Moving

I've moved.

Please visit with me at http://xia23.wordpress.com

-Progress

I have been published, so to speak.

http://www.edudegreedirectory.com/articles/tech-savvy.html
http://www.edudegreedirectory.com/articles/accreditation.html

More to come . . .

-Technolust

To me, this device far outcools the iPhone. I check daily for the official release. I'd much rather a gadget that allows reading and mp3 playback than one that does movies and music, especially since rolling over on my old e-book and spiderwebbing the screen. Click the title to access the website of the French company who will retail them.

-Places to Be

If you can't find me, I'll be in the bookcase, or in a tree out back.

-Wordfreak

For the first time in my memory, I completed the crossword puzzle in the Sunday New York Times Magazine. No missing words or letters, and not even one Google-enabled cheat--not a one. It took about two hours.

I kick ass.

-A Lovely Thing is a Joy to Behold

I once took a poetry workshop. Well, several times, actually. My efforts with the English department led to the reversal of a policy that granted credit for only one instance of the course.

That isn't the story, though. Once a woman in a workshop, she was blind, recited her work. I cried in that box of dusty tiles and cramped wooden chairs. Just a bit, one trailing over my cheekbone to the corner of my mouth. She finished and, spontaneously, I told her that she'd spread shivers through my spine. The pages are gone, and I can't ever know again the words on them. She was called Maria.

Here is another such moment that I can share. It is a song from the only movie musical I have ever enjoyed. The story of these two musicians, both in and out of the movie frame, shivers too.

P.S.--Today I remembered, as I dried my toes before pulling on socks: She is Maria Celino. Where are you now, Maria?

Listen:

-essentee

http://essentee.blogspot.com/

Your words and pictures welcome.

-Frames

After weeks of watching the roof leak

After weeks of watching the roof leak
I fixed it tonight
by moving a single board.

-Gary Snyder

Since I spread the rolls of insulation up in the attic just after moving in, I've known the sub-standard quality of the materials used in constructing the roof of this house. Armed with breathing protection, a miner's head-lamp and cumbersome rubber gloves, I spent hours pulling, pushing, coaxing the long pink strips into place between ceiling rafters. Each time I removed the gloves for a break, sweat dripped from the sleeves. The cone of the breather gathered brown dust over the nostrils and mouth.

Long 2"x 4" boards bowed under the pressure of heat and years. I felt the curves of them while taking brief breaks. I knew that at some point in our stay, there would be work needing completion up there. My back panged and sang as I clambered around on the rafters, shifting the small plywood platform that I knelt on to work. Even at the peak, only a child could be upright in the space, so I'd just sit to break as I eyed the long curves where only straight should have been.

That was all done after we first moved in, and except for some brief visits to place mounts for ceiling fans, I'd not spent much time up in there. Beyond the confinement of the place, there was the fear it inspired. Between us and the world, just this small strip of wood, tar and paper. At each rain fall, I envisioned first a small spot of wet in the plywood, then the drip into boxes of magazines or clothes and the spreading brown stains in the ceilings above our bed and heads, all the slow-motion horror of decay.

Then my back was failing, in what felt like fast-forward, and home improvements became less important. Some money came of my decay between operations four and five and my mind fixed again on the way of things, the crumbling and degeneration. Sticks and bones break on their own and minds go crumbling after. We found a contractor to replace the roof, and a radiologist to inject my spine. It felt like progress and not just fingers in the dike.

In the midst of removing the old materials, the contractor discovered many problems in the structure: the framing was weak and inadequate, the plywood was brittle, destroyed by the heat--all of it needed replacement. So it began and progressed, from pallets of plywood dumped in the yard, to the cigarette butts of workers curled in the sand of the driveway. In the midst of it all, with us out of the house, one foot came through the bedroom ceiling, and bits of trim came to rest all over the yard.

All of it is fixed now--new shingles and plywood on 2" x 6", and more titanium screwed into the bits of bone in the middle of me. The cigarette butts are still out there, and some nails strewn about. Apparently, the magnetic scan of our yard promised in the contract was either neglected or ineffective. For me, there is a cane for walking, a brace for support and the place where they cut patched with strips of tape. It is still a bit bloody and bruised. I discovered after my other fusion that the titanium does not set off metal-detectors. It is, perhaps, not even magnetic. I read yesterday that some people return fully to normal activities after fusion, to Olympic competition, even. I want it to rain now. The ground is so awfully dry, just awaiting the sink-holes and forest fires.

-I hope they'll get on well out there

-Theft of Intellectual Property

This was my idea! I was robbed!

-Mosaic

Please take a look at the work in which Sheryl and I participated, today and other days. The link will tell you more than I could, but we're proud of having been a part. Here are Niki and I, entranced.

To'Tom Totem

When one's mind is blank, or to make it so, make something with themes and swirly things. A gnome is next.

-Traum/aSDF

hung on still air
like a speckled
flock, thick, floating
waiting on just
a touch, new life
in a moment
unguarded, still
again, alone
fingers loose, arched
like cats, on keys
worn with use, ranged
before me, eager,
ready to live
a page in dream
chance lost to fear
begin now, press
push into them
and make them dance,
fly, forever
a name, just words,
lines in a face
words on the page,
waiting on me.

-Something to See about You and Me

Until we entered the cordoned "Pre-Natal" area (after reading the requisite warnings concerning entry of sensitive viewers and children, of course), my mind and feelings were blurry. I'd stopped listening to the audio guide soon after stepping into the first of four partitioned gallery rooms. It seemed a bother to hold the foot-long listening device to my ear.

The smarmy male voice sharing information had flowed straight through my head, leaving nothing behind. I wandered from display to display among the local politicians and wealthy folk, ignoring the Galen and Harvey quotes on the wall. Any flow the curator intended was lost on me as I bounced from full-body cross-section to skull, from spine and leg-bone to diseased kidney and lungs.

Before entering we listened, though with difficulty due to the sound system and environment, to the introductions offered by the mayors of both our county and the city of Orlando. The mayor of Winter Park was present, as well. Local talk-radio bad boy Shannon Burke was in attendance, but we didn't see him and his goofy leather jacket until we got inside. I felt out of place as I watched people eyes slide over my face and paste-on name tag, then keep on going, not finding anything to stop for in my name or face. We sort of snuck our invitations to the event, so in truth, we really didn't belong, but it saved us $25 each.

As the speakers thanked all the right people, Sheryl spoke to a man she thought looked sort of famous--he denied any notoriety, but as it turned out, he was Jim Merila, the man on the ground for the group producing the exhibit, The Universe Within Touring Company, LLC . He shared with us that his company was among several now touring the country with plasticized Chinese bodies. It seems some of his old friends from his TV work recruited him to work the bodies exhibit. He is off to Detroit on the close of the Orlando show.

Jim proved an engaging and candid host, answering questions about his background and life with minor hesitation to allow for bites of hummus and bread from the hors d'oeuvres tables. To a pointed question about the ethical implications surrounding both the source and uses of the bodies in the exhibit, Jim equivocated. I shared the concern of a friend who refuses to attend based on the somewhat dubious provenance of the bodies. His reaction to my query betrayed a hopeful and presumed innocence. Since the bodies (and their intended use) had passed the "smell test" with Chinese and U.S. authorities, as well as with hosting institution administrations like the Orlando Science Center's, surely all must be well!

Beyond the easily identified fallacy of his argument (consider the fabled students graduating high school and unable to read--all those teachers let them through, so everything must be okay, right?!), Jim's response failed to address the underlying concern raised: Was it possible these folks had once been political prisoners whose deaths were hastened by an oppressive regime not known for its respect for basic human rights? True, I didn't let that potential stop me from attending, but it's a valid question. The website for the Universe Within Touring Company reassures us that the bodies ("specimens"), "have been provided for the exhibit consistent with the laws of China". I have no idea what that means, but even with the polymerization, something's smelling rotten in Orlando.

Jiim's eagerness to emphasize the respect and care with which the specimens (bodies) are shown seemed sincere--he shared that the producers debated whether one seated display body should have a book or magazine in front of it on a table. The company decided to leave that body with nothing to read, for reasons of decorum, Jim suggested. The exhibitors didn't want to cheapen the experience or provoke inappropriate responses in vieweres.

