Figaro-Pravda

Movie review: Paranormal Activity

2009-10-25T08:23:00.004-05:00

"Horror" is such a broad genre that I feel uncomfortable, generally, admitting how much I really and truly enjoy horror movies - mostly because this admission immediately conjures up images of Jason and Freddy and Chucky and all those things that I actually don't like about horror movies.

When I lived in Atlanta, a regular ritual each Fall was to walk up the street to the Haunted House at Agnes Scott College. This was a kid-friendly affair, short on gore and long on spooky atmosphere. I preferred this sort of Halloween affair because it allowed me to get the adrenaline rush without dangerously spiking my post-traumatic stress disorder - the best of all worlds.

A little chill up the spine and lots of spooky atmosphere is what I enjoy. I like it when the experience gets into my head and not just my gut. These days, though, that's a rare find. M. Night Shyamalan's early films definitely qualified - I couldn't sleep for several nights after my first viewing of Signs - and there have been others. For the most part, however, I have pretty much given up on Hollywood feeding my enjoyment of the horror genre.

And, it turns out, Hollywood didn't - at least this time. A couple nights ago Kira and I went to the local theater to see Paranormal Activity, an extraordinarily effective film shot on the lowest of budgets (under $20,000) and the smallest of crews (including cast, it was about seven people). What the film lacked in production budget, however, it more than compensated for in imagination, story and overall chills. This movie gets into your head.

The movie presents itself as a simple assemblage of footage found in a camera after an "event," that took place in the house and the lives of a young couple, Katy and Micah. There is no narration, and no narrative (at least on the surface). Instead, the editing of the movie follows the mere "documentation" of these events through the lens of the video camera Micah purchased to get to the bottom of the noises waking them up in the middle of the night.

As the footage unfolds, we learn, piece by piece, that there is a lot more at work (and at stake) in these events than merely a creaking and settling house. There is an entity at work, and it is not friendly.

It is clear from the start that the movie borrows from the "found footage" trope of movies like The Blair Witch Project. To simply dismiss this as a copycat, however, is to miss the creepy effectiveness of this technique across decades of the genre. Blair Witch did not invent the "found footage" trope. Though the movie used it to terrifying effectiveness, you can find precursors in such gems as John Carpenter's The Prince of Darkness, and the little-known but very suspenseful and creepy nuclear-nightmare TV movie from 1983 called Special Bulletin. There is something about grainy video and point-of-view filming that gears our brains to feel like we are right in the thick of the action.

Being in the thick of it results in exactly the sort of seriously creepy spine-tingles I was talking about earlier. To be merely scary is pretty easy. BOO!, and your hiccups are gone. Done. However, to be eerie and chilling is a trickier demand. Paranormal Activity pulls it off in spades, however. It succeeds by taking everyday activities and objects - sleeping, domestic life in a suburban condominium, and young love - and rendering it uncanny.

The performances are perfectly understated. Both the Katy and Micah characters are played by relatively unknown actors who seem very natural and real. This, coupled with the "found footage" approach, lends heavily to the "this is really happening" vibe. Both the characters are even more believable for the traits each reveals as the events get weirder. Katy becomes more bitchy and whiny, and Micah tries hard to "alpha male" his way through the haunting. Neither approach works, but both add an air of truthfulness to the documentation. We are seeing people under stress and unguarded; the makeup is off. It does not make them more sympathetic characters, but it does get us even more involved as viewers in the immediacy of the moment.

What I found most interesting were the questions raised about the act of observation itself. As the film progresses, you get the subtle indication that this entity, whatever it is, knows that it is being filmed. Whether Micah's camera provokes anger or exhibitionism on the part of the intruder, it is arguable that things got a lot worse once the camera got involved. There's a media studies thesis in there somewhere, for your grad students reading this. For the rest of us, it makes for one hell of an effective movie.

Thanks to a well-handled viral marketing campaign, this film is now in theaters nationwide. I recommend going to see it on the big screen - it is worth it. Moreover, the experience of being around other folks getting creeped outta their gourds is kinda neat. So yeah, go see it in the theater, definitely.

But I also recommend going earlier in the day. This is one film you don't want hanging over your head when you go home to turn out the lights.

Favorite songs of the moment

2009-10-20T17:15:00.003-05:00

The Brains: Money Changes Everything

While this song was made popular by Cyndi Lauper, I have always been a fan of its original incarnation, written and performed by Atlanta band The Brains. This version was recorded at the Wax-N-Facts 30 year anniversary, and I think that's another Atlanta band, the Swimming Pool Q's, backing up the lead singer.

Romeo Void: A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)

I am a huge Romeo Void fan. The 80's were an interesting decade for music all around, but Debora Iyall and the rest of the group made some of the most challenging music - musically and politically - that I've ever heard. This particular song gets stuck in my mental jukebox pretty regularly, so I've included it here.

El Ten Eleven: Every Direction is North

I first heard these guys as part of the soundtrack for the film Helvetica, a documentary about the typeface. I like this video clip especially because you can watch the song being built from scratch in real time.

Avishai Cohen: Smash

Israeli-born Cohen is a phenomenal bass player. This is from his 2006 album Continuo. I like the whole album, but this was the track that made me say, "I have to go buy that right now."

The Producers: She Sheila

Another Atlanta band (I have them on my mind this week, it seems). Sorry for the poor-quality video. Best I could find. The song rocks, though.

The Nicene Creed, Colbert style

2009-10-14T09:47:00.004-05:00

Yep. The whole creed. You go, Stephen. Nice ending, too.

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Books that changed my life: Biodegradable Man: Selected Essays, by Milton Mayer

2009-10-10T18:15:00.001-05:00

When folks ask - and sometimes they do - I describe myself, vocationally and ideologically, as an "ex-newspaperman." My history, my context, my weapon of choice, is the long narrative, the nonfiction essay. The biting phrase, lemon-peppered with political bent and righteous indignation, is my mother-tongue. Mencken, Lardner, Trilling - these are my kin. Hell, even ol' Uncle Karl, the salty Marx himself, was a foreign correspondent before the long years of the British Museum and Das Kapital. In my mind's eye, I sweat ink. Young men, as the old Latin teacher once hissed, standing atop the writing desk, throaty and Brooklyn-born, I love woids!

But of all those many woids I love, by far the woids I love the most are those of Milton Mayer.

At the end of 1990, I was in my second year of college. War (the first one of ours in the Persian Gulf) was either well underway or heating up, depending upon how you mark the particulars. I was working at the campus bookstore for my work study.

One of my weekly tasks was shelving books after they came in from deliveries and were processed. The week we started back to school after Christmas break was in mid-January. It also happened to be the week of my birthday, and I made a spur of the moment decision: I was going to pick one of the books I was shelving and buy it for myself as a birthday present.

