Brilliant Disguise

So, is there some sort of game happening today?

2010-09-11T12:06:00.001-05:00

As I drove into Iowa City this morning at 7 a.m., there were a few more cars on the road than I see on most Saturdays. By 9 a.m., when I came out of the

KSUI studios on South Clinton Street, packs of black-clad fans were already streaming steadily along every major road leading toward Kinnick Stadium.

At first, I couldn't figure out why almost every person I saw was wearing black rather than gold, which is usually the more popular choice to fly the Hawkeye fan flag. But then I remembered that Other Team's colors are ketchup and mustard, and it all made sense. No one wants to be mistaken for their little brother.

LibraryThing review: The Union of Their Dreams

2010-05-01T21:49:00.000-05:00

Heroes are funny things. We choose to put someone on a pedestal for any number of reasons, from the way they look to the way they sing to the causes they champion. But beneath the façade of every hero beats the heart of a human being, with all the quirks and foibles that make up all of our complex personalities.

César Chávez was a hero to many people in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the driving force behind making the plight of migrant farmworkers visible to the rest of America through boycotts of grapes and lettuce. With the founding of the United Farm Workers union, he and his dedicated staff fought for what most of us recognize as basic human rights: a safe workplace, a fair wage, decent housing, education for our children. Under his leadership, the UFW boycotts captured the attention of the nation and won major concessions from field owners to improve the lives of the workers. His accomplishments have been enshrined in American life: schools, parks, libraries and streets have been named after him, and the state of California officially celebrates his birthday as César Chávez Day.

As Miriam Pawel illustrates in The Union of Their Dreams: Power, hope, and struggle in Cesar Chavez's farm worker movement, Chávez's considerable accomplishments were not without setbacks. Over the years, his initial dedication to the cause of farm workers shifted to a determination to preserve his control over the organization he created. After farm workers at many farms and ranches in California won the right to hold union elections and chose the UFW to represent them, the union found it difficult to actually deliver on the promises it had made. Chávez could be capricious, transferring staff members out of communities in which they were working hard to win the trust of and organize workers. As the union grew, Chávez became preoccupied with fighting off what he perceived to be challenges to his authority from board members, resulting in midnight purges of staffers who had lived in poverty and dedicated their lives for years to the farm workers' cause.

Pawel creates her complicated portrait of Chávez indirectly, by telling the stories of several of the UFW's most dedicated workers in alternating vignettes. The style allows us to get to know each of the workers well, but muddies the reader's sense of a coherent timeline of events, and sometimes leads to incidents being told twice and out of order.[The Union of Their Dreams] is not a hatchet job in any sense; Pawel does not try to demonize Chávez nor lay the UFW's failures solely at his feet. The most grievous flaw of the book, however, is the lack of representation from UFW officials who remained loyal to Chávez throughout the 1970s turmoil. But Pawel, a journalist by trade, has a very accessible writing style, and her informality creates an intimacy that makes the reader feel part of the story.

This book is a worthy read not only for for those interested in progressive politics, but also readers looking for insight into how organization are formed, grow, and are stifled by their success. It's a familiar story for anyone who has volunteered or worked for a nonprofit organization, but it seems especially poignant in this case, because the stakes were so high for so many people, and even more significant victories were so close. I came away from this book deeply impressed by the incredible accomplishments of a group of idealistic, committed men and women, and saddened by thoughts of the opportunities lost to power struggles, disorganization and petty quarrels.

LibraryThing review: The Lexicographer's Dilemma

2010-03-31T22:30:00.002-05:00

Bad grammar drives me crazy. Bad spelling, too. (To say nothing of fragmentary sentences. Ahem.) There's a reason my AIM handle is grammrdiva (and yes, the misspelling was intentional). I'm not going to lie: I make tiny, (mostly) internal judgments about people who unintentionally misuse language. Yes, I'm one of them. And I do so even though I know I am far from perfect myself. I have a whole host of bad habits that a lifetime's worth of writing and editing for a living have yet to shake. And I fully expect to be judged by them, too.

Cover via Amazon

And yet, I sit before you today a (slightly) reformed critic, thanks to The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch. Lynch has written an eminently readable review of the ever-changing English language. Maybe it's my bachelor's degree in history, but I found his core thesis compelling: English usage and spelling has been shifting constantly since the dawn of the language. The English we now think of as "correct" has gotten that way through popular usage, and not because of any inherent rightness or royal proclamation.

Which is not to say that myriad people have not tried to dictate to the masses about how they should speak and write — heavens, how they have tried! Lexicographer's Dilemma is organized nicely, with chapters examining successive eras in the war against 'improper' English. The cumulative effect of reading about all of the smoke-shoveling (as Oliver Wendell Holmes might have termed it) was a metaphorical throwing up of my hands. Maybe Lynch is right, and the only thing that matters is whether we understand the meaning of what someone says or writes, and not whether the speaker/writer used the proper verb conjugation or commonly accepted spelling.

In fact, Lynch has a lot to say about the futility of prescriptivists (such being the term for linguists who think matters of language and grammar are a black-and-white affair). It's clear he is much more at home in the gray area occupied by descriptivists (who are more interested simply in documenting how people are actually using language, regardless of 'right' or 'wrong'). After a few chapters, I found myself agreeing with him, which frankly came as a relief. Single-handedly upholding the standards of good and proper English is exhausting, you know.

And as long as I stay away from Internet message boards (LibraryThing's Talk excepted) and protesters' signs at political rallies, my blood pressure should be just fine.

Turning the corner on 'driveway moments'

2010-03-05T18:59:00.000-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

If you listen even occasionally to National Public Radio, you probably have heard of a "driveway moment." That's the terminology NPR devotees use to describe the way compelling stories (usually during the morning drive show, Morning Edition, or the afternoon drive show, All Things Considered) keep listeners glued to their car seat even after they've arrived home. They sit in their driveways, listening to the radio, until the story is finished and they can turn off the car and go inside.

I am much more than an occasional listener to NPR. I listen to NPR almost exclusively at home or in the car, which adds up to maybe 5-6 hours a day during the week and more on the weekend. I'm also a member of Iowa Public Radio, which means once a year I put my money where my ears are, make a pledge, and make room in the kitchen cupboard for another coffee mug.

It occurred to me this evening that the concept of driveway moments has become Pavlovian for me. I got home from work and was sitting in my car listening to a piece on the fine art of movie sound mixing (apparently, NPR is dredging the bottom of the "Oscar story" barrel on this Friday before the awards show). Suddenly, I had an epiphany: I don't give two figs about sound mixing. I'm especially not interested in listening to (apparently) well-mixed sound clips from Oscar-nominated movies I haven't seen. And thus, I don't actually have to sit in the car listening, while my pizza from Herb & Lou's gets cold on the seat next to me. I can actually turn off the radio in the middle of the story, get out of the car, and go inside.

It was a very liberating feeling, and a great way to start the weekend. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a pizza to eat.

Bedazzled by the King

2010-01-08T20:59:00.003-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

The first celebrity I ever had a crush on as a kid was Elvis Presley. And when I say "as a kid," I mean young. My earliest memories are from third grade recess, huddled against the school building with my best friend Kay VanSkike, flipping through the latest movie magazines — Photoplay, Modern Screen — borrowed from our mothers' stash.

This was in 1972, 1973. Kay and I sighed over nostalgic pictures of the young and handsome Elvis with his beautiful child bride Priscilla, and clucked our tongues at more recent tales of his dissipated escapades with various and sundry models after he and Priscilla split up. We never gave up hoping that the "real" Elvis — dressed head to toe in black leather and smoldering with sex appeal — would make a reappearance, banishing the pudgy white-jumpsuited modern version forever.

Early in fifth grade I moved with my family out into the country, changing schools and losing touch with Kay. We hadn't seen each other or even spoken in months when Kay called me the following summer to break the news that Elvis had died. It was August 16, 1977; I remember standing in the doorway between our dining room and living room, phone cord stretched to the limit, sharing the news with my mom. It was the first time someone I "knew" had died, and it didn't seem real. Not much later, my oldest brother would die unexpectedly, and I'd experience again that same stunned disbelief, but Elvis was the first.

After that, I went through a period of consuming every bit of information I could find about Elvis' life. I read long magazine articles that examined his proper place in the pop-culture pantheon; Albert Goodman's trashy biography; Priscilla's autobiography Elvis and Me. I watched made-for-TV movies and practically wore out my mom's Elvis LPs, especially the Blue Hawaii movie soundtrack and the classic 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can't be Wrong, with its multiplicity of images of a sexy young Presley in a dazzling gold lame suit. Everyone who'd ever served Elvis so much as a milkshake wrote a tell-all book after he died, it seemed, and I devoured them all indiscriminately.

All of this is by way of establishing that I thought I knew pretty much everything about Elvis, from his birthplace (Tupelo, Miss.) to the company for whom he was driving a truck when he first walked into the Sun Studios in Memphis (Crown Electric) to the woman who was waiting in his bed as he expired on the toilet in the adjoining bathroom (Ginger Allen). But tonight, on the 75th anniversary of Elvis' birth, I learned something new when I listened to The Story on NPR. Dick Gordon interviewed Gene Doucette, the guy who designed those bedazzled white jumpsuits that have become synonymous with latter-day Elvis. (Click on the link to hear it for yourself; it's the second segment.)

It's easy to make fun of the caricature Elvis became by the end, with his bloated physical appearance, his mutton-chop sideburns and oversized smoke-tinted aviator glasses, and his over-the-top stage shtick, tossing sweaty scarves to swooning septuagenarians. But the interview and its accompanying music clips inspired me to dig out some old CDs (I still have the LPs but no turntable, alas). And you know what? There's a reason that long before Michael Jackson, Elvis was the King:

Gmail wants your grandma's address

2009-12-02T19:10:00.001-06:00

Well, kinda. The all-online, all-the-time e-mail provider knows that everyone has at least one Luddite on their holiday e-mail newsletter address list, and they want to help. They will send a free, personalized holiday postcard — on real paper! delivered by a real postal worker! — to anyone in the U.S. All you have to do is fill out an online form, cut-and-paste some pseudo-sincere seasonal sentiment, and cross Aunt Clara and Uncle Roscoe off your list.

Details here: Official Gmail Blog: Spread some holiday cheer, one card at a time

Library Thing book review: Montana Rose

2009-11-30T21:51:00.001-06:00

True confession time: I only requested this book because I have an unrequited love affair with all things Montana. I didn't really pay any attention to the description of the book beyond the title, so it was a bit of a surprise to realize as I read that it was (in my view) a Christian romance. I lowered my expectations accordingly (having found previously that books with such an overt point of view, whatever it is, tend to have less-than-stellar writing and plotting) and kept reading.

How refreshing, then, to find that Montana Rose is a very good book. It is well-written, and the characters appealingly drawn. In a nutshell, a woman in 19th century Montana finds herself widowed and pregnant, an unacceptable condition in that time and place. She is forced into marriage with a local fellow (at her husband's funeral, no less!) who is a virtual stranger, and struggles to make a life for herself and her family.

The Christian message is not subtle, but it fits smoothly within the narrative rather than sticking out like a sore thumb. It's true, though, that I don't have any beef with a Christian viewpoint, being one myself though not evangelical. Someone with a strong non-Christian worldview would probably find this book's message overbearing.

As I said, there were some interesting plot "twists." I dreaded the inevitable preaching about a woman learning that it is her Christian duty to be submissive and obedient to her husband, but that wasn't the message at all. Cassie's new husband, Red, is much more interested in molding Cassie into a wife who can be an equal partner for him in their hardscrabble frontier life.

Still, it's hard for a Christian novel to generate much reader suspense over whether the good guys will prevail and the bad guys be thwarted. There's really only one way for it all to work out, so the emphasis for me as a reviewer became whether the journey is enjoyable even when the destination is preordained. In the case of Montana Rose the answer, quite happily, is yes. ( )

Editors vs. writers: 'Twas ever thus

2009-11-15T22:21:00.002-06:00

Image via Wikipedia

I watched the first 2 parts of HBO's recent John Adams miniseries tonight. (As the holder of a history degree, I think it's required by our bylaws.) It's a very fine production, and fascinating on a number of levels beyond the sheer pleasure of seeing our country's beginnings brought to life.

For example, I couldn't help noticing the similarities between then and now, watching the Continental Congress squabble amongst themselves about whether to declare independence or try one more meek petition to King George III. I think today's Congressional debates would be much improved if each member was issued a long stick with which to pound on the floor to signal their agreement with the speaker. (That, and the elimination of microphones, television sound bites, and cable news pundits.)

But the scene that gave me a start and made me nostalgic for my moribund journalism career came in Part II. The retelling of the drafting of the Declaration of Independence shows that writers and editors have always been at odds in their common quest for elegant expression.

The scene opens with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and John Adams gathered in a room. Jefferson, having been cajoled into writing the Declaration of Independence by John Adams (in other words, given an unwelcome story assignment by his editor), has delivered his copy to his fellow congressman (editors). Like all writers, he paces nervously behind his editors as they read through the draft. Adams is complimentary of the way Jefferson has made a case not only for the the Colonies' independence from England, but for the rights of all men.

Adams: "This is well-said, sir. Very, very well said."

Jefferson, his nerves slightly soothed, finally takes a seat across the room from the others.

After criticizing Jefferson's inclusion of a condemnation of the slave trade (which Franklin knows won't fly with the delegates from the South), Franklin reads aloud another line in the copy.

Franklin: "'We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal, et cetera ...' 'Sacred and undeniable' smacks of the pulpit."
Jefferson (eyebrows raised in real or faux astonishment): "Does it?"
Franklin: "These truths are self-evident, are they not?"
Jefferson (reluctantly): "Perhaps."
Franklin (with a brisk nod): "'Self-evident', then."

Jefferson watches unhappily as Adams marks up his printout of the Declaration with his edits.

Jefferson: "Every single word was precisely chosen. I assure you of that, Dr. Franklin."
Franklin: "Yes, but yours will not be the only hand in this document. It cannot be."
Adams (trying to smooth things over a bit): "There may be expressions which I would not have inserted if I had drawn it up, but I will defend every word of it."
Jefferson (with a wave of his hand, pretending not to care): "Well, it's what I believe."

Jefferson's restrained reaction doesn't hide his annoyance that any editor, even the great Benjamin Franklin, would have the nerve to alter his golden prose. (Franklin, of course, being a newspaper editor and publisher, proves himself immune to a writer's pique.) I've been on both sides of that argument in my career, and I can't say I handled either role with as much grace as these men.

On the other hand, at least Jefferson didn't accuse Franklin of acting like Procrustes, as a writer once did to me when I had the temerity to ask her to cut a paragraph or two from her review of a community theater production. (Greek mythology says Procrustes offered a bed to weary travelers, cutting off their legs if they were too tall to make them fit.) Not having had a classical education, I shrugged off the insult and told Pat I still needed 3 more lines cut.

I had already learned what Benjamin Franklin knew: You have to have a thick skin to be a copy editor.

It is what it is

2009-11-10T20:26:00.002-06:00

I was plowing headlong through my RSS feeds in Google Reader earlier tonight, trying to get rid of the nagging little (341) perched next to Unread Items. I recently revamped my whole folder/tagging system in Reader, dumping all the subject-centric tags in favor of a simplified 3-tier system: Gotta Read This, Good Stuff, and If There's Time. This makes it much easier to keep up with the blogs I'm most interested in, and I just hit the Mark All Items Read button on the rest whenever posts start to pile up on me.

But I digress. (Geez, if I had a dollar for every time I've said that ...) I was reading a post on Consumerist promoting a list compiled by the Mint blog of "10 Things You Can Do To Lower Your Auto Insurance Premium". It's a pretty good list, but item 7 did give me pause: Buy a vehicle with a theft device or have one installed.