Other bodies, such as one bouncing a basketball and another wound up to hurl a discus, were apparently exempted from that particular smell test. The study guide available for teachers at the website underlines the effort to display the bodies in an "artful, compelling and dignified" way. I guess what I came to realize in the pre-natal section is that, among the cross-sectioned cadavers and disembodied limbs, I personally found neither art, nor dignity. Compelling, perhaps, but why?

There is certainly a case for bodies dismembered by cross-section being regarded as art, and I must admit, my gee-whiz reaction to some of the displays speaks to the compelling nature of what I was seeing. There is something to be said for a body (specimen) sliced up like a loaf of bread, with several inches separating each upright piece, all held in place by a clear plastic separators, sprawling across 40 feet of gallery space. It was impossible not to think of Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four, stretching even in death. Compelling, okay, art, maybe, but educational? Well . . .

After we left, I asked my companions if they'd learned anything. I hadn't, and the best response I got was that the aorta is a lot bigger than she'd thought it was. But really, there was nothing on display that couldn't be seen in a copy of Grey's Anatomy (book, not TV show). We'd all neglected the audio portion of the exhibit, and I didn't see a single person reading the wall postings detailing the historical/artistic development and use of anatomical knowledge. As much as they tried to coat this (side)show with a veneer of learning, that's not what sells tickets, and the exhibit is, first and foremost, a business venture.

Be careful scrolling down from here--that's a much shorter warning than the one before the exhibit's pre-natal section--you've been warned. I searched for and found this picture to give you a sense of what's displayed in that area. I couldn't find the one with the conjoined twins, but here goes--scroll down only carefully and after considering it . . . really.


























Sheryl wondered how I found this picture. I didn't, actually, get it from the show's website. What I did was search Google Images using the term "pickled punk". That's a carny term for a fetus in formaldehyde. It looked the same to Sheryl, and it looks the same to me as what we saw displayed. It sure brought in the rubes that night.

P.T. Barnum had a "museum" where he displayed microcephalics as pinheads, dwarves as nobility and fabricated creatures as mermaids. It made him very wealthy, but something very different than a scholar or teacher. You can plasticize it, call it a "specimen", put it under muted lighting with a vague, New Age-y soundtrack lilting from unseen speakers. Then say it's dignified, educational even, but that doesn't change anything about what it actually is. Not at all.

>:-(A NIMBY Backlash, and The Missing Crusade):-<

One of the things I miss about Monday to Friday hours in the trapped, dusty flourescence of my office job is access to opinion. Mine grows stale and fixed in the absence of contrast and comparison. Having watched three or four of the "To Catch a Predator" segments produced by Dateline NBC, I think I can surmise what would have been the chatter among the cubicles each morning after the shows, particularly in the knots of women among my co-workers.

E-mails from viewers provide the vitriol I've missed in the copy room. Viewers thank the producers, using words like "commendable", while MSNBC's Dan Abrams struggles to find another side (the predators') to the story in order to cover things fairly. He finds the arrests and prosecutions "refreshing". The level of justice most of the e-mailers seem to seek is of the more primitive sort, vengeful and violence-based--a viewer moved to commend Dateline is the sort who prefers Old Testament-style justice.

I can't deny that, on the first couple of viewings, I too clapped my hands at the cuffing of the married soldier with a teen-aged daughter, that I crowed at the confrontation and the climax of the camera's appearance, boom-mike hovering into view as the crew materializes. It is as if, among all life's difficulties, follies and missed connections, something is finally working as it should--success in large letters and full color.

At first, none of the doubts and concerns I now have with this programming surfaced. Without the foil my co-workers would have provided, my contrarian nature slept, and I exulted with America at our safer streets and chat-rooms. My unease at this method of portraying and addressing the problem of sexual predation sprang up finally when I saw a brief mention of a sting-gone-wrong, culminating in the suicide of a DA in the town of Murphy, Texas. Caught in the web strung by Perverted Justice and NBC, prosecutor Bill Conradt opted out of the inevitable shame and punishment, permanently, by the timely application of a bullet to his brain.

Part of what's troubling the residents of Murphy is that, by setting up a decoy home in their town, NBC and Perverted Justice may have been guilty of exposing the children of Murphy to increased danger by actually luring predators into the town. In addition, Geraldo intimated, many residents were waking up to the idea that NBC might treat such stings as mere entertainment, an opportunity to sell commercial time to advertisers. Apparently, it takes a death to awaken such misgivings. Still, the unseemly nature of humiliation for fun and profit seems to escape most folks outside of Murphy.

From the accidental slip-and-fall of a stranger in the street to the fates of celebrities and countries, we find common ground in our schadenfreude. And it was this feeling that welled up in me as I watched that first man's face fall as Chris Hanson stepped from behind the curtain. There are moments, however, where pointing fingers and glee are neither necessary nor proper. There is something wrong, sinful perhaps, about the orchestration and enjoyment of another's humiliation. A long time ago, I read that some Jews consider that the worst of sins is public humiliation of another person. For them, that act is akin to killing that person, and either is unforgivable. I am not a Talmudic scholar, but there is a sense in me, born of the red-faced moments from school years common to us all, that we have much to learn about our use of humilation.

As I type, the Murphy, Texas episode is on the television screen in front of me--a Dallas school-teacher of 23 years was just shown being busted after following up with a "13 year-old" "boi" for a meeting after their online chat. He will be charged with solicitation of a minor, and as the cameras appeared, he lamely apologized, his head sinking into his shoulders and his body into the stool as a storm of electronics and attention bursts around him. Like the rest, down to his belly he went, hands behind head, to be cuffed and transported.

A scant few minutes or so is given at the end of the progam to cover what is perhaps the biggest story to come from Dateline's foray into Texas: the suicide of one of the perpretators. INXS00, better known as chief felony assistant Bill Conradt, was among those corresponding with the decoy boy. In an unusual move, perhaps owing to Conradt's profession, police sent a swat team ahead to his house rather than awaiting his appearance at the decoy house. Cameras, as ever, accompanied the guns. Not even the report of the weapon from inside the house was allowed into the broadcast. Viewers wanting a bloody climax were disappointed. Dateline will continue to report on developments, and on their activities in Murphy.

Though the report sanitized the event as far as it could, my mother predicted a more graphic outcome, and left the room. I daresay that her reaction was outside the norm. I suspect that many more, perhaps most viewers, wanted some blood spatter, or to see the corpse in a bag, or even just a chalk outline and stained carpeting. That vengeful desire feeds the popularity of the series--it is of a piece with our on-again, off-again (though never quite absent) national relationship with the death penalty, and our just-below-the-surface rationalization for the current bloodletting our tax dollars permit at home and abroad.

An instructive episode to consider in this context is that of the hapless Jonathan Edington. Though the final facts of the matter have not been reported by police in New Haven, Connecticut, it appears that Edington stabbed his neighbor neighbor to death based on the mistaken notion that the neighbor had molested his two-year old daughter. When I first saw the story reported here in Orlando on the day it occurred, the anchor on the local news suggested that, should the charge of molestation be substantiated, a light sentence for the fast-acting father would likely result.

While any of the men on "To Catch a Predator" would likely choose national humilation and local prosecution to the fate of the New Haven man, I am not sure that either outcome is ideal for us as onlookers, as citizens. Consider Edington again: had the molestation been confirmed as a certainty, many of us would say that we understood, and to an extent, approved and applauded his reaction. Perhaps most of us would do the same, we tell ourselves. An ethicist might produce a more nuanced position, but I think our approval makes us, just a little, complicit in the killing. At the very least, an attaboy attitude makes of us people for whom murder is, at least sometimes, an acceptable re/action. I can think of no belief system that allows for this sort of ad hoc justification of that which is wrong.

Where punishment is merited, it should result, but our ability to make sport of it, to live vicariously in vengeance, whether with a camera or a weapon, speaks ill of us. In one sense, "To Catch a Predator" may achieve some redemption in that its activities help to remove men of bad intent from our midst, at least for a time, thereby curtailing their illicit activities. That we are safer must also inform the popularity of the progam--and truly, as each man is lead away in handcuffs, one or more kids is indeed less likely to cross his path, whether virtually or actually.