When I came across Biodegradable Man in the bin, I am not sure what first drew me to take a second look. Perhaps it was the title. More likely it was the "Selected Essays" bit. In any case, something about the book prompted me, as I was carrying it to the shelf, to flip it over and read the back. There I found the following (quoted from one of Mayer's essays inside):

If we reject Karl Marx, it has got to be because Marx too man first and last for an economic animal, moved to every other end by his economic considerations. A Calvin Coolidge who says, "The business of thei country is business," has no quarrel with Marx except on the technical nicety of the management of the enterprise. The business of this country, and every country, is liberation, liberation from political and economic servitude and from the subtler but more devastating servitudes of ignorance, bigotry and boredom. Man is a thinking as well as a feeling animal whose self-realization, unlike that of the barnyard critters, requires the life-long activity of a persistently inquiring intellect and a persistently discriminating taste. These are the objectives that the liberal arts serve, and liberal education is nothing but the beginning of their habituation. It is a platitude (but none the less valid for that) that the masterpieces of the liberal arts do not teach us what to think and feel, but how. There abides the great Latin pun - Facio liberos ex liberis libras libraque - "I make free men out of boys by means of books and balances."

If Mayer didn't have me in rallying common cause with me against ignorance, bigotry and boredom (though he did), I would not have been able to resist the grand gesture toward the benefits of the liberal arts (a muse with which I was just then becoming smitten) and the Latin. On the strength of the back cover alone, I bought the book.

It is important to let you know a bit of where my mind was at this point in my life. I had been raised, by my Mom, mostly, on conspiracy-theory laden skepticism and hyper-conservative Libertarianism. Mid-way through high school, however, the former went to work on the latter in my psyche, right around the time I was introduced to the writings of Karl Marx. What emerged from that brackish bouillabaisse of competing claims was a new me; a nascent leftist with a strong pacifist streak and a healthy wariness of what passes for both conservatism and liberalism in our current political sphere. I was angry and over-educated - precociously and verbosely ferocious - and Mayer, God bless him, seemed to be speaking my language.

Evenings for the next few weeks I spent reading from essay to essay, in sequence. I was please to no end with my purchase. The first section, America the Beautiful, was a series of six essays of cultural commentary, where Mayer examined (and skewered) and America both present and vanishing, whether the demise of hitch-hiking culture and the commuter train, or the rise of bourgeois refuges like the gated community and the country club. The middle essay, "In the Tomb," is an extended meditation on the limited comfort the art of interior design can offer to the owner of a backyard fallout shelter whom Mayer, with measured cudgels of sympathy and irony, interviews.

I loved the language, the style, and the wit of this man from the outset. His voice was a voice I both esteemed and envied. I, too, saw things in my community that I thought were absurd, and I, too, had a desire to write of them with this practiced ire.

It turns out, however, that this first section - enjoyable though it was - simply was an appetizer for all that followed. As good as Mayer was at social commentary (and he was very, very good), his real talent lay in political commentary. His was the engaged discourse of the populists of a long-lost generation, and he walked the talk.

Indeed, I quickly came to learn, Milton Mayer was that Mayer, the Mayer of Mayer vs. Rusk, a Supreme Court case I had been taught in my high school American History and Government class during my overeducated youth. Mayer had taken on the McCarthy-tinged torpor of his times, challenging the American government to a battle of quills when he was denied a passport for refusing to sign an anti-communist loyalty oath (or, indeed, any oath, Quaker that he was - but I am getting ahead of myself). He took on the government and he won, and what's more, he wrote about it, in a remarkable essay, "A Man with a Country":

It would be much more useful if a senator of a congressman - or a President who vetoes it - would resist a bad law like the Internal Securities Act [under which Mayer first went to court] or a bad regulation like the State Department's; but they will not. They will say, "It's the law. We may not like it, but it's the law." But we hanged the Nazi leaders at Nurnberg for saying that, and properly; a man who will obey the law, whatever the law, wants a form of government in which man exists for the state and not the state for man.

In this day and age, with language like that, you might mistake Mayer's rhetorical cant for those of cultural commentators on the right, those of a much less intelligent stripe - those who would resist government encroachment for more partisan, less principled reasons. But Mayer - God bless him - would have stood his ground as well against our current bumper-crop of pinheads. The Glenn Becks and the Ann Coulters of Mayer's day were eviscerated (and rightly so) in the wake of his mighty pen. "Veepings," he called the lot of 'em, naming them for the toadies they were (and remain).

So after a couple sessions of reading, I was pretty pleased with my purchase, to say the least. The best, however, was yet to come.

A little over half-way through the book is a quiet little essay, an essay entitled "Sit Down and Shut Up." This essay was a description of Mayer's first encounter with the Religious Society of Friends - the Quakers, as they are more popularly known. This little essay, to say the least, has had a profound effect on my life.

You see, up to that point, I had little truck with organized religion. I had been raised an atheist, as I mentioned. In high school I had dabbled with some eastern mysticism, reading the Tao te Ching and the Bhagavad Gita and the like. I had been to an Episcopal church a few times with my friend Robert, and Sewanee was an Episcopal school, but in 1991 I would have told you I was a long, long way from Western religion, let alone Christianity.

But God is not without a sense of humor, and moreover is patient (and kind). Mayer's little essay is no more than four pages long. Midway between the third and the fourth pages I read this:

What do I know about the Quakers? I know that they were persecuted, not merely as dissenters, but for many of their positive tenets, such as their denial of special priesthood; their indifference to sacrament, including their refusal to take oaths; their complete democracy of organization, down to the point of determining action on any issue by the "sense" of the Meeting and not by vote; their historic opposition to war, though in this, as in all temporal issues, they refuse to bind individual conscience; and their recognition, as original as their opposition to slavery, of the complete equality of women with men.

Having read that for the first time, I went back and read the essay again. And then a third time. At that point I think I must have said, "If there were still Christians like that, I shouldn't so much mind being a Christian."

Thanks to Mayer, I idealized the Quakers. I idealize them still, having spent twelve years of my life being one, starting that next fall, in 1991. I idealize them even though contemporary Quakers are, by and large, a long way from the enemy-less pacifism of which Mayer wrote (most of them, myself included, discovered over time that when they weren't being partisanly aggressive, they were still itchingly passive aggressive). I idealize them even though most Southern Quakers, reacting to the fundamentalisms of the Bible belt, are a long way from Jesus as well. No matter what they are, I love and always will love the Quakers of that page, the page Mayer wrote. That page gave me a hope, a direction, a fervor, and - God help me - a religion, for the first time in my life.

How can I estimate the effect that essay had upon me? The effect is incalculable. My career, such as it is, and all my schooling, from bachelor to master and beyond, has been shaped by the glimpse of the Kingdom that paragraph held for me. That essay helped me get right with Jesus, though it took a long, long time for me to realize that truth.