This is probably good advice for some people, but I won't be taking Mint's advice any time soon. Let's review, shall we? I own a 1999 Hyundai Elantra. The windshield is cracked, there's some rust acne flaring up on the door panels, and I keep forgetting to replace a taillight cover that got broken last winter because I hardly ever walk behind my car. I don't need to buy some fancy gadget; the entire car is an anti-theft device.

Library Thing book review: Fear the Worst

2009-11-02T22:10:00.000-06:00

This suspenseful novel starts out in a very promising way with every parent's worst nightmare: A divorced father is dumbfounded and frantic when his teenage daughter doesn't come home from her summer job one evening. When he goes to her workplace to inquire about her, they claim not to know who she is. So if she wasn't going to work every day, where was she going, and where is she now?

The first two-thirds of the book are solid, filled with a frantic dad trying to convince everyone, including the police, that his daughter's an innocent teen mixed up in some scary stuff. I know you won't be shocked — shocked! — to hear that the police not only don't believe him, they think he had something to do with her disappearance. But the ending is so weirdly convoluted I'm still not sure I understand exactly what happened. Between dead bodies showing up on dad's lawn and a climactic scene at a shabby Catskills resort, it's a disappointing denouement to an otherwise tense thriller.

Library Thing book review: The Cellist of Sarajevo

2009-11-01T10:39:00.000-06:00

It took me much too long to review this book, but not because I couldn't decide whether I liked it or not. I knew as soon as I started reading this compelling and unusual narrative of the effects of the 1997 siege of Sarajevo on a quartet of the city's citizens that it was one of the finest books I've read in a long time.

No, the delay was because as soon as I finished it, I started loaning it out to people who I was pretty sure would love it, too. One of them, Amir, lived in Sarajevo when the siege began. He managed to escape through the tunnel mentioned in the book, and later married a good friend of mine and came to the U.S.

But enough about that. The narrative of The Cellist of Sarajevo is unusually constructed. There are four main characters, and the chapters alternate between their viewpoints. One of the characters is the titular cellist, who reacts to a bombing that killed 22 people waiting in a bread line by vowing to play on the bombing site every day for 22 days. Another character is "Arrow," a female sniper who is assigned to protect the cellist from assassination during his daily concerts. Kenan must make a dangerous trek across the city to fetch fresh water for his family, a journey that involves crossing intersections that are targeted by enemy snipers in the hills surrounding Sarajevo. Dragan is making a similar journey, trying to reach his workplace where he knows he can get a free meal — a precious commodity in a city where privation is the norm and no one has enough.

The four characters never meet each other, but they encounter other neighbors, friends, and strangers during the course of their quests. These encounters bring into sharp focus what it means to retain your essential humanity in the most inhumane of conditions, and whether it is possible to live through a war without losing the eseential essence of civilization. It's important to note, I think, that while The Cellist of Sarajevo is based on actual events, the author says in his introduction that he has compressed three years of war into a month of narrative for literary purposes. Knowing that did not lessen the impact of the story for me in any way.

The Cellist of Sarajevo is beautifully, lyrically written. I found myself compelled to read passages to myself, for the joy of hearing the language spoken aloud. Reading aloud also helped to slow my reading, and prolonged the pure pleasure of the experience of living with these four brave, fascinating individuals.

The way we were, indeed

2009-08-21T21:14:00.009-05:00

The Netflix movie de la nuit on Thursday was All the President's Men. It's hard to believe a crusty old newspaper person like myself has never seen it, although in my defense I have read the book about the Watergate scandal on which it was based, by ace reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. (Obligatory parenthetical aside: If I had a nickel for every movie I could say that about, I'd be a rich, rich woman indeed.)

It's a very good movie, and I'm glad I finally saw it. I was worried that the nostalgia would make me all weepy for those long-lost golden days of yore, when newspapers were guardians of the public interest and hewed closely to Finley Peter Dunne's admonition to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable" instead of Wall Street's relentless earnings per share drumbeat. I'm not sure why it didn't. Maybe it's because at the time of Watergate (1972-74) I was still in elementary school. By the time I landed my first newspaper job in 1983 (sports stringer for the Daily Review Atlas) there were computers on the newsroom desks, not electric typewriters, and no one was meeting anonymous sources in badly lit underground parking garages (not least because there were no parking garages, underground or otherwise, in Monmouth, Ill., pop. 9,900. Heck, there were only two elevators in the whole town, not counting the grain elevator).

But I digress. Early on in the movie, there's a scene in which Bob Woodward (played by Robert Redford) goes to the courthouse where the Watergate burglars are being arraigned. He gets his first real hint that a big story is afoot when he finds out the burglars, supposed low-lifes from Miami, have lawyered up with some high-priced legal talent. One of those attorneys looked sort of familiar, and definitely sounded familiar, but I couldn't place him. (I don't know about you, but this happens to me all the time.) He was only in the one scene, so there was no chance for his name to sneak up on me when I wasn't paying attention. I checked the end credits for a familiar name, but didn't see anything that clicked.

Tonight I surfed over to the Internet Movie Database, where I knew that if the name I sought was known to anyone in the world, it would be listed there. And sure enough, with the help of a tiny head shot, I found the name I sought: Nicolas Coster. Yeah, it didn't ring much of a bell with me, either. So I clicked through to his list of credits, which is ... extensive, to say the least. Was it possible, I wondered as I scrolled, that his familiarity was the cumulative effect of his many guest appearances in apparently every TV series ever filmed? I had just about decided that it was, when I saw this:

Yes, Nicolas Coster played Lionel Lockridge in 257 episodes of Santa Barbara, a particularly frothy soap opera of the 1980s that had none of the camp or kitsch of Days of Our Lives (which I also watched) or All My Children (which I didn't). I don't know exactly how many of those 257 episodes I actually saw, but it pains me to say I think it was most of them up to about 1987. Still living at home with a soap-mad mother, working mostly mornings and nights at the Review Atlas, what else was there to do in the afternoon? The lamest excuse ever: We didn't have cable TV.

I'd like to think I remember ole Nicolas from some other part of his oeuvre, perhaps his no-doubt riveting portrayal of Chester Gaddis in the seminal two-part Matlock episode "The Trial." Or perhaps his five-episode run on The Facts of Life. Or his one-off appearances in Hart to Hart or Quincy M.E. or even, God help us, T.J. Hooker. (All of which I watched regularly. Shut up.) But, no. I think Santa Barbara is where our paths crossed most memorably. Thinking back, I can hardly remember who that girl was, or what she thought she was doing wasting all that time on garbage television. I want to travel back in time and shake her by the shoulders and say, "Wake up! Life is shorter than you think! Go do something important! Or at least interesting!" Or something you won't be chagrined to write about on the Internet in 25 years. Sheesh.

More than a feeling?

2009-07-31T06:47:00.003-05:00

I've got a funny feeling today. It's not the feeling I expected to have on this date. And I'm not sure what it means, or what to do about it. It's just ... there.

I certainly expected to feel something on this date. Happy. Relieved. Excited. Thankful. Lucky. Blessed. It was 1 year ago today, July 31, 2008, when I underwent the third PET/CT scan in six months, and was told that as far as anyone could tell, all signs of Hodgkins' lymphoma were gone. Six cycles, 26 weeks, of chemotherapy had done their job. There had been unexpected complications and detours and side effects along the way, but none of that mattered now. I'd reached the finish line. All was once again well.

And in every checkup I've had since, every 3 months (with a few additional visits just to have blood drawn), it's been the same message: All is well.

Slowly, slowly, the chemo-induced scarring on my lungs began to resolve itself. Slowly, the phrenic nerve that controls the diaphragm, the one that had become paralyzed by the tumor growing all around it, began to regenerate. I could breathe easily again. All is well.

Those periodic lab tests confirmed the way I felt. My hematocrit was back to normal. My white-cell counts were good, my immune system once again a robust defender. The single kidney left undamaged by the cancer was again functioning normally. I no longer felt the overwhelming need to take a nap every four hours, like some gigantic overgrown baby. I started working full time again, and reveled in being busy and useful. I began venturing out of my house for things other than chemo appointments and work. My formerly stick-straight hair grew back in a madcap curly mop. All is well.

But today, I don't know. I've got a funny feeling today. I've had it for a week or so. It's nothing explicit, nothing I could point a finger at and call a symptom, nothing that can be put easily into words. It's just ... a feeling. A feeling that perhaps all is no longer well.

What do you do with a feeling like that? There's absolutely nothing that I could articulate to my oncologist as a reason for concern. Maybe it's just normal anxiety tied to the 1-year milestone. Maybe in 3 months when I get another PET/CT scan and another all-clear, I'll look back on this and it will all seem funny. Or maybe I'll look back and say, "Yes, that was when it started again. That was when I knew."

My next checkup is in October. By then, I guess I'll know if it's more than a feeling.

'Lucky Billy' rolls snake eyes

2009-07-14T23:01:00.010-05:00

One of my fellow Library Thing members (Kasthu) wrote that she got to page 29 of this novel by John Vernon before giving up in frustration. I'm afraid I wasn't even that successful: Page 19 was the breaking point for me.

And it's a darn shame, because I sure wanted to like this book. I love history, and I love stories about cowboys and the Old West, but this book manages to turn one of the most thrilling legends of American folklore into a dry, confusing, mundane tale.

As a rule, I don't mind POV changes within a book, but it needs to be done well. The shifts should be clearly noted, and there should be enough of a difference in tone between the various "voices" to make it easy for the reader to adjust. The first two chapters alternate a third-person omniscient narrator with a first-person narrator, and it. Just. Doesn't. Work. I get that those Old West fellas were laconic cowboy types, but Sheriff Pat Garrett seems to be on tranquilizers.

It was the sheriff's chapter that did me in, sadly: He was describing to some barmates what Billy the Kid (his former pal turned nemesis) was really like, and it just about put me to sleep. Somehow, I don't think that's the intended effect when you're talking about one of the most notorious outlaws of the Wild Wild West.

I guess I'll just stick with Marty Robbins' classic song version of the "Billy the Kid" story:

Come for the Gobbler, stay for the Bleat

2009-06-23T21:51:00.006-05:00

If you look at just one Web site in your life from this moment forward, please PLEASE let it be this one.
James Lileks, he of the ultra-amusing Gallery of Regrettable Food, has an in-depth look — with pictures! — of The Gobbler Supper Club Motel in Wisconsin. This sadly defunct edifice was a cheese-tastic creation, with more shag carpeting on the walls that even Elvis dared use to line the Jungle Room. I can't possibly do it justice, and I won't spoil the hilarity by trying to quote random lines here and there. Really, like the best of John Irving's farcical novel scenes, it's the cumulative effect of Lileks' prose and the unbelievable illustrations that build to a crescendo of snorting, gurgling, wheezing cackles. Just go. You won't be sorry.
Once you've caught your breath again, poke around the rest of Lileks' site. It's a crazy virtual junk drawer of fascinating bits and pieces, from snarky commentary on other countries' paper money to a collection of odd matchbooks. Reading his stream-of-consciousness blog, Bleat, has highlighted many an otherwise dreary day for me.

F%&# you, penguin

2009-05-22T20:31:00.006-05:00

I love the Internet. I know I've mentioned that before. But this is different. Those other love songs to the online world were about all the incredibly useful information that the Internet (and its overlord, Google) put at our fingertips, information that used to take a trip to the library and hours spent thumbing through card catalogs and the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. (Are any of you old enough to remember those glorious green indexes to every article ever printed in a magazine? I spent hours in junior high looking up articles about Bucky Dent. That's him over there on the right. Be still my beating heart.)

But this link I'm about to share with you has nothing to do with learning something useful or necessary. It is sheer, unadulterated, irreverent goofiness and the kind of thing that the Internet was born for, as far as I'm concerned. Behold, I present to you ...

Fuck You, Penguin
A blog where I tell cute animals what's what.

Is this a great Internet, or what?

Sometimes the comedy writes itself

2009-05-21T20:36:00.004-05:00

Another newspaper story made me laugh out loud tonight, and — what a refreshing change — it wasn't because of a typo or mistake. From the West Branch Times:

Joe White, Alliant’s manager of customer services for an area that includes West Branch, said he would have to know more about that town’s electric service before he could compare. He did say that West Branch has a lot of squirrels, referencing an outage in March where more than 1,100 customers were powerless for about two hours at lunchtime on a sunny day.

Yes, I live in a town where the squirrels outnumber the people, apparently. And not just any squirrels. These are your juvenile delinquent squirrels, your punk squirrels. I'm sure if I ever got a good look at one, it would be wearing a little black leather jacket, or maybe a guinea tee to show off its tattoos of naked ... otters? I don't know what turns squirrels on. Well, not four-legged ones, anyway.

Actually, this story kind of confirms a brainstorm I had when I was in college. In one of my geography classes, where we had to choose a research project to utilize our newly acquired mad mapmaking skillz, I toyed with the idea of trying to find out if Cedar County has the highest number of skunks per square mile of any county in Iowa. Because I'm telling you, the number of squished skunks on this county's roadways is unreal. You have to smell it to believe it. Clearly, this news story proves that it's not just skunks -- apparently the entire small-rodent population is out of control around here.

Irony, thy name is Consumer Reports

2009-04-22T16:49:00.005-05:00

Some of my favorite blogs are those on the Consumer Reports web site. Written by CR editors, they offer great consumer information and advice on a variety of topics, from Cars to Health to Electronics and more. Their advice is usually spot on, but it's not always supported by the rest of the site.

An example of what I mean showed up in my Google Reader today. A post on the Electronics blog was titled "Earth Day tips: 7 ways to greener printing." Here's number 2 on the list:

2. Instead of printing out e-mails, Web pages, and other documents, read them on your computer screen. A free application called CutePDF makes that simpler by turning such items into easy-to-read PDFs.

But at the end of the post, there's a Print This Page link. What's missing are links allowing readers to save the article to an online bookmarking site, such as Delicious. Wouldn't that have been more in keeping with the spirit of the blog post?

Unprovable but indisputable facts

2009-03-21T19:36:00.006-05:00

You will never, ever be disappointed when an Internet message-board comment begins:

Not too many know about this because it was kept secret by the war department.

Seeing-eye radio? IRIS is on the air

2008-12-17T20:08:00.011-06:00

One of my favorite volunteer gigs these days is to be a reader for the Iowa Radio Information Service (IRIS). IRIS is a statewide network of volunteers who read the newspaper as part of a radio broadcast that can be picked up by specially tuned receivers. The receivers are provided at no charge to Iowans who are blind or have a visual or physical impairment that makes reading difficult.

I jokingly tell people that this is the perfect volunteer job for me because I love to hear the sound of my own voice. Actually, as a former journalist, I like the idea of remaining at least tangentially involved in the news business, and I believe that there still is news (especially local) that can't be gotten from either radio or television. I first got involved with a similar group when I lived in the Quad-Cities.

The NBC Nightly News recently focused its "Making a Difference" feature on a similar program in New Jersey. Watch this:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Here in Iowa City, IRIS operates out of a conference room at WSUI/KSUI radio. From 8:00 to 9:00 a.m. 7 days a week, 365 days a year, two volunteers take turns reading the local news, opinion, obituaries and sports from the Cedar Rapids Gazette. (Programming for the rest of the day's schedule is produced in Des Moines or by the national InTouch network.) As with all things, the best of intentions can sometimes go awry. I have had mornings when my reading partner never showed up, leaving me to stumble through the hour alone. There have been mornings when I have been the no-show. Once in a while, the radio station staff will inadvertently lock us out, or the newspaper carrier will forget to deliver our papers. Somehow, the show goes on.

Even after 15 or so years of volunteering here and in Rock Island, I'm far from a professional radio broadcaster. I have learned a lot about reading out loud, though. One of the lessons I learned early on when one of APRIS' listeners wrote in to complain politely that we were reading too slowly. It seems our natural instinct is to slow down and over-enunciate when we are reading out loud, but that listener assured us that reading at a normal pace was much more tolerable.