Our satisfaction in this safety is, unfortunately, delusional, or at least wildly inflated. The tendency to consider only that which confirms our views, while ignoring or minimizing disconfirming evidence, should give us pause about the fate of sexual predators in this nation. Too, like NBC, we are likely to pursue most vigorously that which is most easily obtained--to pick the fruit that hangs lowest and within easy reach. Looking at the seemingly endless series of men arriving to meet young girls, often almost tripping over one another, its easy to believe that a sizable chunk of all predators has been rounded up.

This conclusion is wildly incorrect. According to Bureau of Justice statisitics from a three state study, 96% of reported rape survivors under age 12 know their attackers. Similar results from the Department of Justice provide confirming evidence with 95 to 97% or victims knowing their attackers, depending on the age of the victim. Considering the stigma and potential for family disruption and strife, it is easy to imagine thousands of cases not even having been included in these numbers due to failure to report. Look again to the feedback from the Dateline's viewers--for those that mention personal experience as victims, it seems clear that the abuse was both long-term and in the family.

Even if an adjustment is made for the emergence of the internet and its influence in fostering unsupervised, unhealthy connections between individuals, say to 10% of all attacks by strangers, neither we nor Dateline are even starting to address the problem. Without even talking honestly about it, we're a long way from a solution. Sure, we get a thrill and the men are rightfully prosecuted. But for every man caught, there seem to be four others to take his place, and more arriving every moment.

Many of the men on Dateline acknowledge having seen the show or heard of it. None was deterred. Clearly, we'll never know how many men won't ever show up at the house or in the chat room for fear of prosecution, but none of the men arrives on camera expecting anything other than the activities he's discussed with the Perverted Justice decoy. Criminals don't walk willingly into prison, and the threat of punishment will never deter the determind perpetrator.

So beyond the achievement of removing some men from the streets and chat-rooms, let me suggest something to Chris Hanson and his producers at Dateline: You have a bully pulpit--Use it! The program needs to be about more than satisfying our impotent need for revenge, and for more than making us feel satisifed that this awful problem is already being handled. Perhaps we can forego just a few lines of the salacious chat room dialogue to help raise awareness as to the actual scope of the problem that, in theory, the program is helping to address. I don't begrudge NBC the right to make money, but when they began this crusade, they took on a role that was more than just commercial. Let them embrace that additional role fully, or abandon the crusade altogether.

-Remember the Eighties?

Since the story has now fallen from the peak of Mt. Hot Topic into the teeming, steamy Valley of Yesterday's News (a.k.a. Footnotia), perhaps now my reaction, both to the story and its top-like trajectory, may be a bit cooler, somewhat more rational. The elections are over, Rumsfeld turns to walk away and one can likely find New Year's Eve decorations displayed in right-thinking retail outlets.

By now, we're all supposed to have grasped the facts, formed an opinion and stopped thinking. "Foley scandal" now makes us wax knowing, righteous and nostalgic, like hearing "Mel Gibson" or "decrease our dependence on foreign energy" or "John Mark Karr". Now the pundits, blogsters, political and cultural critics can reflect maturely, knowingly on both the causes, and effects, of the tawdry Foley affair.

At the height of the storm, I was unwise enough to leave my car radio on, and tuned to the local AM talk station. When I returned to the car after some time, having taken care of the most recent round of doctor visits, I heard a promotional ad for the Sean Hannity radio show. Listening can be funny, and/or infuriating, and I do so sometimes, making the conscious choice of switching over to the station. There is, perhaps, an intellectual moment of held breath as my finger punches the button.

The anger I carried away from the doctor visit, for reasons I don't now recall, certainly colored my reception of the words from the car speakers. In as close a paraphrase as I'll be able to manage through the fog of my anger, Hannity was advising his devoted cadre to watch the activities of the Democrats closely in their dealings with persons or issues associated with Mark Foley. Remember, he told them, the Democrat party was the one that kept Gerry Studds in power, despite his own, consummated, homosexual page scandal. Clearly, those people are not to be trusted.

I turned off the radio and rode home in silence, my sources of anger combining to something greater than the sum of parts. Upon arrival home, I trance-walked to a pad and paper, and wrote this, in letters I now struggle to interpret correctly. Um, sic.

Fuck you, Hannity, you palavering, partisan prick. Sometimes you're right, sometimes not, but you never let the chance to be right, or rational, get in the way of shilling for the RNC. Fuck you Hannity, 2600+ times over, and that's not even counting the Iraqi souls.

What deserves more attention, a cloak-room blow job, or the deaths of thousands and thousands as we invoke reason after reason from our lazy susan of excuses for the invasion of a sovereign nation. A soveriegn nation, you know, like Bush described Pakistan when someone asked him why we didn't go after terrosist training camps in that nation. Beware Pakistan, and all current allies, times and policies change, handshakes and diplomacy become the "shock and awe" bombings you once watched us deal on Iraq.

Only a fool or a fanatic can be convinced that Saddam Hussein is not among worst of the world's Bad Men. But to say that the world is better without him in power no longer seems so sure a propostion, and posits an idyllic, imaginary Iraq of gratefully coexisiting tribes, ignoring their ancient hatreds, forgetful of the oil-drenched bonanza for the group in power. Quick, choose between a Saddam-less Iraqi civil war, and the Iraq of 2002. Be honest. No qualification, no caveats--Pick.

I stopped then, the confines of the page putting border and shape to the amorphous anger bubbling from me. Then I put down the pad and let it all go. Slowly, Foley fell from the web-pages and headlines, after the inevitable apologia, evasion and savagery that accompanies such scandals. I almost forgot too, being a highly irregular wathcer of the evening national news broadcasts. But that pad of paper lingered on my bedside chair.

More rationally: Mr. Hannity, Studds was actually stripped of a chairmanship and censured by the House by a vote of 420-3. And to be clear, it was the voters in his district who sent Studds back to DC, six times, not his Democratic legislative peers. These are apples and oranges, you fill in the fruit joke.

I guess the key difference though, in the comparison that Hannity seems to want to make between Studds and Foley is that Studds was, consistently, an avowed and proud gay man. Never did Studds lecture on the floor at Capitol Hill about the need for laws to prevent the use of communications tools for preying on naive, underage children. Foley did. He was, like Foley, guilty of (and unlike Foley, censured for) very poor judgment. But Studds' "victim" later appeared in support of him, and Studds never once described the relationship as anything but consensual.

In the strictest sense, by law, the relationship between Studdds and the page was legal by consent age laws, if improper by ethical standards. By contrast, Foley, a closeted homosexual, sought to make the very activity that lost him his job illegal, in addition to its known location outside Congressional ethics standards. Hypocrite seems too mild a word, and no voter, anywhere, would send Foley anywhere but prison.

To play this game of "Remember the Eighties?", Sean Hannity ignores and side-steps the obvious differences in the Foley and Studds cases, leaving us to wonder why he brings Studds up at all. I guess, to some, talk of any gay member is a natural segue to discussion of any and all other gay people in Congress. Likely, it was just another excuse to prop up his sense of Republican superiority, if a poorly-picked one.

Hannity's thesis, at least as I read it, is that eternal vigilance is required of Republicans in watching the progress of the Foley case, as, clearly, the Democrats can't be trusted to handle it correctly. Strong evidence now exists that make his concern not just wrong, but irrevelant. And as we discuss, somewhat breathlessly, the depths of the depravity to be found in those IM's (Did he really write "cute butt"? How shameless!), see that we are not discussing the blood flowing into the sands of Iraq.

I'd like to play "Remember the Eighties?" too, and here is my topic: The issues and policies that brought us from handshakes to dead civilians, "shock and awe" and willful destruction of an infrastrucure that all Iraqis depend on are of far greater importance than gay congresspeople. Remember this, Sean? I know it wasn't for dating, so can you tell me why those two men were together? It happened in 1983, the very same year as all the Studds hoo-haw. I wouldn't normally go back so far, but, well, you started it. Can we trust a man, a party, that toadied up to a monster?

Good-bye, Mr. Rumsfeld. I know you remember.

