Have a little sample under the counter

I've just posted the first three chapters of my new serial, "Hooch," at www.teachup.com, together with Christopher Baldwin's illustrations. The story is set in Northern New York, somewhat to the east of where I grew up but exactly where I lived from 1987 to '93 and where my own boys went to high school. It's about a young boy in the days of Prohibition when the border, and the tangle of small, local roads below it, invited locals to become involved in rumrunning and people like Legs Diamond occasionally came up for a visit.

The story will be carried in newspapers throughout New York state this spring as part of their outreach to schools. I'm currently working on the teaching guide, and there will be an essay contest. This is the sixth year the New York Newspaper Publishers Association has sponsored the program and the third time I've written the serial.

Fun stuff to write, and even more fun when I start hearing from the kids. Come have a look!

Too little, too late?

I worry that my speech today is too little, too late. I worry that many Americans have already formed their opinion about the Recovery Act, based on the inaccuracies they hear from beltway pundits or from their elected officials.

Al Franken may be right -- after all, they say a lie is halfway around the world before the truth has put on its shoes. And this speech was given to an empty Senate Chamber.

But it's worth a look, as he talks about the success of the Recovery Act, and refutes the lies and distortions that are already out there.

The speech is the fastest half hour you'll spend this week, and perhaps the most valuable, but it is 27 minutes. For those who don't have that kind of time, here's the transcript.

And here are a few excerpts:

My friends on the other side of the aisle often imply that tax cuts would have been more effective than the Recovery Act. But perhaps they've forgotten that over one-third of the Recovery Act was comprised of tax cuts.

Unfortunately, the tax cuts were designed in a way so that many Americans didn't notice they were getting them. An extra twenty bucks on your paycheck adds up for you and the economy over time, but people don't notice like they do a big lump-sum refund. But here's the thing about lump-sum refunds-people like to save them, or pay off debts with them. When you get an extra twenty bucks in a paycheck, you're likely to spend it-giving the economy a boost.

This explains one unfortunate paradox of the Recovery Act-because the tax cut was well-designed, it helped boost consumer spending. . . but nobody noticed it. But that's not a failure of the Recovery Act policy, that's a failure of getting the message to American taxpayers.

And the tax cuts in the Recovery Act did their part. According to CBO, tax cuts for those in lower income brackets increased GDP by $1.70 for every dollar spent. But, for those who would argue that the Recovery Act should have been only tax cuts, consider this. While tax cuts for the lower brackets yielded a $1.70 GDP boost, tax cuts for high income earners and companies only raised GDP by 50 cents per dollar spent. And neither of these figures compare to the return on the Recovery Act's public works investments-an impressive $2.50 increase in GDP for every dollar spent.

*          *          *

Here's another project in Two Harbors, building a water tower. In addition to five crews of workers on the project, the tower tank is made of 723,000 pounds of American steel, and the rebar is another 33,000 pounds of American steel. So additional American workers made that steel. And more American workers mined the taconite. On Minnesota's Iron Range. More jobs.

I visited Two Harbors on September 6th, just a few weeks ago, and personally saw this project in-progress. Now, these folks aren't in suits and ties, shuffling papers. They're building bridges, roads, and water towers. 

These projects are going to improve transportation, health, and safety for people in Minnesota. And because of these jobs, made possible by the Recovery Act, they will be able to keep a roof over the heads of their families, put food on the kitchen table, send their kids to college, and, yes, buy stuff.

*          *          *

Everywhere I go, they thank me for the Recovery Act. They thank me for the teachers and firefighters, for the Workforce Investment Act funds, which they used to train people for jobs. For the highway extension or the wastewater plant or the funds for rural broadband or for weatherization of public buildings.
 
In fact, Michael Gunwald, writing for Time Magazine, said this: "the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet."

A few weeks ago I heard a prominent conservative talking head on one of the Sunday news shows describe the Recovery Act this way. He said: 
If I pay my neighbor $1,000 to dig a hole in my backyard and fill it up again and he pays me $1,000 to dig a hole in his backyard and fill it up again, according to the national income statistics, that's a $2,000 increment to GDP and two jobs have been created. The American people understand, however, there's no real wealth created in this kind of transfer payment.

How out of touch. How downright offensive. And yet this is why so many Americans believe that the Recovery Act hasn't created any jobs or just created jobs for bureaucrats.

Larry the Animal

I doubt that Larry the Animal thought twice when he saw the lineup of motorcycles outside the Bonnie Doon, sporting colors. After all, the Undertakers were his friends. They did business together. And he really wanted a milkshake, so he walked on in.

I can't remember when I first met Larry the Animal, but I suppose it was my sophomore year in college. Larry was one of those high school kids who hang around campus because he's too smart for his contemporaries, but he's not quite socially poised enough to realize that he doesn't really fit in with the college kids, either. Larry was bright and funny and harmless enough, and so we took him in and let him hang around like a stray puppy.

And he really was a stray. Larry had been tossed out of his own home, probably for being too stiff-necked to cut his hair and behave the way his parents wanted. And I'm sure -- very sure -- that he mouthed off to his parents. There was no filter between Larry's brain and Larry's mouth and it was a time when there was plenty of positive reinforcement around for shooting off your mouth in defense of freedom. So Larry lived with Laurie, another high school kid. They weren't boyfriend and girlfriend, simply a pair of bright kids, but apparently Laurie's parents were more tolerant than Larry's.

