ProgTrip

Change you can believe in

2011-12-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

We count change and make piles of it.

Hundreds of dollars in quarters. Maybe a hundred and a half in dimes. Less than fifty in nickels, and who cares how many pennies. Random coins appear as well. Silver dollars and fifty cent pieces, Susan B. Anthony’s and the Queen of England’s. A pin found its way in, as did a roach and a piece of candy or two. There was also a fake diamond ring, and a few other random non-treasures. We discard most of these in our counting, and Alex’s observance of the strange quarters from Guam is more a distraction than a noteworthy moment.

He soldiered on, trying to keep the mood high despite the heavy undertone. We don’t trust the machine to count our currency, or we won’t incur the cost of doing so. Instead we dirty our fingertips and make tiny stacks on the floor, several dollars here or there otherwise arranged. One pile might be slightly higher, no matter, they’ll all make it into the roll eventually. All this weight, material, some of it having enough value to be counted some of it seemingly just an obstacle to counting.

Marlboro College

2011-02-17T17:31:00.000-08:00

Marlboro College is my alma mater. That said, they tend to portray the school in advertisements in a somewhat lame fashion. So we've created a companion website:
marlboro-college.com

It isn't up and running yet, the link right now takes you to a facebook group debating the school's marketing strategy. We don't think we know how to market the school better than the folks at the school. We know we know better. Putting a sanitized, white-bread, humorless portrait of what is a vibrant, hyperactive, intelligent, youthful, fun place is not the way to get kids interested.

I'll let you know when the project begins to take more shape. Basically, it's guerrilla marketing done as a response to bad marketing.

Last Observations in Santa Fe

2010-08-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

I've seen many birds.

The tiniest of them was a hummingbird. Five of them crowded around a feeder outside the General Store up in Pecos. Horses hung out nearby, and water for your R.V. was available for a nominal price.

Surprising to see were pigeons: I thought I'd escaped them when I left Chicago. Yet there they were, buzzing past my head in Santa Fe's plaza. Someday I will uncover the secret to these fat, low-flying birds' ubiquity and longevity. I suspect it has a bit to do with humans' dual traits of sloppiness and pacificity, at least as regards pigeon life.

I expected an eagle to appear in flight at some point, that American icon glorified in the art of the west. Instead I was greeted by the laughter of crows and the circling, ominous flights of hawks overhead, their continuous circles cut through by jet's smoke-white contrails across the a true cerulean backdrop.

Yesterday, storms formed the sky's border in 3 directions. Only the north appeared safe. As the clouds began to collide, the wind rifled through the streets, creating a machine-like sound from the still-opened sun umbrellas of the nearby restaurant. We beat a fast path back to the apartment, growler of Kolsch in tow.

Once inside, I watched as an old, tall elm swayed left and left more in every gust. A large bird, maybe a falcon but probably a pigeon, squatted on a power line some indistinguishable distance outside the window. And when you finally had a clear view of it, it was gone.

-8/6/2010
Santa Fe, NM
Collected Works Bookstore
3:58pm

A Late Night's Meditation in Santa Fe

2010-06-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

Itch and Etching
Volumes at fingertip's length
Mask an empty evening's mind
The fluid-enforced balance,
reflective just this once
rehearing the song as many times
as drinking the night in might require

The cover will be pulled back
every word resonating like church bells
His teacher's voice rising up thru dark bled
pupils, each itch and etching an easy echo--
those memories already know and push
as fast as they allow, though you're not there

Anywhere, anymore we're alone, so
the we, well, the he, becomes one
speaking as me, saying he once was
now only she knows, she knows that is clear
as for me, I'm no longer here. Ask her.

6/8/10
3:30 am
Santa Fe, NM

Links and Lynch likes

2010-04-27T11:24:00.001-07:00

Yeah so just added a new feature here on the page: links to other blogs, on the right side there. I realize that my ramblings may not be your cup of acid-infused lemonade, so feel free to click over for thoughts on the following:

-bee procreation
-wine tasting
-video games and literary theory
-doom pop
-painting and prose
-sports, Notre Dame, and life
-hip hop remixes
-the lonely life of a dirty-minded high school teacher
-sex advice for the 20-something set

Surely, that should hold you over for now. Stay tuned for more, and thanks for visiting!

A more recent one

2010-04-26T09:13:00.000-07:00

Train poem #211

Snow shoots up trackside
Doves on chunks of ice
drift down off dead tree branches
Whistles warn, we're jostled
The daily paper gripped tighter
with two hands, half-
heads peeking above seats,
the frozen views from the windows
melt into other, sparse
scenes: Indiana, wintertime,
legs crossed--
I recline.

Many such stuck names

2010-04-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

Many such stuck names

Some random Ross gave me his name
years ago, it stuck to the back of a book,
Neruda, underneath the excerpts on the back
cover. Inside are a picture of my sister’s
kids, smiling from out of the Spanish
civil war [sic] A business card
inside the front cover, a woman with
a name that sounds like a snack,
her symbol an exclamation point.

I don’t know why I have to try so hard
to push this pen. Maybe out of
practice- then again- maybe it’s just
not a good pen.

The Ross it could be is not a lost Ross,
that Ross isn’t this Ross, I’m afraid

The children are smiling. The oldest can
already say circle in Spanish, and square.
It’s only a matter of time.

And as for her ? ! She may still be
there, waiting to meet me at lunchtime.
I could ask Pablo, as he’d know, (though he isn’t here)
“Faces randomly met disappear by daytime.”

6-1-09

Winter is leaving, here's how it felt

2009-04-29T16:18:00.000-07:00

December’s Ides in Hyde Park

Staring out of the 7th floor window
I couldn’t see the cold of Chicago
Couldn’t feel the breeze off the lake

I pictured myself in the loop:
Somewhere downtown I’d like to get into
if only I knew where to go, what bus to take

The day shifted down into night
Still I did not go outside
Not for mine, not for her sake.

Shooting arrowed thoughts between my eyes --
Corresponding the quiver with those thighs
Seeing the serpent in Edens’ snake.

Rapture won’t come from within security
Your pessimism’s drawn out by my surety
Now you know, you mistook your mistake.

I couldn’t have stayed less than an hour
Even if we went all the way, up Sears Tower
To hear all the noise the city didn’t make

“The moon shone like a headlight” on icy trees.
Though the power’s out, he still sees
The leaves under his feet he’s forgotten to rake.

When daylight comes he puts his boots back on,
Looks in the snow for the tracks of the fawn,
Counts the days til his seed will awake.

(And it will awaken.)

Dec. 15,2008
Hyde Park, Chicago

Photo from California

2009-04-16T09:12:00.000-07:00

From atop Grizzlie peak in the East Bay.
A pleasant evening, not a bear in sight.

Photo from Election Night

2008-12-14T23:37:00.000-08:00

The Route You Don't Remember

2008-12-03T13:33:00.000-08:00

Nugget and Rob and Gus
we used to cruise in VW buses

Beneath the Blue Mountains in Taos

Antonio harvested and lost
his buttons
Warnings of the snake.

Awe and then fear overlooking the gorge
Elevated to sage
as the morning sank.

Dropped into darkness head on
Yelling back at bears and bones and owls
until the next dawn
We spun circles
in your wagon
Bianca
from Maine’s land

Like a snake she saw a dragon
across the vinyl of a yellow tent
Hearing the screams I kept my eyes
open to the moon’s howling ascent

Rising again, scalping the locals on
the black tar as their grass hid me home.

Onward down the route you don’t remember
the trees grow sparser.
Signs warned rocks to fall
unfenced.
We stopped to pee by the roadside along the Rio, where
nearby climbers ambled up the face of a knobby crag-ridden cliff.
The story goes that the cross upon its peak shines white
for the innocence of the child who died upon that turn, a warning
to the subconscious of those not knowing the tale. I just thought
how funny it was that they would climb it.

Do you remember that day?
(She says she might.)
Well you were going the opposite direction.
(How do you know, she asks.)

I could tell by the pile
of ants I stepped by on our way
through Colorado’s southern passes, past San Louis.
Even though I remember not thinking about
the future, I knew enough to step around the
antpiles along the path.

(All of us, all six ghosts that inhabit this same path in my memory, travel together north along the Rio Grande. We’re laughing and talking, singing and swimming and searching, suspicious of our own evil interpretation of this dream.
-ML, 3/04

Video from the Obama Rally

2008-11-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

Inauguration Day

2008-11-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

Inauguration Day

Tell the president I am the president

Tell the Congress to pass no laws
restricting the freedom of me

Tell the king that the king is dead
the queen has fled

Tell the leaders: they are now the led.