Those who knew me in my twenties are better equipped than I to decide whether I was too bad, or too good, a Quaker to remain one. Like Mayer, I love the Society of Friends despite the problems and shortcomings I see in them. Unlike Mayer, who remained a fellow traveler of the Friends throughout his adult life, I eventually made my break with them. Though I admit I delayed the formal severance until long, long after I had stopped attending Meetings for Worship with the Friends. I delayed, in fact, until the last, the absolute last, possible moment.

My journey continues, the journey begun in that essay, in this book. Though I am now, and shall remain, a Catholic (and I leave it to those who know me now to decide whether too bad or too good of one), I am deeply thankful for that mystic stillness I learned as a Friend. I am terrified by many things in this world, but not by silence. Silence, the Living Silence, is a friend to me.

I carry that silence in a special place within my heart, a place right next to my ire and my righteous indignation. As my heart pumps the ink I let pass for my blood, the cadence of the beat, to the words that I write, to the joy of a well-turned phrase landing pie-like on the face of yet another Veepings - all of that is thanks to old Milton Mayer, and for that, for so much more, I salute him.

Detourning Women

2009-10-06T15:31:00.004-05:00

Ladies and gentleman (and ladies): detournement.

(Thanks to Jennifer Randles for bringing this to my attention.)

All of these lives... rearranging themselves for me

2009-09-24T15:24:00.005-05:00

A couple of months back I posted about a series of ads I noticed in the Atlantic monthly, and the subtle (or not so subtle) racist undertones I noted in them.

Now that the most recent fracas -- that being over whether Joe Wilson's outburst at the President was an act of racism or not -- is finally starting to die down, I figured it was time to say a little something about this:

Now, yes. I want to give this some benefit of the doubt. It is a stunning ad, and quite amazingly executed (assuming these are actual human acrobats, and not cgi). Be that as it may, however, every time I watch this I think the exact same thing to myself:

Look. Here's over a thousand black-haired, brown-skinned people, arrayed reverently (given the saffron-like robes, one might even say, worshipfully) around the supine blond white woman.

At her every whim, they whirl and shift themselves into new patterns around her: "All of them rearranging themselves... all of the time..."

It is hard, what with the visual imagery being what it is, not to think of all the gyrations and rearrangements that third-world economies have gone into in order to provide us (supine white folks) with the earlier generations of our American comfort objects, our shoes and our handbags.

The fact that she is the focal point is clear. The fact that she is the only one not working her ass off is also clear. What is even more clear is that she seems completely oblivious (or uncaring) to all this black-haired motion that is, quite literally, everywhere she might care to turn her gaze.

The technologies of the industrialized world's white reality -- whether we are talking about television (where it took us a long, long time to get from Father Knows Best to the Cosby Show) or the American electoral process (ditto) -- have always been geared to generate illusory results. White technologies obscure the plain realities of racial, economic, and class disparity that haunt the green meadows of our "civilized" world. We may present ourselves with prettied-up images of all this, but the actuality of it is actually much more grisly and horrific and absurd.

I'm not telling you anything new, of course. You know this. James Cone and Jacques Ellul told you all this a long time ago, and many others besides. But now here is the Palm Pre, reminding us again, only now in much more direct manner, of this simple truth: For every relaxing, oblivious white girl out there, there are a hell of a lot of hard working brown skinned people, rearranging themselves and their lives.

That the result of this disparity is sometimes beautiful for us does not obscure the fact that it is also obscene. Tote that around in your Blackberry, little Miss America.

Senator Corker responds

2009-09-10T14:34:00.004-05:00

Dear Dr. Dault,

Thank you for taking the time to contact my office about supporting a public health insurance plan option in comprehensive health care reform. Your input is important to me, and I appreciate the time you took to share your thoughts.

I strongly believe that no issue requires an innovative cure more than our country's ailing health care system. No matter whose statistics you believe, millions of Americans, including 800,000 Tennesseans, lack adequate health insurance. Beyond the chaos this causes to our health care system and the American economy, the human and emotional toll is enormous. I believe, as you do, that all Americans, regardless of medical history or preexisting conditions, deserve the opportunity to have access to high-quality health insurance coverage that is both affordable and transferrable between jobs. I also agree with you that increasing efficiency, reducing fraud, and maximizing competition between health insurance plans is the best way to achieve the best health insurance system.

I want you to know that I am meeting regularly with doctors, hospital representatives, the insurance industry, and patients like you to get a well-rounded perspective on every option available that presents a possible solution. As the Senate debates comprehensive health care reform, I assure you that I will be working with my colleagues to craft legislation with the best possible balance of choice, quality, and affordability among health insurance plans. The insight you have provided in your letter will certainly help my staff and I more effectively look in to this issue.

Thank you again for your letter. I hope you will continue to share your thoughts with me.

Sincerely,

Bob Corker
United States Senator

Tales from the Health Wars

2009-09-07T20:19:00.007-05:00

When I was in college, a good many years ago now, it was right around the time of the first Gulf War. You might not remember the name of Tom Costen, but I remember that name. Tom was the first American pilot shot down and killed when the conflict broke out. Tom was also a Sewanee graduate.

The Sunday after Tom was shot down, the pastor at All Saints Chapel on campus preached a sermon in his honor. Actually, it wasn't so much of a sermon as a full-on eulogy. I remember that Sunday morning, and Tom's name, because that church service was pretty pivotal in my life.

The pastor did a fine job with the eulogy, all things considered. He certainly was clear that what had happened - Tom's being shot down and having died - was a tragedy. I had no quarrel with that part of the sermon. It was a tragedy, and the whole war was a tragedy, and I and my male friends were scared to death we somehow were going to get caught up in it and die ourselves.

I was waiting, however, for the pastor to give the rest of the story. I was waiting for him, from the pulpit, to fix his eye on the congregation and remind us that - no matter how tragic the loss of Tom Costen was - it was equally tragic, and wrong, that he was sent to drop bombs on villages and towns and possibly (or probably) harm innocent civilians - women and children - in the process.

I waited for the pastor to do what I thought was his Christian duty, no matter how difficult, in naming that uncomfortable truth. However, he did not speak that truth. He finished the eulogy, and left it at that.

I wasn't a Christian then. Hell, I was just barely a theist. That was the morning I stopped singing in the choir at that Episcopal church (the chapel, being in the center of campus, was the center of life and arts, so I had joined the choir the year before, interested somewhat in the Christian mumbo-jumbo, but mostly baffled. By that point, however, I had at least figured out that Jesus would not be cool with the bombing part). So I left, and did not return. I wish sometimes that I had had the good sense to go talk to the pastor and confront him about it, but I didn't. A few months later, I happened upn the local Quaker meeting - but that's a whole 'nother story entirely.