They'd have to be, because Larry would try anyone's tolerance. He was obnoxious. But, at that time, there was a strong tendency towards tolerating people, and so Larry was welcome. After all, in addition to being obnoxious, he was funny and smart and good-natured. I'm sure I got a few passes on the same basis.

I'm not sure how Larry got by in the world, but it appeared to be a combination of Laurie's parents providing room and board and Larry doing some hustling and a fair amount of dealing.

Larry got his nickname, "Larry the Animal," because he could be clean-shaven one day and heavily bearded the next. You could sit and watch his beard grow. To give you a visual, imagine if Benny Hill, rather than Robbie Coltrane, had been chosen to play Hagrid in the Harry Potter movies. Like Benny, Harry wore wire-rimmed specs and had a constant expression of cheerful expectation. Like Hagrid, he was covered with hair.

In fact, Larry the Animal was so hairy and jolly-looking that he was, very briefly, employed as Santa Claus at the department store downtown. Anyone who has done this job knows about the wiseass teenagers who try to goof on ol' Santa, but they got a shock when they'd sit on Santa-the-Animal's lap and ask him for a nickel bag of Panama Red.

"Ho-ho-ho," Santa would say. "I don't know about that, but maybe Santa could hook you up with some Michoacan that the elves just scored, or how about some blonde Lebanese hash?"

However, the career of Larry the Santa Claus ended abruptly when a pair of South Bend police were headed up on an escalator on which he was headed down, and wished him a merry Christmas, to which Santa responded by suggesting an anatomical impossibility, adding a porcine epithet.

Larry didn't consider this in the least a setback. The job hadn't been that much fun, and he really didn't like the police. The fact that the Santa gig had been providing him with pocket money was, well, not a priority.

Larry had good reason to dislike the police. As a kid with long hair, he was hassled on a regular basis. And, as a kid who couldn't keep his big mouth shut, he was hassled more often than other long-haired kids. South Bend wasn't so big a city that anyone who bothered to stand out was lost in the mix.

The South Bend cops were not so good at undercover work -- they tended to the oxfords-and-white-socks fashions. But even a blind pig finds some acorns, and Larry the Animal was eventually busted for possession.

We all heard that Larry had been busted, but there was often a gap between the bust and the result of the bust. Still, it seemed like Larry was out on the street a long time after we'd all heard he had been busted.

And then a pattern seemed to emerge.

Larry the Animal might have stayed out of the clink, but his clients did not.

Had the South Bend police been more polished in their approach, the link might have gone undetected a little longer, but the connection between dealing with Larry and getting busted became pretty clear in a short period of time.

For example, someone bought grass from Larry and, by the time he got home, found police cars in his driveway. It did not take long for people to begin to connect the dots.

But Larry the Animal went on his merry way, believing that his accomodating manner had saved him from a jail sentence and would also go unnoticed in the world.

So when he dropped acid one day and, somehow in the course of his trip decided that a milkshake would be a very nice aesthetically-enhanced experience, he had no hesitation to head down to the Bonnie Doon.

Now, not everyone who trips on acid wants a food experience, but any experience you have on LSD will be greatly enhanced.

Including walking into a roomful of motorcycle bandits who know why you aren't in jail.

What if people judged gun owners the way 

they judge Muslims?

What if all gunowners were judged by the actions 

of a crazed, dangerous few?

Imagine how talk shows would respond to these stories, 

all of which appeared in a single week:

A man is in critical condition after being shot Saturday morning at a convenience store in southwest Atlanta.

Five bystanders were shot during a wild gun fight that took place last night outside a Long Island bar.

An unidentified man in Kentucky shot and killed five people before turning the gun on himself after a domestic dispute on Saturday, Breathitt County Sheriff Ray Clemons told CNN

Minutes after a woman was suspended from her job at a Kraft Foods Inc. plant and was escorted out, she returned with a handgun and opened fire, killing two people and critically injuring a third before being taken into custody, police said.

Edgar Cooper said he was shocked to learn his 14-year-old daughter had been shot in the forehead while walking home from her first day of high school Tuesday.

A man was shot and seriously wounded last night inside a barbershop on Tremont Street in Roxbury, a relative of the victim and police said.

A 45-year-old woman was shot in a drive-by shooting early Saturday in what police believe was an act of retaliation for a stabbing the night before.

A 16-year-old male was found suffering from gunshot wounds early Saturday morning in the 1100 block of Virginia Ave., according to a news release.

Kansas City police say Montra Johnson of Kansas City was found shot to death at the bus stop Thursday. His identity was released Saturday.

Investigators say 36-year-old Thomas London was found in the parking lot of the Majestic Nightclub on Cusseta Road 2 AM Saturday morning suffering from multiple gunshot wounds.

DeSoto Parish sheriff's deputies say a man who refused to prosecute his father-in-law for a shooting five years ago has allegedly been shot by him again.

Two people were injured in a shooting Thursday afternoon near Hirsch High School on the city's South Side.

Authorities are investigating after one person was shot and killed this afternoon in Beltzhoover.

At the corner of 9th and Monroe streets, responding officers located a 28-year-old Wilmington man suffering from a single gunshot wound to his head. The victim was pronounced dead at the scene where he was then transported to the state's medical examiner's office.

Police detectives are looking for a suspect who they believe shot and killed a 54-year-old man on Friday night.

A home invasion Friday in Richmond left one man with a bullet wound to his leg.

A Crawfordsville man charged in the shooting death of his girlfriend's daughter might have been told to take a gun to the room where she and other kids were playing to scare them.

