. I studied the map a little, wondering what it's like to be on the opposite coast of our continent, and in another country. The university is on the western tip of a small peninsula in the Strait of Georgia. It seemed like a world away, but in fact was only 2,899 miles away.

To get the magazines, I e-mailed the university a few weeks ago. I stated the issues I wanted to purchase and casually mentioned that I hope the weather is lovely up there. The magazine's executive editor, Krista, responded, saying she had the issues, they would cost a certain amount of money, and would take a certain amount of time to arrive. She also said "the weather is not so great today, very wet and windy."

I had reached out and she had responded. The gesture possessed some charm, but also a taste of humanity as a united collective thing. Yet, will I remember the little joy that she didn't ignore my interest in the weather in Vancouver? Will I remember what she said it was like?

I wonder if I'll remember these little stops along the way toward our goals, Beth to be a professional photographer, me to be a fiction writer. I hope we do remember. These tiny little adventures are our lives, the proverbial journey rather than the destination.

I hope we remember and look back some day and laugh and celebrate. I really just hope we remember.

Any quirky little anecdotes to share about your journey?

Final Drawing Session

2008-12-12T19:29:00.003-05:00

Well, the instructor facilitating my MICA drawing sessions each Sunday decided that, since this past Sunday was our last session, he'd bring in three models and juggle them (not literally). This meant that one model (one I don't like to draw for some reason) posed the same pose for three hours, while two others took turns doing the short poses.

The facilitator, however, is not the most vocal communicator, and didn't assert direction very clearly, so it was a little chaotic. Sometimes a model would stop posing and leave the platform after a 10-minute alarm went off, and then one of the artists would remind the facilitator guy that this was supposed to be a 20-minute pose and the model would be asked to return to their pose - something that frustrated the model, Mr. J, and probably other people.

Anyway, a pretty chaotic and disappointing final drawing session. The only piece I thought worthy to share is below. I apologize to Ally, who suggested I add a background - something I wanted to do but wasn't quite able to make time for. Still, I might argue that my shading is better than it was last session.

Here it is, and don't forget to click on it if you want a closer look:

So, no more nude models at MICA for me, at least for now.

What next? Any ideas? I was thinking of drawing Beth every Sunday for an hour or two, and save money in the mean time to take a drawing class. I fear that if I get much further, bad habits will become permanent habits. I need proper technique! Or do I? Jimi Hendrix, after all, played a guitar left handed, even though the guitar strings were in order for a right-handed player. He turned out fine. But then, where did I learn that bit of lore? Is it even true?

Anyway, Beth is going out tonight. A local band, performing at Sonar here in Charm City, agreed to have Beth come take photos of their performance. The idea is that everybody wins - Beth gets experience with her relatively new digital camera, and might even get a few shots good enough for her portfolio, while the band benefits by getting some free publicity photos. That's the theory, at least. A friend of ours, Jessica from Catonsville, is going to keep Beth company at the gig, so I'm free to stay here (with a little guilt), listen to music, and draw to my heart's content.

I think I'll do a self-portrait with pastels, something I've never done. I'll probably find myself to be an agreeable model, unless I start flirting with me, in which case I'll have to slap myself for being so forward and assuming, unless I have too much wine and am hypnotized by my deep brown eyes, in which case I might give in to the seduction. If that happens, nobody tell Beth that I love me.

Okay, that was funny at first, but then it got weird.

Seriously, though, anyone with suggestions about what to do next with the drawing thing? What's the next logical step? I mean, of course I should keep drawing, but considering my current skill level, should I set a specific goal for the near future? Something like taking a class? With an actual teacher? Teaching me stuff?

To My Fellow Future Cave People: Fear of - and Hope for - the Apocalypse

2008-12-07T10:44:00.006-05:00

When it comes to those personal creative endeavors we each care most about, the need for individual improvement sometimes supercedes the desire to share or express. That is, I want every "finished" illustration I create to be the best one I've ever done, in one way or another.