-Pills-a-Poppin!*

*Plus-Prescription Pain Pads!

-Thanks, but we found someone who'll do it cheaper

Recently, I put together a pictorial family tree to share at a family gathering. This sounds more grand than it really was--I simply took data from a quirky, web-based interface and translated to a paper-based format. With the information laid out in a viewer-friendly manner, no longer confined to a screen with mouse-over pop-ups, the blood flow, then to now, was much more compelling. We could see the lineage, movement of names and families across time and continents. England, Ireland, Canada and the United States were the places, the names and towns too many to list here.

The grunt research work was done by Sheryl and a cousin I've seen a few times. That not-so-distant relative used a website for genealogical research. As one moves back in time, the details, understandably, become more scarce. Wedding dates are the first casualties, followed by maiden names, birth dates and towns, death dates. The records remain, however, and can be traced--in our case, all the way back to the fifteenth century. I don't imagine anything as noteworthy as a Mayflower passage, but in some cases, the timing would have been about right. The quest to add shape to the hushed history of a native American divorced from the clan was unsuccessful.

The preamble above is my unsubtle acknowledgment of the sufficiency of documentation for my family's immigration history. We came from elsewhere. The records skimp on such information, but one can be sure typical reasons for emigration all played a part in the crossing of borders and oceans: They sought freedom, religious and economic; They fled tyranny of all sorts, and moved toward a new world of opportunity and hope.

That the United States still represents these things around the world is axiomatic, and as such, we remain a destination. We have, too, become a target, and those people who aim to diminish our stores of hope and opportunity are likely hidden among those crossing to take part in them. At least so goes the thinking that generated all the hot air on Capitol Hill, the press, and the resulting nationwide protests and marches.

After all the ink, air-time and debate, the federal response has been deployment of reserve troops for unarmed, logistical support at our southern border. To describe this response as lackluster would be high praise, but then, it is an election year. One could suppose that, after November, all settled into their seats, our legislative branch might be emboldened to enact meaningful legislation in order to stem the tide of illegal entrants. Even after the elections are over, however, the likelihood is that politicians will continue to hack away at the problem, whittling the wrong end with their rhetorical knives.

Perhaps a good comparison is with America's 35-year old "War on Drugs". There, too, we engage an ongoing, troubling challenge to the prosperity, safety and health of our nation and its citizens. Look again to the picture at the top of the page--drug dealers also stand on street corners and wait for people to drive up with ready money, but we only see one of these crimes on "Cops".

As with the war on terrorism, we spend untold sums on eradication of the problem at its source, using our military to poison and burn fields of drug crops and assist law enforcment efforts in other countries. We also seek to interdict both drugs and illegal (and potentially harmful) human entrants at our borders and in our waters, air space and ports.

There is something missing, however, from our immigration war, and our elected representatives are unlikely to add it, before or after this November--think of it as Nancy Reagan's legacy: the "Just Say No" mentality. Mrs. Reagan realized, as do our school systems and parents, that we can burn as many coca fields as we can find, but unless demand for cocaine ceases to exist, Americans will continue to snort and smoke it, regardless of scarcity or cost. We get off on cheap labor, as consumers and employers.

The National Drug Control Strategy, issued by the White House in February 2006, presents three main areas of focus for addressing America's ongoing drug problem: stopping drug use before it starts, healing drug users, and disrupting the market for illicit drugs. These strategies match those guiding drug policy for the year 2005 as well, and can be translated, roughly, as interdiction, rehabilitation and education. Added to the ongoing eradication efforts at our border and points of origin, and the educational "Just Say No" efforts, is an emphasis on the renewed and ongoing health of users.

On a comparative level, our immigration battles seem relentlessly single-minded: Efforts at interdiction apparently begin and end with intercepting border sneaks--in trucks, on foot, over deserts, rivers and roads. With approximately 33 million illegal aliens now in the US, more than double the amount in 1980, the effectiveness of interdiction is not even debatable: it simply doesn't work. (You'll note I've dispensed with the euphemistic nicety of referring to those millions as "undocumented workers". Sneaking into the country is, in fact, illegal, and substitution of "worker" for "alien" confuses what a person does with her citizenship status. The two are not interchangable. Use what label you will, we have millions of them, and more on the way.)

My suggestion for a workable, solution to the "immigration problem" is one that fully embraces the concepts and approaches found in the national drug control strategy of the last couple of years. Let's equate stopping illegal immigration at the border with preventing drug use before it starts. We'll need to stop the supply to kick our illegal-alien-labor habit, but we'll table that portion of the problem for the moment.

More pressing is addressing the demand side of the problem, the other part of "disrupting the market" for unlawful entry and employment in the United States. The federal government has, as yet, failed to act in a decisive manner on this issue, leaving legislative and enforcement efforts largely in the hands of local government and business. At 33 million and climbing, "undocumented workers" are finding few impediments in the lucre-for-labor world.

Recent efforts in Palm Bay, Florida indicate a similar failure of will on the part of local government. A recent proposal to impose a $350 fine on employers who knowingly employ ineligible workers met with much outcry and opposition. Really. In addition, such employers would be barred from bidding on public contracts and operating within the city. A 3-2 vote from the city council ratified the status quo, but perhaps began a dialogue we've done our best to avoid nationally.

Among the points bandied by opponents in Palm Bay were possibility of discrimination and racial profiling, inability of employers to verify documentation accurately, overload of enforcement agencies and unfair targeting of construction and real estate interests. One wonders on which other laws these residents and commissioners prefer weak penalties and lax enforcement. So much for interrupting the market in Palm Bay.

In reponse, if I may: 1. Conflating ethnicity and citizenship status merely confuses the issue and is misleading--the two are not interchangable. If enforcement officials or employers discriminate based on ethnicity, there are well-known laws to punish them, and they should be enforced. We are a nation of laws--you know, like the ones that govern employment. 2. In a world where I can trace ancestors back 500 years, verify a car's entire history with only a VIN , track sex offenders across the country and back, all on the internet!, and where the government can access data on all phone and bank transactions in the interests of national security, it is laughable and disingenuous to claim emloyment eligibility can not be verified. 3. Hire more enforcement agents. If money is needed to do so, use a $5, 000 or $10, 000 fine instead of the proposed $350. Additional revenues collected (multiply 35 million by X, just to get the top end) can then be used to build that wall on the border, assuming we continue to pursue that misguided effort. You can be sure, though, that the river across the border will slow to a trickle when the jobs dry up. 4. Forgive the hyperbole, but one might also say that plantation owners were unfairly targeted by the efforts of abolitionists--one goes where the action is.

But then those contractors will need just a little help adapting to the cost of lawful behavior, as will the people who buy the homes they build. So we come to another piece of wisdom translated from our drug abuse prevention policy: healing the users. Like that of pre-Civil War America, our current economy depends on the unfairly-compensated labor of many, many people. That's not going to be an easy addiction to break. For all the tough talk on amnesty, we need, as a nation, to be frank about the contributions of those tens of millions, and about the absolute impossibility of that many deportations. It's not just the rooves over our heads, of course, but the vegetables we eat, the vacuumed offices we work in and clean dishes we eat from, our cut grass and our child care, the road crews and the painters.

It can be done, and there will have to be a path to citizenship for those workers, like it or not. Include in a list of suggestions tight requirements for current working residents (illegal aliens) to be considered for integration into our cultural and (legal) work environments, a six-month to one year window for employer compliance, a phased relaxation of minimum-wage laws, targeted at key industries, with specific limits and time-tables, new restricitions on all legal immigration limits from all countries while we integrate current and eligible aliens, guest worker programs, etc.

The details are best left to the legislators and lobbyists, but again, throwing up or hands in despair is laughable and disingenuous. The healing needed by the other users of this "system"--the governments of the countries to our south--well, we can at least force the issue, then leave it to the diplomats. We can do all of this, and must. Leaving it in the hands of Army reservists and self-appointed Minutemen simply exacerbates our dividedness, our peril.