A Capitol Heights teenager who was shot Tuesday night died Wednesday, authorities said.

An 18-year-old woman was arrested this afternoon after she was accused of shooting a man while they were camping on Mount Lemmon, authorities said.

Two teenagers were shot just outside of Mumford High School in Detroit this afternoon on the first day of school

A 14-year-old boy was shot in the leg Friday evening while walking in the Pullman neighborhood on the South Side.

A Knoxville man is in critical condition after being shot in the neck late last night, city police said.

An Antioch man was shot dead during an argument near an East Oakland taco truck, and investigators are trying to determine whether he was killed with his own gun.

The triggerman behind the drive-by shooting that killed a 14-year-old boy and injured two others outside a Paterson bodega might have been seeking retribution for a fatal shooting earlier this week, police said today.

Authorities have identified the man shot while driving at Oakridge Drive and Mia Avenue on Friday, Sept. 10.

A teenager who was charged with manslaughter and had escaped from a mental health facility while awaiting a final resolution on the case was fatally shot Monday night in Mattapan, officials said yesterday.

Clarksville Police responded Friday night to Lincoln Homes, where a 14-year-old girl had been shot while inside a residence on Ford Street.

A Jackson delivery man who was shot on the job has died. It happened around 3:30 Friday afternoon at the Super Saver convenience store on Medgar Evers Boulevard near Palmyra Street.

A young boy and a 25-year-old man were shot and wounded on the city's West Side Friday night.

Police believe robbery was the motive behind the fatal shooting Tuesday afternoon of the co-owner of a DeKalb strip club.

Eva May Francis died after being shot while her home likely was being robbed, Gwinnett County police said Thursday.

A 25-year-old man was shot in the thigh Friday afternoon in north Stockton, and police were searching for the assailant.

An elderly man and his nephew were found shot dead at a neighborhood in southwest Atlanta, detectives said.

A renowned car racer and auto shop owner was discovered shot to death inside his El Monte business early Wednesday after he failed to return home the night before, investigators said.

A man was fatally shot inside a car in Hartford North End Friday morning, police said.

Atlanta officials said they are investigating a deadly shooting in which a father killed his own son.

Atlantic City police spokeswoman Sgt. Monica McMenamin tells The Press of Atlantic City that a man and woman were shot shortly before 6 p.m. Wednesday while sitting on a porch at the Carver Hall apartment complex on Caspian Avenue.

Officials have released the name of the man who was shot to death Thursday evening while repairing a limousine in south Fort Worth.

Akeem R. Jones, 19, was found bleeding from a gunshot wound after shots were fired Friday inside a north Omaha house.

Witnesses say a woman calmly walked up to Dominic Nicholas Mahone while he was dancing on the floor of an uptown Charlotte club early Friday, pulled out a gun and shot him twice.

A Marion County sheriff's spokesman says a woman was fatally shot Thursday at a northeast Salem mobile home park.

A former University of Tennessee football player was home recovering Friday after being shot outside an East Knoxville apartment complex.

A 14-year old Highwood girl was fatally shot in her chest early Sunday in North Chicago, officials said.

It was a tragic end for a man who was trying to do a good deed. He broke up a fight and was then shot in north Harris County.

A North Carolina man has been shot to death in what police say was a robbery attempt.

Robbery may have been the motive for a fatal shooting in the parking lot of a Walmart Neighborhood Market grocery store on Beechnut.

On Tuesday evening at 1057pm, officers were called to 7007 Longview Road to investigate a shooting. Upon arrival, officers discovered a 29-year-old male dead in the parking lot of the Express Mart.

Laboring on Labor Day

I had a break this week in my normal duties, as the youth publication I edit for the Denver Post was taken over by the Colorado Foundation for Agriculture, one of the four weeks a year they do that.

So, with nothing to do but catch up on neglected work, I wrote a couple of chapters of the serial I'm working on, and struggled with the last chapter, which is always the hardest.

I also redid the website for those serial stories and would like to invite you to visit and marvel at www.teachup.com

It's not a very sophisticated website, but then I'm not a very sophisticated guy. The last one was a little fancier, harder to navigate and full of broken links. The layout also required some redesign in order to add new stories as they were published, similar to adding stars to the American flag. Worst of all, when I needed it fixed or updated, I had to find someone.

I approach the web like I approach my car -- I know what's wrong, I know I could probably learn to fix it myself, and I don't. Fortunately, there are some shortcuts and plug-and-play site builders that are made for people like me, so I just redid the thing with what I suppose is the digital equivalent of duct tape and paper clips, but it's up, it's up to date and, unless someone finds a busted link I missed, it's working. And, if someone does find that busted link, I can fix it.

The prime audience for the site is the Newspapers-in-Education people who continue to run serial stories. This is a somewhat shrinking group, but that simply means you have to be a little more aggressively available. Broad-side-of-the-barn marketing isn't as effective when the barn has shrunken down to the size of a detached garage. My revenue from this work is about a quarter of what it was four years ago. The good news is, I was splitting with my artists and my newspaper back then. Now I only split with my artists.

Speaking of whom, you'll get a chance to see some nice artwork if you check the samples on that site. I've been fortunate to catch a few people on their way up over the years and they're given me an advantage in that area. Some of my competitors use "talented relatives" to illustrate their work, and the quotation marks are there for a reason. But even those who hire professionals often end up with a kind of generic kid art that I find uncompelling, though kids have been taught that this is what illustrations look like and so it works well enough. I'd rather offer them a little more.