I've also learned from IRIS how to pronounce the names of a lot of small Iowa towns I've never been to. We have a cheat sheet of phonetic spellings for towns in our Eastern Iowa broadcast area. That's how I know it's Ne-VAY-da, not Ne-VAH-da like the state; it's Mont-i-SELL-o, not Mont-i-CHELL-o like Thomas Jefferson's home. I can tell my reading partner is not a native Iowan when they read a story from Maquoketa and pronounce it Ma-kwo-KEE-ta. Another morning, I remember my non-sports fan partner was repeatedly flummoxed by a sports story about the Iowa football team and specifically one of the Hawkeye players, Kenny Iwebema. I think she pronounced poor Kenny's name about 12 different ways before she was done with the story, but having started the story she gamely soldiered on to the end. (For the record, it's pronounced Eh-WEB-uh-muh. I think.)

Like most operations run entirely by volunteers, IRIS is always in need of a helping hand. This spring, the Iowa City operation was shut down for a couple of weeks when the Iowa River floodwaters crept uncomfortably close to the KSUI studios and damaged a transmitter. Other IRIS broadcast locations around the state were affected. As if all that wasn't enough, the upcoming transition to digital television means that IRIS will lost its ability to broadcast in some areas of Iowa unless some alternative transmission methods are found. If you'd like to make a donation or find out more about volunteering, check it out. That's also the place to go if you know someone with a visual or physical handicap who would enjoy having an IRIS receiver in their home. Where else are they going to get serious news and unintentional comedy all wrapped up in one early-morning hour?

Wrestling with a memorable year

2008-12-07T03:22:00.007-06:00

Carver Hawkeye Arena in the midst of 16,000 screaming wrestling fans is no place for bawlers. Brawlers, sure. That's what the Iowa Hawkeyes are, and that's who was grappling on the mat Saturday night with cross-state rival Iowa State. The defending national champions (Iowa) taking on the No. 2-ranked Cyclones — for a wrestling fan, it doesn't get any better than that.

So what's with the boo-hoo hoo-ha? Well, I wasn't really crying ("there's no crying in wrestling!") but I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little misty-eyed thinking about where I was last night, and how far I have come in the past year. It was almost a year ago to the day that I attended the first home meet of the 2007-08 season, a double dual against Cornell and Coe. It was a great time, so much so that I shrugged off the fact that just walking from the bus stop to my seat left me huffing and puffing. After all, I knew I wasn't in great shape, plus I seemed to have caught a chest cold or something. Not surprising, given the ridiculous winter weather that I was already tired of.

By Jan. 5, the day of the big Iowa-Oklahoma State dual meet, I knew it wasn't just a cold. I had been looking forward to that matchup for weeks, but on that Saturday evening I couldn't muster up the energy it would take to drive in to Iowa City and try to make my way to my seat. By that point, I was barely able to walk across the street without having to stop to catch my breath.

Missing a meet I had so looked forward to was my wake-up call. On Monday, I finally called the doctor for an appointment. By Wednesday, I was admitted to the hospital and by the following week I was recovering from open-chest surgery and coming to grips with a diagnosis of Hodgkins' lymphoma.

I'll spare you the gory details of the next 11 months. Those of you who were there already know. What matters is that I am now 5 months into remission, and last night I attended my second Iowa meet of the season. Just a year after my first inklings that I might be sick, I walked (with the aid of a cane) from the parking lot to my seat in Section LL without stopping once for a breather.

As I cheered on the Hawkeyes' win yesterday over Iowa State, I thought about the past year. Countless times during those early months of chemo and fevers and sundry complications, focusing on the Hawkeye wrestling team was a welcome distraction from possibilities I didn't want to contemplate. Last night, sitting in the midst of an all-time record crowd for a college wrestling dual meet, I thought about the little stack of wrestling season tickets that went unused last year — I found them recently when I pulled my winter coat out of the closet.

I thought about how I'd watched last January's National Duals on Iowa Public Television from my hospital bed, trying not to think about the painful bone-marrow biopsy I'd just had, or the upcoming surgery that would involve sawing my sternum in half and then wiring it back together.

I thought about waking up in the ICU a few days after my surgery and stumbling onto the Iowa-Ohio State meet on the Big Ten Network, even though I couldn't see much because I didn't know where my glasses were and the breathing tube in my throat meant I couldn't ask for them.

I thought about getting up at 2 a.m. during a second hospital stay in February and stealthily using the nurse's laptop computer in my room to check Hawkeye Nation for match-by-match results of the home dual against Michigan.

I thought about missing the first 2 days of the NCAA tournament in March because I was in the hospital again and the damn place doesn't carry ESPNU. I thought about nagging the docs to get discharged that Saturday afternoon in time to get home to watch two Hawkeyes — Brent Metcalf and Mark Perry — win individual national championships Saturday night.

I thought about all those things yesterday. And yeah, I got a little sniffly, damn it.

And then Brent Metcalf scored a takedown in the first nine seconds of his match against Mitch Mueller (on his way to a 26-10 technical fall) and I went right back to screaming my head off. Thank you, Iowa wrestlers. For all of you, and for me, the best is yet to come. It's great to be a Hawkeye!

MoochReview: Firehouse

2008-12-06T07:58:00.001-06:00

I just finished reading Firehouse, a book by David Halberstam about a New York City firehouse where 12 of the 13 men who responded to the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center died. The book is beautifully written, and manages to draw a vivid picture of the powerful bonds that unite firefighters with their comrades. It's almost unbearably sad, especially when I stopped to think that for all the impact of the stories of these 13 men, they are but a tiny fraction of the lives that were lost that day.

I would strongly recommend Firehouse to anyone who is interested in a glimpse at the impact of that day on the NYFD. There is little detail about the scene at Ground Zero because little is known about what, exactly, the men of Engine 40/Ladder 35 experienced there. The one member of the firehouse who survived did so with severe injuries, including a concussion, and his memories of the day are incomplete. Most of the book examines both the individual lives of the firefighters who died and the culture of brotherhood that is the modern firehouse.

As good as the book is, though, one thing did trouble me. Although Halberstam tries to portray the firefighters realistically there is still an element of sanctification about their individual lives and stories. There are hints, mere wisps of suggestions, that some of the men may have been less than perfect (in the ways that all of us are less than perfect), but the tone quickly reverts to unstinted admiration. The book was published less than a year after the attacks, so it's understandable that Halberstam did not have the luxury of distance to more objectively draw his portraits. It would be interesting to read an updated version of the book to see where the families and comrades of the firefighters are now, but that won't ever happen given that the author Halberstam was killed a couple of years ago in a traffic accident.

So why does Halberstam's idealization of the firefighters of Engine 35/Ladder 40 bother me? Because none of us are perfect, and by writing as if these men were, Halberstam diminishes their lives. There's no question that it takes a special kind of person to be a firefighter anywhere, let alone New York City, but to pretend they were perfect is as if to say that what they were — strong,tough, proud, brave, sure, but also impatient, angry, intolerant — was not good enough. But all of us deserve to be remembered for who we are, warts and all. Anything less is like watching only half of a movie, or reading random chapters out of a book. We are the sum of our thoughts and actions and emotions, and it's in the experiencing of the full spectrum of life that we are truly alive.

I've become a mooch — BookMooch, that is

2008-12-05T20:07:00.008-06:00

A couple of months ago, I joined BookMooch, a Web site whose motto is "Give books away. Get books you want." Members of the free service list their unwanted books for others to "mooch" for free. Mailing out claimed books from your inventory earns you points that you can use to "mooch" free books from other users. The only costs are for postage.

At the time I joined BookMooch, my intention was to pare down my library of approximately 1,200 books. (When I moved/downsized into my current 1-bedroom apartment in 2002, I had to choose whether to get rid of the books or the bed. Now my "bedroom" walls are lined with 7 bookcases and I sleep on the (very comfy) couch.) I have happily sent off 19 books to mooching readers all over the world (Germany, England, Scotland, Finland, Australia, Korea) and the U.S.

Unfortunately, all those BookMooch points were burning a hole in my Web browser, and I have mooched back 16 books (you can see a mosaic of covers of my recent Mooches over there on the left). To say that this defeats my original purpose is to belabor the obvious, so let's just agree between ourselves never to mention it, OK? Thanks!

On the plus side, all those new books (new to me, that is) give me a fresh source for material for this here web log. So if you're looking for ideas for what to read next, stay tuned for some fresh looks at books. See? I'm doing it for you! First up: Firehouse by David Halberstam.

Mourning a Slain Immigrant on Long Island

2008-11-16T20:58:00.002-06:00

I've been closely following this story over the past week. At first glance, it may seem like an all-too-familiar story of racial tension: High school kids cruise around looking for representatives of the "other" to bully; what starts as casual thuggery turns tragically into homicide. Unfortunately, stories like this are a dime-a-dozen these days.

What made this one catch my eye, and unsettle my stomach, is that I know this place. I was born in Patchogue, grew up in nearby Mastic Beach, and I still have family living there. The Suffolk County I grew up in in the 1960s and early '70s was much different than today. It was more rural, for one thing; back then the area Mastic Beach was largely a village of summer homes for New York City residents. The family across the street from us, who adopted my beloved dog Josie when we moved to Illinois, lived in Queens most of the year. The mom and four daughters came out to Mastic to live in the summer, with dad coming to visit on the weekends. The last time I visited, it was hard to tell where New York City ended and the Long Island suburbs began. And it was more homogenous, for another thing. The neighborhood's main diversity came from Italian families like ours and retired Jews, who apart from different religions nonetheless shared the commonality of having moved to get out of The City. Our church, St. Jude, offered Masses in English and Italian; nowadays it also offers a Saturday evening Mass in Spanish and a Sunday-morning sign-language Mass.

I wish I could say that news of this most recent hate crime had shocked or surprised me, but it didn't. I have heard the intolerant rhetoric of newly arrived immigrants to Suffolk County from members of my own family. It always seemed strange to me that a family like ours, whose founders came to this country in the early 1900s and faced deep discrimination against "wops" and "guineas" should turn around and reflect that hateful attitude onto the next set of hopeful immigrants. How quickly our collective memory fails us.

What I've Been Reading Lately

2008-11-01T13:20:00.002-05:00

The latest twist in a local story that's gone nationwide, the ICE raid at Agriprocessors in Postville, Iowa:

Federal Charges for Ex-C.E.O. at Meatpacker

The New York Times: With the arrest of the former chief executive, Sholom Rubashkin, federal authorities extended their criminal prosecution to the highest level of management at the plant.

Let's hope this story becomes irrelevant on Tuesday:

Why no Iowa women in Congress?

Des Moines Register: "This is one of the great mysteries of life: Why hasn't Iowa elected a woman to Congress?" said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for Women in American Politics at Rutgers University. "On the face of it, it doesn't make any sense."

Why even good news is bad news in the current economic disaster:

When Consumers Capitulate

The New York Times: No, what the economy needs now is something to take the place of retrenching consumers. That means a major fiscal stimulus. And this time the stimulus should take the form of actual government spending rather than rebate checks that consumers probably wouldn’t spend.

And for a solid suggestion of what that stimulus should be, read on:

A National Mobility Project

The New York Times: In times like these, the best a sensible leader can do is to take the short-term panic and channel it into a program that is good on its own merits even if it does nothing to stimulate the economy over the next year. That’s why I’m hoping the next president takes the general resolve to spend gobs of money, and channels it into a National Mobility Project, a long-term investment in the country’s infrastructure.

This would be a great program for The University of Iowa to consider:

With Free Bikes , Challenging Car Culture on Campus

The New York Times: The goal, college and university officials said, is to ease critical shortages of parking and to change the car culture that clogs campus roadways and erodes the community feel that comes with walking or biking around campus.

Nice story about one of my favorite musicians:

For John Hiatt, words follow

Los Angeles Times: Indeed, emotionally rich songs about the upside of relationships have become a hallmark of Hiatt's body of work, which he discussed over lunch on a return visit to L.A., where he lived and worked in the early 1980s.

If after reading this newspaper article you want more, I can highly recommend Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson:

1900 hurricane changed Galveston — and forecasting

International Herald Tribune: The storm came without a name — without warning — and it shaped the future of weather forecasting. It's known simply as The Great Storm of 1900, and it was the worst natural disaster ever to hit the United States.

Halloween with the Jersey Devil

2008-10-31T15:34:00.005-05:00

Bruuuce Springsteen has posted a brand-new song and video on his site for Halloween, and it's a doozy. "A Night With the Jersey Devil" sounds like hard-core gutbucket blues — if you caught any shows on the "Devils and Dust" tour a few years back, it sounds a lot like the way he performed "Reason to Believe" on that tour. You can download the mp3 for free. The video is just spectacular. Check it out!

So, I'm an "Ingrid" — who knew?

2008-10-12T13:05:00.003-05:00

My result for "Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz..."

I am an Ingrid — "I am unique!"

Ingrids have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being an Ingrid

my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
my ability to establish warm connections with people
admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
being unique and being seen as unique by others
having aesthetic sensibilities
being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being an Ingrid

experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
feeling guilty when I disappoint people
feeling hurt or attacked when someone misundertands me
expecting too much from myself and life
fearing being abandoned
obsessing over resentments
longing for what I don't have

Ingrids as Children Often

have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
are very sensitive
feel that they don't fit in
believe they are missing something that other people have
attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

Ingrids as Parents

help their children become who they really are
support their children's creativity and originality
are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

Take Are You a Jackie or a Marilyn? Or Someone Else? Mad Men-era Female Icon Quiz at HelloQuizzy

There's got to be a better way

2008-10-07T21:19:00.004-05:00

I'm listening to the second presidential debate right now, and Tom Brokaw is really starting to annoy me with his nagging reminders to Barack Obama and John McCain about giving answers that exceed the agreed-upon one-minute time limit. I understand the necessity of keeping either candidate from rambling on all night with non-answers. But you know, these are complex questions, and voters want to hear some complex answers. You can't answer a question about "How will you deal with the looming underfunding crisis for Medicare and Social Security" in a one-minute sound bite and still make sense.

Plus this stupid "one minute per candidate per question" ground rule means that Brokaw can't ask follow-up questions to force either candidate to actually answer the damn question that's asked instead of spouting off half-truths and outright lies about the other guy.

There must be a debate format that would allow candidates to give thoughtful, complex answers to the questions that are actually being asked. I don't know what that would be. But I know this isn't it.

(Photo from Sept. 26, 2008 debate from The Associated Press)

Apart

2008-09-13T09:56:00.003-05:00

We are two apart, you and I.
I am here, you are there
and yet —
We are, too, a part.
We are a part
of each other,
a part
of a circle of love.
We are a part
of what makes the world go round.
Yes, we are apart
You are there, I am here
Apart —
and still
— a part.

Is it time to panic yet?

2008-09-03T15:58:00.003-05:00

I'm not going to lie to you. The past week has not been a fun one (let alone a Funyun) for Cubs fans. All season we have watched with amazed delight as the most championship-deprived team in professional sports pounded out runs, shut down opposing hitters, and racked up wins by the bucketload. Even as we reveled in our unfamiliar status as front-runners (seriously, best record in baseball? Madness, I say!) there was some part of us that felt like Charlie Brown whenever Lucy offered to hold the football. When would it all come crashing down? And, this being the Cubs, in what gruesome fashion would our hopes be crushed this time?

But it didn't happen. Sure, there was a brief stretch right after the All-Star break when the team engine sputtered a bit, but Sweet Lou changed the plugs and tightened the timing belt and all was well once again in Wrigleyville. (Note to self: Try not to come up with clever metaphors using stuff like cars that you know nothing about.)

And then the Phillies came to town, and suddenly the magnificent Cubs were playing like the lovable losers of old. No offense, brain-dead defense. They lost Saturday. OK, you can't win 'em all.

They lost Sunday. Man, where did the offense go?

The Phillies left town and the Astros came in. Didn't help. The Cubs lost Monday. Oh, no.

Then they lost Tuesday in gut-wrenching, extra-innings, had-'em-then-lost-'em fashion. It was too much for Ron Santo, whose crackerjack analysis for WGN Radio was reduced to heavy sighs and mutters of "Oh, boy."