Which brings us to the final plank of our national drug/immigration policy: education. While the press and current administration have done a more than adequate job of illuminating the threat of terrorists among unauthorized border crossers, not much other enlightenment on the problem has emerged. There are many stakeholders here--labor, consumer, ethnic, national security, business, human--and all those voices need to be heard, as they need to listen. Like they say on the drug-awareness public service announcements, "Talk to your kids about drugs. They'll listen."

Let's talk.

-2 from 1994

I sit with my pen paper
computer type monitor
sometimes very angry,
hating you me, all of them
and the words don't come.

Pick my nose pull my hair
out smoke ten cigarettes
thinking of ways to clean
up my closets my life and
the words don't come.

Getting old in a straight
line no detour best route
go where you're going
if you know where to and the
words don't come.

Even letters, words
already written would be
fine than just none to
tell them how it is with me
I can't say and the words
don't come.

My mind rages whirls half
asleep, words and bad
memories play at the edge
of sleep fumbles not enough
to land on and the words don't
come.

_________________________________________


I stare into darkness from my narrow bed and hear the sound of tires spinning slick on wet streets. Waiting for sleep with the maddeningly random radiator tick, I forget the very regular, too fast, beating of my heart. I catch myself not taking breath, place my left hand on my diaphragm to be certain of a calming movement there. Four seconds in four seconds out. I place the palm and fingers of my right hand on top of my skull, seeking its shape, keeping everything in place. My eyes pick out the outline of shaded windows, glowing clock-face and television tube, their lines and curves, keeping time alive for me, clear and persistent.

I seek out corners where there is no reminder of the day, points of darkness and absence. I stare into them, leaning in, almost, as if there were a strong wind on my thoughts. Lack of light, of time, makes patterns--bursts and swirls, ovals and long shapes not seen in the day, ill-defined, purple and redblack. They spin and jumps in groups they choose, like ornate dancers from another century, then fall still as everything will. Others take a turn and fall away. With the balls of my thumbs, I press lightly on the lids of my eyes. My face must look as if I am in a sandstorm--eyes squinted and clenched jaw with mouth tight and prim. To see just anything, over time, blind kids will end up beating at their eyes with fists. Many have to be restrained. We all need something to see, even just the lights of nerves and pain. I push again, harder, with my thumbs, just to the edge of hurts. Pictures return to blow and dance before slipping left, right out of reach again.

I stare into what is missing, my future, the fog and smoke of plans and wanting. My years here fall away. My eyes tear with stress, so the patterns split and multiply. I rock my head back and forth, eyes squeezed tight. It is all there in front of me everyway. Up ahead, my eyes, mind, of all things my need to see, they make the dance. I want to take the hard sharp edges of tomorrow and unformed dreams and push them down, hard into my mind to find the axis of unfulfilled desire. What pictures I could see. Such pictures.

-What to Say

---"Come on, let's go," I call to Pete.
---"Where?" he asks, running to me from his castles in the sand. He stands before me, hands on hips, looking up with the question on his face.
---"I don't know, that way," I answer, pointing away from the clusters of families, umbrellas and blankets.
---"What's there?" he asks.
---"Sand and water, same as here" I tell him, "Not so many people, that's all. Let's go." I walk to the waterline, to move with my feet in the shallow runoff of waves. Pete follows, stepping quick to match the pace of longer legs. I hear our youngest brother Danny yell to us. We stop and turn as he runs up.
---"Why didn't you wait for me?" Danny asks, puffing with the effort of catching us, "Can I come?"
---"Sorry I didn't see you, Dan. You can come," I tell him. He's younger than Pete, and it's easy for him to feel left out.
---"I thought we were going, Tom. I don't want him!" Pete tells me, thumbing at Danny. He's not the youngest. It's easy for him to feel jealous.
---"You think he can't walk on a beach, just because you say-that's not right, Pete. Let's just go. I don't want to talk about that anymore. Come on."
I turn and continue, kicking up wet clumps with my big toes, knowing they will follow now, that I don't have to ask again. They arrange themselves on either side.
---Danny grabs and pulls on the hem of my shorts sometimes to slow me down. His legs are shortest. Late day sun warms my back, bursts of wind push the hair from my forehead.
---"Let's race," Danny suggests.
---"Yeah," agrees Pete, skipping his legs a little.
They crouch, dig fingers and toes into sand, sraightening their legs into runners' starting stances.
---"Come on, Tom"
---"All right," I say "we'll race to the dingy wrecked up there." I bend down between them with forearms on thighs and yell "Go!" Both boys sprint off and Pete pulls ahead right away. I jog to stay even with Dan and let him in front as we near the boat. Pete slaps a piece of bow breaking from the sand to win.
---"I beat you guys. I always beat Dan," Pete crows. He walks around the chunks of fiberglass and foam that floated once.
---"He does," admits Danny quietly, "but he's seven."
---"It doesn't matter," I tell him, "let's keep going." Pete pulls at an orange bouy on a blackened and frayed line.
---"Can I keep it, Tom?" he asks.
---"I guess it's as much yours as anybody's," I answer, "but leave it, we'll get it on the way back."
Past the boat, Danny crouches in the sand, looking back at us through his legs, ready. As we reach him we stop and drop into stance. From either side, they look at me, awaiting the moment.
---"To the dunes," I decide.
---"Let's go!"
---"Reeeaaady," I whisper, and after a pause, yell, "SETGO!" Both boys jump into a run at my shout. I settle into a slow jog and watch Pete lead again. He will win, and we know it. It's okay and I look out to sea. The late ferry full of day trippers crosses the horizon right to left, its running lights glowing and bobbing.
---Because I'm distracted, looking away from my going, I find myself on my knees and hands, brought down by a thin, white cord looped from the sand. I pull at the cord where it grows from the ground, it sticks fast. I see them kneeling where the line snakes to its end some yards away.
---"Tom," Dan yells, "come here, quick!" I stand and run to them, following the line with my gaze as I step to the end of it. A crumpled seagull dries in the sand at our feet, cord still noosed around the bits of bone and feather that were a neck once.
---Dan snaps to vertical. The force of it steps him back, once, twice in the hot sand of afternoon.
--"What happened?" Danny asks me, his eyes fixed on the corpse. Silence boils from Pete's point of the triangle around this dead thing.
---"Why'd they do this?" Dan asks, looking to me at last. There is nothing to say, so I don't. He is looking, still.
---"Let's go." I tell them, "I didn't tell Mom we were going and we should get back." They follow, and we turn and walk, all in a line, heads down against the sun of dusk, wind at our backs.
---"Don't forget the buoy, Pete," I say, "grab it when we go by."
---"I don't want it anymore," he tells us.
---We walk.

-Eternal Spring

Having just completed Voodoo Science by Robert Park, which inludes decisive dissections of no fewer than three "free energy" proponents' claims, I was delighted and somewhat shocked to see a new contender on BoingBoing today. I'd definitely recommend BoingBoing any day (link to your right), but go visit these earth-shakers yourself at their site.

While they've clearly spent some money on the design and back-end functions of their site, and their charming brogues might lilt the doubt out of you, these Irishmen have mostly produced nothing more than a whole lot of hot air, at least so far. Their website, and accompanying ink-and-paper notices in UK magazines, have put the scientific world on notice--as of this writing, these essential stats were available on the Steorn site:

2-days since we challenged the world's scientists to test our revolutionary free energy technology

704-scientists have expressed interest in testing our technology

8180-people have registered to receive the results

Just so it's clear, and I don't compromise my interest in this, I am both one of the scientists who will help test this (my scholarly interests are automotive and alternative fuels) and one of those registered to receive results--with bated breath, I assure you. Their pluck is admirable, if nothing else, and it remains unclear which of the two types of voodoo scientists these men are--those that drink their own kool-aid or the ones snickering at the rubes gathering outside the tent--fools or frauds by Park's reckoning.

Whichever kind they are, it seems no one has schooled them on how science works. By issuing a challenge to the world's scientists to test their theory, they've evaded responsibility to design reliable tests around a hypothesis, repeat them to verify results, then publish results for scrutiny by the community. Carl Sagan, or someone, said "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof". What isn't required is a video of a CEO and marketing manager of a hitherto unknown company making winky comments about their known problems with the laws of thermodynamics.
Should the white-paper I am eligible to receive as a registered scientist ever actually be sent, I'll soon it share via this forum. Should someone else beat me to it, the link will be made. I don't consider we'll learn much from the energy leprechauns.