Anyway, come have a look. Now, I've got to run. My break is over and I have to start putting together the next issue. A few weeks ago, we had a new writer, a fifth grader, turn in a story about his baseball team's elimination from the state tournament. He's enthusiastic, loves baseball and enjoys writing, so, when Ken Burns came to town, we sent him out to get the interview.

Getting back to work, when work includes something like that, isn't really so painful.

Now that he's gone ...

The hurricane having blown past my most northeasterly friend without having done any significant damage, I can now confess that this silly thing has been running through my head for the past week.

Will someone please explain to this mother that a mosque would be an insult to the victims of 9/11?

(photo by Platon, published on-line by the New Yorker)

(This column first ran in the Press-Republican in January, 1998. 
The cartoon is by John Sherrfius of the Boulder Daily Camera.)

The Myth of the Silent Majority

As noted in last Monday's Lookback, the treaty that removed the last U.S. troops from Vietnam a quarter-century ago coincided with the Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

The country had simply exchanged one set of demonstrators for another. And it definitely was a change.

While some individuals went from protesting death in Southeast Asia to protesting death in abortion clinics, the two movements represent fundamentally different sides of the political divide, each going against traditional definitions:

Classical liberalism tries to reach positive social goals by forcing people to do things they might not otherwise do, but the strength of the antiwar protests came from those who believed in individual rights. For all the talk of treaty violations, bombing raids and political self-determination in Vietnam, the reason the streets were full was because a lot of young men objected to being drafted for a distant war in which they felt no personal interest.

And, although classic conservativism strives to free individuals from government control, the crusade against abortion gains its strength from those who want a strong central government to make individuals live according to moral positions they may not accept.

Of course, you don't find political philosophers chanting in the streets. Those who carry the placards tend to be ruled by passion, not logic, and you can't tell the fascists from the anarchists without a scorecard.

For all their differences, however, the protestors have something important in common: The guts to stand up for what they believe in.

By contrast, the majority of people sat on their hands through the American Revolution, they sat on their hands while slavery was debated, they sat on their hands until Pearl Harbor forced us to confront the Axis, they sat on their hands while black people were assaulted by firehoses and police dogs in the struggle for civil rights, and they sat on their hands throughout the Vietnam War just as they are sitting on their hands now, through the abortion debate.

"Which side are you on?" the old union song asked, and the answer, to most Americans, is a shrug of the shoulders. I dunno. Whatever.

This so-called "Silent Majority" is often portrayed as loyal citizens who do not question the status quo, but, in a democracy, to fail to question the government is the fundamental act of disloyalty.

You don't have to disagree, but you do have to question.

Then there are those uninvolved souls who say they question the government, who claim to disagree with it, but then make knee-jerk anti-government jokes and say, "What can you do?", as if they were too worldly and wise to waste energy fighting the inevitable.

Nonsense.

If silence were a sign of intelligence, every doorknob would qualify as a genius.

A thought you do not act upon is no different than a thought you did not have, and I would rather be surrounded by people too stupid to realize what is going on than by people too lazy and apathetic to act upon what they see.

These self-proclaimed free-thinkers who refuse to take action on their beliefs are like a crowd standing on the shore watching a child drown. It would be better if they were not there, than for that child to perish knowing how many people could have done something to help.

And, while it is often said that, in a democracy, people get the government they deserve, the impact of apathy goes well beyond government. A free society is shaped by the opinions and preferences of its people, who, accordingly, not only get the government they deserve, but also get the media they deserve, the automobiles they deserve, the food they deserve, the clothing they deserve, the families they deserve ... in short, they get the lives they deserve.

Yet it takes so little to make a mark, to change your world. In a sea of screaming fanatics, a quiet voice stands out. The new voice, the voice that does not seek to provoke, the voice that speaks up once, is the voice that is heard, and remembered, in the halls of government, in the corporate offices, in the places where power waits for direction.

That core group who write frequent letters to the editor represents a tiny fraction of our readers, and they don't represent every shade of opinion among that readership. But, in a small community where the newspaper has nearly the status of a public utility, those who write letters do a great deal to set the tone of that community, and to select which issues are discussed in that community. That group of letter writers is given real power by the many who don't bother to make their views known.

Of course, the silent ones have the right to sit back and let others set the public agenda. It is their absolute right to count for nothing.

But I wish more people would add their voices to the mix, not by shouting and waving placards in the streets, but by just expressing an opinion and partaking in our society.

Often, someone will call the newsroom, upset with something they've read in the paper or seen around the area, asking us to do a story. Sometimes, it does result in a story.

But not always.

And, when a story isn't likely to result, the editor or reporter will suggest, "Why don't you write a letter to the editor?"

The sad thing is, callers frequently think they’re being told to shut up and go away. In fact, they are being invited to join the process of building our society.

The first step is to get off your hands.

The anniversary has never gone unmarked.

Nor have our lives. 

 Please use your seat belts.

In case you missed it.

When the road was sometimes longer than the love (Part Two)

I can't remember the name of the truck stop at the intersection of I-80 and I-35, but they laid on the bacon and eggs and homefries and coffee in a manner that was intended to keep you coming back. We needed a good breakfast, after a night of switching off driving in pairs and sleeping in the back of the station wagon in pairs.

Ina had not been interested in entertaining any snoopy truck drivers who might pass us by on the highway, but we still hadn't gotten a whole lot of sleep back there. It turned out she wasn't that interested in entertaining me, either, but don't let's get ahead of ourselves here. She was still a very good snuggler and we needed the coffee. 