And just like that, Cubs fans were back out on the ledge. Is this it? The beginning of the end of the dream? The series that started the final slide into heartbreak?

Hell no, I say! It's just a little rough patch. Every team goes through them once in a while. The Cubs still have a 4.5 game lead over the Brewers in the NL Central. They still have more wins than any other team in either league. So suck it, St. Louis. Or, as Andy Dolan at one of my favorite sports blogs, Desipio, said today, "Stop it, you pansies".

Do you Hulu, too?

2008-09-02T22:20:00.003-05:00

Earlier this summer, I pulled the plug on my TV — literally and figuratively. I canceled my cable service, but because I have a crummy old TV without even rabbit ears, I can't get any channels at all. So I yanked the lifeline because everything I've read says a lot of energy gets wasted when an appliance is plugged in, even if it's turned off.

Other than Cubs games, which I enjoy listening to on the radio, I don't really miss it. Of course, the few shows I watch regularly are still in summer reruns, at least for another week or so. But even when the fall TV season brings first-run episodes back to the small screen I won't be fretting because I've found a way to keep up — on an even smaller screen.

Maybe you already know that many TV networks make episodes of their original series available for online streaming after their initial air date. That's great, but it can be a hassle to try to remember when new episodes will be available for each show (some networks make shows available the day after they air, while others like Fox don't put episodes online until a full week later). And even if you remember when, you still have to navigate to all those different network Web sites to watch your favorite shows.

I won't be doing that, though. You see, thanks to a tip from my friend Michael, I just do the Hulu. Hulu is a free media streaming site that offers full episodes of many current and classic TV shows as well as a surprising number of full-length theatrical movies. Not every series is available here (infuriatingly, AMC refuses to make their Emmy-winning show Mad Men available for online viewing either on Hulu or their own site), but a lot of the most popular current series are there — The Simpsons, House, The Office, Family Guy. There are minimal commercials inserted into the videos, but not nearly as many as in a standard broadcast. You don't have to sign up for a free account at Hulu to watch, but if you do there are some goodies waiting for you. Two of my favorites are the queue and subscriptions.

As you're browsing Hulu's offerings of TV and movies, you can click the + next to the program's title to add it to your queue. The queue lets you line up a bunch of videos without having to remember what you wanted to watch or where you found it. You can add as many items as you like as you merrily click your way around the site. When you're ready to start watching, just go to your queue and there are all the clips you selected, waiting for you. You can re-order the items (through an unfortunately clunky interface that only lets you move an item one slot up or down at a time), delete individual items, or start watching a clip with a single click.

Here's what's in my queue at the moment: Several movies (Ghostbusters, Moonstruck, Legends of the Fall), and the entire first season of the classic TV series Lou Grant. Once I've watched an episode all the way through, it's automatically deleted from my queue.

All of those items I added to my queue individually. But other clips show up in my queue without my having to lift a finger, thanks to Hulu's subscription feature. When you fnd a series you know you want to follow, just click the Subscribe button on the show's home page. Whenever a new episode of that show is uploaded to Hulu, it's automatically added to your queue. Right now, I'm subscribed to The Daily Show, the USA series Psych, and the Fox series House and Bones.

So that's my obsession confession. There are other aspects to Hulu that I haven't spent much time with, such as a social-networking component that lets you view other users profiles and queues (though I'm not sure why you'd want to) and leave comments and ratings for videos. But what I really want to know is: Do you Hulu, too? What's in your queue and on your subscription list?

Why Cubs fans love Ron Santo ...

2008-08-19T19:49:00.010-05:00

UPDATE: WGN Radio producer Matt Boltz has finally uploaded the promised photo of Ron's new 'do — check it out in the top photo. I don't know; it looks pretty much the same to me. The shirt, on the other hand; let's just say that the paisley inside the sleeve cuffs is ... different. There's a better image of it on Boltzy's Blog — check it out and let me know what you think.

... Or at least why this Cub fan loves Santo. I know some fans get frustrated during his color analyst gig for Cubs games on WGN Radio, the way he lets his emotions get the better of him whenever the Cubs do something particularly horrid or particularly wonderful. ("Oh, GEEZ!" is his standard bad-play riff; "Yes, SIR!" is the response to a good play.) But the way Ronnie wears his heart on his sleeve is what I love most about him. You always know what he thinks and what he feels about what has been his team since 1960. And this season, as the Cubs just keep winning, he has been a joy to listen to.

But that's not what I wanted to write about. Beyond his obvious love for the Cubs and the way he reflects every fan's emotions throughout a game broadcast, I love the way Santo and radio play-by-play guy Pat Hughes interact. They have great chemistry together, and blowout games often devolve into a series of bad jokes, puns, and good-natured ribbing about Pat's tightwad nature and Ron's personal idiosyncrasies, of which there are many.

Maybe because they have been apart for a week (Santo stayed home for the Cubs' recent road trip), Pat and Ron were in rare form Tuesday night. The bottom of the first inning was one long hilarious riff on Santo's new look, which apparently consists of a new purple striped shirt and a new toupee (or, as Santo calls it, his "piece"). As far as I can gather from their on-air descriptions, the toupee is dangerously mullet-like (although neither Ron nor Pat used that terminology). Pat did reference Rod Stewart, however, and Ron was quick to point out, "But his is blond — and real. Well, this is real hair, too. It's just not my hair." (The bottom picture, by the way, is from 2006 and shows Ron's "old" hair.)

This isn't the first time Ron and Pat have talked about Santo's toupee. My sides still ache from laughing hysterically during a game in 2002 when I first heard the now-classic story about the time Ron's hairpiece caught fire while broadcasting a game. And I've heard him carefully explain the difference between his "everyday" piece and his "gamer," which is reserved for public appearances. Like I said, that's what I love about him — Ron Santo's hair is the only fake thing about him.

Go, Mike, Go!

2008-08-17T07:12:00.002-05:00

Great news for Iowa wrestling fans this morning. Mike Zadick, former Hawkeye competitor and current Hawkeye assistant coach, will compete in the Olympics after all!

Zadick won the Olympic Trials in June, but because the U.S. had not qualified the 60-kilogram weight class at any of a series of tournaments earlier in the year, he wasn't going to be able to compete. In true Hawkeye fashion, however, Zadick kept training and working out as if he would wrestle, even traveling to Beijing with the rest of the team last week. He got his chance when the Bulgarian wrestler at 60kg was injured, leaving a spot to be filled. This happened about a week ago, and since there has been a cone of silence around the possibility of Zadick being named to the team, for whatever reason — even to the extent of message-board posts with Zadick's name in them being deleted by the powers-that-be at USA Wrestling. Mike will wrestle Tuesday in Beijing (Monday night in Iowa time, but probably not aired on TV until Tuesday) You can watch live at nbcolympics.com IF your computer system fits the ridiculously constricted video-player guidelines. Mine doesn't, not that I'm bitter or anything.

That makes 3 former Hawkeye wrestlers in the Olympics. Former Hawkeye and current assistant coach Doug Schwab qualified at 66kg (in a twist, by beating Mike Zadick's brother Bill, a former world champion), and Steve Mocco, who wrestled part of his career at Iowa before transferring to the much-despised Oklahoma State Cowboys, will represent the U.S. at heavyweight. I know a lot of Hawkeye fans don't consider Mocco to be "one of us" because of his defection, but I've heard that prior to the Olympics Trials he was training in Iowa City with head coach Tom Brands. If Brands and the Hawkeye family can forgive him, so can I.

Go Mike! Go Doug! Go Steve!

Fun at the ole fairgrounds

2008-08-14T18:40:00.003-05:00

I've devoted a fair amount of energy on this blog to mocking and waxing indignant over the plethora of errors that newspapers make. It's only fair that I point out some good stuff once in a while, too. The staff of the Des Moines Register's Juice section (i.e., the young and the hip) are blogging the Iowa State Fair this year. It's an enjoyable glimpse into this beloved state tradition, in all its heartwarming strangeness.

Exhibit one: A post today on a visit to the baby animal barn. It's apparently devoted to gestating mammals of all sorts and their fresh-born offspring. Depending on your luck, you and/or your munchkins can even watch actual baby animals actually being born. (Quick question for parents: Would this be a very good or a very bad way to jump-start the "birds and bees" conversation with kids?)

Anyway, there's a picture of a perfectly adorable baby lamb, and this quote from blogger Cara:

As I was admiring a baby lamb on wobbly legs this old woman next to me goes, "Oh aren't they so cute? And I love lamb!" Oh the state fair. Where we admire the animals. Then eat them on a stick.

That made me snort out loud. Well played, Cara.

Doesn't anybody edit this crap?

2008-08-06T18:35:00.002-05:00

Honestly, it's getting embarrassing ...

He said the stores and shops there are maintaining there leases and he expects the new owners could be successful in securing additional tenants for the mall.

— "Sycamore Mall could be sold by '09," Iowa City Press-Citizen, Aug. 6, 2008

A gift for the Grammar Diva

2008-08-06T12:28:00.005-05:00

This is the kind of thing that makes my geeky little heart go pitty-pat: The New York Times has begun publishing excerpts from a weekly newsroom critique. After Deadline, is written by deputy news editor Philip Corbett. The intent is "not to chastise, but to point out recurring problems and suggest solutions," Corbett writes.

The first post tackles the incorrect usage of "like" as a conjunction, the overuse of "A Tale Of" constructions in headlines, and a better usage for "most well-known."

You know, I can almost see your eyes rolling from here. But I don't care about your petty mockery; those of us who care about using words well are always looking to pick up pointers from the pros. As a freelance editor and writer, the value of reading After Deadline isn't just in the specific usage notes. There's also the less-obvious reinforcement that yes, how we use words matter, that there are ways to make ourselves better understood, and that they are worth pursuing.

In a world filled with daily examples of the degradation of language thanks to near-senseless abbreviations born of text and instant messages, and the refusal by many people to use proper capitalization and punctuation because it's not cool or it takes too long, a little positive reinforcement goes a long way. Even for the Grammar Diva.

Above and beyond (you know who you are)

2008-08-02T17:32:00.003-05:00

I got the best possible news on Thursday: the PET/CT scan showed no trace of Hodgkins' lymphoma, which officially puts me in remission after 7 months of treatment — well, actually 6 months of treatment and the longest 3 weeks of waiting I've ever experienced. Now I have 5 weeks off before going back for a checkup in September.

Even though I like to think words are my thing, I'm having trouble expressing how much everyone's good thoughts, prayers and words of encouragement have meant to me throughout this whole experience. And that's not even counting all the good deeds:

dropping everything in the middle of the night to haul me to the ER with a neutropenic fever (and more than once!);
sweet-talking my car out of UIHC parking prison;
bringing me groceries so I always had milk and OJ and good things to eat (when I felt like eating);
giving me a ride to and from chemo every two weeks so I didn't have to hassle with parking or fight the sedatives to drive home.

Awesome as it is, that list doesn't even include the incredible support I've received from my co-workers, which is even more astonishing when you consider that they had been my co-workers for a grand total of 3 weeks before I got sick. Despite that, they were right there visiting me in the hospital, bringing me books and magazines or just sitting and chatting. Once I was sent home, but before I was able to return to the office, they helped me set things up so I could access my work computer from home and feel like I was contributing even if in the smallest ways. They've put up with my frequent absences with grace, offered to help in a variety of ways, and just generally been the kind of office mates you dream of finding.

I guess that's the theme of this post. I've been overwhelmed by how willing people were — are — to drop everything and help, often without being asked. I've never been very good at asking for help, and frankly it's pained me at times to have to do it during all this. The fact that help was given so willingly and lovingly has made my heart grow three sizes, as the Grinch would say. (And not a minute too soon, as the people who know me would say.)

I don't know what will come in the future. I'm not cured yet, as my oncologist was quick to point out. But I do know that whatever comes my way, I will be able to deal with it — with a little help from my friends.

Why Johnny doesn't read (newspapers)

2008-07-24T11:45:00.001-05:00

There's been a lot of talk lately about the inevitable demise of daily newspapers. Circulation is declining, ad revenue is plummeting, newsroom staffs are being slashed, and stock prices across the board are in the basement.

Of course, there's been much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth over this trend, and pundits galore offering up their opinions on why people have lost interest in reading a daily newspaper. Is it the Internet's fault? Is it the increasingly short attention span of our youth? Is it the overall economy? Global warming?

By now, you've noticed what all those theories have in common: They all make newspapers a victim of outside forces over which they have no control. No one ever seems to ask whether it's something within the newspaper that could be driving people away. Well, now someone has. John McIntyre, assistant managing editor for the copy desk at The Baltimore Sun, wrote a blog post that suggests maybe the way newspapers are written is confusing readers and sending them elsewhere for their daily fix of news and smudged fingers. He talks about longstanding conventions that people inside the news biz assume readers understand, like using a comma instead of the word 'and' in headlines and what a dateline (that all-caps town name at the start of a story) really means. It turns out many readers don't have a clue. He also points a finger at the incredibly stilted language in which many news stories are written, and how seldom they lead with the most important facts.

The post should be required reading for all freshman college journalism students. That's assuming there will be any newspapers left for them to work at by the time they graduate.

NEWS FLASH: Its knot just the Press-Citizen

2008-07-23T15:18:00.003-05:00

A while back I wrote a post about an epidemic of improper word usage in the Iowa City Press-Citizen. For a period of several weeks, I kept stumbling across a comical number of wrongly used homonyms. The stories were written on a variety of topics by a variety of reporters, so it wasn't simply a case of having employed the dimmest bulb in the chandelier.

It probably seemed like I was picking on the P-C, but it was more a matter of it being the newspaper I read most often these days. To prove my lack of bias, I present an excerpt from a recent story about the Warren County Fair from my hometown paper in Monmouth, Ill.:

Sarah Dean, from Gerlaw, is an example of one of those specialized animal handlers. Dean is an accomplished 4-H champion who brought a goat to this year's fair. The goat, Akicita, is a personable critter that knows how to shake and give kisses on command. It is also a champion "weather" in it's own right, named Grand Champion of the Decatur and Petersburg competitions, as well as earning a number of other accolades. A "weather" is a neutered goat.

Now, I may have grown up in the middle of nowhere, but I'm no farm girl. Nonetheless, I know that a neutered ram (sheep or goat) is a "wether". Unless, of course, lightning shoots out of its ass.

I'm not even going to mention the improper use of the contraction "it's" instead of the possessive pronoun "its". Even a grammar diva can be a compassionate progressive once in a while. To prove it, here's a handy tip for the legions who feel hopelessly confused about the whole "it's/its" conundrum — try reading the sentence aloud, replacing the questionable "its" with "it is". If the sentence still makes sense, use the contraction. If it doesn't, use the apostrophe-less pronoun. You're welcome.

Google me this, please

2008-07-19T16:08:00.003-05:00

Earlier today I spent about 40 minutes searching for the neoprene sleeve that I use whenever I have to take my laptop out of the house. I know exactly when I last used it, several months ago. I know where I last remember seeing it, in the living room next to the couch. Obviously it isn't there anymore, and it doesn't seem to be anywhere. Bear in mind, I have a very small, 1-bedroom apartment with exactly 2 closets. There aren't a lot of places it could be hiding, but I'll be damned if I can find it.

As I was digging through boxes and drawers and old backpacks, I realized how spoiled I have become by Google. Pretty much any question I can think of — what 60 kilograms equals in pounds, the Latin-to-English translation of 'timor mortis conturbat me', whether Abe Vigoda is dead or alive* — I can fire up my computer and hey presto, Google has the answer. It's entirely possible my offline finding capacity has been permanently crippled by the ease of searching the Internet.

There's only one solution to this conundrum. Google needs to develop a new application, one that will index everything in my house and then cough up its location when I type a query into the search engine. I'm not sure how it will work, exactly; that's for the computer geeks to figure out. But I hereby offer myself and my small but many-thing-filled apartment as a beta tester.