All that being said, there is a part of me that still wants to believe that I am wrong, that hundreds of years of science and thousands of experimental results are mistaken about the nature of reality. It is impossible even to imagine a world in which the many costs of energy are dissolved in a moment.

I trolled the message boards available under Steorn's forum link, and a lot of that hopeful sentiment is there. The first topic, as of this writing, is "What will we do if they're right?". While others are as silly as "Save us From Mars!!!" or "xbox", and many of the comments stray wildly off topic, there is a decidedly optimistic thread in the postings.

What is common to my thinking, those postings and the ability of this company to generate publicity, if not power, is what Park, citing Gary Taubes, calls "Pascal's wager". Blaise Pascal recommended the path of faith saying, "Do not hesitate to wager that God exists. If you win, you win everything." I'll close with Park's words on that thought: "Needless to say, they love Pascal in Las Vegas. Some form of Pascal's wager is often invoked to justify impossible schemes." Indeed.

-"I"solation

The smell smacks one in the nose just inside the automatic door, and everyone in the great room shares in the bounty. Without a work-out, it would be uncomfortably cold at the YMCA, but our activity warms it up nice and sweaty for us all. With thin towels and wall dispensers pumping anti-bacterial gel, we swipe and daub at the smells and threats lurking in our quests.@

Staring at an individual enhanced-definition# screen and sweating into the foam of my headset's earpieces, I was one of many, chuffing out carbon dioxide, all in a line, held in place by a mini-screen.$ I didn't hear Sheryl, but saw her signal me in peripheral vision. She rode an elliptical machine, while I worked a treadmill. She mouthed a channel number to me, pointing at her screen.

Thumbing the channel changer, I arrived at a local broadcast of Robert Putnam from the stage of the Sun Trust Auditorium of the Orlando Museum of Art. We figured out later that this had been an event we'd actually attended--a friend from a local non-profit invited us to hear the author of Bowling Alone. The camera panned the audience during the Q&A session. I caught no glimpse of us listening, attending the words. Admittedly, the soundtrack of the event did not pull me away from the sounds from my mp3 player.%

Sound in my ears, smell in my nose, 73 channels to choose from and the thoughts in my head all fought for attention, having very little common ground to share it. Pumping away at speed 4.1 (6.0 is a mile in ten minutes) at an incline 0f 4.0, my legs kept me in place at my TV.^ Hovering unnaturally, I wouldn't hear Putnam's words again, fearing they would sting.

On first hearing him as he spoke to the capacity crowd, his ideas and truths didn't seem discouraging or unwelcome. My daily life bristled with the people and interaction of an office work life. I understood what he said about the loss of community and "social capital" in post-WWII America. He was talking about a familiar world, the one in which I'd grown up, a life lived in the great between and nowhere of car travel commutation and TV screen transfixion.& It's our now.

At this time in my life, if not for Sheryl, I could spend whole days in a row speaking to no one but my self and my bird. During a trip she took recently, I did just that. I scanned my own groceries at the store, my asocial entertainment in the form of a DVD arrived in the mail, the woman at the Y's check-in desk swiped my card while talking on the phone, I replied to a couple of e-mails, and my phone was not dialed and did not ring. My motion through the world was brisk, my transactions efficient, and my mouth closed.*

Eight months away from the world of work has pinched and narrowed my life, my window on the world. Right now, that window is as small as a TV screen, as the page of a book, and I suppose as big as the windshield of a car. My wallet affiliates me with the town library and the YMCA. Each brings me back to myself--words on the page, pictures in a screen, and me, huffing away at nothing like a hamster-wheel man.

None of this would bother me so much if not for the side effects. That's the part of Putnam's message that hurts. Where do we "belong"? If the answers to that question include only places, where we work or sleep or shop, rather than groups with whom we create, commiserate and laugh, well, something is wrong, isn't it? How's this for stinging: "Joining one group cuts in half your odds of dying next year."+

I'm not sure how to end this, or if there is an ending.


@Think of sweeps-week local news exposes of flesh-rotting bacteria lurking on hand grips and medicine balls, the lingering middle school fear of sweat stink--I spent an entire 13-year-old day sniffing my armpits at school, horrified at my failure to apply deodorant that morning, and can't shake the creepy-crawly feeling that comes over me as I do sit ups on the mat.

#I don't know if enhanced definition is better or not than high definition, but it has the effect of greatly enhancing the age visible in the faces and necks of the screened subjects. I find myself reaching to my adam's apple and the space below my chin at those moments, as if I could catch myself aging or push back the sag of time at the skin of my neck.

$It is sort of silly and pathetic that we do this and rather than generating energy, consume it in the process of combatting our sedentary ways. I imagine the weight-lifters hurling tires or bales of hay, the stationary bikers delivering packages. Is there no way to convert this expenditure of energy to good use? If we are going to make workhorses of ourselves, why not put all that energy back into the grid? The gym could sell it to the power company, and adjust membership fees according to the power each of us generates. It would be interesting to see what such a scheme did for the adult obesity rates in this country. Imagine making money, even, by exercising!

%I was listening to songs by the Monkees, Ken Nordine, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, Buzzcocks and to a book by David Foster Wallace. Consider the Lobster , a book of essays read by the author, was available at the library so I ripped it to iTunes. The iPod was programmed to play at random, and bits of the text, out of sequence, played amidst the music. Would it be postmodern of me to say that the meaning of the essay was not damaged, was perhaps enhanced, by this disjointed presentation?

^A pleasant though unnatural feeling of floating happens for me each time I step off the treadmill and begin walking to the fountain after my 30 minute trek. All of a sudden, the perceptions of forward motion and walking synch up again, making for a momentary all-is-right-again-with-the-world feeling that is brief and magical for me.

&Trance-Fiction--as this sound-alike occurred to me, these words from the Beatles' "Glass Onion" went through my head: "talking 'bout the fool on the hill, don't you know he's living there still". Go ahead, I dare you: Try to think of exactly just one thing, whatever you choose.)

*It may seem strange to you, but there was nothing particularly lonely about this time. The days were full with necessary activities, and those that I invented. I even wore my mp3 player into the grocery store and shopped with my essays and music. It would not have changed my interaction with the world, or lack thereof, had I removed the headphones. When I think back to my childhood, to the first edge of my rememberable life , it seems a silent, disembodied world, just my set of eyes looking out.

+Am I alone-ing myself to death, or do I just have a much lower need for interaction with the world? Somtimes it feels as though I have trained myself to be okay with solitude. I get uncomfortable with near-friends, squirrelly about phone calls, invites and meetings. Friend-behavior is not something I am practiced at, and I am no longer sure that I can handle the trappings of voluntary association, or that I want to. This new world of terror and threat levels means danger in public--explosions on trains, pat-downs at stadiums, dirty bombs, road-rage, viral fears, identity theft, black-outs, AIDS, pollution and panic.

-deep & in

scratch hard
your fingers find sand
& green grown of
ground rock and sun
tough roots twist under
thin layer above
for what seems ever in
place where i found
love, my life
nothing like years gone
only deep roots thrive
out there, in here
vines spread wide
shooting as they will
unseen, lawless
acorns fall faster than we
collect, birds, squirrels &
i fight for reasons my own
chaos, growth
inside me too
I yank shoots
walk the grass, killing
tangles grown & weeds
roots so deep in me
on this blasted ground
shoots branch far
as I pull, choking
flowers, snaking the grass
shoots to kill then
stack a pile
vines that crawl
hidden, unchecked
hide from light on this plain
sunny, unforgiving
I look for ends &

pull

-Fairedistributionofyr$

I turned on the radio as I pulled away from the curb after dropping Sheryl at work. A commercial on our local AM talk radio WDBO informed me of the gathering of Americans in favor of the "Fair Tax". I'd heard a brief mention on the radio days before, and until the ad this morning, I thought it had come and gone without my participation.