For today's blog post, I had a few ideas and I roughed them out, polished and tried again. I didn't want to post this blog until I had the illustration done. Yet I could not get it right. So, to prevent too much time passing between writing and posting, here is my post, without the hoped for illustration. If I get time today, after a few commitments, to return to my illustrations and create a piece of the quality I desire, I will do so. Otherwise, here's the text...

Sometimes I'm afraid.

I see the majority of people preoccupied with sports, television, celebrity, interpersonal drama, and worse. So much time spent festering, stagnating, time that could be spent absorbing knowledge, preparing for our worst days to come or at least the building of wisdom to pass on to the next generation.

I see people driving huge new vehicles and getting poor gas mileage after we've been told for years that burning gasoline is detrimental to the environment and the supply won't last forever. If they can afford a huge new SUV, why wouldn't they buy a hybrid instead? I can't afford either, but I know what I'd choose if I could afford one. This makes me angry, but the anger is the result of fear that people aren't paying attention.

I see all the crap I carry onto a plane when I travel - packs of gum with the pieces aligned linearly, drawing utensils side-by-side in a small container - things I think should look suspicious to an X-ray technician, yet the people in uniforms don't stop me. Is this safe? Why don't they stop me? If someone were really trying to...

I see our leaders, along with those of other nations and peoples, and what do they do but speak in rhetoric and pass resolutions? What is a resolution anyway, but a non-binding statement saying, "after many days of discussion, we have come to a consensus that we should try to do something soon about [blank]. We're not making promises, but we all agree that a solution to [blank] needs to be found and implemented quickly and effectively, blah blah blah...etc."

I see a lot and I admit that to grasp such a grand idea, to intuitively appreciate our possible demise, in one form or another, challenges my simple ape-mind. Yet as great as my limitations to comprehend are, I understand enough to be afraid.

Seriously.

Crude oil, deforestation, exploitation of fisheries, toppling of delicate ecosystems, environmental change, disease, poverty, corporate greed, religious fanatics, rising cost of living, stagnant pay, crumbling infrastructure, hurricanes, floods, Near Earth Objects (google it), wildfires, the second coming of some god's son, tsunamis...does it seem like the odds are against us? Maybe?

Among these joys of existence, a fear is sneaking up on me, like an un-dead corpse crawling along the floor in a pitch-black cellar. Its ice-cold fingertips have only just touched my ankle, but there's no question that something is near.

The sense comes from a lack of confidence that someone out there is actually trying to think ahead, to prepare for and defeat the worst that the chaos of nature and civilization will inevitably deliver.

Imagine if we ran out of crude oil, suddenly and unexpectedly, what would happen to the infrastructure of the entire western world? Trains can't run without diesel fuel, nor can tractor-trailers or most cargo ocean-liners. So, how would we get car parts, booze, medicine, baby diapers, beer, lumber, steel, etc.? What about food? Electricity? Well, coal could fuel the power grid, couldn't it? No, actually. I'm pretty sure that most coal is moved by sea and by rail, both of which are powered by diesel. So, no electricity - only darkness. No running water. No heat.

Or, if the world climate changed more quickly and drastically than anyone predicted?

Or, how about a disease pandemic - either by chance or as a bio-weapon? Imagine something highly contagious, which doesn't show symptoms until seven days after infection, meaning that people get it, travel, give it to others and, because of air travel, every continent is infected before the first group shows symptoms. Quarantines are implemented, people die suddenly - at the pilot's seat in planes, while driving cars and semis, while operating drawbridges, while cooking dinner in the apartment next to yours. Half the government agencies are wiped out in a week. People flee the cities to avoid infection. Everyone avoids everyone else out of fear of infection. Something like 0.001 % of the world's population survives.

If one of these things (or one that mankind hasn't yet imagined) were to go sour, what are we left with? Not much. It could be a matter of decades or could happen over the span of a few days. And then it's all gone.

Television, internet, iPods, laptops, World of Warcraft, dreams of getting that novel published, electricity, a house with a yard, social order, sources of food, heat, clothing, shelter, modern medicine?