Why I relate this old memory, here and now, is that last Sunday I saw a pastor be gutsy in a pulpit, and preach a homily with some balls, and it got me thinking about that old, old Sunday of my youth.

This past Sunday Father Val, our pastor here at the Cathedral in Memphis, preached a simple and straightforward sermon in which he reminded those present that Catholic social teaching about the protection of life does not end with the birth of a child. He reminded the congregation that the Church considers health care - for everyone - to be a basic human right.

Father Val went on to speak of Mother Theresa, of blessed memory, who would confront visitors to her mission in Calcutta, who wanted to help her, and challenge them to leave and find their own Calcuttas - not in remote India but in their own home cities. Father Val related this story and then challenged us - challenged us - to take that example to heart. He challenged us to remember that all human beings, as children of God, have the right to demand of us, and loot of our comfort and excess, for their basic health and welfare. He suggested that, following the words of Mother Theresa, that we might find some Calcutta right here in our midst, and that getting involved in these conversations about health care and getting right with Jesus and the poor might be a wise course to take.

I tell you, it was a gutsy homily. I left the church that morning with a feeling wholly different that the feeling I had, all those years ago, in the wake of the tragic death of Tom Costen.

You know, they say Lincoln once snuck into the side door of a church in D.C., and slipped out right as they were passing the collection plate. An aide accompanying him asked him what he thought of the sermon.

"It was fair," the Great Emancipator replied.

"Only fair? Not great?" pressed the aide.

"It was not a great sermon," Lincoln concluded, "because the pastor failed to ask anything great of the congregation."

I think last Sunday, Mr. Lincoln would have been pleased. Lord knows I was.

***

Dear Senator Corker and Senator Alexander

I am writing to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to change your position on the health care debate. Please become an advocate for the hard working people of Tennessee who are being bankrupted and ill-treated by corporate insurance companies who value profits over people, who deny legitimate claims made after years of premium payments on the basis of recission (i.e., retroactively applied "pre-existing condition" status found after a claim has been made), and who refuse to offer affordable coverage to all citizens. Senator Corker and Senator Alexander, I pray that you will come to support not only health care reform and health insurance reform in the strongest manner possible, but that you will also fully and visibly support the public option, to allow the people of Tennessee, and of America, the greatest number of choices for their health. Thank you for your service to this state, and please, for all our sakes, do the best for your constituents. Health care and health insurance reform, WITH a public option, NOW!

***

You can reach your representatives' offices by calling the toll-free switchboard at 1-866-210-3678, or by going to the Write Your Representative website.

***

Getting involved in something great feels good. You might should try it, if you haven't in a while. Just a suggestion from a good pastor I know. Thought I'd pass it on to you, friend.

These are a few of my favorite things

2009-09-04T11:57:00.003-05:00

In the words of Mike Watt, that last post was a heavy piece. So I decided I would lighten things up a bit.

For your pleasure, here's Unknown Hinson, playing Hendrix. Enjoy.

Walking in Memphis

2009-08-25T19:11:00.016-05:00

"...prodigality is the law, and excess alone is sufficient..."

- Fr. Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity, 1968

You never appreciate the subtle importance of a grid system until you have lost it - as I did for the eight years I was in Nashville. I could never find my sense of direction there. I even asked native Nashvillians (I almost wrote "Nashvillains") about this, and they, too, admitted that - despite having been born and grown up in the city - the cardinal directions still eluded them on an intuitive level. There is nothing so disorienting as trying to dead-reckon in a city in which you have no sense of direction.

In this sense, Memphis was a cool, clear breeze. North and south, east and west, these are on friendly terms again with my psyche. There are a few roads that remain cattywompous (that's a technical term for "indecipherable"), but they are the exception, not the rule. Moreover, Memphis was resistant to the introduction of an interstate through-way cutting across the heart of the city. By this little act of defiance, they gained a lovely green space (Overton Park, with a museum, a zoo, and a symphony band shell), and maintained these old, broad, tree-lined boulevards that give the city a very different feel than, say, Atlanta, with its cramped arteries and traffic congestion.

This city is an experiment. We are here for a year, at least to start with. We came up for three days in late July to find a place to live, and settled on a house that is perhaps a little beyond our means in terms of space and rent, but that is close enough to Christian Brothers University (my reason for being here for the next twelve months) that I can walk to work.

* * *

Walking is the great adventure, the next frontier. For a long time, now, I have been stymied by my dependence upon the petrochemical culture in this country. I have resisted it in certain ways - most notably by refusing to buy in to the macho egotism of the semi-annual new car purchase. Instead, I got my absolute money's worth out of the old Nissan I purchased back in '96. It's got nearly 250,000 miles on it, looks like absolute Hell, and still runs fine getting nearly thirty miles to the gallon. If you discount the costs of gas, but include purchase and repair costs, that comes out to my having spent around $.06 for every mile I've gotten out of the car. Not bad.

So the plan, and the hope, is that, having moved to a central, walkable location, I can get rid of the car. Kira and I will pare down to a one-car existence, with added benefits like more exercise for both of us and less stress on my left (read: clutch kicking) leg and hip, which have both been troubling me of late.

There have been little forays already, in the several weeks I have been here prior to Kira's permanent arrival. Walking to Bob's Barksdale Restaurant, which serves the best freakin' breakfast in the city (Those of you who know me well know what a find such a place was, and close by!), was followed by a leisurely stroll over the Cathedral, which is about a mile from our doorstep, down the lovely tree-lined and shady Central Avenue. Evenings have been spent exploring Cooper-Young, our new neighborhood, with its panoply of shops and restaurants.

* * *

We call the new place "Kookyshoes." It is a two-storey, rambling collapse of a place, painted an indescribable shade of sea-foam green (is it blue? not exactly. Is it green? not precisely. It is too pale to be pretty, and too dark to be soothing - sort of like a hospital wall). I gave it the name one blistering hot day as I was pulling into the driveway, my air conditioning in the car failing yet again. Everything at that moment - no AC in the car, no AC in the house, boxes everywhere, no time to unpack them, too many huge things to do, money draining out of accounts like we had cracked a levee, and Kira two hundred miles away for the next several weeks - just seemed so absurd, the name just made perfect sense all of a sudden. Ol' Kookyshoes. Don't pay no mind, tha's just Ol' Kookyshoes's way.

Anthropomorphizing can help, those moments when you can only just barely keep from screaming with the rage in your skull. For me, I imagined the house as a doddering old man, well meaning but incompetent, and needy of our care and understanding. The house - Hell, the whole damn situation, was needful of much charity. That I have not yet murdered somebody in all this frustration piled upon frustration is proof enough to me of powerful forces of benevolence at work in the restraint of my soul, forces much greater than my own sorry will. I take a moment here to thank the angels for the patience I have been granted under their care.