With only about a half hour to spare, I went home, ate cereal, grabbed a camera and drove downtown. I'm not much good at estimating crowd size--if parking availability is a reliable indicator, I came to understand this event was something of a big deal. After circling the bar district and Church street, past the motorcycle cops and orange barriers, with no luck, I paid my 5 bucks and drove into a parking garage within earshot of the amplified voices.

Since WDBO is home of the ever-partisan Sean Hannity here in the city, the profusion of "W" stickers, yellow ribbons and "position" bumper stickers on the cars in the garage was to be expected. The station hosted the rally, and also made possible the presence and participation of libertarian talk-show host Neal Boortz. As I visited his site to get the link, I learned of the estimated attendance: 10-12,000.

That's Neal Boortz there on stage, red shirt, and that's about as close as I got. I tried to push in closer, but it was damn hot, we were a sweaty bunch of tax protesters, and I was not so eager to wade in deep. Boortz commented that any person willing to brave the heat of the day should be more than ready to show up at the polls and make it count. It was in the 90's, easily.

There was some echo off the buildings, no matter which area I wandered into. The only other comment I tuned in on and took away from the day was Boortz's idea that critics of the Fair Tax typically pick apart the plan only after first changing it. His analogy was to performance results for a car: the manufacturer tunes and prepares the car, and runs it as a complete, ready-to-be-purchased unit. If a critic first removes a wheel before testing, results will surely vary.

Without a far more extensive knowledge of economics and government than I have, there is no real way for me to judge the validity of the Fair Tax proposal. It sounds damn good, though. Suffice it to say that the resources and crowds involved in what I saw today do demonstrate that something's happening here. We should pay attention.

Put simply, from fairtax.org: The FairTax replaces the income tax and all other federal taxes with a national consumption tax. The FairTax is levied only once, at the point of purchase on new goods and services. The simplicity of the FairTax frees Americans from our current overwhelming tax code and unshackles the U.S. economy. [My emphasis]

I left soon after Neal Boortz spoke, having seen all I'd come to see, victim of the heat and poor acoustics. The voice of John Linder, Georgia congressman and a sponsor of H.R. 25, was dopplering off the buildings as I walked to the car. I scored a t-shirt, lots of literature and two DVDs from booths run by volunteers from fairtax.org. They were requesting donations for their goods. I'll admit I only feigned a donation to obtain my swag, my hand hovering with a bill as I called out, "large, please". It's the thought that counts--besides, I saw folks stuffing twenties in the fish-bowl. They can take mine out of that.

One of the discs I came home with did not come from the fair tax folks. The man with the sign (below) gave it to me. His backpack of tricks was stuffed with discs full of cutting edge conspiracy theory--his sign says it all: 9/11 was an inside job. In the time it took to take his picture, return my camera to the case and accept a disc, I heard him spar verbally, loudly, with two different people--"just trying to get the truth out there, man". Mmmmkay.
The rest of the crowd stayed on topic. Lots of themed t-shirts, magic-markered
poster-board signs and the wardrobes, haircuts, shoes and demeanor of solid middle class-dom. The faces were overwhelmingly european-american. (Pretty much exclusively so--I saw only two people with brown skin, and they were canvassing for some candidate, not the fair tax--I couldn't pull off an unobtrusive photo-op).

This was a solid, well-behaved group who came prepared with water bottles, folding chairs, fans and umbrellas--lots of families with kids. They were there to show support and feel the strength of their numbers. I'm unsure who the signs were for--they've all got the message already, but most such rallies suffer in that way. No one was going to learn much, but learning is not really what today was for.

I'll be voting, too, in a few months, as will you, if you are not disillusiuoned enough by the process to have given up. I'll be looking for candidates who support the fair tax initiative. Who can be sure if those 10 to 12, 000 votes will matter much. But as with my vote(s) for Ross Perot, I want at least to spend any upcoming votes in a disruptive, hopeful way. I guess I haven't completely given up.

-Lucifer Falters, Falls in the Sea

Flush with indignation and anger, I sulked in my room, surreptitiously defying a parental ban on solitary viewing. I watched on a small black and white television, so perhaps some of the brilliance of the explosions was lost on me, but after all of the hype , I was only disappointed. I am fairly certain I turned the movie off before all the threads of the story were chased down and tied off. The commentary that followed the movie I missed entirely.

I was a junior in high school when The Day After first aired, and ripe with the anger of my years. A movie that sought to make real the horror, the threat, of nuclear war, seemed only gratuitous to me; The culture, at least as I remember it, was awash in the imagery and awareness of the atomic black cloud under which we all lived. Why all of a sudden did I have to share this with everyone?

From Dr. Strangelove, to the Police to the Port Huron Statement that I found somewhere in my reading (history class?), the reality was rather hard to escape. The Berlin Wall, M*A*S*H* re-runs, Marc David Chapman and Ronald Reagan--you remember, the eighties.

From some time in the seventies, I have memories of discussing the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks at Assumption School. I think it was sixth grade with Miss Murray. All I took away was that to say "SALT Talks" was a redundancy. You can see why I majored in English rather than political science.

On reading the Port Huron Statement as a teenager, I felt a sense of wonder--here was a document that acknowledges the " . . .awareness that we ourselves, and our friends, and millions of abstract "others" we knew more directly because of our common peril, might die at any time", [italics mine] and mentions the single-issue stance of many peace activists of the time: "Ban the Bomb".

It was fabulous, unreal. No one says this stuff, out loud! People who thought the world could change in that way, and that they would help make it happen! I went to one practice for Confirmation with a borrowed jacket that had a "Ban the Bomb" button pinned to it. I think I was practicing an ironic stance.

Of course, I saw those undergraduate SDS ideas through the filter of time. How easy it is for me to find naivete and hope and foolishness in it even now--Liberal wasn't even a bad word yet! That same sense of hope, both foolish and naive, informed the pre-movie approach of the pundits, politicians and guidance counselors, I think. "The Day After" was a televsion event not to be missed! The idea was that families would watch the mushroom clouds together, would lament the fall-out and roasting skin of radiation burns, the deaths and desolation. They'd talk. You know, the day after, really get to the bottom of things.

Hence my anger: Talk. TALK! About what, exactly? The best home treatment for radiation sickness, creative uses for fallout, what kind of canned foods to keep in the basement, about my feelings concerning imminent death from above? Feelings? There was no talk, no words for this. There are not.

So I hid in my room, saw in silence the black and white possibilities of my teenage world. I fumed. Buttons, banners and letters to congress seem(ed) about as full of promise as talking about my feelings for annihilation. Not much has changed. Quick, which sounds better: balance of terror, or balance of fear? Tick, tick, tick,

I just finished reading Walter M. Miller's A Canticle for Liebowitz. If you seek the unlikely intersection of science fiction and Catholicism, you may wish to visit. The story begins with a novice monk's discovery of a fallout shelter, and crosses eighteen centuries of recovery from nuclear holocaust, with much credit to the Order of Liebowitz. This group of monks collects and maintains those pages and notes of knowledge that surived the war, and the bonfires and anti-intellectual mob violence that followed.

The story is bookended by a second nuclear confrontation, the seemingly inevitable result of our cleverness and conflict. From a monastery in what was the desert of America's southwest of eighteen centuries before, the Abbott learns of an unnamed Asian nation's launch of missiles. LUCIFER IS FALLEN, the headlines shout. In a rather hopeful attempt at the continuation of the Church and its people, New Rome launches a pod of pilgrims into space to seed the universe. This bit is the most "science fiction-y" aspect of the story, and it at least leaves me feeling some hope for our troubled and troublesome race.

The book made me think of no other so quickly as Russell Hoban's Riddley Walker. It's an easy comparison--scroll down from the purchase page behind the link and you'll find both works named on the lists of several fans of E.O.W. stories (End of World--it seems this is a distinct sub-genre). Published in 1959 and 1980, respectively, both books are informed by the Cold War climate in which they were conceived. In Canticle, our renewed mastery of and willingness to use destructive technology happens somewhat peripherally to the story of the monks preserving what knowledge they can dig from the rubble.