All gone in a blink, because our current foreign policy will always produce another suicide bomber, because so many leaders are puppets, because party politics are treated with more importance than progress, because the masses - we - are too complacent, because of scapegoating large and small, because people believe in deities and providence rather than individual accountability, because profit margins overpower the well-being of future generations.

I could go on - oh yes, I think about this more frequently than a mental health professional would likely approve of - yet there is hope. Not hope that we'll overcome and that it'll all be okay but that we'll fail, that our systems, our leaders, our plans, our backup plans, our emergency scenario preparations, will disintegrate like sugar in your morning coffee (I say YOUR morning coffee because I don't take sugar in my coffee, but half-and-half only, something that would be difficult to find if civilization collapsed).

Really, though, some idiot will detonate a bio-weapon, or India and Pakistan will come to blows (yes, they both have nuclear weapons - no, they don't like each other) or something in the world will deliver to humanity a problem for which there is no pretty solution, and we'll be left very much in the dark.

Think "War of the Worlds," or "I Am Legend," or "28 Days Later," or "Lord of the Flies" with grown-ups, or "The Road Warrior," or "The Day After Tomorrow," or the upcoming "2012." Except, no zombies, few aliens, little hope, and certainly no Hollywood camera crew to capture our struggles. That is, assuming any of us survive. We're not cockroaches after all, not really.

"Can you believe what so-and-so said about so-and-so?"

Wouldn't matter...

"I'm tired. I wanna sleep in."

Too bad...

"What if we can't [fill in desperate hope for survival here]?"

That last idea is all that would matter, and this is the only pretty little thing of the whole picture: the simplicity of the struggle. i.e., everything boils down to survival.

No more job, paychecks, worries about health insurance, cost of gas, world affairs, legality of actions, etc. All that would matter would be food, shelter, protecting the group, avoiding injury, and devising clever solutions to those challenges.

Certainly, the new reality would have its downsides, such as watching loved ones die for previously harmless and minor illnesses and injuries, but making spears, building fires, and devising effective shelters are pretty straightforward, though sometimes difficult, tasks.

Once in a while, I think back to a certain aspect of my teenage years - I used to get bronchitis every year and I had asthma as a baby. I wouldn't have made it, probably, in the future apocalypse of my imagination, and I wouldn't be alone. Unmarked graves would be full of those genetically flawed like myself. But, as a member of the transitional generation, I would be well suited. Consider this my cover letter for the job of Community Organizer, Philosopher, Construction Manager, or Mediator in the time of New Earth.

In a way, it's a scary dream. Would we come to resemble our ape cousins in values? Or did that bite the dust with our neanderthal ancestors? Are we so much genetically superior? Would the skeptics of evolution finally buy in to the concept that we are animals?

So many questions, so many scary scenarios, and so many awful ways to get there. Yet, here we sit, some not reading books, not even newspapers, oblivious. What would the majority among us have to offer the rest? Knowledge of celebrity trivia? Make-up tips? Sports stats? Those offerings don't spear deer, dry meats for the winter months, create leather from hides, or provide shelters.

I know many have written about this and created fictions, both on paper and on the screens. But I'm not out to make a buck through catharsis or suppressed fear, at least with this blog. I'm just another potential caveman, and I think about this stuff: Where will I go? What will I carry? What or whom will I seek? What will be the principles by which I live?

I worry about these things and I hope most people do because as the old axiom goes, "if you're not afraid, you're not paying close enough attention."

Be afraid, be prepared, and let us hope it never really happens.

Do you have the fear? Why? Why not? What would you miss most? What would you not miss?

Pastel Improvements

2008-11-23T19:55:00.005-05:00

Okay, I won't likely have time to post these Wednesday when I normally would, so here they are - three pastel drawings I did today.