* * *

Everything I wear these days is pretty intentional. A couple years back, Kira and I were traveling in the Netherlands with some friends and we got caught in a rainstorm on the way to the train station, and ended up shivering and being chilled throughout the rest of the long day on the train and after. Since that time, I have been on a quest for clothing that manages temperature and moisture more effectively than my old cotton t-shirts and blue jeans.

The result is that most days I dress, like my old friend Chris had pointed out, like I was ready for monsoon season in India.

I look a little peculiar, I guess, in my ventilated shirts, Tilley hat, and convertable cargo pants. However, the clothes I wear leave me mostly fearless in both the rain and the beating sun. Needless to say, as I was exploring Memphis neighborhoods near Ol' Kookyshoes on foot, I was well-served by this get up. With the exception of one unfortunate run in with a patch of chiggers (little red no-see-um bugs that make your like an itchy Hell for a week), I have been pretty well protected and comfortable.

One Sunday, coming back from the Cathedral and, after, the coffee shop around the bend, I spotted a woman in the late forties weaving her way toward me on the sidewalk. As we passed, she slurred the words (in an accent? Perhaps, or perhaps it was simple intoxication), "Hello, Austrian!"

I am not Austrian. Not yet, at least. But I took it as a promising sign.

* * *

Now it's thirty years ago, and I am sitting in the gymnasium, playing Governor Fob James. I am presiding behind a desk with a microphone, and my suit does not quite fit, and I have been given a top hat that now sits on the desk in front of me. For some reason I am the narrator over our elementary school play, written by our teachers. It extolls the history of all things Alabama, from our Phenix City, deep in the east, to the muscled shoals of the north, and all the long acres between stretching west and south. I remember I could not pronounce "Appamatox," always stressing the wrong syllable, no matter how many times my loquacious tongue tried to work its way around the word. I remember the parade of bored miscreants that passed for my classmates, the actors in this embellished pageant, portraying the shambling and various characters that, apparently from the representation, bumped and mumbled the state to great heights.

Most acutely, I remember the retiring and ashen-skinny young boy in blackface, clutching a borrowed coronet and clad in a bowtie, standing straight at the microphone and telling us the brief but vital history of the man W.C. Handy. I cannot today recall the name of the youth, but I have never thought of him as anything but noble. In such a hostile context, there in the rusty buckle of the Bible Belt, he could easily have played the role in many a deprecating manner, yet he wore his stain nobly. He spoke quietly, but audibly and articulately, despite his tendency in normal speech to stumble over words. That morning he took especial care to be heard, and in my minds eye I see his dignity. Sometimes, in the years since, though I cannot explain exactly how, that simple memory has strengthened me.

* * *

I ignored Jesus again today. He's the man who lives under the railroad trestle, just around the corner from where we live. He has buggy eyes and, every time I've encountered him, he's been wearing what I can only describe as one of those old-timey football helmets. I know he's Jesus, even though I have not yet met him, and he scares me, and I am afraid to talk with him, or to listen to his questions when I think he is going to ask me for money. Each time, as I pass under the trestle or through the little park where he sleeps some nights, I walk to the other side of the street if I see him coming. One time he nodded at me. He knows that I know.

Jesus is the toughest. The minor prophets are easier. The guy who stopped me on Central Avenue today to ask me for change for the bus told me his name was Malachi. No kidding. I gave him the six bits I had in my pocket, wished him a pleasant ride, and walked away wondering at how the stitching that holds together the universe seems more bare to me here - like the laces of a football beneath my fingertips, or the rough thickness of a sewn-up scar.

* * *

And then, later that night, as I was driving home, there, without any irony whatsoever on the Elvis-heavy radio station, was the old Marc Cohn song, "Walking in Memphis." As I listened, I was overcome with the oddest feeling. The feeling was full, and heavy, and very undeniably there, all at suddenly once. It was the feeling that follows the unexpected rearrangement of a long-familiar room. The fact that the room was inside me only made it that much more immediate.

Whereas before, I just enjoyed the song, suddenly when the lyric got to mentioning Union Avenue, and Hollywood, I suddenly had a picture in my mind of both those places. I get my mail down on Union, where the PO box is, and I pass Hollywood when I head east. These places in that old song are now, overwhelmingly, my places.

And I had to pull the car over. For, you see, I was weeping, and for a couple of minutes, I couldn't stop.

* * *

I am not sure what I am doing here, Lord. I have uprooted my life and my suddenly-expanding family to a new place, with radical hopes and not much in the way of security and assurance. I missed my wife so much when she was not here. Now that she is here, some moments I find I am also missing the solitude of those weeks terribly. My soul is always so confused. My life is a series of moments in which I always feel I should be doing something else, no matter what it is that I am doing at that moment.

I pray for some peace in all this newness and upheaval, some peace in my restless soul.

And a direction, Lord. Point me out a direction.

Prayer, and some place to walk to, that's what my soul needs.

I pray. I walk.

I hope.

medias in res

2009-08-08T08:24:00.003-05:00

We (Kira and I) are in the midst of our first major (as in major major) move. We have moved across Nashville twice already, and so we had thought we had this stuff down pat. Not so. Welcome to Memphis.

To make a long story short, we got flim-flammed by the moving company, and the price we were quoted on the front end was less than half what we ended up paying on the back end (we're in the midst of dealing with that). Next, when we arrived, the washing machine we asked the rental company to install was not installed (though it had been three weeks since the request had been made). Worse, though the air conditoning "worked," in the sense that the units made noise, they barely blew air through the ducts, and the air that came through was close to 90 degrees (I measured it with my nifty thermometer). It is August in Memphis, so outside temperatures are topping 100 degrees Farenheit, and I am writing this from a motel room (in other words, we are in the midst, as well, of dealing with that). I am promised the air conditioning technician will be out "first thing Monday." Hope springs eternal.

When the washer finally was installed, late yesterday, we came home to find that the installation somehow had knocked a door knob clean off the door. On Monday, I will phone in a work order with the rental company to deal with that.

Worst of all, Kira still has three weeks of her chaplain residency left in Nashville, which means that last night I had to say goodbye to her for much longer than I would like. This is the hardest part. I am glad that she is not here to suffer the heat and the headaches of making our new home a home, but I miss her fiercely. I cannot wait for this month to be over, and to get back to normal life, or at least a "normal-er" life.

I needed to vent. Thanks for listening.

How much is that white guy in the window?

2009-07-27T14:51:00.006-05:00

Forgive me. I've been reading the Atlantic Monthly again.