Body of Lies is Just That

2008-10-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Movie Review
Matthew B. Lynch

Ridley Scott’s new movie, Body of Lies, has been described by early reviewers as “more gripping than Syriana” and “the right kind of war movie.” While the action and acting are enough to hold anyone’s attention, upon closer examination this is one war movie that is smarter than its own plot, and hence faultily conceived from start to finish.
The early trailers portray the plot as a sort of Departed-in-Iraq, with Leonardo DiCaprio reprising his role as the forgotten good guy, left to fend off the forces of evil alone. This is certainly an element of early and latter portions of the story, however, midway through we see Leo’s CIA agent character leaving the Middle East after a failed mission in Jordan—one compromised by his own boss’s betrayal—just to inexplicably create a new operation even more preposterous than the previous one. He is aided in this new mission by the same guy, Crowe’s character, who blew his previous mission. If insanity is repeating the same action over and over, regardless of the consequences, this is bad plotting taken to its least sane extremes.
While I won’t ruin the ending, I will offer this on its approach: the portrayal of on-the-ground intelligence as innately superior to US intelligence, in and of itself, redeems this movie’s lack of focus and utter implausibility. It seems as if the producers had some pretty decent intelligence consultants working with hacks of screenwriters to craft a movie that simultaneously appeals to America’s befuddled masses and reinforces their (mis)conceptions of the Middle East while at the same time maintaining a shred of authenticity. Body of lies indeed.
A friend commented while watching it on the heavy reliance on standard images of the region: the camels and bazaars figuring in nearly every shot, the heavy reliance on desert landscapes. Combined with an inability to transcribe basic Arabic phrasing accurately, or even provide so much as a backstory for DiCaprio’s character and his motives in being involved in the CIA to begin with, bespeaks of a certain laziness on the part of the filmmakers: they want the film to be just smart enough to seem smart, without it actually being so. In the end, one hopes that the other viewers of the film will walk away from the film shaking their heads, just as DiCaprio’s character walks away from his US puppeteers into the mean streets of Amman. It’s a movie that’s asking for itself to be dismissed, and viewers would do well to heed that message.

Reflections Under a 3-Watt LED

2008-08-07T21:20:00.001-07:00

8-5-08
Hyde Park, Chicago

“If your heart is pure, you have no need of morals.” -Matthew Lynch

I’m not sure I believe the above quote to be true in every waking moment; it just sounded good at the time I said it. There are plenty of metaphysical ideas about whose validity I tend to vacillate on, but my range is rather narrow in this regard: I either go for a sort of pan-nihilistic skepticism or an affirmation-through-negation of identity and intention. I’m not ever (maybe once) arguing for any sort of orthodoxy. I do not want to be in a cult, nor do I wish to start one.

I would quote my friend, who, quoting someone, said something like she ‘didn’t know much’ but she had ‘an intuition’, but I’m not sure that’s what she said. Memory, like sensation, can be tricky. One minute you think you’re seeing the future president, the next you realize you’re on a plane to the moon, and then you think, why is there a beeping noise next to my head Damn, I hate beeping noises. When your eyes open to the reflection of daylight off your white-walled room, you may ask, well, what was the first thing I wrote about last night. Do you remember? I don’t, but I’m pretty sure I had good intentions when I wrote it. Not that that counts much anymore, as alas, intentions form such a small role in constructing meaning.

Another friend wrote a poem about rain. She made rain at once a phenomenon familiar and extraordinary– momentous– and as I sit here, under the glow of a 3-watt LED flashlight, the echo of sirens amidst the staccato sounds of drops pounding pavement singing tonight’s lullaby, I wonder: when the rain stops, well, what starts?

Summer's Here, and the Time is Right

2008-06-03T14:20:00.000-07:00

June 3, 2008
Chicago, IL

As spring starts to wind down, many situations start to resolve themselves while others are still in flux. I'm striving, as best I can, to ensure a smooth, stress-free lifestyle for the coming months: as usual, the world may have other plans.

Last weekend, I visited the family in South Bend, and ran into some old friends (aka miscreants) while I was there. I even went to an old-school, backyard music performance party, featuring the inimitable Ali Niedbalski and a cameo appearance by the one and only Bonesy. But when I got back to Chicago, I knew it was time to get serious:

My history class has, at long last, brought us from the early stretches of the first millenium (AD/CE/whatever) up to our current situation in Iraq and the broader Middle East. Our teacher took great pains to demonstrate the interconnectedness of world history with modern political realities; most notably, to my mind, the relationship of Iranian 20th century political history to the evolving and devolving dynamics in Iraq, Israel and the world.

Reading The Mantle of the Prophet by Roy Mottahedeh, one gets the sense that the only constant in Iranian politics over the past 100 years has been an underlying dissatisfaction with economic and cultural realities, fostered by relations between the elite and the working classes on one hand, and the forces of Westernization and religion on the other. The stunning diversity in the range of dissent in Iran gives the lie to any description of Iran as a monolithic, static culture.

I bring this up because, as I said, some things are starting to resolve whiile others are in flux: Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination. John McCain is licking his chops to pick a foreign policy fight over Iran specifically and the American approach to the world in general. It doesn't appear, by most accounts, that Bush has the domestic support to launch another preemptive military strike, but you never know. You can be sure about one thing, though: this topic will be discussed, at a very high volume, in the coming months.

The rhetorical challenge appears steeper for Obama, as he is advocating a change in the status quo. Just as he had to navigate around extreme figures like his pastor in order to succeed domestically, he will have to find a way to engage other elements of Iran's power structure (ie, ABA-- Anyone But Ahmadinejad) in order to make the type of progress he (we?) seek in relations with Iran. First, though, he has to convince America, if not John McCain, that this is possible.

As for myself, my challenges are relatively minor in comparison: I have to pass my finals with pretty high marks (or dad will kill me!!), and then learn a whole heap of Persian this summer. Then, I get to prepare PhD applications, stress over elections, and write an authoritative thesis on a topic that has not yet manifested itself in my consciousness.

I'm looking forward to sharing all these experiences with my friends and family over the coming months. I also hope to get out and enjoy Chicago in the summer: there are few more exciting places to be. As the song says, "They'll be dancing in Chicago..."

All we need is music.

MESSA: The blog!

2008-05-18T21:24:00.001-07:00

I started a new blog for our student organization:

Messablog.blogspot.com

And here's a gratuitous picture for you:

Blue

2008-05-08T15:53:00.000-07:00

Blue is a dog.

Seven Days in the Life

2008-04-26T16:18:00.000-07:00

Spring surely broke the boredom. The weather turned nice, and I got out and shared my shining nature with the world.

Last weekend kicked off with a philosophy conference, the APA, where I attended a lecture on liberalism, religion, and identity. Not everyone's cup of tea, but I enjoyed it. Plus, the Palmer House has a pretty sweet lobby.

Saturday saw a jazz show with Scotty, who seems to be making some inroads in the local scene himself. It was nice hitting up the Green Mill, but I had to pull the plug when the boys in the band busted out the flutes. I do have a line. Oddly enough, our seating proved to be the most notorious part of the evening: first, we were treated to the lasting image of a couple getting kicked out of the women's restroom for pounding on the pipes themselves, and then Scott and I had to share a half-booth to make way for a guy with a ton of Mexican food and his busty 'date'.
Sunday went down pretty much as awesomely as possible, with Ali treating me to a ticket to Wrigley, with 2 other friends. Her tardiness was more than made up for by the thrilling Cub victory, and then the postshow dueling piano bar, where Ali made a guest appearance singing "Chocolate Jesus" to a stunned post-game crowd.

Monday=sleeping off 'spring fever'.

Tuesday=10 hours of studying + grant writing

Wednesday=4 more hours of studying, quiz, and then sleep.

Thursday proved exceptional, as the evening program revolved around hearing war stories from Iraq-based reporters. I couldn't even scratch the surface trying to depict what they had to say, but one got the impression that these people had an intensity of person that far surpassed most anyone I'd met in a while. Afterwards, played pool with the bros (and Ruthie and Julie, clad in sweet Bowie shirt), and stayed out a bit longer than planned.

Friday watched the end of a Persian movie called the Lizard, sort of an Iranian "Sister Act", and then met up with Cernak and watched the Cubs lose a tight one in DC. We made our way over to the School of the Art Institute's MFA show, which featured a really crazy deer sculpture and some pervert jerking off on video. The swing band we saw later was fun, but I found myself wanting a dance partner, and not quite ready enough to strut my stuff to ask one of the flapper girls for a go. Somehow we did not make it to play pingpong later either, quite a disappointment, as was my late-night karaoke version of "Running with the Devil".

Today I got invited to see a trance show, gratis, from one Sandervanderhanderhosen or something like that. He's pretty famous, but I've really only got a passing interest in trance, so I have passed, and will be continuing my attempts to alleviate the thinness of my person and wallet by working at the pub this evening.

What's amazing about all this is how little I spent and how much I managed to do. I even got most of my homework done, and slept enough that I'm not feeling like I was hit by a truck. Gotta love spring.