Based on a few suggestions from my dear friends, Ally and Jesse, I tried three new things. I tried drawing on non-white paper, I tried to not outline the figure, and I tried to do the whole thing in a mid-tone before doing any shading or highlighting. Of course, my mid-tone was too dark, so I used my lightest pastel, which kind of complicated the....never mind.

I know they're not completely realistic, but I'm really pleased with the results.

They're posted in the order they were drawn.

Happiness, Bad Days & A Reality Check

2008-11-22T11:06:00.010-05:00

We all have our dark moments. This is how I reached and returned from one of mine recently.

I've accomplished stuff over the last year - at least that's my sense of things - but let's review the year, or what I remember of it at least.

1. Though I had only two by-lined clips and dreams of becoming a reporter, an editor gave me a break and let me fill-in for a month last November while his primary reporter was out recovering from heart surgery. It was tough, but I apparently did well enough as a temp reporter to merit a permanent position with one of the company's other papers. Hooray.

2. I'm participating in life-drawing sessions every week and have totally improved my skills and enriched my life. Hooray.

3. I started a blog and don't seem short on the words with which to fill it. Hooray.

4. I wrote several short stories (fiction) and have entered five or six contests, the most recent of which I'll know the results for in four days. Through this pursuit, I've improved my abilities with and understanding of the medium. Hooray.

5. I've tried to read most of the New Yorker every week, hopefully improving my understanding of the world. Hooray.

6. I voted for a guy I actually believed in and he got elected to the highest office in the land. That one's a BIG Hooray.

7. Last but not least, I continue to have a caring, understanding, brilliant, and sexy girlfriend. Hooray doesn't quite cover that one.

8. I'm certain there's more.

Now, because I'm aware of the above items, I'm confident I'm not stagnating. In fact, I think I have a lot going for me. Yet given all that, I'm still not happy. I average more bad days than good ones - not really bad, but bad enough - in which a murky cloud of doubt hovers nearby, just out of sight, making its presence felt. There are good moments, however.

Anyway, I wandered into a foul mood or, more accurately, an unstable mood, a few days ago and I wondered what it would take. That is, I've found that if it's not one thing it's another and I always seem to find something with which to be frustrated.

These are a few of my personal grievances:

1. I don't make much money.

2. I've never been paid for a piece of fiction I wrote.

3. Though I am very fond of my brothers and parents, I usually only see them once or twice each year.

4. It's cold here, colder than it should be south of the Mason-Dixon Line in November (it snowed several times this week).

5. It's difficult to find a good cafe anywhere.

6. I drink too much too frequently.

7. Though I thought I was good at making friends, it seems that good people are hard to find and most days seem to hang only on hopes for the future.

Obviously, some of these things I can affect or even control, and am trying to do so. Also, I concede that some of them seem to border on triviality. I can almost sense electrons traveling this way through hyperspace carrying the phrase, "get over it." Get over it indeed. In response to that, I would argue that different individuals find comfort in different ways. But then, an argument is not what this is all about.

It's about a question.

"What would it take?"

If I made more money, enough to save a few dollars, if I wrote fiction and essays when and about what I chose, if I lived nearer my best friends and afford the time to visit my family when I wished, if I could afford to go to the movies as often as I wished, if I could travel the world on a whim, if all that crap on the above list, and more, was no longer a problem, would I be happy? COULD I be happy?

If I spent every day reading, writing, drawing, playing with photography now and then, would I truly sleep well? If I were fluent in French, Spanish, Russian, German, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic, would I be more satisfied with life? I fear the answer because my sense is that no, I wouldn't be any happier.

And if those things can't make me happy, what would it take? World peace? An end to corruption and injustices throughout all of humanity? Perhaps if aliens landed and introduced our world to a new era of distant space travel and discovery?

As much thought as I've given these musings over the years, they were made trivial on Wednesday or Thursday, when I was first writing them (I know that's not how blogs are supposed to be done, but I write multiple drafts).

What happened was my older brother, Ben, called me. He lives in Indiana with his wife, Nicole (I have three brothers, one older and two younger). So Ben called and said that he and Nicole are expecting a baby in April. My big brother will be a dad, my parents will become grandparents, and my other two brothers and I will become uncles. HOORAY!