Flipping through a recent issue, I began to become aware that there was a common thread running through the images I was seeing. Not in the layout of the magazine itself, per se, but rather in the advertising. Every few pages there was this commonality. Once I noticed it, I went back and checked to make sure. Sure enough. It was there.

The first image was near the front of the magazine - within the first few pages, I'd say. As you can see, it shows an image of, well, a white guy in the right corner of a window. He stares out, masterfully, over a production floor. He looks calm and relaxed and in control, even though his shirt sleeves are rolled down. His posture (arm up, legs slightly crossed) communicates that things are okay. He is where he should be, right? And so is everything below him. Where it should be. For some reason, this guy's back simply oozes confidence, to my eyes, at least.

So far, so good. But then, a few pages on, here was this second image - in many ways a direct replica of the first. Powerful-looking man, in lower right corner of window, looking out through window in a visual narrative of poise and mastery. This time its is harder to tell the racial profile of the man, but he is quite decidedly not African-American (this will become more important in a second). If I'm not mistaken, that's Taiwan through the window. I especially like the tagline: "The end of think. The beginning of know." Introspection is dead; kiss it goodbye. Now is the time for the blind bling-bling of bourgeois assurance that brought us great advances like collateralized debt obligations and... you know... dioxin and stuff. all this to say, by white guy #2, I was starting to get a little suspicious.

That was when I came across this third image, toward the back of the magazine (wouldn't you just guess that?). In contrast to the two masterful non-African-Americans in the right of the two previous windows, here is a very nervous looking African-American, posed to the left of the frame, in a similar manner to the first two. Only here, the window is replaced by a (barred!) railing, a poor-man's window, if you will. The caption reflects uncertainty and lack of control over one's life - precisely the opposite of the message of the first two images. If the first two guys are management, this fellow is lower-middle management at best, and facing an immanent layoff at worst.

What is one to make of these images, taken together? First, probably, is the fact that they are together. All three of them occur within fifty pages of each other in the same magazine. You would think advertising firms would want to keep their material a bit more fresh than this. And yet, here they all are.

Second, taken together, they convey a narrative of business in our present-day global America. The narrative, as I have intimated above, is one of mastery and its lack. To the white guys sweating the present "economic downturn," the message seems to be, "don't worry - you're still on top." To the non-white, however, the message is just as clearly one of nervousness and lack of control over one's resources and, ultimately, time (delay of retirement indefinitely, for example).

It is not lost on me that these images are amalgamated within the Atlantic, a magazine I continue to have serious misgivings about reading. I keep feeling like the editorial policy of the Atlantic should be much, much to the left of what it actually is. You pick it up, it at first has that nice lefty vibe, like the one you got clearly in the good ol' days when Lewis Lapham was at the editorial helm over at Harper's, or, sainted memory!, the really good old days of "fighting" Bob LaFollette and Milton Mayer over at the Progressive. I can't help thinking that any of those mags would have put the kibosh on these sorts of semiotic shenanigans between their covers, despite the loss of potential ad revenue.

Alas, however, not so the Atlantic.

So, like the old song, I ask, "How much is that white guy in the window?" How much as in, "how often?" of course, but also, "at what cost?" I ask because, cute as he is, I am certain that white guy is for sale, and I want to suggest that the price - for us nervous folks, non-white and otherwise - might indeed be too high. Caveat emptor.

Updates redux

2009-07-27T14:15:00.002-05:00

I'm also making some slight adjustments to the blogroll. It looks like La Perruque has called it quits, so I dropped them (sadly). I've shifted some around, and added a couple blogs from Jason Ingalls (Practicing Peace) and Jonathan Warren (Dust and Ink). Thanks to Jonathan for giving me a shout out in his first post.

In other news, I am making really good headway on the draft of my new manuscript. I am very pleased with the progress, and think I might actually be able to get it to my editor by the September deadline. It is some of the most fun I've had writing, I might add. Getting to muse at length about Bible culture is a pure joy for me.

One last note, to readers who know me personally (as opposed to the many who just like my writing - and thank you to those for reading, as well): if we haven't caught up in a while, email me. There's lots of good news that's worth relating, having to do with life and family, but its not the type of thing I will post here on the blog. Looking forward to being in touch.

Okay - back to the writing desk!

Slight changes to Figaro-Pravda formatting

2009-07-27T13:59:00.003-05:00

After many many months of resistance, I have finally added the Blogger automations to Figaro-Pravda's templates. I had already made this switch with my other blogs, but I held out on the flagship, handcoding changes in HTML.

What caused me to switch? The archiving functions in the new template are much more flexible, and that sold me. Now the back catalog is much more accessible to the curious. Go to it, kids. Knock yourselves out.

On your end, there won't be much of a hiccup - or, at least, there shouldn't be. If you notice anything amiss, gimme a hollar, and I'll go behind the scenes and tinker.

As always, thank you for reading. Thank you.

Excelsior!

David

Probably the reason I made it out of the Eighties alive.

2009-07-10T00:20:00.004-05:00

I summer where I winter at. No one is allowed there.

Thanks, Bob. Thanks for everything.

I think I know what Freud would say

2009-07-05T19:57:00.003-05:00

Cigar. Teddy bear. Gun. A harem of women. Yeah, I think I know.

That's the completely conspiracy-theory obsessed Bob Welch, by the way. If I didn't remember this song from my childhood in the '70's, I'd swear this video and the website were part of one of Michael Rosenbaum's famous pranks.

Look out, Ted Nugent. There's a new sheriff in town.

Richard Henry Lee...

2009-07-05T01:02:00.003-05:00

...Virginian statesman and delegate to the Continental Congress of 1776, is best known for the motion that led to the Declaration of Independence. He made the motion on June 7, 1776, and the deliberations stretched on into weeks. Finally growing impatient, Lee again arose in the assembly in early July and declared:

"Mr. President, we have discussed this issue for days. It is the only course for us to follow. Why then, Sir, do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise, not to devastate and to conquer, but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. The eyes of Europe [and the world] are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast, in the felicity of the citizen, to the ever-increasing tyranny."

Happy birthday, America. Don't forget where you came from.

Recon, starring Peter Gabriel

2009-06-29T15:38:00.004-05:00

Just discovered this short student film (!) starring Peter Gabriel and Charles Durning. I wish I could find it in higher quality, but you'll get the idea from this, regardless. Clocking in at just under ten minutes, it is a neat little piece of cyberpunk noir. Enjoy -

Victory is mine

2009-06-24T22:53:00.005-05:00

For the past year or so, Kira and I have been increasingly conscientious about composting our food scraps. This has been, on the whole, a positive experience, and it has been pleasing to see the subsequent reduction in our weekly flow of garbage that gets hauled away from the curb.

I say "on the whole," however, because composting is not, at the end of the day, a bed of roses. The song of the lonely composter is, at best, bittersweet -- a mixed melody of virtue and sorrow.