Des Moines is southwest of Waterloo and Independence is about 25 miles northeast of Waterloo and another 40 miles south of Wadena. And, since it was also where Dean's parents lived, Independence was a good place to stop after our all-night drive from Boulder.

His little sister was extremely jealous as we freshened up and made ready to head out to the rock festival. The concert had been all over local media and she was old enough to want to go but not old enough to do it without her parents' permission, which certainly wasn't going to happen.

My memory of driving through the tangle of local roads to Wadena is that the Three Dog Night song "Mama Told Me Not To Come" was in extremely heavy rotation on the local radio stations.What I can't remember is why we didn't throw in a tape; my car was outfitted with a cassette player, which was cutting edge technology in an age when 8-Traks were just getting up to speed. I suppose we were making sure there weren't any warnings about road closures on the local stations.

Traffic wasn't bad at all, and, in fact, we parked quite near the farm where the concert was going on. Ina and I set up a blanket on the hill overlooking the stage, while Dean and Linda pitched a lean-to farther back at the edge of the woods. I don't think we had brought anything other than bedding, and little of that -- we assumed food and drink would be available on site. We assumed wrong, as it turned out, but we had the first 12 hours or so covered in that respect, since we didn't expect to be particularly hungry or sleepy for awhile, but did expect the music to sound extra nice.

And the music was rather good -- mostly B-list, but very high on the B-list. No Doors or Stones or Airplane, but the line-up did include Johnny Winter, Leon Russell, Savoy Brown, Rotary Connection, Little Richard, Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Everly Brothers, the Sons of Champlin, Joan Baez, REO Speedwagon, Lee Michaels, Ian and Silvia and the Great Speckled Bird, Albert King, Mason Profit, Illinois Speed Press, the Chambers Brothers, the Doobie Brothers and the Siegal-Schwall Band. There are some real memories in those names, though I have to admit we were building memories in random snatches at the moment.

Let me explain something about rivers, rock festivals and nudity. I suspect that Scorsese and the gang did some pretty selective editing at Bethel the summer before, or else East Coast girls are a lot more uninhibited than Midwestern girls. Which I know is not the case. The Volga river -- the one in Iowa, that is -- is shallow and warm and very inviting, but the only naked people in it were 19-year-old boys, which, when you think about it, is hardly surprising. There was one very tripped-out couple walking naked in the river, but they were so odd that they hardly counted. At least when we were down there, the girls were in cutoffs and bikini tops and I would have seen a lot more nudity if I'd stayed home in Boulder.

Being a 20-year-old boy, I was content to sit back and be with the statuesque girl with the auburn braids, headband, bikini top and tan body that everyone else was looking at. Dr. Hook aside, there is something odd about being out with a genuinely beautiful woman, because, on the one hand, you're too cool to consider it a reflection on yourself, and, on the other hand, you're too human not to. Everybody wanted to talk to Ina, but she was with me, man.

Even when some people from Wadena came in to check out the scene, they managed to pick their way through the 30,000 people on the hill and hunker down at our blanket to ask Ina what it was all about, and she was happy to tell them and we had a nice conversation with some farmers who were very amused by the whole thing and were playing up their rube roots to comical effect: "Hey, ain't that one of them Mexican ceeg-arettes?" one of them gasped in mock horror, and there was plenty to be horrified about, if that's what you wanted, but they didn't, particularly. They talked to Ina for awhile, listened to a little music and then scored some weed and went back home to report on the strange goings on.

Meanwhile, as we stretched into the second day, we were finding that the beverages available appeared to be the muddy water of the Volga or else quarts of Boone's Farm Apple Wine, neither of which were what you really wanted for rehydration in the middle of a sunny hayfield. There was some chicken being cooked, or partially cooked, but the lines were long, and I can't really remember what we did once we got to the point where we began to be hungry.

However, the third day took care of itself, because that morning Ina announced that she needed to go home, because her boyfriend was arriving back in Boulder from wherever the hell he had been. Since I didn't know he existed, it is understandable that I also didn't know where the hell he had been. What I did know was that there was considerable music yet to be played and also that I suddenly was hanging out with somebody else's girlfriend, and had been for the past two and a half days, which made a lot more sense than her maidenly protestations about truck drivers and others around us on the hillside and suchlike modest impediments to true love or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Dean and Linda weren't that pleased to be leaving early, except that the lack of food and drink was starting to have an effect and two days of music is, after all, quite a bit of music. So we gathered up our gear and went back to the car and drove to Dean's parents' house. The car wasn't air-conditioned, but it was plenty cool enough in the front seat where Ina and I were sitting.

I was miffed about the whole undisclosed-boyfriend thing, and she was upset over the whole criticizing-the-beautiful-girl thing. And we were 875 miles from being able to simply walk away from each other.

We got back to Dean's and showered, and Ina came out in a black halter-top cocktail dress and full warpaint. The rest of us, even Linda, were in jeans and T-shirts, and there she was doing a credible impression of what you might get if you crossed Ginger Grant from "Gilligan's Island" with Lisa Douglas from "Green Acres." She looked terrific, but, at that point, all I could do was wonder what kind of dumbass would bring a stupid cocktail dress and all that make-up to a rock festival in the middle of a cornfield?

Dean had decided to let us go on ahead so that he could spend some time with his family, which was a good idea in that it got him out of what was now a very crowded car, but a bad idea in that his father read him the riot act over rock-and-roll and long hair, which led to him leaving the house, putting out his thumb and actually beating us back to Boulder by several hours.