Psychic Grammarians Rocking Your World

2008-04-09T22:19:00.000-07:00

grammarians of a psychic nature
for lies

me: well, you know what they say about spare wheels
1. 2:22 PM alison: i only keep around the cool ones
that's bs
me: exactly
alison: even the spares have to be talented somehow
other than just good in bed
me: well, a donut
is just a donut
alison: ha
yeah
***

back to the lead pipes
2. 2:41 PM me: loving the lay?
alison: exactly
me: I think is more proper
alison: you always know
how do you always know ?
2:42 PM me: psychic
grammarian
we should start a band
called the Psychic Grammarians
alison: YEAH
hehe
me: Let's do it
2:43 PM alison: i always wanted death by stero
stereo that is
me: Well, Psychedelic Crap finally split up
so it's time for me to get a new band
alison: what?
that terrible
psychic grammarians
is awesom
2:44 PM bc it consists of us
***
spread like
3. 3:00 PM runny margarine
alison: obnoxious giirls and lecherous men
me: I know
alison: groaaaan
me: I don't want to encourage it
alison: that was the worst yet
me: I thought you'd like it
we could use that as a song title
alison: maybe i did
me: Runny Margarine
alison: totally
you'd have to sing that one
i couldn't keep
3:01 PM a straight face
the presentation would suffer
surely
me: you'd have to harmonize
she spread out like
runny mar-gar-
alison: i can't breath
me: rine
alison: i'm laughing to hard
we'd have to practice a lot
so i could hack it
who
3:02 PM i feel a bit better now:)
me: good good
I said
alison: runny margarine doesn't make good apple pie
me: I can't believe----
alison: that's the chorus
me: it's not----
butttter
3:03 PM I can't believe
alison: firm butter
yum
me: it's not butter
alison: deliscous
me: see if they have Cabot butter or cheese at your grocery
alison: ot should be don't make good apple pie
me: it is truly the best
alison: it's a blues tune
i hear it...
yeah we got cabot
me: nice
alison: cheese
3:04 PM maybe not butter...
me: mmm
that sounds like a second verse
we got cheeeese
but maybe
not butter
baby
nutbutter
alison: but you KNO-W-W-W cheese don't make no good apple pieeeee
3:05 PM it's perfect
good thing we've been on the record with this stuff
it's in our archives
for keeps
me: she said that's why I'm lovin the lie
alison: i changed it to lay per your rec
3:06 PM me: it don't rhyme with pie though
alison: right
me: we'll work on it
3:07 PM so fuckin sick
alison: hehehe
ahhh
me: in so many ways
alison: i'm in pain
:)
3:08 PM me: that's what she said
alison: hurt so good
you know what i mean
me: we could go into that
alison: you mean a segway?
me: oh yeah
3:09 PM little john cougar
never hurts
alison: will stand up and spew
amazing shit all over the audience
i'm out of contrl
me: it could just be the outrow
alison: clearly
me: outro
like fade out
hurt so good
alison: i'
m listeneoing to a song called
me: with each of us like whispering it
3:10 PM alison: you've got me licked
i think that should be part of the medly
but we'll rewrite the lyrics
you're too cool for my kind of foooool
you got me licked
me: you're too runny for my kind of honey
alison: perfect
keep flowin brother
3:11 PM gold
me: that's what she said
alison: running from your fingers
me: you're too goooey
for my kind of
alison: um
i dunno
me: cutie?
alison: fooey?
me: ooooooooooooeee
3:12 PM alison: capooee
me: just like a grunt or something
alison: perfect
it is a blues song after all
me: then we can go into
Oooeee
alison: it needs groans and grunts and noises
me: Oooee baby
won't you let me take you on a sea cruise
alison: feel it baby
yeah
rub your face in that ooze
3:13 PM me: it'll be a bit more will ferrell
style
alison: ?
go on
me: you know from snl
alison: i know
me: the skit with the medleys
alison: was mine too porn curise?
s & M perhaps
...
me: Tom Cruise
alison: yuck
me: I'll be your Homes
3:14 PM if you be my Cruise
alison: holmes
***
me: we could fly away
4. on a comet
alison: oh no
me: like the dog from full house
alison: i'm afraid of comets
oh he was nice
me: (his name was Comet)
alison: i know:)
i was a fan
3:15 PM me: Psychic Grammarian
alison: for life
me: for lay-fe
?
alison: grammarians of a psychic nature
for lies
me: That could be our tagline
alison: fuck yeah its our tagline
me: I'll start the Myspace page
if you want
alison: sweet
3:16 PM DOOOO ITTTT

McCain for President

2008-04-01T14:24:00.001-07:00

Dear Friend:

I am writing to you today to announce my support for Senator John McCain. As you may know, Senator McCain is the nominee for president for the Grand Old Party, aka the GOP, the Republican Party of Lincoln, of Reagan, and of our current bold, courageous leader, George W. Bush.

In the past 8 years, the Republican Party has presided over some of the most important events of my lifetime. When Bush came to office, he inherited a strong economy and a world with little strife between nations. Little did any of us know just how much we would need Republican leadership in the years that followed. Through it all, John McCain has been a stalwart leader within the party, championing both the war in Iraq as well as the tax cuts that generated so much wealth

for the upper echelons of the American citizenry.

He has also mended fences within the Christian evangelical community, engaging noteworthy and respected religious leaders like Jerry Falwell

and John Hagee.

He embraced Bush’s surge strategy, which, despite long odds, has proven to be a resounding success in the eyes of the media. Despite statements of Iraq’s people to the contrary, McCain, like Bush, sees a long-term American presence as the only way to ensure stability in the region– as well as to keep us safe from the looming threat of Iran’s potential nuclear technology. Like Bush, he knows that international treaties and organizations like the IAEA and UN are not to be trusted: we must, in this day and age, follow our gut when approaching rogue states. It is my true belief that had John McCain been in charge, we would have found Saddam before he had a chance to bury his WMD’s in the desert.

While the liberal media has attacked McCain for being ‘in bed’ with special interests, we all know that this is not true. After all, it was the McCain-Feingold bill that was supposed to eliminate special interest influence on politics (at least during election season). McCain’s ties and machinations on behalf of people like Charles Keating and the telecommunications industry are merely coincidental, and show none of the same corrupting influence as the Obama-Rezko and Clinton-Chinese government connections that plague the Democrat party. Though multiple other Republicans have had to resign due to ethical breaches that robbed taxpayers and enriched corporations, John McCain has been the very rock of morality and rectitude within the Republican party.

Conservatives like Rush Limbaugh attack McCain for not being conservative enough. If calling for more tax cuts for the wealthy, bombing Iran , and refusing to endorse universal healthcare are not conservative enough, I do not know what is.

Sure, McCain endorsed legislation that put America back in compliance with international laws on torture that were drawn up when the Nazis lost power. But he wisely backed away from stripping the president of his authority to do whatever he wants. He voted for the Patriot Act both times, he voted to place Samuel Alito and Judge Roberts on the highest court in the land, and he stood by Alberto Gonzales when the press mercilessly went after what they perceived as corruption in the Department of Justice.

Yes, if there has ever been a friend to George Bush, a friend to America, and an enemy to those that hate us, from Vietnam to El Salvador to the streets of Tehran

to the hedonist bastion of liberalism in San Francisco, it is John McCain. In these uncertain times, we can certainly find no one better than the battle tested, wise old paragon of the Republican establishment, John McCain. He has my vote, and I hope he has yours too.

April Fools,
Matthew B. Lynch

PS: Don’t be an April Fool: vote!

Obituary Birthday

2008-03-09T17:36:00.000-07:00

“I’m Going to Open a Flea Market and Retire on the Profits”: Reminiscing on Kur(d)t Cobain
By Matthew B. Lynch
Chicago, IL
March 9, 2008

Since it seems likely, given previous experience, that I will live another 6 days or so, I will not end up one of those ‘dead rock stars’ who died at age 27. For some reason, I had this nagging feeling growing up that I would become one such person. Shit, I don’t even sing karaoke. I wrote some lyrics played by a band a few times, but for the most part, my only claims to fame right now consist of a couple internet videos and some vivid memories that exist inside my and my friends’ memories.

While fame has eluded me, I have, however, had a number of close brushes with death (see posts below). Be it fortune or fate, I have made it through all of these relatively intact– and healthy. I’ve also managed to transition smoothly out of my adolescent rebellious stages, and now can proudly boast of having a collared shirt for every day of the week in my closet, and a tie to match. Today, I even thought of doing my taxes, but instead I picked up a book that was given to me for my last birthday, Journals written by Kurt Cobain.

The cover says “If you read, you’ll judge.” I’m not really sure what judgments I could make about Kurt from this book. Much of my thoughts on him and his life have been fixed in my mind since I first saw the news footage that he had died of a gunshot wound to the head. Instead, I got to thinking about how he’d see the world these days. What kind of music he’d like. What he’d think about the news that someone managed to use his social security number to buy a house in New Jersey, to open 188 credit card accounts.

It’d be easy to say he’d have the same opinions now as he did then. But I’m not the same as I was when I was 15, searching Goodwill stores for ugly green cardigans, refusing to cut my hair, occasionally painting my fingernails black and ranting about how bullshit the world was. I no longer spend $50 on live Nirvana recordings imported from Italy; I no longer parse the lyrics of “Milk It” for some sort of insight into the human soul. But Kurt’s scent is still here, in my place of recovery.
He embodied, for me, both creative and self-destructive tendencies; a dynamism of being that was both transcendental while at the same time a bit pathetic– sad. The book shows his hatred of writers who tried to psychologically dissect him, yet he also seems bent in his writing on correcting the misconceptions they had about him. At a time when so much bullshit was going on, he just seemed really authentic--and I think he really wanted people to see him that way. Even though a lot of Nirvana’s music was slicked over by production tricks, and his image was manipulated by marketers to serve their own ends, when you saw him on TV you knew: this guy was real, though everything around him may have been garbage.

I think a lot of us are still looking for that from our heroes. We want them to be willing to speak the truth, no matter the consequences; we want them to lay themselves on the line for us all to see. We’re looking for people to break the mold, to challenge the system, to bring some sort of dynamic change to the world as is. I’m about to turn 28 now, and I’ve stopped looking for rock stars to save me, to save society. Yet I still wonder: can I become one, or at least have the capacity to be as pathetically beautiful as those I used to admire?