I sing, dear reader, of fruit flies.

It started with the advent of warmer weather a few weeks back. We have been keeping a small, charcoal-filtered scrap bin inside near the kitchen trash cans. When preparing food or slicing up fruit to put on our cereal for breakfast, the location of the pail made it easy to get rid of the bio-waste as it was being generated. Throughout the cold months pf winter, this arrangement worked just fine. Come the summer, though, things started to change.

Without being too graphic, it got to the point where every virtuous lift of the lid on the small bio container brought its own "reward" of a small cloud of very active -- and hungry -- pests. It didn't take long for the strawberry tops and banana peels, doing their fetid business in the small green pail, to become a breeding ground for these harmless, but quite annoying, swarms.

What to do? What to do? Both Kira and I have been trying to avoid harsh chemicals lately. Allergies, general health, and a host of other concerns leave us leery of fumigating rooms or zapping the little bozos directly. We both, my wife and I, have been on a "home remedies" kick of late, and I was curious if there was a more "old world" solution to the problem then resorting to the wares of DuPont and Dow Chemical.

Turns out there is. After a little thinking, and some digging on the internet, I came up with this: take a shallow dish, fill it with a dash of port wine, stretch some cling wrap over the top, and poke a small hole in the middle with the blades of a scissors.

Some of you who know me, reading this, may recall that I have a particular fascination with the theme of monkey traps. Being a theologian, I think a lot about the workings of systems, and I am particularly interested by systems that are powered to deliver results on the basis of "lowest-common-denominator" operations. That is to say, I like systems that are so elegantly simple that they continue to work even when they are in what is known in the biz as a "failure condition."

For a system to work, even while its failing, requires the sober understanding on the part of the designer of some factor, outside the system, which can be depended upon to deliver a satisfactory result, regardless of the condition of the system. In the case of the monkey trap, that consistent factor is the short-term thinking of the monkey. Because the monkey cannot let go of the immediate desire to have the fruit or the nuts in the bottom of the trap, it gets caught -- and held -- by its own fist, refusing to let go of the treasure in the trap.

This fruit fly catcher functions using the same principle: the files are smart enough (and driven enough by the scent of the sweet, sweet wine) to get in through the hole, but they have no capacity whatsoever to get back out again.

The first morning, after laying the trap, there were ten flies floating in my little scarlet sea. Two days later, there are thirty, and I no longer spot pests on the wing here in the house.

Given all the catastrophic failure we have seen recently, I am encouraged by this. With a little thought and planning, systems can be designed to incorporate failure into their flow, so that even when they aren't directly "working," they can still work. Part of this, I think, involves a willingness to let go of active control, and to allow passive factors to operate.

Passive factors are not nearly as glamourous, of course. It would probably be a lot more macho and satisfying to grab that can of D-Con and zap each individual winged beastie in turn. But there's a lot of ways that that macho crap can fail, and pretty quickly. Can't be everywhere at once, in the first place. Second, the little pests might outbreed me, and develop a resistance to the chemicals. And finally there is the worry that I and my loved ones might not be as resistant to the chemicals as the bugs are (an ultimate sort of system failure, this).

What I love about the port-wine trap, in contrast, is that none of these factors drives the success of the system. All that matters is that fruit flies keep having a mad lust for fruit juice -- and I think its fair to say that nature is on my side with that one.

Take my advice, O reader: build to fail.

Gives new meaning to the phrase, "celery stalk"

2009-06-20T11:38:00.005-05:00

When I lived in Atlanta, years ago, the bathroom in my small apartment had a window. The tub was an old clawfoot tub, and it was set out from the wall, so the landlord had installed a wraparound shower curtain that ran all the way around the tub, obscuring the window.

One day, while cleaning, I pulled back the curtain to find that an ivy vine from the outside wall had worked its way through the window sash, and was extending several inches into the room. As it extended, it was not attaching to anything. Instead, it was just suspended in air, as if it were reaching toward the shower, to grab.

Say what you will about Al-Qaeda. For my money, that mute tendril of intrusion was as terrifying as any Hitchcock film. You northerners might not understand, but down here, we've got kudzu, and kudzu will freakin' eat your car.

At last, I have found someone who shares my fears. Watch, and be edified, citizens.

(It seems to have an ad attached to it - apologies!!)

The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

2009-06-16T14:27:00.005-05:00

Today, in the parking lot of the post office, I observed a family (with a small dachshund, no less), driving a Volvo with truck nuts.

And I thought, already in my horror:
What if this is not irony?

An historical Rhyme

2009-06-16T09:41:00.003-05:00

I made this up in the shower this morning. Sing to the tune of "London Bridges Falling Down":

In a duel you lost your nose
lost your nose
lost your nose
Now it's made of brass and gold
Tycho Brahe!

Don't blame me. Blame Wikipedia.

The 23rd Grand Illusion

2009-06-10T14:18:00.002-05:00

Once, many years ago, I lived in my mix tapes. For me, they were an art form; a style of communication better than a written letter (back when we used to write letters). What was wonderful about the medium to little teenage me was the ability (the hope, at least) of conveying not just semantic meaning, but emotion. Like all teenagers, I was inarticulate about feelings when it came to using mere words, but I found I could achieve something like communication through a collage of sounds. I wooed with mix tapes. I worked out anger with mix tapes. I found the possibilities that arise out of juxtaposition and combination. A few cubic inches of plastic and iron filings were my palette. Into this space, which was not a real space but rather a space of the mind and the ears, I painted and collected and assembled sound.

What I found then, and find often now, was that this language of assembly and sound was not (as Wittgenstein cautioned against) any sort of "private language." The assemblages on my mixes spoke to me, certainly, but the only reason I really found them useful was because I believed they would speak to others, as well. To the high school crush to whom I could not bear to reveal my feelings, I could give a mix tape. The mix was crafted and constructed to convey without literal conversance. The mix spoke a secret language of Gnostic inference and ghostly symbols, but it was never meant to be indecipherable. The whole point was for the assemblage to be deciphered.

Years later, I find that I am still bound to those crushes who have remained in my life, no longer or never as lovers, but as friends, by these secret languages. An old acquaintance (for whom I never made a tape, though I am certain she was offered many by others) once said that she did not trust the medium of the mix tape: "They are always political; they always mean to say more than they are." Precisely.