This is probably because his rides didn't run into an abandoned spare tire under a swooping underpass in a driving rain in Omaha on a Sunday night when the garages were all closed and spin out into a ditch whereupon he was told by the pretty girl in the cocktail dress what an idiot he was. I've got to say, it's pretty amazing that Linda didn't get out and start hitching. If it hadn't been my car, I sure wouldn't have stayed for the rest of the ride.

But it was my car, and I got it out of the ditch and we did alright, even though Ina picked up the smelly hitchhiker in the buckskin clothes with the monkey and then, while I was napping, proceeded to take I-80 North towards Cheyenne instead of I-80 South towards Denver. As I recall, the resulting exchange was something to the effect of "Boulder is north of Denver," followed by, "Yes, but it's not in fucking Wyoming."

By the time we got back to the correct state, Ina -- who had joyfully sung along with me on the eastbound trip -- now sharply asked if I had any goddam tapes of songs to which I did not know the goddam lyrics, in response to which I put on Bizet and proceeded to do the "L'Arlesienne Suite" in "bom-bom-BOM-ba-bum-ba-bum-bum-bum" fashion.

I would have played the side of the tape with highlights from "Carmen," but there was a knife in the car and I didn't want either of us to get any ideas.

We got back to Boulder, I dropped her off at her apartment, dropped Linda off at her apartment and then went back to the house where all the people who had previously said, "So, you're taking Ina?" and then smiled, now asked, "So how was your date with Ina?" and began laughing even before they heard the details.

Three months later I took a much nicer girl a much shorter distance and finally got to hear Poco, who had played at Wadena, but only after we had left. When we got home from the concert, we discovered that someone had gone into my apartment and stolen my ... but never mind. It's a long story full of police and airports and construction workers and car chases and it's late.

When the road was sometimes longer than the love

Creamcheese didn't get to come to the Wadena Rock Festival, 40 years ago. But we had one hell of a great summer anyway.

Creamie belonged to my girlfriend from the summer of 1969. We had broken up in typical 19-year-old fashion: She took up with my roommate, and disregarded the old folk tune, "Tis best to be off with the old love, before you have on with the new."

It was a spectacular break up in which everyone behaved badly, me no better and perhaps worse than some others. As one of the collateral damage people remarked to me, with no little bitterness, "You could have come out of this with everyone's sympathy ... "

But I didn't, because nobody is that self-contained at 19. And a few weeks after the dust had settled, my now very-much-ex called to say that she couldn't keep her dog on campus and her (new) boyfriend couldn't keep him either because he wasn't a real man. She didn't phrase it quite like that.

In any case, I ended up with Creamcheese as a roommate, and he was a great guy. She'd gotten Creamie from the boyfriend before me, down in Clearwater, Florida, which is where he lived. But when they broke up, she demanded, and received, the dog, and so he ended up in South Bend, Indiana, and then he ended up living with me. Creamie was a great dog, in no small part because he had survived being named "Suzie Creamcheese" by college students who weren't sure how to roll a dog over and examine the evidence.

So Creamie lived with me throughout my junior year, and a very good year it was. And so, at the end of the 1969-70 school year, I called my by-then-long-ex several times, to find out when she wanted to accept custody of the dog. And she didn't return my calls, so, when I was ready to pack up and head out to Boulder for the summer, I said to Creamcheese, "Get in." And, behold, he did, and we drove out to Boulder for a writer's conference at the University and had a great summer.

On our way to Boulder, we picked up two guys who were hitching to Oakland, California. One of them had just completed his masters in marine biology diving for brain coral off the coast of Aruba, and the other had just shot Tricia Nixon for a photo layout in Ladies Home Journal. And none of it seemed strange, in that era. If you weren't there, it's impossible to explain. If you were, it's unnecessary. Onward.

So we got out to Boulder and the two hitchers hung around for a few days and then continued their quest to Oakland and I tried to figure out what to do next. I had about 10 days before the writer's conference began and didn't want to spend it sleeping next to the car, so I found a house with a great many very friendly people, because that was how Boulder was.

It was not a commune. Communes had philosophies. What we had was ... well, not a philosophy, except to the extent that having a good time is a philosophy. Which it isn't. Which we knew. So we referred to ourselves as "a house" and not "a commune."

And, behold, it was a blast.

At some point in all this, I went off to the University of Colorado for my writer's workshop, and I was something of a curiosity, but I survived it but spent most of my nights back at the house, because the dorm room at CU was a little strange, with a roommmate who kept calling his wife to tell her how it was going. It was fine, man.

And I went out a few times with Annie, who had lived in the basement apartment at the house before I showed up, and who was gorgeous and militant and under active FBI surveillance, and who insisted on splitting the bill down the middle, though, I have to say, she was willing to let one person pick up the meal and another person pick up the movie.

We did a fundraiser for the striking farmworkers in the San Luis Valley one night, when poet Denise Levertov was doing a reading for the community. Denise, who was a lecturer at the workshop, was very supportive. But we couldn't make love because Annie had "the Revolutionary Clap" which she had gotten from a Black Panther, and which she was taking medication for, but had to abstain from everything for a few weeks.

Later, she joined the Weather Underground and left Boulder with a load of explosives. Some time later, I found out that the fool who gave her the clap was a poseur who was no more a Black Panther than I was.

However.