***
Drawing from the portfolio of Katherine Plante (Burlington, VT 2007).

nice shot

2008-02-20T23:17:00.001-08:00

I only had one. Taken on Cernak's iPhone.

My Dirty Career as a Dishwasher

2008-01-31T13:58:00.000-08:00

My Dirty Career as a Dishwasher: A Water-logged Flashback
By Matthew B. Lynch
January 23, 2008

The other night I had a nightmare. Not the kind where you’re stranded naked in the desert and no one can hear you scream, and have only glass covered in cherries to eat. This was a real nightmare, a nightmarish memory of sorts wherein I repeated actions from the not-too-distant past. My attempts to do anything right in this nightmare were as futile as when I first tried, and I awoke with the stench of scum and grime perched at the tip of my inner nose– a stench I wish I could erase from my subconscious memory so nights like this would be relegated to the past where they belong.
There is something even more sadistic, now, about sharing these experiences. Not only am I dragging myself through them again by relating the memory, I’m inflicting this memory upon any gentle reader. As I write this, the jukebox in the next room is playing the song “Dream Police”, and, in a way, I’m hoping that by recounting this I will be able to better police my own dreams. I also hope that by accounting for this time I will help staunch any latent tendencies toward remaining in ridiculously tedious and at times tortuous situations. I can, as my friend Ricky Klee likes to remind me, be quite stupid.
***
As an undergraduate student, I seldom had much money. When my job as a waiter at a brewery ended, I was left looking for work– just in time for Christmas. I already had one job with the college’s newspaper, but that was a work-study position, so I saw little from it. Fortunately, I lived close to a ski mountain, Mt. Snow, so when school was going on hiatus for winter break, I ventured over there with hat in hand. Most of the ‘good jobs’ were already taken either by more-enterprising locals or by the cheap-waged college students imported from various parts of the world (Australia, Peru, to name two– they actually paid the company to come work in the States!) I took a job as an after-hours custodian, and lasted all of two days. I went looking for better work after cleaning a sum total of 1 toilet.
I had 2 rules for my next job: 1) clean no more toilets and 2) make more than $8 an hour. When I walked into a couple restaurants looking for work, I heard the same refrain: Fennessey’s needs somebody. I went over to Fennessey’s, which turned out to be a pretty expensive restaurant, and inquired about work. I had been hoping to be a waiter, but when they offered me a position as a prep cook I jumped at it. Little did I know that for the $9 an hour the chefs promised me, I was going to be, by any reasonable observer’s standard, their bitch.
I did not expect, at the time, to put in 150 hours in my first 2 weeks working there. I worked for 14 consecutive days, between 10 and 14 hours a day, doing everything from cleaning shrimp to slicing salmon (to which I am allergic) to scrubbing the screaming hot sautee pans they were cooked in. I had a Chilean sidekick who aided me with cleaning the accumulated dishes and glasses, as well as the end of the night kitchen cleaning. I was responsible for making sure the place was spic and span, all dishes done, garbage tossed, floor mopped, by the time I left, usually around 2 am. The kitchen had some “soft spots” in the floor, which tried to eat my legs on more than one occasion. Imagine mopping up caked-in splatters of steak blood while stepping around gaping holes in the floor and barking orders in broken Spanish all so we could get done by last call at the bar next door, order a couple beers for the road, and then go home to shower it all off, sleep a few hours, and wake up and do it all over again.
On a really busy night, when we’d serve upwards of 300 plates, the chefs would hand me a $50 and leave me a bottle of Jack or vodka to pull off of. The latter greatly improved my Spanish skills, and made carrying a 100-pound leaking trash bag across a frozen parking lot in sub-zero temperatures a bit easier. I hated it when those bags broke. On a bad night, the chefs would walk out screaming obscenities at anyone who’d listen, and leave me to clean up everything he’d left stewing. But I always ate well, a fact I made sure to remind myself of whenever I went to cash my paycheck and there weren’t enough funds in restaurant’s account at the bank to cover it.
One night,the first night off I’d had in two weeks, the head chef (who had some pretty bad habits) beat a man within an inch of his life and left town in a hurry. Things at the restaurant did not improve from there.
I worked at the same establishment over the course of two winters. I never got a raise (they tried to reduce it the 2nd year) and I didn’t get much in the way of bonuses after the head chef left. My hours were cut the 2nd year when they hired a Chinese-Peruvian rugby player with the physical abilities of 4 lesser men (ie, 4 of me). Breaking my hand in the middle of the 2nd winter did not help much– I had planned on working as a waiter or busser, but being unable to lift anything over 10 pounds made that hard. The restaurant was in bankruptcy as well, adding to the overall sense of despair, and one night I went home in an immense amount of pain as well as utter depression over the sad state I had gotten myself into. I looked in the mirror in my bathroom–which was the only room with a light in it in the joint– and I just burst out laughing.
What I saw was an exhausted face streaked with oven grease, a dirty mustache and patchy mutton chops, one eye blood-shot, the other dialated. My hair had caked-in potatoes in it, and my teeth were custard yellow. I said to myself, “Fuuuuuck this”, and laughed some more. I was half-drunk (I had figured out that they left the taps on after-hours), totally physically spent, and tense to the point of breaking something by looking at it. I just couldn’t do it anymote– not then, not again, ever.
A couple weeks later, I was on the move to Burlington, VT to start an office job. My car was leaking exhaust the whole drive up, there was snow and ice all over the mountain roads, but all I knew is that I had to go, and I didn’t even think of looking back.
***
The other night I went to bed without showering or shaving, no blanket wrapped around me, and the wind howling outside my window.
***

“Yo, Carrot Dick, hurry up with those pans!”
He grabs them out of the washer and hands them over.
“Grab me that salmon from the basement.” He takes off toward the basement. “Get the older one, from last week, Catboy.” He nods, and moves at a quick pace to the basement. He’s in that Zen-state of restaurant work: no time to think, just react to everything that’s happening as it happens. As he moves, someone hands him a drink. Then another.
The night is over, the customers are gone. He stands with a mop in one hand, a glass of stout in the other. He mops slowly, slowly, head down.
He’s broken from his trance by the sound of the back door bursting open. There’s sunlight peaking through the door. “What the fuck is going on here?”, the owner of the restaurant yells. The worker looks puzzled as he sets his drink next to the dirty dishes still sitting by the sink.
“Did you leave the goddamn door open all night?”, the owner asks.
He looks around, and his worst nightmare has come true: the kitchen is trashed, and it is the next day. The work hasn’t been finished, and he hasn’t slept. He’s drunk, and has no idea what to say to the furious owner. He tries to stammer, “I’m sorry,” only to be interrupted by another voice saying, “It’s not his fault. He just got here.” It’s his boss, the chef. The worker nods his head, steps to the side of the enraged owner, and walks out into the cold winter morning.
***

fun pic

2008-01-14T19:18:00.000-08:00

Circular Persian Situations and Crises Personal

2008-01-08T19:57:00.000-08:00

By Matthew B. Lynch
1/8/08

Chicago, IL

As I sit on a cushioned seat in the communal computer room in the basement of the U of Chicago’s Regenstein Library, thousands of votes for various candidates are being counted in New Hampshire. It’s a state as white as the White Mountains that dot its landscape, and yet it somehow takes on primary importance for the electoral process in American politics. Vestiges of past policies, I suppose, though some states like Michigan and Florida attempted to assert their primacy this cycle. They will have their say soon; for now I must be contented to consume the minutia of data coming in by the minute from the tiny towns known as hamlets, and hope it’s not too tragic a day for those I support.
My day did not seem to have so much riding on it; the future of the free world did not rest as far as I can tell on the decisions I made today. This isn’t to say my day was uneventful: I had my first class of the second quarter of Islamic History and Civilization, and attended the first Persian circle of the new quarter as well. The former I will wait to comment on, the latter seems more pertinent.
If you watch current events at all, you’re probably aware that an incident occurred in the last 24 hours that marked yet another turning point in US/Iranian relations. According to the news reports, some Iranian speedboats made menacing movements at some US vessels. This almost directly coincided with the imminent trip that President Bush is taking to the Middle East (a geographical term I now use hesitantly, knowing what I know now.) He arrives in Israel tomorrow, and the future of Iranian relations is sure to be a subject of discussion, as are the recent rocket attacks on Israel coming from Lebanese territory.
I always get a bit frustrated when things like this happen: I’m not really itching for more conflicts, especially with countries I hope to visit at some point, in this case, Israel and Iran. But I ply away at my studies anyway, studying Persian and hoping that this country can somehow thaw relations with the Iranian regime, and that Israel can forge some compromises that will somehow pacify their region. I’m more optimistic about the former than the latter, though the results of these primaries do in large part make it seem to be about a wash. (As I was writing the last two paragraphs, the state of New Hampshire was called in favor of those two stalwarts of pacifism, Hillary Clinton and John McCain.)
But I attended Persian circle today trying to forget about the present conflicts and learn more about some culturally relevant ideas and people. The guest speaker was Saeed Hooshangi, a professor in Spain who also is fluent in Persian (remember, do not call it Farsi). He gave a lecture entirely in Persian, and closed by reading several of his own poems. Unfortunately, though I did understand a few phrases here and there, and some of the references he was making (primarily those to Rumi, for whom I have a particular affinity), I could not catch more than a gist of the contents of his lecture. At times my ignorance of Persian seems like merely an obstacle to overcome, but at other moments such as this it is more of a burden that weighs on my soul.
I am, however, taking the appropriate measures to get past my inadequacies in Persian and elsewhere. There are several grants I must apply for in the coming weeks, as well as classes and lectures to attend. I am also playing a bit of basketball to help keep my body fresh in these winter months. With any luck, my personal travails will iron themselves out, and I will be left to worry about those things I can’t control: elections, speedy boats, and the way the world spins.