This news so shifted my perspective that I was unable to continue with the draft that night. I was too elated to focus on the downers of life. Funny how the Me Me Me bubble - the reflections of the past and future hopes, regrets, and fears - can so expertly be burst by something so small and distant, something I'm happy about for reasons that are difficult to explain.

I will try to remember the power of that news, its effect on my self-absorbed introspection.

On a slightly different topic, is anyone reading this?

Pastel Proficiency

2008-11-19T19:27:00.005-05:00

As foolish as it sounds, I introduced three variables into my Sunday life-drawing session this week.

First, I used an easel instead of a drawing table. This way I could directly compare reality and my drawing, side-by-side. It was difficult to get it set up at the right level, but I think I figured it out. Plus, I thought that standing up for three hours straight would be real tough, but it wasn't bad because I was drawing (and we took breaks every 20 minutes as always).

Second, until now I've drawn only in one color at a time - charcoal color. But this Sunday, I tried to use pastels.

Third variable? I used bigger paper than I have so far: 18 x 24 inches.

All in all, I was in way over my head.

Instead of trying to doing any hour-long drawings, I focused on several 20-minute drawings to put some pressure on, to force myself to learn quickly with the pastels. It worked, more or less, but I only got one good piece out of it.

It was mega tough to sketch a figure and then flesh it out with color. In fact, most of my drawings were just experiments, learning how the pastels worked, how they blended, what they couldn't do, etc.

Anyway, here it is, my drawing in color.

By the way, I only have four colors of pastel. They're good colors though, and I tried real hard.

And don't forget, if you really want to see what's there, you can click on the image to make it bigger.

Jetlag Envy

2008-11-15T09:24:00.007-05:00

My parents returned home from Paris a few days ago. My dad was there on business and my mom, having recently retired, went there for three days to tour the city and spend some quality time abroad with my dad.

Though my dad has seen several countries - both when he was in the U.S. Army in the 1970s and more so in recent years for his job - my mom has not. She didn't travel abroad at all before the last few years. In fact, before this fall, she'd been only to the Caribbean islands and Mexico - never overseas. She had long wanted to see Europe but only reached England for the first time this past September.

My mom's excitement for travel reminds me of my own more than most. She wants to taste the food, see the sights, meet the people, and drink it all in with passion. Her fascination, as mine would be, is relatively childlike. That is, it's all new and pretty to her eyes. I can acutely relate to that. I don't need to ski in the Alps or go hunting in the Kalahari. No. All I need is to stare at the regular day-to-day stuff and observe its difference from, or similarity to, my home. How are the rocks different, the clothing different, the buildings, the bird songs, the clouds?

I'd love to see a futbal match in Barcelona and catch a slow train north, through France, Belgium, Germany, etc. until I reach that unknown landscape in Sweden where from came my mom's parents' parents. I'd maybe drop a few Euros on some new clothes and try to blend in. What I'd really love is to sit in a restaurant with a view of the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul and smell the exotic air, listen to the exotic languages, and fry my mind trying to comprehend the sublime reality that I'm still on the same ball of dirt, water, and life, whirling around an unimportant star in an unimportant galaxy in a universe that might just be without a purpose or meaning. To feel smaller than I've ever felt before. I like that idea very much.

[sigh]

The thing is, I'm a nomad by nurture. My family is from Michigan, mostly, but my dad's job had us moving around a lot. I was born in Connecticut, spent a year there, a year in New Hampshire, several years in Michigan, then to Virginia, Florida, Indiana, and back to Michigan. After I graduated from college, I moved to Virginia (to get a decent job), then to Maryland for a lower-paying but more satisfying job.

On top of living so many places, I've visited the Carolinas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania, California, Montana, New Jersey, Colorado, Delaware, and probably other places I can't even remember. I grew up with that stimulus and it's a hard habit to kick.