* These are all actual searches I have conducted in the last month. Judge me if you must, love me if you can, as Toby Keith didn't say.

Go Cubs ... Go!?

2008-07-18T09:03:00.004-05:00

Enough with the boring health stuff. It's time to talk about what's really important — the Chicago Cubs.

The second half of the season begins today after a four-day pause for the All-Star Game and attendant hoopla. I usually dread the All-Star break, because it is four days without real baseball and let's face it, the middle of July is not exactly a whirlwind of sports activity. There's major league baseball and ... let's see ... oh! the Tour de France (but no Lance Armstrong this year), and ... um ... the British Open (but no Tiger Woods this year), and ... yeah, that's about it. So the All-Star break is a wasteland. It's four days when sports fans are expected to actually, like, interact with their friends and family instead of the television or radio. Like I said, a wasteland.

But this year, I found myself actually looking forward to the All-Star break. I needed a little breather after the first half of the season saw the Chicago Cubs bolt out to the best record in the major leagues (57-38!) and lead the NL Central Division by 4 games over the Satanic Red Fowl (aka the St. Louis Cardinals). As much as I love the Cubs, I think we can all agree that this is not typical Cubs behavior. Yes, I want them to win, I ache for them to win. I'm just not used to them, you know, winning. How long will it last? When will the bottom fall out and the joke be revealed? Is it possible that this really is the year? No Cubs fan with a memory that stretches back to 2003 wants to get their hopes up. But at the same time, I am not going to be one of those lame fans who breathes a sigh of relief when the Cubs hit a rocky patch, thankful that they seem to be reverting to all-too-familiar form.

No, I want them to win. I expect them to win. More importantly, I am starting to believe that they can win. So you can see why the four-day All-Star break was so needed. It was a chance to regroup, to take a deep breath before plunging back into the season. Now I'm ready for the wild ride to October. Bring it on!

All over but the waiting

2008-07-11T13:08:00.000-05:00

Well, it's over. I had my last chemotherapy treatment on Thursday — 6 cycles of two treatments each, every two weeks since January 25. Actually now that I think about it, it was every week for the first month because of my participation in a clinical trial that involved the administering of a fifth drug in addition to the usual four-drug (ABVD) regimen for Hodgkins' lymphoma.

To celebrate, I made chocolate chip cookies and took them to my wonderful oncologist and his amazing nurses to celebrate their finally being able to get rid of me. After all the ups and downs and complications of the last six months, I told Doc that I couldn't understand why he hadn't shoved me off on one of his colleagues that he doesn't like. (He told me that unfortunately, right now he doesn't have any colleagues he doesn't like.) Doc ate two of the cookies during my appointment so I think he liked them. He did ask me if I had put anything in them to pay him back for giving me poison every 2 weeks for 6 months. He made me eat one first before he would eat his.

When I went back to the infusion suite for my chemo, I was surprised to be presented with a certificate for "graduating" from chemotherapy, signed by a number of the nurses (and Doc). As the last of the four drugs I usually receive was being infused, one of the nurses who had treated me several times over the past six months (but not today) came over and asked if it was true that it was my last visit. I said yes, and she said "great!" and went away. Then she came back just before I left with another certificate, saying that several of the nurses I saw a lot hadn't had a chance to sign the first one so they made another. I may have teared up a little bit, but I'm sure it was just allergies. Oncology nurses (both the outpatient clinic and the inpatient floor) are amazing people. It can't be easy to know you are going to lose many of your patients, but you'd never know it from their consistently upbeat and encouraging demeanor.

So overall the day turned out better than it started. The woman who normally gives me a ride on chemo days (a former co-worker who lives in West Branch) forgot to pick me up this morning so I had to drive myself in, which made me a little bit late but it all worked out. She left a voice mail message for me this afternoon apologizing all over herself for forgetting, but honestly I'm surprised she remembered all those other times. It was so great to have a ride every week, because I am often a little groggy right after chemo (a side effect of the pre-medications they administer to prevent nausea and allergic reactions). And I didn't feel so guilty about imposing on someone since she wasn't really going out of her way (her husband works at the hospital and she always drops him off and picks him up anyway).

What now? Now I have to wait 3 weeks before going back for a PET/CT scan that will tell us whether I am in remission or in trouble. It will be a long 3 weeks. All distractions will be gratefully accepted.

I'll Take Cultural Illiteracy for $400, Alex

2008-05-16T20:01:00.006-05:00

There's no doubt that doctors — medical doctors, I mean — are smart. They know a whole lot of stuff about a whole lot of stuff, after all. That vast reservoir of knowledge can be intimidating to the rest of us, especially since we tend to have most of our interactions with MDs when we are sick and vulnerable and needing answers. They know so much, you think, about things that are beyond your ability to begin to comprehend. It's easy to assume that they must know it all, right?

Wrong. It turns out there are vast dead zones in that reservoir of knowledge, a veritable Sargasso Sea of information into which a doctor has never even dipped his toe. At least, not the particular doctor I am writing about today, a very capable urologist who recently had the honor of blasting to pieces (with a laser, not a taser) my kidney stones, while also putting in place a stent (a thing hollow tube from the kidney to the bladder) that allows the body to pass the stones and pieces without anything gumming up the works. The stent is left in for 3 weeks or so, and then removed during an outpatient procedure that is so not a big deal that it would take more time to describe than to experience (and probably be more painful).

It was a week ago Monday when I returned to the urology clinic to have the stent removed, and there was the usual bored waiting for the doctors in the exam room. To distract me and relieve the boredom, the nurse turned on the TV and asked me what I wanted to watch. I'm not big on daytime television, but it happened to be about 2:30 in the afternoon, which around here means it's Jeopardy! time. Of course, no sooner had the first round started when the doctors came strolling in. They both greeted me, and the resident came right over and started prepping for the procedure, which involves a tiny camera attached to a grabber thing to pull the stent out. The head doctor, the urologist, paid no attention at all to me or my kidney after that initial greeting. Instead, he stood next to the exam table with his head tilted back, seeming totally absorbed in — you guessed it — watching Jeopardy! Of course, over the past 4 months I've gotten used to the idea that it's the residents that do all the work, and the doctor is just there to — observe? offer feedback? satisfy the insurance company's liability requirements? collect $200 for an office visit? — I don't know. Which is to say, I wasn't all that shocked that the urologist had lost interest in me, but I kind of wondered what was so fascinating about the TV .

Finally, after about 5 minutes, he spoke. (I should mention, he is originally from Ireland, though he's been here for 30 years, and still speaks in a lovely brogue.) "So, they give you the answers and you have to come up with the questions?" he said. And it dawned on me — he had never seen Jeopardy before! In fact, he had apparently somehow managed to escape even learning the rudiments of the concept of Jeopardy! I was so stunned by this that I didn't even notice when the resident yanked the stent out a moment later. I get that doctors are generally busy in the afternoons, but how could someone live in this country for so long and never manage to catch a glimpse or a rumor of one of the most popular game shows in history? The mind boggles.

Postscript: I was relating this story to my friend Diane, who asked me what I had said when he dropped his bombshell of obliviousness. I'm not sure I said anything because I was in shock, but I wish in retrospect that I had been able to come back with one of her suggested ripostes, which I offer here for your amusement:

"Whaddya, new here?"
"Hey, doc, me and my kidney are down here!"
And my personal un-P.C. favorite: "The answer is German. The question is 'What language would I be speaking today if it wasn't for the U.S. freakin' Marines?' Now pay attention, limey!"

Scene about town

2008-05-13T15:29:00.003-05:00

On the marquee at the United Methodist Church in West Branch:

Dear God,
Please make me as good
a person as my dog thinks I am.

Hawkeye wrestling fans are everywhere

2008-03-04T21:10:00.000-06:00

You never know where you're going to run into an Iowa Hawkeye wrestling fan. A few weeks ago, I was finishing up my regular chemotherapy session when an older gentleman was assigned to the chair next to me. He looked to be in his 50s or 60s, gray-haired, and wearing a gold Iowa sweatshirt and jeans. As he settled into his chair Billie, the nursing assistant, greeted him with the familiarity of a nurse to a long-time patient and asked him if he planned to attend the Iowa-Indiana wrestling meet the following evening. Of course, when I heard Billie mention wrestling, all pretense of not eavesdropping fled, and I openly listened as he told her he was definitely planning to go to both that meet and the home finale on Sunday, Iowa vs. Michigan.

I couldn't help being a bit envious as I looked at this man, who despite his presence in the chemo suite looked vigorous and energetic; a stark contrast to how I felt at the time, reduced to gasping for breath after walking across the room. He asked Billie if she would be at the final meets, and she said she would be at Sunday's meet for sure. The man noticed my (not at all disguised) interest in his conversation, and asked if I was a wrestling fan. I told him I was, and we chatted about the prospects for Mark Perry (senior 165-pound returning national champion) wrestling in the final home meets of his career at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. Perry had injured his knee at National Duals in January and had surgery that had kept him out of action since. We agreed that while it would be great for fans to see him wrestle at Senior Night on Sunday, it was more important that he be ready for the Big Ten championships at the beginning of March -- and, of course, the NCAA National championships two weeks later. The man asked if I was going to be at the meets, and I had to admit that even though I had season tickets I wasn't up to that sort of physical exertion yet. I felt like a real slacker, although it was obvious that the man was much further along in his chemo regimen.

That Sunday, to the surprise of absolutely no one living in Iowa this winter, there was a huge snowstorm that dumped nearly a foot of snow on Iowa City. As I huddled under a blanket on the couch, listening to Mark Ironside and Steven Grace call the Iowa-Michigan wrestling meet on KXIC radio, I thought about that gentleman from the Cancer Center. And I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to feeling a certain sense of satisfaction as Ironside mentioned the relatively (for Iowa) sparse crowd in attendance. "Ha! I bet that guy didn't get to the meet after all," I thought less than charitably. The following Thursday I was back in my usual chair in the chemo suite for my weekly dose. I didn't see my new friend, but I did see Billie the nursing assistant. I asked her if she had gone to the meet and she said no, the weather had been too awful. "I suppose that guy didn't make it either," I said with faux regret. "Oh no, he was there," Billie said, putting me in my place. "He doesn't miss many meets; of course, he lives right near the arena."

So this is my vow: Next year is mine. This chemo thing is going to be done in July, and come August I am going to renew my wrestling season tickets and this time I'm going to actually use them, dammit. If that guy can do it, so can I!

The way my mind works

2007-12-04T20:07:00.000-06:00

My completely imaginary conversation with Joe, who's 10 years old:

Me: Do you really only eat white food?
Joe: Yep.
Me: What do you have against colored food -- I mean, food of color?
Joe: It's just not as good as white.
Me: Hmmm. How do you feel about the use of German shepherds and fire hoses as a means of crowd control?
Joe: ??

I know what you're thinking. "Geez, lighten up, Sparky, he's only 10!" But really, if someone had bothered to interrogate the 10-year-old George Wallace in 1929, the schoolhouse doorway might have remained unblocked in 1963. Not that Joe has anything in common with Governor Wallace, you understand. I'm pretty sure George Wallace was not prone to asking random acquaintances questions like, "What kind of eggs does a wicked chicken lay? Deviled eggs!" Trust me, he's got a million of 'em.

Another of life's imponderable questions

2007-12-04T20:05:00.000-06:00

Why do guys with gray ponytails always seem to be smirking? And why does it annoy me so much?

What Is a Progressive?

2007-11-14T20:31:00.000-06:00

That's the question lots of people ask when I tell them what my political affiliation is. We are so accustomed in this country to defining people by what political party they belong to. Democrat or Republican mean very clear things to people. But I don't like being confined to one party when neither major party seems to want to fight for the things I believe in. I am an Independent when it comes to how I vote, and a Progressive when it comes to what I believe.

Created by Adam Klugman and Jefferson Smith of the Oregon Bus Project, this video sums up everything I want to explain to people who ask me, "what is a progressive?" It especially appeals to me as a historian who spent many an engrossing hour learning about the Progressive Era in America from Professor Stromquist at UI., who is one of the best professors I've ever had the privilege of learning from.

Thanks to the folks at Left in the West, where I first discovered the video.

Iowa's jagged edges

2007-10-07T19:58:00.000-05:00

It's October. This is my favorite of all the months, and not just because some really awesome people were born on my birthday. No, it's because the weather in October is about as good as it gets in Iowa. Behind us are the sticky, steamy afternoons of July. The icy, breath-stealing nights of February are still just a rumor from the future. But October ... October is all about warm, sunny days, cool, crisp evenings and early mornings. At least, it usually is.

This October, the 8th October of the 21st century, has had more mood swings in its first 7 days than my Aunt Clara during a family reunion. Last Wednesday, the high temperature was a glorious 75 degrees (Fahrenheit); the low was an appropriately chilly 50 F. By Sunday, the high had soared back to 88 , with all of the humidity Iowans expect to endure during State Fair week in August. The forecast for the rest of this week? Highs in the 50s and 60s, lows in the 30s and 40s.

No one I've talked to over the past week about the weather (which is everyone I've talked to; Iowans who would hesitate before asking a cousin for their home phone number think nothing of chatting at length with a total stranger about atmospheric conditions) seems to mind this split weather personality. It's part of the price they stoically pay for living in a place that movie stars confuse with the celestial heights.

People in other parts of the country don't understand this -- neither the weather dichotomy nor Iowans' calm acceptance of it. Moving to Iowa from San Diego or Bangkok or Ankara is a culture shock in many ways. One of them is the sheer unpredictability of the day-to-day weather. A University of Iowa Web page that advises international students coming to Iowa City offers this sage advice: "Severe weather" in various forms -- heavy snows, high winds, ice storms, thunderstorms, high heat and humidity, and tornadoes -- can come at various times of the year. Being prepared with appropriate clothing, and in some cases an umbrella, can reduce your discomfort and make you safer during harsh weather.

What native Iowans know and incoming Iowans learn quickly is that the transition between seasons is never smooth in Iowa. There has never been in my memory a time when winter ended with a gradual warming up that eased into spring, or a summer that slipped incrementally into fall without the occasional reversion back to the departing season -- sometimes more than one. The seasons have jagged edges in Iowa. They lurch forward and backward with a ferocity that betrays both reluctance of the previous season to go gently into that good night, and a reticence on the part of the coming season to seize the day. Maybe the weather reflects the nature of Iowans or, more likely, Iowans adapted their personalities to the vagaries of their homeland.

Jagged edges can slice and wound, draw blood from their unsuspecting victims. But they can also sharpen and smooth what they come in contact with, finish the rough surfaces and make them perfect. Does living through the jagged weather edges of Iowa prepare us to deal with the other jagged edges that we brush against?

The suspension of common sense in SI

2007-09-17T20:15:00.000-05:00

When I was a sophomore in high school, I developed what many people would consider a bad habit: I started skipping school. Not just the occasional fake illness; once I got revved up I was skipping once or twice a week, writing fake excuse notes and forging my mom's signature. We lived out in the middle of nowhere, and my mom went to work at 5:30 in the morning, so I would just stay home until around noon, then go for a walk in the farm fields around our house until I saw the bus drop off the neighbor kids. I would saunter home as if I, too, had just gotten off the bus. And I would have gotten away with it indefinitely if I hadn't made the mistake of leaving my books in the machine shed of a conscientious farmer who found them and called the school, sure that the girl who had left them there was frantic with worry over their disappearance. Since said girl had not been in school at all that week, Principal VanKirk smelled a rat, a truant rat. My mom was called in, there was a melodramatic conference with the principal and all my teachers, and I ended up getting suspended for the last three days of 10th grade. (Digression: Why is suspension the punishment for truancy? "You don't wanna come to school? Fine! You have to stay home for three days! That'll teach ya!") I was allowed to return at the start of school in August. I didn't stop cutting classes that year, but I did get better at hiding my books.