My Dealings with the Angel of Death

2007-11-20T22:36:00.000-08:00

My Dealings with the Angel of Death
By Matthew B. Lynch
11/5-6/07

“People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.” -Jim Morrison

I vividly recall one night, long ago, spent dreaming different cinematic scenarios wherein the Angel of Death would sneak upon my friends and, without so much as a sound, fell their heads off with one swoop of his sickle. As their bodies splashed into the nearby swimming pool, the Grim Reaper would then turn to see me, with my video camera in hand. As he walked slowly, deliberately in my direction, I would pull the lens cap over the camera, and the film would go dark.

Those were the idle nightmares of a Scream-influenced adolescent mind. What I never really conceived of at the time was that I would one day meet someone who not only imagined himself to be the Angel of Death, but would actually be intent on proving his status as such to anyone who might cross his path. To speak of such things requires a more linear introduction: I would never want to delude you into thinking that this is somehow just another idle fantasy.
***

When I was a student at Marlboro College, the prevailing modality of occupying breaks from school was to return “home”, sponge off one’s parents, and maybe put in a few half-hearted applications for employment at the local coffee shop or mall department store. This, to me, was not only a repugnant thought, but also an impossible one. I could not get to Indiana all that easily, and getting there would mean having a month of really awkward conversations about Christianity, politics, and family ties. Marlboro was already enough of a strain on my sanity; I didn’t need it stretched that way too.

So I chose to occupy my breaks working at local restaurants in various capacities, the details of which I will spare you here. I also always had an eye for anything interesting going on in the community (there wasn’t much) that I could report back for the best newspaper of my time, The Citizen. My weekends were often very busy with the restaurant work, but I could pretty much pursue my own interests on the earlier weekdays. I was never one to go out on the town alone, and fortunately I had the perfect wingman in that perennial all-star of the southeastern Vermont service-employee community (as well as the talent behind the seminal jazz-funk group No Soap Radio), Mr. Graham Major.

During the time period I am referring to, Graham and I considered there to be no greater fun than attempting to drink each other under the table, and drag any unsuspecting bystander along with us. While usually this was a relatively safe enterprise (as opposed to, say, skinny dipping in South Pond in November), it did get us into a whole heap of trouble on frigid Vermont evening on the infamous Elliot Street in Brattleboro. As best as I can recall, we stopped at the Metropolis to have one classy drink before hitting up the places of lesser repute across the street. The minute we sat down at the bar, those plans changed.

She was wearing the kind of tight black leather pants that belonged in the front row of a Poison concert, and her fingernails were so long they could’ve scratched through Bret Michael’s nylons. The friendly smile she offered to Graham and me was totally unexpected, unwarranted, and awesome. That smile made a bit more sense, however, when we looked around the bar: including her, there were 3 people in the place. (Remember, children: when something like this happens, watch out for the thorn. You may not see it, but every rose has one.)

Not wanting to seem like heathens, or just random drinkers wandering in off the street (ahem), we respectfully quizzed the bartender on the particular merits of each bottle of scotch on the shelves. By the end of about an hour, we had put down a glass of each of the 3 ‘best’ scotches in the place, and I paid a visit to the little boy’s room. Though my memory gets a little hazy at this point, I will try to reconstruct the following as best as I can:

When I returned, a couple people had drifted into the bar. One of them was sitting in what I thought was my seat. Graham had obviously been too engrossed learning about the bartender’s assets as a restaurant employee. In so doing, he unwittingly set off a chain of events that would cause terror, physical terror, to quake in my heart in not less than 3 cities over the course of 3 years. For sitting in my stool, hands clasped on the bar in front of him, was none other than the Angel of Death.

Not that we knew it at the time– we were too busy mustering the best of our collective game to ingratiate ourselves with the bartender. I had somehow managed to turn an idle comment about working on a screenplay into a whole avenue of conversation with our increasingly (was it possible?) beautiful host. For, when not happily serving drinks to young men of questionable morals on Tuesday nights, she was, indeed, an actress.

At some point both Graham and I got her number, for reasons still unknown to both of us. We also ordered a round of shots: one for me, one for Graham, and one for the guy with the oily, curly jet-black hair now sitting on the stool in between us. We asked him what kind of shot he would like, he said, “Patron”. We did the shot, and I continued to discuss my nascent screenplay with the bartender/actress. The odd hand motions and astonished glances I was getting from Graham’s direction could not break into my singularly devoted awareness. Not until the curly-haired guy with glasses got up to go to the Little Satan’s room did I find out what was going on. This is our exact conversation:

G: Matt, can you hear what this guy is f’ing saying to me right now?
Me: Graham, this bartender/actress is amazing. I think I’m in love.
G: I’m not kidding, This guy just told me he is a fallen angel.
Me: What?
G: Shit, he’s back.

I figured Graham was just trying to get me to stop hitting on the bartender/actress, so I ordered him a beer and decided to ask this guy next to me what his story was. Here’s what happened:

Me: So, M___, what’s your story?
M___: Oh, I’m uh opening a pizza shop down the street. Do you like pizza?
Me: I love pizza. But the pizza in Brattleboro sucks.
M___: Mine will be the best in town.

Nothing about being an angel of death. He came off as a guy who really liked his pie. Graham was definitely messing with me. I looked back to the bartender and said, “Hey, you know M___ here is opening a pizza place down the road?” For the first time the entire evening, the bartender/actress did not smile. She went to clean some glasses, and I continued to discuss M___’s pizza plans, offering sage advice on where to advertise (the Citizen), who to market to (Marlboro), and other points of interest (McNeill’s).

Occasionally, he’d turn and talk to Graham, who was becoming more and more freaked out by this guy. But Graham’s always been a sally, so I didn’t think to much of it. Somewhere along the way I ordered shots for the whole bar, and it wasn’t til the next day that Graham could tell me the 3 main things I needed to know about M____:

1) He truly believed he was a fallen angel, and that he had ‘lived’ for over a 1000 years.
2) He believed he was not only a fallen angel, but an incarnation of the Angel of Death.
3) He had a very, very quick temper, and was not someone you should fuck with.

But, since I had bought him a couple drinks and generally been cool with the Angel of Death, he was always pretty friendly toward me. Eventually he opened a place in Brattleboro which came to be known as “Angel of Death Pizza” amongst our group of friends. Occasionally, we’d hear some pretty odd reports about its proprietor: the gritty parties he’d throw after hours, the customers he’d forcibly escort out of the store. But he did make some damned good pizza.

One day, after beating his head cook within an inch of his death, M___ showed up with a truck, loaded it with all the restaurant’s equipment, and got out of town, leaving no forwarding address.

*** POST-SCRIPT

I later found out the bartender was actually engaged, and that she really wasn’t that into me. Not having an actual screenplay pretty much ensured that we’d never interact again. I did run into her one late night in West Dover, at a place called the Silo, which, on Mondays in wintertime, is a jam-packed dance party. I wanted to say hi, but when I tried, her massively friendly older sister dragged me out to the dance floor and did things to me I’d rather not discuss.

As for the Angel of Death, I thought I had seen the last of him with the last slice I bought at his place before he skipped town. But I was not so lucky. Following an epic Umphrey’s McGee show in Times Square, I made my way over to the Conspirator late-night show at BB King’s. I looked around for one of my friends and companions from the early show, but found none. As I searched through the crowd, I felt a gentle tap on the shoulder. Just like something out of a horror movie, I turned around to see the Angel of Death staring me in the face.

“Hey, Matt,” he said. “Do you know where I can find any acid?”

Above is a scene from a Conspirator show, just so you have the frame of reference.

***
ML 11/07

Monkeys rampage in Indian capital

2007-11-13T10:47:00.001-08:00

Monkey Menace in India Drives Residents Crazy

Just weeks after the Indian capital's deputy mayor toppled to his death fighting off a pack of monkeys, the animals are back on the attack, sparking fresh concerns about the simian menace.
One woman was seriously hurt and two dozen other people were given first aid after monkeys rampaged through a neighbourhood in east Delhi over the weekend.

"There were about three or four monkeys involved," deputy police commissioner Jaspal Singh told AFP.

"Wildlife officials are trying to find them. As police we're not experts in dealing with monkeys. We can deal with mad bulls but monkeys are more difficult," he said.

Along with an estimated 35,000 sacred cows and buffaloes that roam free in the capital, marauding monkeys have been longstanding pests.

They routinely scamper through government offices, courts and even police stations and hospitals as well as terrorise neighbourhoods.

Trouble boiled over in late October when the city's deputy mayor, Sawinder Singh Bajwa, 52, fell to his death driving away monkeys from his home.

He was on his balcony reading a newspaper when four monkeys appeared, his family said. As he waved a stick to scare them away, he tumbled over the edge and died in hospital from head injuries.