There are still domestic locales that call to me. I've never experienced the southwest, the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, etc. I don't remember New England because I was too young. I still need to see Niagra Falls, Mount Rushmore, the redwood and sequoia forests. I'm sure there are many other places right here at home that I've missed. But America, with all its diversity, is still America.

My envy has grown in recent years as I've come to realize that almost everyone I know has crossed an ocean. My girlfriend has been to Japan, albeit a long time ago, and my closest friends have been to Czech Republic, Japan, Scotland, etc. My oldest brother visited Germany at some point, I think in middle school, my second youngest brother has been to England and China, and the youngest, well I can't remember if he's been anywhere. Most of my good friends from college have visited or even lived abroad at some point.

I'm not saying my life has been dull or boring. I've skied in the Rocky Mountains, watched the Space Shuttle launch in Cape Canaveral, snorkeled in the Florida Keys, visited caves in Appalacia, crawled through the machinery spaces of nuclear aircraft carriers, and I saw a mob of ethnic Albanians waving Albanian flags and cheering in Times Square in February after Kosovo declared independance from Serbia. Life has indeed been a wonder.

But still, I'm jealous. Staying in the same country for so long feels like I'm still living in my parents' house. I want to be cultured, not so I can tell people so, but because I am convinced it would enrich my perspective and makes life taste more like filet minion than a dive bar sirloin steak.

I guess it's my mother's visit to Paris that really set this off. She celebrated her 60th birthday while she was there. For this, I'm very happy for her, but it serves as a reminder. I don't want to be 60 years old when I see Paris for the first time.

"So? Do something about it!" I can hear someone saying.

Yeah. Do something about it. I agree. But what?

Anyway, I received a letter yesterday that my mom sent when she was in Paris. The envelope and stationary both have the letterhead of Hotel Ampere on them. The paper is textured, it feels cool, almost wet, as if from a French morning fog. The address at the bottom of the stationary says 102 avenue de Villiers - 75017 Paris. It's such a small thing, this sheet of paper with familiar handwriting on it. But it traveled all the way from where I want to be to where I am, as if backward from a future for which I am not destined, but must pursue. Only a choice on my part can transform the letter into the plane ticket I wish it to be.

But, what about you? Where have you been and where would you like to go? Why?

I Draw Naked People

2008-11-12T21:27:00.015-05:00

My lovely girlfriend, Beth, is resting her eyes in the living room. Some mad scientist removed her two remaining wisdom teeth yesterday morning. Today, she was able to return to work, but the pain medication is making her groggy, so she's riding the wave of a public radio classical music station and letting the pain fade away. With her occupied, I thought I'd pop online and show my friends some nudie pictures.

I've been drawing since middle school, maybe earlier, but it was all robots and airplanes. I've never really known how to draw well. Then, in the few years after college before I left Grand Rapids, Michigan, my friend Jesse gave me a few lessons on how to REALLY draw. He offered a few extremely valuable pieces of guidance, suggested some exercises, and off I went. After piddling with charcoal pencils here and there for a few years, I moved to Baltimore, where there were a few good museums of art. I started trying to get better in earnest and began drawing statues at museums, trying to draw what I see. Now and then, when I was particularly proud of one drawing or another, I'd send it to Jesse and he'd critique it, telling me what I did right and making suggestions about how to improve further. But, there are only so many statues at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Walters Art Museum, and my skills seemed to stagnate in the months preceding this summer. I was bored.

Then, for my 30th birthday this year, Beth gave me a gift of 10 or 11 life drawing sessions at Maryland Institute College of Art. So, since Sept. 21 I've been going to MICA every Sunday to spend three hours drawing real models. There are two models at each session. One of them changes poses every five minutes, then every 10 minutes, and then every 20 minutes. The other model remains in the same pose for the entire three hours (with breaks every 20 minutes). It's been amazing and I'm really improving. At Jesse's suggestion, I've tried both compressed and vine charcoals. I think vine charcoal is my strength now, but I did a pencil drawing the other day and saw some serious improvement.