Assemblage is powerful. Assemblage accomplishes, and its accomplishment is always and often unintentionally greater than the elements assembled. How is this so? The answer is not in the elements, or even in the assembly. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are interpreters and meaning-hounds. In psychology, the word apophenia is used to describe an overly heightened state of pattern recognition, where the sufferer seems to be seeing connections in every unrelated thing. If we take a step back from the precipice of pathology, however, we find that each of us benefits (it would be hard to say "suffers") from this condition. Without a certain level of the apophenic, a good game of chess would be impossible, negotiating city streets would be a nightmare, and we would never be able to locate a loved one's face in a crowd. We differentiate and combine, and in that process we associate and imagine that which is not there, but should be. We connect the dots, we fill in the colors among the spaces and the lines, we find new things. For the majority of humanity, this is simply what we do. Hence the articulate inarticulate joys of the mix tape, given and received.

Where the Hell have I been?

2009-06-08T16:59:00.003-05:00

Okay. So apparently I am the last human in Hipsville to have heard of the Athens, GA band Now It's Overhead. Oh, my goodness, but I find them enjoyable in a dark and moody sort of way. Check out the vid, kids. Howl.

Halifax Dispatch

2009-06-05T08:37:00.008-05:00

The water in the lakes and in the ocean is always cold here. That is what my wife told me before I got on the plane. Now, banking at below eight thousand feet above the little finger lakes surrounding the final approach to Halifax airport, I believe her. Even from this height, the water looks cold. And clear. I can see the bottoms of the lakes, we are so low now. It is actually quite an uncomfortable way to arrive somewhere, this low to the ground while still in the air. The descent is bumpy. I am glad to be on the ground.

Ahead of me in the border control line a man juggles and drops the duty-free bottle of Scotch he had carried from the airport shop in Newark, where we all got on the plane. In the brisk aroma of the aftermath the man, a religion scholar like myself (most of us were, on this flight), opined simply that "Shit happens."

Every time I fly North, I get the old Thomas Dolby song, "Flying North," stuck in my head - partly because it is a catchy song, and, well, I'm flying North. If you've never heard of Thomas Dolby, you actually have. He's the dude that did "She Blinded Me with Science, back in the '80's, and everybody has heard that. If you've never heard "Flying North," however, don't feel bad. I am one of six people on the planet that has actually heard that song (We have a club, which meets semiannually, usually somewhere in the tropics, like Tahiti).

There are no seagulls in Halifax. At least none that I have been able to find. Again, my wife tells me that this is likely because Halifax is so far North. Same basic reason, for the birds and the water. North. I am wondering if this also would account for the wireless internet reception, which is spotty, it seems, no matter where I go.

Everyone makes eye contact here. Most people smile when you walk past them. If you say "hello," they respond in kind. Evidently, no one here has gotten the Great North American Memo on Standoffishness, which seems to have such a firm hold on the lower 48. Needless to say, for the next two days, I am, for almost the first time, not out of place. These Nova Scotians seem to engage, quite naturally, in behaviors for which I have been scolded and teased for over three decades. Friendliness. Who knew? It is a reasonable substitute for the lack of seagulls.

Apparently, according to a debate I read about in one of the local free papers, Halifax has one adult club where topless dancing is permitted. Only the club is not actually in Halifax; it is in nearby Dartmouth. I noted this because the debate reported was over whether or not local entrepreneurs should be allowed to open Halifax's second topless adult club. Which will not actually be in Halifax, but rather (again) in nearby Dartmouth.

Last night I took myself out for dinner. I had the Surf and Turf at a local establishment that came highly recommended. It was a very pleasant meal. It is reassuring to know that, much like the skill of riding a bicycle never really leaves you, I can still navigate the innards of a crustacean. That being said, the Turf was a lot better than the Surf in this arrangement. When I comented about this to my wife, she reminded me that, traditionally, Maine lobsters are considered superior to Nova Scotian lobsters, whose meats are used primarily in derivative dishes such as bisques.

As a side note, I find myself wondering how my wife seems to be so confidently knowledgeable about the ways and means of Haligonian geography and lifestyle. I think it is because she went to Alleghany College, and received a very good liberal arts education there. Memo to self: start college fund.

This is, without a doubt, the most socially pleasant conference I have ever attended. At the reception last night I was invited to join tables of scholarly strangers who, apparently, just liked the looks of me and wanted to say hello. I am not used to this; I am used to the much more bellicose receptions at the American Academy of Religion. Everybody has an angle there (even me), and the Memo is in full effect. Not so in Halifax, and, perhaps, by extension, not so in the Catholic Theological Society of America. The proof of the pudding will come at next year's conference. Not for the first time are the hopes of a continent riding on the sturdy shoulders of Cleveland. O, sainted land of the Great Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame and the Flats, do not fail us again.

I can only imagine, from the examples I have seen, that the kilt is a difficult fashion choice to accessorize. All or nothing, really, the kilt is. Can't be half-assed about it. Not, at least, without looking a lot sillier than you look already, wearing the kilt. One of the many reasons Alec will always have my undying respect. That man can wear the devil out of a kilt.

Halifax has a surfeit of art galleries and used book shops. Both are a great pleasure to me, but I have not seen many patrons frequenting any of the ones I have visited. However, it is clear that both the galleries and the bookshops have been in place for a good, long while. Now that's an invisible hand I can believe in.

It interests me that the online spell check system for Blogger flags "pungence," which is a perfectly good word, and one I had considered using in a paragraph above (the one referring to the broken bottle of Scotch), but seems to bat nary an eyelash at "Haligonian." Obscurity, like rank, hath its privileges.

Halifax is an hour ahead of Eastern Daylight Time. I have never been in such a timezone, and I think it is adversely affecting me. When going to Europe, the shift is so dramatic that everything is naturally unnatural. Traveling across the US is a known quantity, so I don't think my body has trouble adjusting. But this slight inching ahead in time is just unnaturally natural enough to completely bollix up my circadian rhythms. I am a night owl by nature, and that is a recipe for dead-of-night disaster here in Halifax.

Speaking of disasters, there is no need to mention that a great many of the victims of the Titanic disaster are buried here in Halifax. I have searched in vain so far, but I am still hopeful that before my visit is over I will locate the grave of Leonardo di Caprio.

I got up last night and wanted to wash my hands. The warm water took a very long time to reach the tap. This is because the water is always cold this far North.

This morning, waiting for my taxi to take me to my airport departure, Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" played over the in-house stereo system in the hotel. I found myself warmed and, by turns, a little tearful.

My Father, thanks to the Army, traveled the world, though he had little taste for the circumstances he was in and what he saw. My Mother cared little for the world outside America, but America she loved fiercely and explored fiercely, at least when she was younger. In both cases, I know of these travels mostly through the pictures I have inherited. They sit in my well-ordered boxes now, these photos of my parents - pictured here together, here singly - along with nameless faces and locations I can only hazily identify by landscape and geography. I find myself wishing I had the stories behind those photos.

Somewhere between my Father's forced marches and my Mother's hermetic isolation, there are my travels. It is, I think to myself, a wonderful world. Halifax ain't bad, either. Here, in my own way, are the pictures.