In the latest incident in Delhi's low-income Shastri Park area, residents reported the monkeys appeared late Saturday and rampaged for hours.

"I was talking to someone at my door at around 11 pm when a monkey appeared," Naseema, who goes by one name, told the Times of India. "As I moved inside, the monkey followed and sank its teeth in my baby's leg."

Six more bites were reported Monday in Shastri Park, while in an upscale neighbourhood in central Delhi, a rogue monkey bounded into the residence of Priyanka Gandhi, daughter of ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi, The Indian Express said.

Animal control officers were deployed to chase the beasts away.

Estimates of Delhi's monkey population range from 10,000 to over 20,000.

In 2001 residential districts petitioned courts to make Delhi "monkey-free" and last May, federal lawmakers demanded protection.

But there has been little visible progress.

"We're trying to catch them but the difficulties are a shortage of monkey catchers. We're not able to take full action at full speed," A.K. Singh, a senior municipal official, said.

Delhi has a 10-million-rupee (253,000 dollar) budget to capture the common rhesus macaques which are handed over to a shelter in a disused mine area on the outskirts.

Neighbouring states have refused to release the macaques into their forests because they say the "urban monkeys" terrorise the local monkeys and swipe food from villages.

Animal control officials often use langurs, which are bigger and fiercer monkeys, to scare away the smaller macaques or drive them into cages.

Efforts to drive out the animals is complicated by the fact that devout Hindus view them as an incarnation of Hanuman, the monkey god who symbolises strength. Killing them is unacceptable.

Delhi's mayor has admitted authorities are fighting a losing battle.

"We've neither the expertise nor the infrastructure," said Mayor Aarti Mehra.

Once caught, "we're under pressure to release ... from animal activists and from people due to religious reasons."

Kartick Satyanarayanan, head of India's Wildlife SOS, said the invasion of natural habitats by mushrooming populations was at the root of the problem.

"Humans are taking all their space."

On the Surface

2007-10-29T20:54:00.000-07:00

Written in San Francisco upon Leaving Connor's House Last October, On a Bus to the Train Taking Me to the Airport:

On the surface, people on the street, taking chances
every day, falling forward at the sun,
singing elated to one and everyone,
doing what they’ve done, no need to
remember to stop and look around
unless a bus is in the street,
making a right turn, then left,
while the traffic lights turn off and on,
a green man and an orange hand,
gasping for breath in a seat near the
front, squeezed between armrest and
person, dropping articles in imitation,
making eyes at nearly every young woman,
to realize at last there’s no end to
the system, just a piece and a pass
and if you like dimsum.

-October, 2006

Check out Connor's Group, Dem Suite:

Op-Ed piece: Why you should care about Islamic History

2007-10-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

This was a recent assignment for my history class. I invite you to share your comments, knowledge, etc., in the comments section. -ML
The Demands of the Present
By Matthew B. Lynch
10/8/07

Like it or not, America is a dominant global power. Despite a weakening dollar and increasingly negative perceptions of America among many of the world’s peoples, not to mention a continued inability to achieve stability in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond, America is still seen as a leader on the world stage. Decisions made in Washington have a direct effect upon much of the world’s population; the people put into office by the American voters are, by and large, responsible for making these decisions.

The American populace likes to believe that the people they elect will act in the best interest of the nation. A rigorous electoral process generally ensures that unqualified, uneducated, and unpopular candidates do not win. Likewise, when those who are elected fail to act in a competent manner, they lose the consent of the governed and are not reelected. But oftentimes situations arise that the populace did not anticipate. In these situations, they usually go along with their leaders’ chosen policies until the policies fail, or until a better policy is developed and prevails.

This is the present situation America is facing in Iraq, and indeed, in a broader sense, with the world. A deadly serious situation presented itself in the form of a terrorist attack on American soil. This was a devastating shock to much of the American public. Placing their trust in their elected leaders, the public supported an aggressive military response, beginning first in Afghanistan, but soon spreading to a whole host of other countries, and culminating in the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

With the information available today, it is hard to believe that the American public would support these same policies were they able to go back in time. While Afghanistan was an early success, the failure to find Osama bin Laden and the resurgence of the Taliban and their allies demonstrate the shortcomings of the American-led approach. Likewise, although American forces successfully tracked down Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime, Iraq is by no means a safer place today than it was 4 years ago. Negative perceptions of America throughout the Islamic world are at an all-time high, as chaos and war seem to be the only objectives Americans are achieving.

But even were Americans able to go back in time, they would need to have a better policy developed in response to these tensions in the Islamic world. Then, as now, new policies brought by new leaders must hold sway over the policies that got America to where it is today. The only means at America’s disposal in crafting such a policy is through an exhaustive examination of the history and traditions of the areas where the origins of America’s problem reside, and where American leadership can only hope to have a positive impact.

For just as American action in the present will, in large part, determine what happens in the future, so too did the decisions made by other peoples in the past foster these present times. In order to make intelligent decisions–and elect those who will do the same– Americans must understand the present situation as fully as possible. Thus it is incumbent upon the American public to become educated about the history of the Islamic world– not only for America’s future, or that of Islamic peoples, but, in fact, for the entire future of the world.

First Impressions

2007-09-30T19:00:00.000-07:00

University of Chicago
9/18/07

A nice day by Chicago standards, just enough of a breeze to take the edge off the late summer sun, strong enough to knock you off your game for a minute. This is the first day I've had amongst academcis in some time-- all stretching out toward ever more diverse topics of "intensive inquiry" described as such by President Zimmer in his opening remarks at graduate student orientation. I am now a part of the University of Chicago, and the indoctrination into the Chicago school will commence quickly.
***
For now I'm killing time in the basement of Ida Noyes Hall, sitting outside the campus pub, awaiting entering students who probably won't be out this late on a weekday, even in the first week of classes. I am the heaviest bouncer this place has seen in years--no one wants to mess with me. I can kill dinosaurs with my eyes, for real. I have prepared the deposit from the door charge for the night, and now all I have to do is wait, for either some straggling coeds to emerge from their dorms for a quick late-night pint or for the clock to tick down to where I can walk away from the door and have one myself.

This game of waiting seems to stretch back further than memory serves--so much the better. I've emerged like a snail from a too-small shell, and am now entering my new home--my new burden.

2007-09-29T15:41:00.001-07:00

From the Santa Fe New Mexican

2007-09-27T04:40:00.000-07:00

Senator rallies around nuclear-plant application

By ANDY LENDERMAN | The New Mexican
September 26, 2007

Domenici’s steadfast nuclear support draws quick criticism

Presidents and pop stars come and go, but one thing stays the same: Sen. Pete Domenici’s steadfast support for nuclear power.

Domenici, R-N.M., heralded the first nuclear power plant application in 29 years this week by hosting a capital news conference and broadcasting his message to news outlets all over the state. But it’s not always a welcome message, and the public is still not sold on the idea, some say.

“Nuclear energy is a clean, efficient power source that America will need if it is to meet expected energy demands over the next several decades,” Domenici said in a news release. And global warming is a reason to support it, he says.

“I believe that any serious effort to address climate change must include nuclear power,” he said.

Two new reactors would be constructed by NRG and the South Texas Project Nuclear Operating Co. in Matagorda County, Texas. Those companies have filed an application with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Incentives like risk insurance and loan guarantee programs were provided to the industry in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, which Domenici wrote with U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M.

Today, almost 20 percent of the country’s electricity comes from 104 nuclear power plants. There are three in Arizona, four in Texas and none in New Mexico. Most are east of the Mississippi River.

“This is the first time in almost 30 years that the NRC received a licensing application for a new nuclear power plant,” Bingaman said in a statement. “Nuclear power is an important part of our nation’s energy mix.”

One student of energy issues said Domenici is a spokesman for the industry. “Without the over-the-top promotion, I don’t know that nuclear power would be a serious consideration today,” said Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group.

Mello said without government subsidies, the applications would not appear. “And some people might think that they will help us with global warming, but it will be too little and too late and too expensive,” Mello said “… And then we come to the waste part.”

Political opposition and environmental issues have stopped the government from opening Yucca Mountain, a permanent waste dump in Nevada.

Indeed, there are intellectual arguments for nuclear power, a political science professor at The University of New Mexico said, like greater energy independence. But there are trust issues about the government taking care of waste, and nobody wants a power plant in their backyard, professor Lonna Atkeson said.

“If safety trumps efficiency and clean energy, then people aren’t going to be supportive of it,” she said. Atkeson studies public opinion, and added many people have a negative view of nuclear energy.

Of Smog and Haircuts

2007-09-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

South Bend->Chicago
5/8/07

Making my way through the most polluted section of Indiana, I stare out the window at the Gary Metro stop on the South Shore Rail Line. It’s early May, and the early afternoon heat has yet to yield to late afternoon t-storms. The thick plumes of gray smog pumped out of aged industrial buildings stand in sharp relief against the blue-orange backdrop of the sky above southern Lake Michigan.

Some of my fellow travelers, in transit to tonight’s Cub game, have already dipped into their deep stash of Coors Light, despite the fact that the stadium is well over an hour away, and game time not til the onset of darkness. We’re in that one portion of Indiana that is still on the same time as Chicago, so that an hour into my trip from South Bend it is somehow the exact same time as when I left. As the train eases (lumbers, more accurately) out of Gary, it is a welcome reassurance that we are indeed moving. With no booze to speak of, save a well-corked bottle of Sauvignon, the buzzed amusement of my fellow riders means little more to me than mild annoyance. I will have to wait til later to join the party.