There's an instructor present at the sessions but he doesn't teach or look at anyone's work. He just supervises, makes sure no one is drooling, times the poses, and declares breaks. I highly recommend a life drawing session for anyone who wants to improve their drawing. You improve quickly and learn things about yourself as well. It's a cheesy thing to say but I mean it.

Anyway, I should note that the models are mostly women and are always completely nude, so consider the facts: My girlfriend paid her hard-earned money so that I, her own boyfriend, could stare at naked women for three hours at a stretch, every week, for more than two months straight. Now, try to convince me I don't have an awesome girlfriend.

So, my wonderful friend Ally thought I should post my favorite pieces from the drawing sessions and here they are for you to stare at, critique, or simply enjoy.

By the way, these are in the order in which I drew them.

You may notice that my best drawings are those in which the model is laying down. Well, I almost always work from the model who switches poses from time to time, but by the end of the session they're doing 20-minute poses, which gives me more time to do a decent drawing, but can be challenging for the models. Not moving a muscle for 20 minutes can't be easy, so they choose poses in which they can lay down.

Still, every now and then I'll get a good 5-minute or 10-minute drawing.

Didn't think I'd have a chance with the one below, but it turned out okay.

Here's one of the few men I've drawn. I have a difficult time drawing men - not much curve or contour.

The one below is the last drawing I did and is the only one I've spent more than 20 minutes on. This lady was doing the long pose. She was really good at returning to her pose after a break.

First Post, Election, Celebration, Fall...

2008-11-08T20:01:00.001-05:00

So, this is the first entry in my blog. In the future, I'll try to be more concise, but I just wanted to get this thing started and it's a bit long-winded.

I would be neglecting reality if I didn't mention the presidential election. McCain conceded, Obama delivered his victory speech, and many in the world celebrated. In Charles Village here in Baltimore, we had an extra special celebration and a busy night.

Beth and I were at a party with about six or so other people for most of the night. I left the party for a bit to go back home and interview a politician who'd just won one of Maryland's Congressional Districts. His aid said the congressman would have to call me back in a half-hour because he was about to make his victory speech, so I took my questions and notebook and returned to the party to await the call.

There, we watched television as the numbers came in. Couldn't believe what we were seeing. We'd hoped, but I imagine few knew what would happen until it did. As the news got better and better, most of those at our party went outside to run around in the street with extra-large sparklers for a bit, but I stayed inside to wait for the congressman to call back. While I waited, McCain came on the television and began his concession speech, which is of course when the congressman called me back so I missed McCain's speech. Anyway, I ran into a quiet room at the party to do the interview. The others came back into the apartment, and when I finished my interview, we all watched as Obama walked onto the stage in Grant Park, Chicago.

He spoke, made history, and we toasted to the future.

To the roof we flew (through a door that was supposed to be locked). There we stood, listening to the city, with car horns honking near and far, and hoots and hollers echoing from blocks away. It felt like the whole world was celebrating. But, from our rooftop we heard something else, what sounded like a cheering mob. We couldn't see the crowd but they roared every now and then.

"Let's go city stomping," said one of our group. It was a phrase he'd made up on the spot, but it was clear what he meant.

We reached the source of the noise about a block from Johns Hopkins University, where several dozen young people were gathered and were chanting and waving flags on the corner at 33rd and St. Paul streets. A few campus police cars were there, apparently just to keep an eye on things. But the crowd grew minute by minute, drawn from nearby blocks by the sound of the celebratory voices and by phone calls from friends already on the scene. They chanted "O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma!" and "U-S-A, U-S-A!" while passing cars honked their horns to the rhythm.

The mob grew until there were over 1,000 people blocking both 33rd and St. Paul streets. City police arrived and blocked off both roads, I assume to protect the mob from drunk drivers, etc. But around 2 a.m., after complaints from neighbors regarding the unruly noise, the police tried to break up the party. Some didn't want to leave. About 20 police walked together, pushing the crowd out of the streets and commanding them to disperse and to go home. The mob thinned out and many people took the hint, but a few refused and were arrested. Anyway, things ended without any violence (as far as I know), but it was an amazing thing to see in person.