Which brings us (and not a moment too soon) to this: the headline of a Sports Illustrated story, which turned up Monday in my Google Reader feedlot:

NBA reinstates ref Crawford after 5-month ban

The story in a nutshell: NBA referee Jerry Crawford got suspended back in April, basically for getting all up in the grill of San Antonio Spurs star Tim Duncan and ejecting him for laughing at a bad officiating call while he was sitting on the bench.

Now, I'm the first to admit that math is not my strongest subject. I went straight from leaving a 10% tip to a 20% tip years ago because trying to figure out 15% was too exhausting. But if he was suspended in April 2007, and reinstated in September 2007, that is definitely 5 months. I had to count it out on my fingers to be sure, but it is.

YEAH, BUT ... The NBA season ended in June. There have been no NBA games played since June 21 in which Crawford could have conceivably refereed. So isn't that a 3-month suspension (April, May, June)? I mean, can you be suspended during the offseason? Principal VanKirk didn't tell me I was suspended for 2 months, 3 weeks and 3 days; he told me I was suspended for three days.

Like I said, math is not my strongest suit. There may be some really obvious logic that I am missing here, so feel free to enlighten me in the comments.

Language Pet Peeves #2: Dominate vs. dominant

2007-09-17T18:58:00.000-05:00

As long as we're on a roll with lamenting the decline of the English language, here's another one of my pet peeves. The subject of this entry long has been an irritant for me, but I was spurred on to write about it by this post at University Diaries, a blog written by an English professor at George Washington University. She notes a story in The Press of Atlantic City, which confuses the verb itinerate with the adjective itinerant.

Reading Professor Soltan's post reminded me that just today I received an e-mail from a friend (about the World Wrestling Championships currently underway in Baku, Azerbaijan) in which he misuses the verb dominate for the adjective dominant. "Say, Sparky!" you are no doubt exclaiming to yourself at this very moment. "Those are very similar errors! I wonder if there's a pattern?"

First of all, don't call me Sparky. Second of all, I don't know if it's a pattern, but as always I have a theory. And here it is: Many people mispronounce/slur the -ant endings of words, so that they are pronounced as dom-i-nit and i-tin-er-it. So when people are writing, they spell phonetically what they hear people saying, and they know they've seen those -ate endings before, and English spelling makes no damn sense anyway, and ... bob's your uncle.

If you ask nicely (and you stop calling me Sparky) maybe someday I'll share my theory of how habitual reading or the lack of it during the formative years correlates to spelling ability.

Take a brake, hit the rode, test your metal

2007-09-11T18:44:00.000-05:00

Our local Iowa City newspaper, the Press-Citizen (whose motto should be "always wrong but never in doubt") has had a bad couple of weeks recently in the old homonym sweepstakes. In a story about Rep. Dave Loebsack's job-shadowing visit recently, the paper's story said that he "road" along with a delivery driver.

A few days later, the P-C's staff editorial about a passenger train excursion between Cedar Rapids and Iowa City mentioned that 2,000 people "road" the train on its one-time round trip.

Less then a week after that embarrassment, in a story about the Hawkeyes football team playing their season opener in Chicago, the story talked about Iowa fans who "road" the train to Wrigley field for a Cubs game.

And just this week, the P-C published a public-service story about autumn being the time of year when deer-car collisions are at their peak. Their advice? "Break" for the deer, but don't swerve.

Now, let no one accuse me of pointing out the errors of others without also offering some helpful advice. So, in my own version of the public-service story, I humbly offer to the Press-Citizen's newsroom staff (reporters, editors, copy editors; it's impossible to track the stupidity back to its lair) this quiz on homonyms, created by Chicago Tribune columnist Eric Zorn.

Anyone reading this who would like to forward it to the Press-Citizen general manager -- purely as a public service, you understand, not to poke fun or ridicule in any way -- has my unqualified permission.

P.S. I would share my score on Zorn's homonym quiz, but I'm entirely too modest. OK, OK, I aced it.

Nifty Google tricks

2007-09-11T18:07:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite things about Google is the way you can use the search engine to perform basic calculations for you without having to go to a conversion calculator page. For example, you can type "165 cm in inches" (without the quotes) and Google returns a page with the calculation "165 centimeters = 64.9606299 inches". How cool is that? And you can do it with temperature (Celsius to Fahrenheit and vice versa), too.

So I've been using the Google Calculator function for a while. But this post at Lifehacker takes the cake: you can check the current time anywhere in the world just by typing the word "time" and the city in the Google search box. So if (just hypothetically speaking) you were interested in the current time in Baku, Azerbaijan, where the FILA World Wrestling Championships are about to get underway, you can type "time baku" in the search box, and voila! You find out that it's 4:03 a.m. Wednesday. So Mike Zadick and Doug Schwab are probably sound asleep, dreaming of gut wrenches and gold medals.

I'm sure there are other awesome Google shortcuts out there, just waiting to be discovered. If you know any, please leave them in the comments. I'm trying to collect the whole set.

New Bruce!!

2007-08-24T18:15:00.001-05:00

The first single ("Radio Nowhere") from Bruce Springsteen's new album, "Magic," has been leaked to radio. It sounds fantastic! The album will be released October 2.

Today's iPod playlist

2007-08-03T07:22:00.000-05:00

It's been a while since I've done one of these. Since the last one, things have changed a bit. My original 40GB iPod bit the dust after 18 months of constant use. At least it had the grace to do so while still under warranty. After a few weeks of back-and-forth with Apple (they kept sending me refurbished iPods of the same model, each of which worked for about a week or less before dying), they finally gave up and offered me a brand-new, color, 60GB video iPod. The only downside is that the FM transmitter I used to listen to my iPod in the car doesn't work with the new model, and I haven't been able to scrounge up the dough for a new one. So I mostly only listen on the bus to and from work, which is a total of about 45 minutes each day.

Enough of the talk. On with the music!

1. Bob Dylan: The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration. I recently added the last of my CD collection to iTunes. It was mostly soundtracks and compilations, including this two-disc set of a bunch of great artists singing the Bob's songs -- sometimes with Bob along for the ride. Highlights from shuffle mode today: Willie Nelson's version of What Was It You Wanted, and the big finale Knockin' on Heaven's Door with everybody on stage (including Kris Kristoffersen, Tom Petty, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris and others). The lowlight (and it's not even close): Johnny Cash and June Carter massacring It Ain't Me Babe. I adore Cash, and I like Bob's original version of this song, but this particular take is just excruciatingly bad.

2. Crazy, Jimmie Dale Gilmore. You either love Jimmie Dale's unique voice or you hate it. I love it, and he sings the bejeebers out of the Patsy Cline classic. This track is from the compilation album Red Hot Country.

3. Sleeping in the Devil's Bed, Daniel Lanois. From the soundtrack to the Wim Wenders movie Until the End of the World. One of the things I like about compilations and soundtracks is I end up discovering little gems that I've never heard before. This track is a perfect example. I really liked the stuff Lanois did with Emmylou Harris on a couple of her albums, but I've never really listened to a lot of his other work. I like this one a lot.

4. Since I Fell For You, Natalie Cole & Reba McEntire. From the compilation Rhythm Country & Blues. A great song, two fine singers whose voices meld surprisingly well. Reba does a nice job with the bluesy stuff.

Comforting the comfortable, afflicting the afflicted

2007-08-02T20:34:00.000-05:00

As I say in my blog profile, I consider myself a "recovering" journalist. The reason I am recovering instead of active has a lot to do with the way newspapers have increasingly abdicated their public responsibilities as corporate ownership ramps up the pressure for ever-increasing profit margins. All of which is by way of explaining why I find this story from the Missoula (Mont.) Independent so upsetting. The story details how the Lee Enterprises-owned Missoulian newspaper has left its opinion editor position open for more than two months, and no longer runs staff editorials, replacing them with guest columns.

For an overview of all the reasons why this is a terrible idea, read the article. But basically, in my opinion, newspapers have a sacred trust to serve as a surrogate for the public interest, using their access and their "bully pulpit" to give a voice to people who are otherwise silenced. It was Finley Peter Dunne who first said, "The job of a newspaper is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable." He was being satirical, but I believe the goal is an honorable one. That obligation to serve the public is why newspapers have been referred to since at least the early 19th century as the "Fourth Estate," providing another layer of checks and balances to the three branches of government. It's why Thomas Jefferson and his pals made sure freedom of the press was included in the very first amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Without unsigned staff editorials, there are no opinions expressed in the newspaper that can't be assumed to be without bias. Sure, if guest columnists advocate for particular issues or positions, you might be able to infer by their name or the minimal bio blurb at the end of the article what their "angle" is, but you might not. Without staff editorials, newspapers become vapid receptacles for biased viewpoints in their opinion pages and the bastardized contemporary version of objectivity in their news pages. True objectivity means that if Person A says "The sky is blue" and Person B says "The sky is green," the journalist does a little independent research and writes a story that says, "The evidence shows that the sky is, in fact, blue." Today's toothless, lazy objective journalism thinks it has done its job if it publishes a story that gives the reader both sides, without bothering to provide the analysis that uncovers the truth -- analysis that its readers may be unable to do on their own.

On a more personal note, as a former employee of a Lee Enterprises newspaper, I shuddered when I read a commenter's reference to "booking some dark time" as the Lee euphemism for delaying newsroom hires to save money. I still remember the staff meeting announcing a wave of staff layoffs where the editor glibly told us a newsroom artist position had been eliminated (and the artist who had filled it with his talent and wit had been fired) by saying it had "gone dark."

Eliminating staff editorials. Prizing profits above public service. Now that's what I call going dark.

You can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him

2007-08-02T19:26:00.000-05:00

Nowhere in this story in Der Spiegel, about a "shoplifting squirrel" that keeps sneaking into a Finnish grocery store and stealing chocolate candy eggs (unwrapping them on the spot, eating the chocolate, and leaving the toy surprise behind), do they ask the question that was uppermost in my mind:

Why the hell doesn't the store try to stop it?!

I mean, how tough can it be to keep a freaking squirrel out of the grocery store? What other wildlife is running amok in Aisle 7? Are there raccoons rummaging through the bread aisle, eating the tops off all the hamburger buns? Are there owls loitering around the magazine rack, wrinkling up the pages of Field & Stream while they look for the centerfold? And who -- or what -- has been nibbling on the Nilla Wafers?

Is that a threat or a promise?

2007-08-02T18:18:00.000-05:00

According to an ABC News story, increasing numbers of vegans are refusing to have sex with meat-eaters. "Their body odor is pungent. Their sweat is extremely smelly. Their spit, and all their body fluids, are strong and stinky. Vegetarian people are not so smelly," Janna Cunningham, who has been a vegetarian for 32 years, and a vegan for 10, told ABC News.com.

Pointing out that it's exactly that sort of humorless rigidity that makes vegans (mostly) unattractive to (most) meat-eaters would be mean-spirited. So I won't.

I will, however, point out that even PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) isn't down with giving carnivores the cold shoulder. "Sex is a very effective form of outreach and activism," said Dan Shannon, a PETA spokesman, and 10-year veteran vegan, who thought meat eaters could be converted by their partners.

Specially designed for you non-confrontational types

2006-10-04T20:16:00.000-05:00

The ultra-cool site Lifehacker posted about an Internet service that lets you call in sick ahead of time. Call-in-Sick lets you record a voice mail, say right before you head out to the Sports Column on Thursday, to tell your boss you won't be at work on Friday, and then schedule a time for the service to call the boss and leave the message.

Somehow, planning ahead to call in sick seems like cheating. Besides, I always wanted to be on the stage ...

My favorite season

2006-09-29T21:56:00.000-05:00

I realized yesterday that autumn is truly here. My heart rejoices to think of the warm days and crisp nights ahead, when Mother Nature puts on a one-woman fashion show just for us.

This realization came as I was driving from Iowa City to West Branch on the twisty, nearly deserted Local Road (excuse me, Hoover Highway). The sun was low on the horizon behind me, and something about the quality of the light made everything seem extra sharp -- as if someone had given the world's focus ring a twist. The gently rolling hills looked like rumpled blankets on an unmade bed. The sun lit up trees, fields of corn and soybeans, and farmhouses: infinite shades of green and gold, russet red and shining white, all against a backdrop of exquisite blue.

I like to say that Iowa is the weather armpit of the universe. We have the worst of two worlds -- horridly hot, humid summers and bitterly cold, snowy winters. Spring is no relief: You never know when one last snowstorm will blow through to kill all the brave little daffodils and tulips, and the brief teases of sweet warmth are inevitably chased away by fierce thunderstorms and tornado warnings. By the time the threat of snow is well and truly gone, it's already 90 degrees and 90 percent humidity.

But autumn ... ah, autumn is the reward Iowans are given for surviving tornado warnings and brutally humid days when the air seems so thick it's hard to breathe. Autumn is the natural world's bouquet of roses and sheepish smile as it asks our forgiveness for its repeated transgressions. "Hey, baby, these are for you. You know I'm sorry, baby. I never meant to treat you so bad. I'll be good to you from now on, baby, I promise." Sure, it's all a big lie (hey, when isn't it?), but it's a beautiful lie. I fall for it every time.

And here I go again ...

Scene around town

2006-09-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

On the marquee of the local United Methodist Church, which is quite fond of cutesy messages:

"love your enemies -- it messes with their heads"

Good to know that God is in favor of psyops (psychological operations). Maybe President Bystander really is on a mission from the Almighty.

On the continuing decline of the English language (even among people who should know better)

2006-09-09T17:32:00.000-05:00

A while back I wrote this post , which started out being about Peter Jennings' alarmingly Yoda-like pronouncements, but degenerated into a diatribe about the inability of e-mail correspondents to actually spell words properly and use proper capitalization and punctuation.

I'm sorry to say that things aren't exactly taking a turn for the better. This semester I am working with a class as a Writing Fellow (which means I work with students to improve their term papers by reading rough drafts and giving them my comments, both written and in conference). There are two of us Fellows working with this particular class, and we were e-mailing back and forth to set up a time to meet the professor and talk about the schedule. And you know what? There is definitely something wrong when three people are having an e-mail conversation and I am the only one who is not channeling e.e. cummings. Even the professor wrote his e-mails entirely in lowercase! What is this world coming to?

Oh, sorry. That last sentence should be:

omg!!!! what is this world coming to?!?!?!?! lolol

Poem for Labor Day

2006-09-04T18:40:00.000-05:00

The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.

-- Excerpt from To be of use by Marge Piercy
You can read the whole poem at The Writer's Almanac

Campus Scene & Heard #1

2006-08-31T00:19:00.000-05:00

In the Wheelroom of the Iowa Memorial Union, two young male college students were walking out. Says one to the other: "I am so done with, like, having lots of friends." Yeah, those damn friends. They can really drag a person down, what with always wanting to hang out and caring about how you're doing and all.

The funny thing is that, to look at him, you wouldn't have thought having too many friends was really this guy's problem. Live and learn.

Fall Semester 2006

2006-08-20T21:11:00.000-05:00

It starts tomorrow, believe it or not, so I thought I'd put together a post about my class schedule for this, the penultimate semester of my undergraduate career (sniff!). I'm taking 3 classes and also doing a research practicum with one of my history professors.

Latin America & the U.S.: Historical Perspectives. I am really looking forward to this class. As the class listing says: "This course examines the historical and contemporary relations between the United States and Latin American countries." It should be a nice complement to a class I took last spring from the same professor, an overview of Latin American Revolution (specifically, Mexico, Cuba and Nicaragua).

The Progressive Era in America. "This course examines the history and politics of the early 20th-century U.S. The Progressive Era is generally defined as 1897 to 1922." Another class I'm anticipating will be quite interesting. I've had some other history classes that covered this time period, though they focused on other specific topics (the development of the working class in one case, and the history of immigration to the U.S. in another), so it will be good to get a solid overview. Like the Latin America class, I've taken other classes from this professor, and I think he's great. There's a real comfort level in knowing how a professor teaches, and whether it's compatible with the way you learn.