For the first time since I caught this cold, I am happy for the presence of congestion in my nostrils. Short of sleeping, a stopped-up nose is the best way to get thru the toxic air of Northwest Indiana. It’s quicker to travel through by car, but the hour one saves in travel time can’t compare with the savings in gasoline and tolls. (Recent price hikes, seeming to coincide with my departure from Vermont, pushed gas over $3 a gallon, while a train ticket is only $10.)
I’ve come on this trip with an ambitious plan: visit my best bud and his [ex]lovely [ex]girlfriend, arrange for graduate school in the fall, scout out an apartment, and find a job, all in the matter of 2 days and 2 nights. The city makes me move faster– at least I hope so. In the past 5 days spent at my father’s place, I’ve managed to do little more than unpack the car, go out boozing with buddies, watch t.v., and read a short history of Mormonism. Fun and fascinating as all that was, I know that in order to thrive in the Midwest I’m going to have to work a bit harder.
**
Today I did something I haven’t done in years. Part vanity, part for fear of change, part laziness, part poverty– all these parts led to a sum of over 3 years without a haircut. Sure, I’d gotten trims here and three to get rid of ‘split-ends’, and I did shave and comb so as not to look unkempt with my mane. But for the last 3 years, my hair has not been above my ears, save pulled back in a ponytail.

When I told one friend, Professor Cornelius, about this, he immediately inquired as to whether I was going to start wearing Calvin Klein cologne now too. Cutting it, in his mind, was capitulating to the pressures of Midwestern conformity. (This from the same guy who just the other day, upon seeing my hair down, asked me if I wanted "crabs with that mane.") He may be partially correct: there is some really odd pressure to conform in the Midwest that seems less prevalent elsewhere. Maybe it’s because I grew up here, and I’m more sensitive to it, but the pressure to
a) make money, and
2) be Christian
seems way more prevalent here than anywhere else I’ve lived– and I’ve lived in a lot of places. Everything that goes along with that pressure, from the shame of being a hedonist to the shame of driving a cheap car (or, horrors, no car) to the shame of having hair like Jesus, is, well, just there. No apologies are made for it, and it takes a pretty brave/crazy spirit to want to buck that system. It does, to a certain extent, work.

Unfortunately, as many are realizing, it is far from ideal. In many places, family farms have vanished to pave the way for yet another cookie-cutter housing development. Woods are plowed indiscriminately to make way for wider roads to take people to gas stations to buy gas for their guzzling SUVs that take their children to indoor, climate-controlled soccer fields or to mall parking lots, all sustaining the hum of upper middle class economic development at the cost of retaining any wilderness or nature that might remind one of why living any other way might be desirable–preferable–livable. This is an area that has embraced Adam Smith’s ideal while mollifying it with a self-justifying religious praxis that expels sins through "In God We Trust" license plates, billboards where God speaks to YOU– and loving your neighbor means making sure the hedges that separate your yard from his are neatly trimmed.
**

Stopping by Brattleboro on an April afternoon

2007-09-10T18:14:00.000-07:00

Sitting inside the Marina Restaurant on the last day of April, 2007

Brattleboro, Vermont

April 30, 2007

Looking west, I am greeted by both the sun and its late afternoon reflexion here where the West River runs into the currents of the Upper Connecticut River, forming what looks like a lake nestled in the foothills of Vermont’s green Green Mountains. The Marina overlooks these sedate surroundings, and provides a welcome respite from spring’s gales. As I take my first sip of the tap-drawn Harpoon IPA, I spy one lone canoer. Paddling his way upstream--for now—but undoubtedly circling back around to let the current carry him home as the sun sets.

I’ve stopped here, in Brattleboro, Vermont, as the first station on my trek that will take me (at least) halfway across the nation—invitations to Seattle notwithstanding. My alma mater lies just up a winding road, the notoriously bucolic environs of Marlboro College. At this moment, the school’s addled seniors are struggling to tie up the final loose ends of their final projects on their final days of collegiate life.

Last weekend offered a modern dance performance (made less modern, reportedly, by its employment of music with lyrics). This coming weekend offers art shows, more dance, and no small amount of undergraduate mayhem. The end of the school year, compounded by the sprung cages of the student’s wintertime blues fills these days with potential, as if the air itself contains enough energy to power all the flitting fantasies of every freshman, sophomore, junior or senior who would pause from inhaling smoke to inhale the pure air that awaits them outside their dorm doors.

Evening approaches as benign blue-grey clouds shade the sun, revealing their matching colors on the surface just past the rock beach below my window seat. On the television, men gamble, Texas Hold ‘Em. One waits to see if he can make his straight on the river card, the other sits tight with 3 Kings. My friend, tonight’s cook, drops by the table, recommends the lamb special while sipping on his gingerale through a straw. He says he’s got a couple of projects due, but I’m welcome to crash on his couch and proffer advice on topics for which I have no expertise—should I so choose. The reemerging sunlight reminds me that the night is young, but I can already anticipate that same sun’s reflexion in tonight’s nearly full moon.

The Marina is one restaurant that was hit hard by Vermont’s statewide smoking ban. The boating crowd, it seems, enjoys kicking back with brews and butts beneath the sweltering summer sun. To keep their boaters happy—and keep their business afloat—the Marina designated the decks outside as smoking areas, leaving the diners inside to enjoy the fan-fed summertime air. During winter season (September-May, approximately), the scent of smoke fumes is much easier to detect, as the smokers huddle near the porch door while snow blows up off the ice, leaving a frosty crust on those with beards as they reenter the eatery, a cloud of smoke in tow. On such occasions, the door must be clamped quickly lest an inch of snow bluster in upon the sparse dinnertime crowd. Winter is not the ideal season for smokers and boaters, but at least at the Marina you can get a good seat.

The restaurant’s menu reflects its unique location: it features both seafood and steaks, organic mesclun salads and that barfood standard, chicken wings. I dined on a lamb special, something I’ve been trying to eat more of lately. The meat seems lighter to the taste than beef, yet has more substance than chicken. I admit to being a novice when it comes to lamb, but I have noticed that it is often accentuated with Dijon mustard, for which I am also trying to develop a taste. The beer here I am well familiar with, from the Vermont-brewed Switchback and Harpoon to the domestic Budweiser and Rolling Rock, to the random beers representing all the countries you’d find at a model UN conference. The beer of choice here in Brattleboro (and probably anywhere it is served) is McNeill’s Firehouse Amber, brewed in Brattleboro over on Eliot Street, at McNeill’s Brewery right across the street from the firehouse, where I am heading as soon as I can pay this bill.

Mayday, after Midnight, in Brattleboro’s Best Eliot Street Bars

Nightlife in Brattleboro takes one of only two forms: there’s either the bars, or pretty much nothing else—it’s that kind of town. The pub at McNeill’s always has at least a few patrons, often including the owner, Ray, clad boldly in pajama pants and tie-dye tee-shirt. Downstairs, in the bowels of McNeill’s, the beer starts as dry stock and moves to boiled bitters, then transforms into a fresh brew with (very) high contents of both alcohol and unfiltered flavor. Unfiltered and unpasteurized, uncarbonated and sometimes barely even cold, the beer is everything it should be, including inexpensive.

A couple other bars dot Eliot as well. Kipling’s is right net door, on the site of what used to be the cheapest (best) place to imbibe within 20 miles: Mike’s Place. More stories abound about Mike’s Place than I’d care to repeat here, but for the sake of nostalgia I’ll offer a casual rendering.

I never met Mike, not sure even who he was, but from the second I sat down inside his place I could tell he had built something special. The twisted, wretched faces of the regulars was the first signal. Their expletive-laced, over-amplified conversations were the only confirmation I needed. I had located one of Vermont’s hidden historical treasures: the archetypal small town dive bar.

This place was not just any dive bar—this was Mike’s—the place where the 80 year old bar maid would serve an already stool-tottering, trucker-cap wearing, total asshole a triple shot of whiskey and then tell him to go fuck himself when he asked for a kiss. It’s a place that rolled a shitload of nickels at the end of the night—a place where you’d probably be afraid you’d get your ass kicked if everyone in there wasn’t so tore up that they’d actually be able to get up out of their seats to really ‘do something about it’. Mike’s often remained open well after the 2am cutoff of most bars, serving stiff J & C’s covertly as cops cruised past just fast enough.

New people came in, almost every night, and it was high entertainment to observe how they’d react to the sordid, smoke-filled scene. It was like that moment in some novel where an unsuspecting protagonist opens the door to find some slovenly assemblage of freaky mutants seething in weird postures and as he looks around he finds himself, for some unknown reason, stepping into the room and grabbing the nearest stool. It was repulsive and magnetic all at once.

Only fools avoided liquor here—a glass of wine would provoke a flurry of catcalls and possibly some sensual pokes from random strangers. No matter what you ordered, it was cheap, almost too cheap. They even served hot dogs and, late night, chips, just in case you felt like putting something that wasn’t 80 proof into your system. This lent itself to a healthy mixture of aging alcoholics, gritty metal-lovers, and whoever else happened to have just enough scratch left in their wallet for one more drink at Mike’s. The wisest folks started and ended their nights at Mike’s: it was cheaper that way, and you could claim seat privileges if you left on the right note.