But, about the blog...

It's autumn as you well know unless you live in the southern hemisphere, in which case you think it's spring. Well, it's not spring, it's fall. It just looks like spring in the southern hemisphere because everyone is upside down, which makes everything look opposite.

Anyway, when I was a teenager I usually felt depressed in fall. I thought it was because I was an overly sensitive young man and that the drop in temperature, changing of the leaves, and the [insert your own generic fall characteristic here] triggered an unconscious nostalgia for the joys of childhood, of simpler days of pumpkin carving, leaf-piles, and other activities that provide charming photographs of me and my siblings as small children in cozy-looking sweaters and overalls.

Then, in the 1980s, scientists invented something called Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D. ha ha ha) because they wanted me to continue being depressed in autumn. I could blame the scientists for this, but have chosen instead to blame the season itself for my desire to sleep late, move slowly, drink more booze, and get angrier more often.

Most people around me this year have declared autumn to be their favorite season. I can see why, with apple cider and Halloween, a cursed beauty in the leaves amd their varying colors, and the smells they create while rotting on the sidewalk. Others probably adore the season simply because the cool temperatures are a relief from summers heat and humidity. Not me, though. If ever I have the means, I plan to spend the autumn months along the Mediterranean coastline or in the Bahamas.

In the mean time, I've theorized that while part of my problem is psychological and attached to the above mentioned associations, the rest is most likely a chemical thing. In short, part of the reason I started this blog is to fight to retain my sanity through autumn and after.

"Here's the thing..."?

I chose the title because it is a phrase I say all the time, usually just before the thesis of an argument or as a response to a proposition. I thought of the title while sitting in my Jetta in the parking garage near work just before driving home this past Monday. It came to me just as Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 reached its climax. It was a moment of singular intellectual greatness, methinks, so great in fact that the karma of the cosmos delivered unto me a bending of space-time, causing all but one of the 15 stoplights on my drive home to be green. That was a rare and wonderful Monday.

"Angry Mr. J"?

While I'm not angry every moment of every day, anger seems the most frequently accessed passion in my person. The neglect to use one's turning signal when driving stokes the fires and is near the top of my list. Also, gerrymandering. Apparently, it's not just a thing of the past. I mean, look at Maryland's 2nd Congressional District. It looks like the team charged with determining the district's borders got drunk one night and chartered a flight to Disney World where they broke into the Magic Kingdom, strapped a chimpanzee into the tea-cup ride, placed a map in front of him, duct-taped a Sharpie marker to his hand, force-fed the poor guy a quart of cheap whiskey and then turned on the tea-cup ride at full tilt, chantin "draw, monkey, draw!"

Poor ape.

I also have problems with vegetables, specifically onions, peppers, mushrooms, and tomatoes. I mean, who invited those guys?

Seriously though, if I write something with which you disagree, please speak up. That is, figuratively, if I'm replacing a flat tire all wrong, I'd prefer to be corrected before I get too far.

I'll try to accompany each post with a related (or unrelated) photo or illustration. I'm currently attending a life drawing session every Sunday at the Maryland Institute College of Art. After some instruction and guidance from my dear friend, Jesse, the drawing sessions have greatly improved upon my meager skills and I figure that, at the very least, the illustrations will provide ample entertainment.

The illustration in this post is a quick one I did of my girlfriend, Elizabeth, a couple of weeks ago. Beth rules (she made red and blue Election Day Rice Krispies treats for her workplace last week and she let me have some).

Beth and I live together in a gigantic penthouse (tiny four-room attic where the water sometimes refuses to work) in the safest neighborhood in Baltimore (the police helicopter is usually circling nearby). We share this poorly-insulated mouse factory with Jake, the fattest, meanest, orange tabby cat in Mobtown.

With all that said, I hope you enjoy.