Intro to Museology. And now for something completely different ... The other 2 classes apply directly to my major (history, natch), but this one is a little different. "This course presents a broad overview of the past, present, and future position of museums and their evolving attitudes toward function, audience, and community." I chose it for a couple of reasons: first, it looks interesting, and second, I thought it might be relevant given my intentions to get a master's in library science. It seems lots of MLS folks end up working as museum curators, so this is just a way to keep my options open, I guess. Plus, it sounds interesting, AND it fulfills my final General Education requirement (Humanities, if you're scoring at home).

Research Practicum. I have never done one of these before, so it's exciting and a little scary at the same time. I will be working with the professor who teaches the Latin America class I listed above; the research I'll be doing is for a book he is writing on the history of William Walker's filibustering campaigns in Nicaragua. I really love doing research, so I expect it will be enjoyable as well as a handy skill to develop for the future.

And of course, I will be continuing my Undergraduate Scholar Assistant (USA) position at the UI Center for Human Rights, which is fantastic. I love working there -- both the work and the people. It's probably the best job I've ever had, which just proves once again that satisfaction does not correlate directly to salary. An important lesson for us all, methinks.

From Janet's Library: The God of Small Things

2006-08-13T15:38:00.000-05:00

The lack of new book reviews being posted is not reflective of the number of books I have been reading. As we enter the last week of freedom before the fall semester starts, I have continued to read steadily. But the reviews have been stalled as I try to craft a review that will do justice to the best book I've read in a while: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I often find it much harder to review books I really like than books I didn't like at all. I think it's because I want very much to convey just why I liked it so much in a way that will inspire someone to want to read it themselves. When it comes to reviewing The God of Small Things, one of the stumbling blocks is that the book is a marvel of beautiful, inventive language that seems to demand the same of its reviewer.

The book, for those completely unfamiliar with it, details the ways in which a family falls apart in late 20th century India, seen largely through the eyes of a pair of fraternal twins (or as the book calls them, the Two-Egg Twins), Rahel and Estha. It's a tragic story of a family brought to ruin by love for the "wrong" person, an Untouchable. To an outsider like myself, it stands as a subtly scathing indictment of the caste system, a societal arrangement that I am probably incapable of fully comprehending.

Ultimately, though, the story is about loss and how the human psyche deals with it. The twins experience a series of devastating losses:

their friend, Velutha
their beloved mother, Ammu
the rest of their admittedly dysfunctional family
their home
and (most heartbreaking of all) each other

Roy finely draws the way each of these losses affects the emotional growth of Rahel and Estha, but central to their experience is always their forced separation at the age of 8. Roy refers to them as the Two-Egg Twins, a semantic device to convey the way their family and even medical experts discount that inexplicable bond between siblings born at the same time. Even as the label tries to diminish the bond, she strengthens it with examples that show Rahel and Estha are in fact as strongly linked as any identical twins. They experience the emotions of the other as if they were their own, and they communicate often without words.

As I read The God of Small Things, it was hard to separate my appreciation of the story from my admiration of the way that Roy plays with the English language. The liberties she takes are far from mere affect; she uses them to skillfully convey the seemingly infinite fluidity of English or any foreign language as it's being learned. Roy creates compound neologisms to describe the people and places that populate the book (the wetgreen grass; the thunderdarkness of the day); Rahel and Estha are repeatedly admonished for pronouncing English words backwards ("POTS" they read aloud as their car approaches an intersection. "naidnI yuB, naidnI eB".) And most strikingly, Roy re-creates word breaks within common phrases (an owl who lives inside the family's pickle factory is always and forever a Bar Nowl).

The fluidity of the language is reflected in the narrative, which slides back and forth from the past to the present. The reader learns early on that some tragedy has befallen the family and that as a result the twins were separated and sent to live apart. What, exactly, has happened is only gradually doled out by Roy. I found the suspense creating a low-level feeling of dread as I continued reading, both wanting and not wanting to know what the final break was. There's no question that things will work out, or that anyone will live happily ever after, but I still found myself compulsively reading to the end anyway. Now that is a writer.

New hope for library delinquents like me

2006-08-01T16:28:00.000-05:00

I have this ... problem. I don't always (OK, hardly ever) remember to return my library books on time, even though I have always finished reading them. This is one of those weird brain-freeze things, where the books will be sitting in a tote bag right next to the front door, and I will walk right past it on my way out. I can't explain it, though the same thing used to happen with rented movies back when I still rented movies. And those babies cost serious money to return late.

For years I chalked up the inevitable library fines to "charitable donation." I figured it was just my way of supporting the public library, which heaven knows can use all the help it can get. Now that I am a struggling student without a lot of (OK, any) extra cash, it's no longer quite so cute. As a result, I was blocked from using my local library for most of the early part of this year, thanks to a whopping $11 in library fines I had racked up over the months (once you get to $2 in fines, you can't check out any more books). Again, I'm not proud of this particular mental deficiency, but it is what it is.

About a month ago, I found out that the West Branch Public Library has a great policy: you can pay your library fines with donations to the local food pantry. In this case, 1 item = $1 fine. Now this is more like it -- I have any number of perfectly serviceable food items hanging around that I could part with more easily than cash. So I rounded up 6 cans of potato-cheddar soup (I had bought a case at one of those bulk-buy stores), 2 boxes of lasagna noodles, 1 box of Rice-a-Roni, 1 can of baked beans, and 1 boxed lemon-poppy quick bread mix, and bought my way out of library jail.

Then I strolled over to the shelves, picked out 6 books from my "To Read" list, and went home ...

The Obsessive Reader

2006-07-15T19:29:00.000-05:00

That would be me, of course. After all, it's only been 10 days since my literary dinner with Janet, and I've already posted 4 reviews of those books (and actually, I have 2 more finished but not posted). You might think I've been spending all my waking life reading, though it's not true. I still manage to work full-time (well, 7 hours a day) between chapters. But I have been reading pretty much all the rest of the time -- it's one of the advantages of living alone, I suppose. I read on the bus to and from work (20 minute trips each way), I read during dinner, I read after dinner and before bedtime.

I've been like this as long as I can remember. I don't seem to be capable of letting a book sit once I've started it. There's almost nothing I would rather do than read, it's as simple as that. Of course, there are a few things: I enjoy spending time with friends (though it happens fairly infrequently as they all are busy with their own lives), I love listening to music (and often have music on in the background while I'm reading, and always in the car), and I do watch some TV (though the Cubs' season does not encourage prolonged exposure, and the only "appointment viewing" I have is House, currently in reruns). And I am still a regular volunteer with IRRIS (the Iowa Radio Reading Information Service) and RVAP (Rape Victim Advocacy Program).

Reading over that last paragraph, it sounds a bit sad and desperate, doesn't it? Perhaps I am feeling a bit guilty about spending so much time lost in books. And I believe I do have a nagging feeling that there are experiences I am missing out on by choosing to allot my free time so narrowly. But unlike in my previous journalist's life, before I returned to college, these reading binges have a limited duration. During the semester the only reading I do is what's assigned for classes (which is not to say that it's not interesting, engaging and enjoyable, but only that it's not "for fun"). So I guess I will try to stop feeling so guilty about being a book addict, and enjoy the sensation all the more for knowing it's only a temporary reprieve.

From Janet's library: A Year of Wonders

2006-07-14T22:01:00.000-05:00

I'm majoring in history and geography, so this book by Geraldine Brooks appealed to me when Janet pulled it off the shelf. A Year of Wonders is a fictionalized account of a 17th century English village that reacts to the arrival of the Plague by quarantining itself from the rest of the world. The isolation provides a kind of psychological laboratory that examines the ways in which communities experience mass fear, mass hysteria, and the consequences of losing 2/3 of its population in the space of a year.

The story is told from the point of view of Anna, a maid for the local minister and his wife. It is the minister who through the force of his personality convinces the villagers to close them off from the rest of the world, and who struggles mightily to keep them from succumbing to superstition even as entire families of their neighbors die. Anna is a sympathetic narrator, not immune to the tragedies wrought by the infection. The oddity of a peasant-class woman knowing how to read and write is addressed in the text.

I thought I knew where this book was going, if not the details, but the ending really took me by surprise. The unusual twist requires the reader to re-examine their assumptions and casts familiar characters in an entirely new light. I don't know how realistic it is -- not very, I suspect -- but it surely made me think.

Another interesting aspect: Brooks' afterword details her research into a real-life village that was the inspiration for her novel. While she used many of the known facts, they are few and far between, which gave Brooks a license to invent. I suspect that if we were able to know the true story it would be fascinating in its own right, but in the absence of that, Brooks has given us a fine substitute.

From Janet's library: S Is for Silent

2006-07-10T21:08:00.000-05:00

Sue Grafton chugs relentlessly toward the end of the alphabet. S turned out to be a perfectly serviceable entry in the series, which I experience a little differently than I do other series. For instance, I have devoured repeatedly all of the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout, and the characters are so vividly drawn that I like to think of them as living outside of the books. Kinsey Millhone, on the other hand, seems like a very cool chick, and someone that I think I would enjoy hanging out with. But the connection isn't as intense; I don't seek out the latest Grafton as soon as it's published, but I'll make a point of eventually catching up at the library.

Anyway, the series went through kind of a "dark" period somewhere in the middle of the alphabet, when we learned a whole bunch about Kinsey's childhood and past history. The last few, though, have reverted back to a lighter feel, and S in particular has virtually no detours into Kinsey's personal life at all. It's not bad, necessarily (though I sorely missed visiting with her octogenarian landlord Henry).

Overall, I'd say if you've read and enjoyed the previous vowels and consonants in the series, you'll probably enjoy this one as well. I don't think this one will inspire many newcomers to start all over back at A, though.

From Janet's library: Lord John and the Private Matter

2006-07-09T10:40:00.000-05:00

This book is an outlier of sorts in Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series. Rather than focusing on the main characters of the series, Jamie and Claire Fraser, this book concentrates on Lord John Grey, a secondary character first introduced in Dragonfly in Amber, the second book in the Outlander series. Lord John is a British soldier who despite finding himself on the opposite side of the Jacobite uprising from Jamie, nonetheless falls in love with him.

None of that really matters in this book, however, which has only a scattered handful of references to Jamie. The book concerns Lord Grey's turns as amateur detective, as he tries to figure out who killed a sergeant from his regiment, who may or may not have been a spy.

If you enjoyed Lord Grey's appearances in the Outlander series, you probably will enjoy this book. The character stays true to his previous appearances, and it's interesting to learn more about him than we know from the Outlander books. But I really only read the Outlander books for Jamie, and his absence here made this an enjoyable but forgettable diversion for an evening. Hey, I've read worse ...

From Janet's library: The Lemon Jelly Cake

2006-07-08T18:05:00.000-05:00

The Lemon Jelly Cake, by Madeline Babcock Smith, is a charming portrait of turn-of-the-century (20th century, that is) life in a small Midwestern town. It was written in the 1950s, but displays little of that decade's blandness. In fact, there are some surprisingly nuanced portraits of the difficulties of small-town life for people (women, especially) who are interested in more of an intellectual challenge in life than how to come up with 19 different pickle recipes to outdo your nemesis at the County Fair.

With its young female narrator (Helene), daughter of the town's doctor and his "booky" wife (the town's description of her), this book was reminiscent in some ways of To Kill a Mockingbird, though without the gravitas or Harper Lee's lyrical writing. There are moments of genuine hilarity, such as when Helene and her best friend Gracie (the minister's daughter) find themselves on the loose in big-town Springfield, where they stumble into a part of town where the "hoarfrost" houses are. Another charming episode involves Helene's attempts to "cure" one of her daddy's patients (whose "stomach palsy" has churned the cream she is fond of drinking into a ball of butter in her belly) while he and her mother are at the town's annual Anti-Horsethief Picnic.

All in all, The Lemon Jelly Cake is a pleasant, breezy read. Recommended for anyone who appreciates portraits of small-town Americana that refuse to either sanctify or vilify.

Thanks, Janet!

2006-07-07T20:52:00.000-05:00

I had dinner with Janet last Wednesday at Saigon To Bangkok, a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant that has the hands-down best fried rice I have ever tasted -- never greasy and with a fantastic hint of spiciness that raises it from "better than nothing" to "better than anything". But I digress ...

We compared our current reading lists, and I lamented that I have fallen behind this summer. Usually, summers and semester breaks are the times into which I cram as much "just for fun" reading as I can, but due to a little overdue fines issue I have not been able to avail myself of the public library lately. (This, however, is due to change, because I have discovered that the West Branch Public Library accepts canned or nonperishable food items for the food pantry in exchange for fines. It's 1 food item = $1 in fines, which means I am just 4 jars of salsa, 4 cans of potato cheddar soup and a box of mac&cheese away from having a clean slate.)

Anyway, Janet invited me back to her house to peruse her bookshelves in search of reading material. This is roughly analogous to waving a crack pipe in front of an addict, frankly, but like the junkie I have no shame. I came away with a grocery sack full of books, which I will be writing mini-reviews on as I work my way through the bag. Stay tuned ...

'Beautiful Game'? Would you settle for 'has a great personality'?

2006-07-01T12:53:00.000-05:00

I have mixed feelings about soccer. On the one hand, as a certified sports nut, I feel a certain obligation to enjoy a sport that is beloved by 98% of the world. On the other hand, I don't know enough about it to understand the strategy involved, which makes watching a game on television akin to watching a baseball team run wind sprints in the outfield. (And a side rant that the ESPN/ABC announcers are useless when it comes to explaining enough of the game to actually make it interesting to casual fans. What a wasted opportunity.

But it's once again World Cup time, and I vowed to make a real effort to watch some games and see if I could capture a little of the excitement. And surprisingly, it's kind of working. I have watched several games through the group play and the next couple of rounds, and it's actually pretty cool. I still don't understand a lot of the rules (what's the deal with free kicks? when does a team get awarded a corner kick instead of a throw-in? how do they determine stoppage time?) but it is amazing what talented players can do with the ball. The way they can control the dribble, direct their kicks, stop the ball with their shoulder or foot, it's pretty amazing.

I think I got hooked when I watched Argentina score the most incredible goal during group play off what I think the announcer called a "back heel" -- the player kind of overran the ball, then flicked it with his heel to a teammate standing behind him, who kicked the goal. It was jaw-dropping. So I was saddened yesterday to see Argentina lose to Germany on penalty kicks. And now today England loses the same way to Portugal.

Seriously, teams should pay me not to root for them.

I'm Back

2006-06-05T15:56:00.000-05:00

I'd like to get back to posting here regularly, and the only way to that is to start. So ... here's a start!

What European City Do You Belong In?

2006-04-19T19:54:00.000-05:00

You Belong in London

You belong in London, but you belong in many cities... Hong Kong, San Francisco, Sidney. You fit in almost anywhere.
And London is diverse and international enough to satisfy many of your tastes. From curry to Shakespeare, London (almost) has it all!

What European City Do You Belong In?

Blogthings - Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

2005-12-30T10:50:00.000-06:00

I Am Donner

The most loveable and sweet reindeer, you're also a total dork!

Why You're Naughty: You keep (accidentally) tripping the other reindeer while flying.

Why You're Nice: You're always smiling, even if you've fallen flat on your horns.

Which of Santa's Reindeer Are You?

Midterm update: Bad news, good news

2005-03-12T11:13:00.000-06:00

Well, Friday was a hell of a day. It started badly, got a lot worse, then rebounded at the end. Kind of like riding a rollercoaster, but without the barf bag.

The bad start was at work, where I went in with the idea of asking to leave an hour early in order to cram some last-minute studying for that damn Italian midterm. Instead, I got hit with a faculty member asking me to review a manuscript and answer 42 author's queries from the publisher, mostly missing citations and such. Oh, and it had to be sent back the same day. I found most of the missing citations, didn't find a few, and punted on a bunch of questions that had to do with content that the author, unsurprisingly, should answer herself (imagine that: an author responding to author queries!)