After I finished school and moved north to Burlington, rumor has it that Mike’s got much more dangerous, so dangerous in fact that one day the doors just clamped shut. The new, polished bar calling itself Kipling’s has none of the same ambiance that Mike’s once had, though one hopes, with time, it can manage to degrade to that perfect spot just below seedy and just a hair above shady, a place where you’d feel proud to bring your newly 21-year old friends, order them several shots, and then leave them with a crowd of strangers, engaged in the seminal east coast Yankees fan or not debate, and then go wait by the window at McNeill’s next door for them to stumble by, shouting incoherently to the folks at the fire station for directions home.

Since Mike's changed names, a couple places have emerged on Eliot to pick up the slack. The Weathervane features live music, nightly, and the Metropolis exists for that uncommon Vermonter who wants to pretend they are in New York City for an hour or two. There are some other dive bars around too, as well as a newly remodeled brewery down on Flat Street that I've somehow not gotten kicked out of despite my best efforts.

(Looking back now, some months after leaving Vermont, I can honestly say that Brattleboro is the place I fell in love--with beer.)

The Destination

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

In the Midst of Moving Back: Parts 1-3

2007-09-05T17:59:00.000-07:00

Buzzing through NoHo on a Wednesday Afternoon
Northampton, Massachusetts
May 2, 2007

The barista at Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters had Lou Reed’s "Perfect Day" playing over the loud-speaker as I poured myself a tall cup of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. I can’t hear it, here, sitting at a table outside, though I did just catch the tune of a policeman’s walkie-talkie, a sound at once familiar yet totally inscrutable.

My good friend Joshua, the painter, should be finishing up his Wednesday work within the next ½ hour. He’s about as hetty as it comes– a product, no doubt, of his environment. Just down the rutted road from his rural home sits a Buddhist monastery. According to the tale he told me, they settled in this area of northern Massachusetts due to the quality of vibrations they received while traveling through. Perhaps it’s just because it is such an ideal, cool and sunny day, with a wisp of a breeze and the occasional, wandering cloud, but as of right now, from my vantage point, those monks seem to be on to something.
***

I drove around the streets of Northampton for a few minutes, trying to get a different sense of the town. Having been here a few times, I’m pretty familiar with the restaurants, music stores, clubs, and random retail businesses that populate the town’s two main streets. Right now I’m hanging out in the town’s designated ‘parking area’, where a security guard has been taking 3 kids to task for supposedly kicking on some stonework set up to keep skateboarders off of the curbs. A nearby sign reveals the illegality of boards– a coded message to the town’s youth to stay far away from this heavily commercial district. While driving, I managed to see the safer residential zones where youth are free to play softball and basketball in a suitable, supervised environment. From what I’ve seen, the town of NoHo seems to cater to two pretty clear demographics: well-to-do baby boomers and card-carrying college kids.

In Noho, upscale boutiques intermingle with pizza-by-the-slice joints. Yoga studios compete for space beside record stores that sell actual records. Most buildings are brick, though many just appear to be. There’s no shortage of bars or gas stations, but these connect on the same street with classically constructed churches via a very smooth sidewalk system. No one feature seems to dominate here– it’s just a healthy mix. Travel a mile in one direction, you’ll find amber fields and purple mountains. Though it’s May, spring hasn’t quite settled in yet, and the mountain’s mauve hue reminds me of just how cold the last couple months have been, and what a blessing this beautiful, sunny day really is. It was probably a day like this when those monks first visited– a January visit may not have been as auspicious.

If I have any complaint about NoHo, it would be the difficulty I have here finding a bathroom. Where I come from, eating establishments aren’t allowed to lack public facilities (it kinda makes sense, if you think about it). In NoHo, however, it’s no-go. Even the nicer dining establishments, like the organic spot I dined in a bit ago, require a key! Add to that prickly parking attendants and an oddly omnipresent police force, and a little bit of the town’s magic luster starts to fade– replaced by mild annoyance. I guess when a town this swanky is located within an hour of one of hell’s own armpits, it’s easy to see the need for precaution. But that story, the story of Springfield, Massachusetts, is another story, for another time. For now, I’ve got to go pick up Josh, and find a way to fit him in a car packed tight with everything I own.
***

Atomic Conversation outside of Ashfield
Buckland, Massachusetts
May 7, 2007 (continued)

Josh’s house sits outside a small town called Ashfield, down the road a ways from Greenfield and Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. It’s the definition of quaint, bucolic living: a two-story baby blue A-frame, with a big barn, two little Cocker Spaniels running around, and a large pond just a stone’s throw away, clustered with geese and ducks and half-rotted tree trunks. His mother works at a school when she’s not at the house, his father works at a task that I could never quite fathom, considering Josh’s temperament. When we arrive, I dig Josh out of the back seat where I’ve stuffed him in with all the assorted papers and technological junk that comprises my most prized possessions, and we make our way to the side yard to say hey to his dad.

Conversation’s usually pretty straightforward with Josh’s old man. I ask him how he’s doing, he asks me how I am, we pretty much leave it go at that. But today he’s pretty excited. While raking up some leaves left over from the previous fall, he tells me about his upcoming trip to Washington D.C. for a big meeting. Josh stands, calm and silent, next to me as I press for the inevitable details. As he rakes over the grass even more vigorously, his dad tells me about the work he’s doing. He says that in the nuclear power industry, they’ve had to learn some lessons about plant safety and pollution controls and the like. His job is to make sure nuclear plants are safe, at least within known parameters. It’s a tough job, I say, but someone has to do it. Josh kind of chuckles: he knows my aversion to nuclear power, especially when put in the context of ‘safety’.

But then his dad tells me something I was not expecting, something I couldn’t quite handle: that his trip to Washington is to make recommendations on how they can make the next round of nuke plants be safer. The next round?, I ask. I didn’t know there was going to be a next round. He says that’s the way things are heading, that it’s pretty much a done deal. And in a breach of every ounce of cordiality and goodwill that I’d built up with Josh and his parents over 3 years of friendship, I hear myself say the words, "That’s great."

Josh knows me pretty well, and knows his dad much better. His dad glances up from his leaf pile to mark my sarcasm, and I flash him as intense a glare as I’ve ever given. Josh smoothly segues us out of the conversation and ushers me into the house, where he shows me some of his recent artwork and pours some tea to calm my fitful nerves. My travel down here hasn’t been easy so far, and it just got a little more difficult. The plan had been to spend a few days out in the country with Josh, making some paintings, hiking, writing, but now I just have this unsteady feeling that I need to get going. And not long later, that’s exactly what I do. Leaving northern Massachusetts on what could’ve been a perfect day, I’m on the road at 9 o’clock at night, heading west.
***

Driving west thru NY state, on a late night in early spring, with only a radio for company, and four years of memories trailing behind
(May 7-8, MA-NY-OH-IN)

Many thoughts, many strange thoughts, occur while driving late at night. Observations, calculations, meditations, song lyrics, faces and fantasies all pop in and out of my over-caffeinated consciousness. My nerves are in tatters. The stress of four days of travel, of packing it all up, of anticipation for what’s next, this all blends together and intensifies the trepidation, the sheer terror, of the moment I now find myself in.

The highway is nearly pitch black. Either the moon isn’t out or it’s too cloudy to see it, so the only illumination I’m getting while hurtling down the road at 80 mph comes from the fast-diminishing glare of my brights, the occasional road sign, and the piercing whites of the various road casualties who suffered the misfortune of having their backs crushed before they reached their destination. The best part of driving at night is that there’s hardly anyone else on the road. The worst part is that you have no idea what else could be.

My eyes seem to catch every white line that passes. I shift to the left lane, so my right eye can chase the endless series in the center lane of the highway. My left eye twitches, sorely needing a rest. I check the speed– still the same, which means my foot hasn’t yet become so heavy as to sit on the accelerator. The radio scratches in and out, as it’s been doing for the last ½ hour. I keep it on the station– the dissonance can keep my attention better than any oldies or country station could.

Why is it, I think to myself, that in certain parts of this country you can find 40 stations, while in others there’s only 2? One of the 2 always has to be Christian radio. People quoting Old Testament verses, always out of context, serving some aspect of ministry that I never can listen to long enough to make sense of it. When I hit the seek button, I wonder, is it my lack of patience that keeps it from making sense, or is it really just nonsense? It doesn’t matter, I tell myself, even if it made sense that doesn’t make it worth listening to. Pop songs are about as easy to get as anything, but I can’t listen to that station for too long either. Better to just let the fuzz settle in, since synesthesia seems to be the next stage in this round of sleep deprivation.

I suppose I could stop. I’ve got a big car, enough cash for a motel, even my own pillows should I wish to sleep. Unfortunately, my caffeine to blood ratio is so high that even though my eyes are seeing sounds and my skin is sensing colors, I can’t do anything but hit the accelerator button on the steering wheel and give my eyes a new speed to take in that hypnotic pulsing center line.
***

I see a rest stop and pull in, passing a host of freight trucks camped out alongside the entranceway. These guys probably have some backseat cots, maybe a magazine to read. I just have these stories kicking around upstairs, stories like the nightmare of Springfield, Mass, like the waking dream of my last night in Burlington, like all the stories I’m coming back to in the Midwest, and all the stories I’m getting away from.

***