It became clear that Annie was far more political than I was, and I was far more apolitical than she was. I called her my Maude Gonne while I was poor Willie Yeats, but, in any case. we moved on with genuine regret. And somehow, I met Ina through her. Which is strange, because Ina was hardly in Annie's flow. But that was the Sixties, where friendships overlapped political lines.

So I ended up asking Ina to go with me to the Wadena Rock Festival, which took place between August 1 and 3, 1970.

Ina was stunning. She had auburn -- not red, but auburn -- hair, and was probably 5'8", with broad shoulders and the accoutrements thereof, and high cheekbones with a light scattering of freckles. Ina was a babe and a half. And everyone who heard I was taking Ina to the rock festival was somewhat jealous.

Which is to say, they said, "Oh, you're taking Ina?" and then kind of chuckled and gently backed away. Okay, "jealous" might not be the exact word here.

Let me be clear, however:  Ida was gorgeous. Whatever they thought of her, nobody ever disputed that she was gorgeous.

So Dean and Linda, and Ina and I, set off for Wadena, Iowa, leaving Creamcheese to sort out his own world in our absence.

Stay tuned. The story is far from being told.

A decade on, the bigots triumph

I was on my way to deliver some newspapers to a classroom on September 11, 2001, when I walked through the newsroom and saw everyone focused on the TV reports. At that point, the news was that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. It was, of course, a tragedy, but a plane had hit the Empire State Building in 1945. These things happen.

I was in the car and about to pull out when the second plane hit and it became clear that Something Else was going on. My first thought was to help kids understand what had happened, and my second thought was "Dear God, anyone who wears a turban or hijab in the USA is in some deep shit right now."

We had just introduced a new educational feature, "Around the World with Nellie Bly," with a cartoon dog doing geography-in-the-news. It was normally a mid-sized feature, but I also had a full page feature that ran Mondays. I pulled that full page, and a version of this piece ran on September 17, less than a week after the attacks.

Then I made this version available to papers around the country, and around the world, and a little over a dozen took up the offer. I thought it was important that people realize that Islam is a very widespread and diverse religion. I wanted them to realize that there are Muslims who have never seen a camel, and who read Harry Potter and who drive Hondas.

Alas, nearly a decade later, the bigots and idiots have dominated the discussion. There is a debate over the construction of a mosque in New York City because it is near the WTC site. Fair enough, but the arguments against it are the arguments of morons. These people are idiots, with no understanding of a world beyond "American Idol" and "Dancing with the Stars."

This is a jpg but that's what the blogspot interface allows. If you'd like a higher res PDF, let me know. I'm not sure you can battle against what Aquinas called "Invincible Ignorance," but what choice do we have?

Another British visitor

(Colorado Springs Sun, June 20, 1982)

(I wrote this piece following a visit to Colorado by Princess Anne, which was the occasion of much excitement, including an article similar to this one which outlined the proper way we provincial cowboys should behave on the off-chance that we found ourselves face-to-face with herself. I thought I'd re-run it now in honor of her mother's visit to the colonies.)

Now that Princess Anne has left, some people think it's time to relax. Hardly!

If she were our princess, if we were still part of the United Kingdom, the hoopla surrounding her visit could now honorably die out. But since she isn't and we aren't, we are left in a bit of a quandary: We must either admit that we have been shamelessly groveling at the feet of someone paid $182,000 a year to represent a monarchy our forefathers died to banish from this soil, or we must extend the same warm welcome to every guest to this area.

Let's get down to the business of welcoming our next tourist:

Alfred George Rowles is a greengrocer from Hertford, Herts., England. He will be arriving at the Colorado Springs Airport, at 3:18 p.m. July 30.

There will be a brief ceremony at the baggage claim area, where Mr. Rowles (that is the form of address traditional in Britain) will present Miss Susan Van Zile with a set of British baggage check stubs. She will then thank him on behalf of the Colorado Springs Airport and he will proceed from the baggage claim area to the sidewalk.

There, Mr. Rowles will board a taxicab for the procession to the Dew Drop Inn motel, where he will be welcomed by reservations clerk James Sandoval and Mr. Sandoval's dog, Rusty. In a brief ceremony at the front desk, Mr. Rowles will sign an agreement formally marking his sojourn at the establishment, following which he will be presented with the key to his room.

Mr. Rowles will then proceed to his room, where he will participate in the hanging of the clothes bag and the airing of the suitcase, following by a ribbon-cutting ceremony at the commode. This symbolic act commemorates the sanitizing of the facilities.

That evening, Mr. Rowles will be present at a dinner to be given at McDonald's at Wahsatch and Bijou. One hundred and seventy-five people are expected to attend.

He will then return to his motel room to rest from his journey and is expected to watch the television and have a small, private cocktail party. No guests from the community have been invited to this gathering.

There are certain rules to follow if you are introduced to Mr. Rowles. Upon meeting him, you should extend your hand for him to shake, or he may extend his first. It is not necessary to bow, bob, genuflect or put his foot upon your neck.

When first introduced, you may address him as "Mr. Rowles." He may respond, "Call me Alf," which then becomes the correct form of address. Only family and close friends are permitted to call Mr. Rowles "Alfie."

One traditional phrase which Americans may utilize in conversing with Mr. Rowles is: "Let's nip around the corner for a pint." Individuals in this case may initiate the conversation with Mr. Rowles, but should bear in mind that the "pint" in Britain consists of beer, ale, porter or stout. It is considered declasse to offer milk after the promise of a pint to Mr. Rowles.