The worse came during that Italian midterm, which was at least as bad as I thought it would be. I have no idea how I did, but I'm pretty sure it will turn out to be my lowest grade since I returned to college. The subjunctive, the conditional, the "if" clause -- I hate them all with a royal passion. I have resigned myself to never being fluent in Italian; now I just want to make sure it doesn't drag my GPA into the gutter before I'm through with it.

All of which made the next development that much sweeter. We received our graded midterms from Images, and I got a 97. Not too bad, I guess. It was a good way to end the day, for sure. That and a movie, Ladri di Saponetta, which was very ironic and funny. And class let out early, to boot. I'm sure glad those 2 Italian classes aren't switched on the schedule. I would have hated to get the good grade, then get kicked in the gut by that crappy midterm.

Midterm report

2005-03-08T21:26:00.000-06:00

One more week -- no, wait, three more days -- until spring break. Apparently in the spirit of "whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger," I have three midterms and a paper due over the course of a week. Nifty. Oh, and the cherry on top? A take-home midterm which consists of 5 essay questions of up to 3 pages each. You have got to be kidding me, right? Alas, no. I hate take-home tests. I really do.

Last Friday was the midterm for Images of Modern Italy. This is a very interesting class, which I am enjoying very much. Unfortunately, that's not the same as feeling like I've got the subject matter under control. Part of the problem is that the class, which meets twice a week, involves a lot of watching Italian films on Fridays, and discussing them the following Monday. Well, sure, that's a good idea -- give me a whole weekend to forget everything! I can barely remember what kind of car I drive when I leave work at the end of the day. Review guide: A list of 6 questions, of which some unannounced number will be on the test. It turns out to be 3, and it turns out to be not horrifically hard. We haven't gotten our grades back yet, but the instructor mentioned in an aside to me and another girl in the class that we did really well. Other folks, not so much, apparently. Too bad for them. And yes, I am at least as mean as that sounds.

Monday, besides being a crapola day anyway because of my schedule (work 9-1, classes 1-3:45, class 6-8:30) I had a 5-page paper due in my late class, Child Labor and International Human Rights. Topic: Define what a child is, define "child labor," define what should be done about child labor, and explain why a global solution is the only possibility of ending it. Cake. Well, sort of. I'm reasonably happy with the final draft, although ever since I turned it in I've been thinking of stuff I could have added. Again, I really like this class and the format the professor is using. We usually have a couple of chapters from a book to read, then we split up into smaller groups to discuss related questions, then we come back together for a full-class discussion and sometimes lecture. I would be more effusive about the class and the professor, but I'm still pissed about that ginormous take-home midterm. And yes, I am pouting as much as that sounds.

This morning -- you guessed it -- another midterm. This one in History of the American Working Class Before 1900, another way-interesting class. I know, I'm starting to sound like a broken record. So I like school; sue me. I did not feel very confident about this midterm, because it had a very heavy reading load that I have not kept up with as well as I'd like. Review guide: Two pages of questions that won't be on the midterm, although questions "like them" might be. Questions unlike them also might be. Remind me again of the purpose of a "study guide"? Anyway, the test was 3 "short" essays chosen from a list of 6, and one "long" essay chosen from a list of 2. I am not despairing about the results, but I'm not skipping for joy, either. We'll see. And yes, I am as ambivalent about my potential grade as that sounds.

So. One more midterm, on Friday, and this one's gonna be bad. It's Intermediate Italian 2, or fourth-semester Italian. I've been doing pretty well in this class, but this particular section of study has some stuff that is completely kicking my ass. If you were around for the fall semester, you won't be surprised to hear that once again it's those damn verb forms. There's this one particular bit, about which tense you use in dependent clauses, and in "if" clauses, and I. Just. Cannot. Keep. This. Straight. I just can't. I have no idea what I'm going to do on the midterm. Somehow I don't think crying is an option. And yes, I am as panicky about the test as that sounds.

Stay tuned for the fallout. And in the meantime, don't cry for me, Argentina. Or in this case, Italia.

Me too

2005-03-08T21:23:00.000-06:00

Not now, you said.
Not then. Not ever.
Not her, you said.
Not anyone.
Only you, you said.
Me too, I said.
Only you.

Happy New Year!

2005-01-01T16:33:00.000-06:00

Quote of the Day:: "'Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better [person].'

— Benjamin Franklin

"What's this do?"

2004-12-26T21:15:00.000-06:00

My poor friend Diane flinches involuntarily whenever I pause next to a mysterious switch, button, door or handle. She knows what the next words out of my mouth will be:

"Hey, what's this do?"

uttered as I reach toward the captivating object of my attention. Usually, the scene ends with her grabbing my arm to physically pull me away from the switch/button/door/handle before I get us both in trouble. We laugh about it, but it's a weird compulsion for me. I always want to know what's behind the curtain, even if it is just a short bald guy with flat feet and no charisma.

Peas and corn?

2004-12-26T11:14:00.000-06:00

So I'm watching the NFL pregame show, and I see one of AOL's new commercials -- the ones that try to scare people into signing on to AOL by telling them how vulnerable non-AOLers are to viruses and malicious do-badders.

Anyway, this commercial features the AOL mom (the same one who climbed up on the table in a previous commercial) holding her cute little baby and talking about all the digital milestones she has stored on her computer. "Your first real food -- remember that?" she asks the tyke. "It was peas," she says to us. "And corn."

Peas and corn? Who serves peas and corn together? Peas and carrots, sure. Corn and potatoes, why not? But peas and corn? Blecch.

I don't understand our priorities

2004-12-23T01:34:00.000-06:00

I know most of us are so comfortable on our respective sides of the fence that we really don't want to hear what the other side has to say, but we need to start.

And in that vein, I would really like to have an intelligent, respectful debate with anyone who can explain the Bush Administration's actions on why it's cutting food aid. Here's the link from the New York Times, with a quote from the story:

U.S. Cutting Food Aid Aimed at Self-Sufficiency:

"With the budget deficit growing and President Bush promising to reduce spending, the administration has told representatives of several charities that it was unable to honor some earlier promises and would have money to pay for food only in emergency crises like that in Darfur, in western Sudan. The cutbacks, estimated by some charities at up to $100 million, come at a time when the number of hungry in the world is rising for the first time in years and all food programs are being stretched."

My questions: Isn't alleviating poverty and starvation more important than some of the priorities the Bush Administration has funded?
What good will it do for the United States to be impervious to attack (which isn't possible, anyway, and especially not by implementing the missile-defense system that doesn't work)? How can the priorities of tax cuts continue to be defended in light of this news and the growing deficit?

I just can't see it, but I'm willing to listen to a reasonable explanation. Anyone? Anyone?

Making the grade

2004-12-21T22:26:00.000-06:00

So finals for fall semester ended Friday, and ever since I have been checking ISIS every, oh, 90 minutes or so to see my updated "Grades in Progress" report. The first to show was Writing Theory and Practice, which didn't have a final per se, but a 5-page research paper that had to be turned in last Wednesday. Ahh, an A. Excellent.

Next up was Foundations of GIS. This one I was a bit worried about, partly because I missed one of the labs (the GPS field research) and partly because I had no feel for how the curve might be shaping up. I knew I was around 90 percent going into the final, but would that be good enough to score an A? As it turns out, apparently it was, or else I aced the final (thanks for the study group, Andrea!). Two down, two to go.

Next: History Colloquium, which had no final but a 15-page research paper that was all I worked on the entire second half of the semester. The colloquium was on World War I, and my research topic was the treatment of prisoners of war, and the role played by international humanitarian agencies such as the Red Cross in watching out for them. It turned out to be a fascinating topic, and I was justly rewarded with an A.

Finally, Intermediate Italian I. I knew this would be the last grade to post, because the final was at the ungodly hour of 7 p.m. Friday. It was also the class I worried most about, simply because it seemed like things kind of spiraled out of my control a bit toward the end of the semester. I found myself spending more time writing my two research papers and less time doing my Italian homework, and as a result had a hell of a time remembering the differences and conjugations for the future and conditional tenses and the subjunctive mood. I'm pretty sure I also missed turning in a 1-page composition (and a couple or three lab assignments) during the last few weeks of class, which is never a good idea. I had about 3 hours free before the final, and I spent most of it sitting in the downtown Dairy Queen cramming my brain full of the futuro semplice and futuro anteriore, the condizionale and the congiuntivo. I guess it paid off: A.

So of course I'm happy with those grades. It does ratchet up the (self-inflicted) pressure a bit, though -- I have yet to receive less than an A since I returned to college in 2003. I know it won't be the end of the world if (more likely when) I do "fall from grace." But I'd like to postpone the inevitable as long as possible, you know?

Today's iPod report

2004-12-16T19:14:00.000-06:00

More of the new music I downloaded earlier this week ...

1. Heading East, Amy Farris. Fantastic song! Kinda folky, singer-songwriter-y, great lyrics. One of the real finds of the freebie extravaganza. Note to self: Need to find out more about Amy Farris.
2. Lucky One, Alison Krauss & Union Station. I knew I liked Alison's music, so this wasn't too much of a stretch. Best of the 2 freebies I found (the other was New Favorite, which is also good.
3. Joey, Concrete Blonde. OK, this is cheating a little bit, because I remember loving this song when it first came out years ago. And it wasn't exactly free, since I bought it at iTunes, but I used a gift card I got for my birthday, so it was sorta free ... Anyway, great song.

Today's iPod report

2004-12-15T19:41:00.000-06:00

I acted on a hot tip from iPodlounge.com, which published a roundup of Web sites where you can download legal mp3 files. I checked some out, and scored 35 new songs in one night. Almost all of them are from artists I've never heard of, which was what I was going for. If you know and have an opinion about any bands that I mention here, let yourself be heard!

So today, some thoughts on the best of bunch so far:

1. Love Invincible, Michael Franti. Kind of bluesy, roots-rocky kind of thang. I like it. I downloaded another song of his, Everybody Loves Music, but it hasn't floated to the top of the playlist yet. Stay tuned ...
2. 2000 Miles, Coldplay. A cover of the old Pretenders song (love the Pretenders, but I digress...) I like it. But can someone tell this hopelessly unhip 40-year-old -- would you consider this a typical Coldplay sound? Just trying to figure out if I should seek out their original stuff.
3. Church in Calhoun, Boxharp. Another band I never heard of. Very nice story song. I'd like to listen to it again when I'm not on the loud-as-hell Cambus, so I can actually hear the lyrics clearly without making my ears bleed. Also have several other songs from them; TBL (To Be Listened, I guess).

They don't like me? But I'm so damn likable!

2004-12-15T19:32:00.000-06:00

Why does rejection always feel so ... personal? Today I received the student evaluations from the class I tutored this fall. Most of them were fine; the students said they found my comments helpful and they actually incorporated them often into their finished drafts. Then there were the couple whose comments were totally negative.

Did they really find my comments and conferences "not at all helpful"? Did they really "never" incorporate my suggestions into their final drafts? Do they really think I'm an "ass pimple on the University of Iowa"?

OK, I made that last one up, and at least there weren't any personally hostile comments, but still. It hurts a little to know there were students I didn't manage to reach. Unlike some of my own writing assignments, I actually put some work into theirs! I spent several hours reading and commenting on all 10 papers (twice during the semester), and planning for our one-on-one conferences. I hate to think I wasted my time.

The program supervisor says not to worry; a couple of negative evals are normal, and you have to remember not to take it personally. So I'm trying. But doggone it, it's not working yet.

Is it because he's Canadian?

2004-12-03T13:31:00.000-06:00

... or is he just a pompous network windbag who couldn't speak in the "voice of the people" if he tried? There must be some reason ABC news anchor Peter Jennings spouts sentences such as this when asked by the Washington Post about NBC anchor Tom Brokaw's farewell:

Good Night, Tom (washingtonpost.com): "Over on ABC, anchor Jennings said he was watching Brokaw's swan song out of the corner of one eye. 'Yes, we all keep an eye on one another,' Jennings said. 'Friends we are, but compete we do.' "

What the hell is that? There's got to be some sort of middle ground between that sort of stick-up-the-behind phrasing and the stuff I see in my e-mail every day ("how r u? im ok. lol") I can't remember the last time I received a non-business e-mail that used complete sentences and at least a passing effort at proper punctualization and capitalization. And the growing popularity of IM and text messaging leaves some people apparently unable to type out such complex words as "you" and "are."

Believe it or not, I'm trying not to be a jerk about all of this, and I'm all for being casual in casual settings and all, but there's a limit, dammit! u cant b serious if u rite lik this, imho.

Or maybe I'm just a grumpy old bat who turned 40 this year. Whatever.

On the iPod

2004-11-16T20:12:00.000-06:00

1. Temptation, Shelby Lynne. Is it pop? Is it country? Who cares? It's just good music.
2. Forever Blue, Chris Isaak. This isn't one of those albums I can listen to over and over and over again, because all the songs start to sound exactly the same. But the first time around, it's golden.
3. Something in Red, Lorrie Morgan. I confess: The main reason I listen to this album is so I can sing the title song out loud. Therefore, I only listen in the privacy of my own home or car.

On the iPod

2004-11-12T13:34:00.000-06:00

1. Barricades and Brickwalls, Kasey Chambers. Cambus on the way to work. I first heard Kasey a few years ago on KUNI-FM, the NPR affiliate in Cedar Falls. She's got an astonishingly original voice, and writes some damn fine songs. And do you have any idea how hard it is not to sing along to "Am I Not Pretty Enough?" It's hard.

2. You Gotta Sin to Get Saved, Maria McKee. Walking between Intermediate Italian and Foundations of GIS classes. I've had this album for years, and only listened to it a couple of times right after I got it. Thanks to iPodmagic, I've rediscovered it, and I like what I hear. In fact, I kept listenting to it on the Cambus ride from class to work this afternoon.

3. The Road to Ensenada, Lyle Lovett. Cambus on the way home from work. That's right, I'm not from Texas, but Texas wants me anyway. I know it's true 'cause Lyle says so. Cool.

On the iPod

2004-11-11T23:32:00.000-06:00

1. On the Media (10/29/04), NPR. Cambus on the way to work. Couldn't listen to the whole show; all the pieces about the election just made me bitter. Sigh.

2. Tracks (disc 3), Bruce Springsteen. From work to see my advisor about Spring 2005 class schedule. Nothing gets the old legs pumping up the Pentacrest hill like "Cynthia."

3. Crossing Muddy Waters, John Hiatt. Cambus on the way home. The more I hear "Only the Song Survives" the more I want to sing along. For the sake of my fellow passengers, I refrained.

Why I Love My iPod

2004-11-11T23:25:00.000-06:00

After months of Pod envy, I finally scraped up the cash to buy an iPod about a month ago. (Actually, I used some of my financial aid for the fall semseter; hey, it's educational! I use it as an external hard drive to transport files between my home PC and the computer labs to print. So there.)
I carefully compared the different versions, and finally decided "in for a penny, in for a pound" and splurged on the 40GB monster. How long did I say I've had it? A month? I already can't imagine living without it.
Why is that? How do I love my iPod? Let me count the ways ...

I can download and listen to one of my favorite NPR shows, "On the Media," for free every week. Because heaven knows turning off the football game at 1 p.m. to actually listen to the show on the radio is just too much to ask.
I can listen to the entire Winterland bootleg without switching CDs in the middle of "Rosalita."
I can essentially program my own radio station by creating goofy playlists that combine songs by John Hiatt, Johnny Cash and John Mayer, among others. This is really the best part for anyone who loves more than one kind of music. No one commercial radio can serve up the music I want to listen to.

On this page, I will be offering up a daily checklist of what I'm listening to as I go about my day, from home to school to work to home to wherever.

Sometimes My Love #1

2004-07-30T10:28:00.000-05:00

Sometimes my love
can no longer be contained
safely within the chambers of my heart.
It slips past a valve and escapes
fizzing forth into my throat
and popping against my teeth.

Champagne kisses to say
"I need you"
Champagne kisses to say
"I want you"
Champagne kisses to say
"I have a secret"

The secret is you.
And a love that sometimes
cannot be contained
safely within the chambers of my heart.