With a much tighter focus, both in terms of time period and characters, Hoban also examines our possible recovery from E.O.W. For Riddley and the other diggers-of-mud in Iron Age conditions, the actions revolve around the race of several factions to regain the knowledge and use of gunpowder. They pull pieces of metal from the ground and wonder at their uses. They puzzle at scraps of oral and written know-how from times long passed. Ultimately, the quest for explosive power is successful, almost despite the intrigue and ignorance of the warring groups. A new and more efficiently murderous age begins.

All of the anti-intellectual fervor, mob violence and hard-won knowledge of Canticle shows in Riddley, with a bit of cannibalism thrown in as well. The fractured English of the characters is believable and hypnotic, and while the small hope Riddley creates in walking his own path lacks the drama of a space launch, he paves the way to a future, our future. (If you pick just one of these to read, pick Riddley Walker.)

I finished Canticle on the fourth of July. A day later, North Korea fizzled missiles into the Sea of Japan, after much tough talk and failed diplomacy. Rocket scientists tell us that, since they flew at all, the soundness of the design is essentially proven. Now it is just a matter of tweaking to get it right (Sunday 7/9/06 NYT, "Week in Review" section--you can look it up--folks from Los Alamos). It will take some time, but they'll launch again. And again.

On that same day, July 5, 2006, I am unclear what specific ominous, sinful and nasty things also happened in Gaza, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq or Iran, Darfur, the Congo, etc, etc. We can trust there was lots of talk and technology, much diligence, that people died screaming. Speeches were made and fists shaken. I could catalog more, lists and lists, but we'd tire of it.

Considering the lilies, perhaps we could all do with more idle hands--we're so clever and busy.

The Port Huron Statement ends in this way: "If we appear to seek the unattainable, it has been said, then let it be known that we do so to avoid the unimaginable."

Clearly unattainable, but all too imaginable. Quick, who'll tell the children, or shall we let it be a surprise? I'm tired.

Tick, tick, tick,

-Blueprints for Self Construction

I'd already turned in the rental car, spilled on my tie and shirt front eating fast food and thoroughly examined all the magazine racks in the area behind the security checkpoint. So I wandered, strolling past the gates at a deliberate pace with my my leather resume cover, shiny shoes and smart business suit.

I was waiting after what I hope will forever remain my worst moment in an office setting--one that I'd flown all the way to Detroit to enjoy. On the way to the interview, it seemed an endless series of just-in-time connections--rise, shower, dress, drive, park, check-in, sit, fly, shuttle, rent, drive, elevator, check-in, meet, shake hands, talk small, talk tall, suffer. I think I waited all of two minutes in the lobby before being called in to the conference room--five of them in a line across the table.

I won't dwell on the particulars--conveying the fullness of defeat and distress I gained from the exchange that day is not interesting to me. Suffice it to say that I was sure I would not get the job, that perhaps I didn't want it. I walked past the airport gates, rehearsing the answers I should have given, avoiding all eyes. I would have preferred the tight timing of the trip in. The wait for a plane out gave me lots of time to think.

Before my flight began boarding, I visited the bathroom. I rounded the 90-degree turn that seems to be a favorite of airport bathroom designers and found myself among business travelers discharging their bar tabs, surrounded by grey wool and wing-tips. I finished, turned to go and found myself nearly colliding with a suit and tie guy at the bathroom exit. I can't get away from these people, I thought.

There may have been a flourescent missing, I'm not sure, but the dark just inside the entrance fogged things, and as I turned to avoid business boy, I came to the stark realization: I was he. Between the burned-out bulb and the sharp turn entering, I hadn't noticed the wall-sized mirror at the bathroom's entrance. I'd seen and despised the man in the suit. Um, oops.

Back at work, I lost the jacket, but put on the tie and put in my time. The man in the mirror gave me a gift to take back to the office. It was one I used almost every day: I sat beside myself in meetings, I watched me answering e-mail, I listened to my helpful input and saw myself laughing at jokes not that funny. Chrismas parties, hallway hellos, copy-room chatter and day to day to day, I judged all that went on around me. I found it wanting, all the time, and especially me--this was years.

Most nights last summer, I took to running maybe three miles around our neighborhood. One year prior to my first surgery, almost exactly, I ran a local foot race, the Park Avenue 5K. I came in 835th place. Not exactly competitive, but my total time was 29 minutes and 21 seconds. That's an average nine minutes and 26 seconds per mile.

While my work life progressed like some mind-d/numbing interactive film strip--BING-all staff meeting, talk talk clap clap BING-email inbox, type type, type some more BING-employee discipline, talk talk cry cry BING-copy machine jam to fix BING-drive home--my health improved exponentially. I could do hundreds of crunches. I broke a ten minute mile.

I did Pilates, too, just a couple of times, by following a video off the internet--a "for dummies" version that took some basic positions and movements and wove them into a half-hour workout. Its difficulty took my muscles by surprise. My legs and back burned the next morning when BING-back to work.

Pilates taught me the concept of "core". I now see it all the time on television in ads pushing fitness programs, but at the time it was new to me. Wikipedia defines core training as the, "attention of training to the abdominal and back muscles". I took from the video a sense of core as my center of gravity, the place at my center from which health, energy and bodily stability flow. Dictionary.com yields several results for core--here is number three of twelve: The basic or most important part; the essence. The core, center of gravity, foundation of everything from the waist up.

In just eight hours from the moment I type this, I will be cut loose officially from my employer of a decade--a man without a corporation. I worked there for better than one quarter of my time on earth.

A unique opportunity for making a different person has presented itself to me. It's as if I were somewhere in the midst of the summer vacation preceding freshman year of college--of course, I haven't applied anywhere, and I have no idea who's going to write my recommendations--but I know I get to start anew.

Here is number 11 of the definitions dictionary.com supplies: The base, usually of soft or inferior wood, to which veneer woods are glued.

For six months now, I've lived outside the suit I've worn for ten years--the veneer, director of operations, company man, is no more. It took three operations to excise it, but it's all gone now. Those same procedures sought to shore up my core, though perhaps that's been less effective.

Now when we meet people, the "what do you do?" question (read: "what kind are you?") is awkward. Well, I sleep poorly and late, then watch judge shows, you know, like Judge Judy, read a lot, ride a scooter aimlessly and think too much and take darvocet and stuff--I'm that kind. The layer of achievement and respectability available to me as "Director of Operations" (capital letters intact) has been stripped. It never fit all that well, but its loss leaves me naked.

I walked up one flight of stairs at the library last week. My legs burned. One flight. Pants I've worn for years feel tighter, though I vacillate between placing blame behind my eyes or around my waist.

Senior year, just before graduation, I wrote an article for the school newspaper about the impending reality of life after college. Somewhere I am sure there is a copy, but I can remember comparing suits to uniforms, using the word "lockstep" and listing in attempted Kerouacesque fashion all the paths preferable to the one ending in a cubicle--poet, prophet, painter, you get the picture. My dance teacher told me she knew what I meant, that my sentiment provided the perfect reason to study dance. My history advisor just shook my hand. A year later he wrote me a recommendation for graduate school.

Surfaces and structures are temporary, and not to be relied upon-- now I know this. Buildings burn and crumble, then we build again. I can't dance anymore.

42 days and $55 worth of medicine from now, I hope to be able to break ground. The easy thing to do, the path of least resistance, involves re-application of the veneer. But then I consider the prospect of actually sending resumes, interviewing and enthusing over reports and reviews, wearing the suit again. Emotionally, intellectually, I know that I do not wish to see it in the mirror again. I find myself wanting . . . more.

So I won't do it--that end-justifies-the-means thing. Not if the money is right, not for a title, not to add to my resume, not to build the nest egg, not for a bigger house, or a new car or the bank account. I find my thoughts echoed/amplified (but better) by a writer I'm rereading for no other reason than that it was free to download the words. In constructing a new self in the world, looking to someone so avowedly outside the mainstream for instructions might be foolish. Given the opportunity my spine has handed me, it feels right.

I close with these thoughts that ring in my mind, from Civil Disobedience and Life Without Principle.

Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay to life itself, than this incessant business.

Most men would feel insulted if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

It is remarkable that there is little or nothing to be remembered written on the subject of getting a living, how to make getting a living not merely honest and honorable, but altogether inviting and glorious, for if getting a living is not so, then living is not.

-Henry David Thoreau