While in Colorado Springs, Mr. Rowles will inspect the Wax Museum, Hall of Presidents and the Cog Railway. Travel arrangements for Mr. Rowles' visit to the area were made in consultation with Mr. Jack Stokes through the auspices of  the Pig 'N Whistle public house of Aldershot, England. Mr. Stokes visited the Pikes Peak region three years ago and offered his consulting services to Mr. Rowles following a football match.

Mr. Stokes was unable to accornpany Mr. Rowles, having been declared redundant following the closing of' his place of employment. He  is currently in Great Britain, serving a term in government service as a collector of the dole.

Mr. Rowles will not be attending any formal functions while in the Springs, nor will he give any formal speeches.

Greengrocers in Great Britain do not normally grant press interviews, according to a Fleet Street source.

Thoughts upon watching The Graduate at 60

i was talking to a moth
the other evening
he was trying to break into
an electric light bulb
and fry himself on the wires
why do you fellows
pull this stunt i asked him
because it is the conventional
thing for moths or why
if that had been an uncovered
candle instead of an electric
light bulb you would
now be a small unsightly cinder
have you no sense
plenty of it he answered
but at times we get tired
of using it
we get bored with the routine
and crave beauty
and excitement
fire is beautiful
and we know that if we get
too close it will kill us
but what does that matter
it is better to be happy
for a moment
and be burned up with beauty
than to live a long time
and be bored all the while
so we wad all our life up
into one little roll
and then we shoot the roll
that is what life is for
it is better to be a part of beauty
for one instant and then cease to
exist than to exist forever
and never be a part of beauty
our attitude toward life
is come easy go easy
we are like human beings
used to be before they became
too civilized to enjoy themselves
and before i could argue him
out of his philosophy
he went and immolated himself
on a patent cigar lighter
i do not agree with him
myself i would rather have
half the happiness and twice
the longevity
but at the same time i wish
there was something i wanted
as badly as he wanted to fry himself
archy

(the lesson of the moth, by Don Marquis, 1927)

Middle-aged pornography

I've just added a friend of a friend at Facebook and discovered a luxurious website. The friend-of-a-friend is Jacoba Budden, who kept saying funny things in response to postings by South African cartoonist Jeremy Nell. With all the excitement over the World Cup, the comments on Jeremy's site became a little more universal, a little less based on local issues, and -- for some reason -- a little more often posted in English instead of Afrikaans, and I became curious about this witty woman.

So I "friended" her and discovered her website, Just Food Now, which is a combination of history, culture and recipes that I find fascinating. I told Jacoba, "Your site is a bit like Playboy for the middle aged -- sumptuous stuff that makes my mouth water even though I know the odds of, for instance, a roast suckling pig ever actually appearing on MY table. The difference being, of course, that your site tells exactly how you get your dishes to look like that, a subject Playboy tends to avoid."

She was amused enough to ask permission to quote me, but there is certainly more than a small ring of truth to it, at least in the sense that, no, I'm not going to make a roast suckling pig, which is the lead recipe in her fascinating roundup on German cuisine. (And wasn't she a genius to know they'd beat England and stay in the tournament even longer?)

On the other hand, it is a defendably intellectual fantasy. I like knowing how you roast a suckling pig, or make spaetzle, even if I'm never going to do it myself. In fact, one of my backburner projects is a story set in 16th century Germany, and so there may actually be a material benefit involved.

But it hardly matters. It's fun to just visit the site and see what she's got going on, or leaf through the archives and find other foods you've heard of but weren't 100 percent clear on.

Yes, I really do read the articles!

Best sixth grade talent show act I've seen in months

I may be coming to the party late. This kid's video has had over 26 million hits and he got a shot on "Ellen" during which Lady Gaga called to tell him how cool he is. But I don't watch "Ellen" and I don't cruise YouTube for videos of kids singing, so I didn't see this until I was doing an article for Internet Safety Month and stumbled over it at a kid-safe video site ("Kideos").

Perhaps it's new to you, too, in which case, you should hit "play."

More World Cup, more nostalgia

Back in the olden days, during the last World Cup, I put this together. I thought of it today watching Nigeria/Argentina because it's the first game I've seen between two teams who really like to play up to the refs with dramatic dives, exaggerated pain, mystified outrage and other theatrics.

What I'm doing these days is similar to what I was doing back then, but Nellie was a voice I don't use now, and that's okay with me, but it was a fun time.

As for the World Cup, the histrionics add an element to the matches that helps create a rooting interest when you have no loyalty to either nation. Either that, or you can enjoy it as a science-fiction movie about a sport played by the world's biggest, most-coordinated 8-year-olds.

(click on the pic for a larger version)

A little Tuareg music

I posted a link to this band, Tinariwen, which played at yesterday's World Cup Concert, over at Comic Strip of the Day.com and thought I'd share it here, too. They stirred up a lot more excitement than Alicia Keys, The Black Eyed Peas and Shakira.

Have a listen.

Those who don't remember history lessons

are condemned to repeat the course

There seem to be so many observers of the past week's news who are not aware that Hamas is the legally elected government of the Palestinian territories that I thought I'd post some things I wrote for schoolchildren, the first in January of 2005, the second barely a year later, in February, 2006.

As your teacher might say, "If you've been doing your homework, none of this should be new material ... "

Or, more specifically, "You get partial credit for identifying Hamas as not being very nice, but I expect your essays to reflect more knowledge of the situation than just that."

(Click for larger versions)