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What A Card.

Author: January 27, 2025 4 Comments

Fake gravestone for Penn & Teller at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California. They had this installed as a setup for card tricks. Source: The Dead Conjurers

I lost my work ID card. It was a stupid thing to do and it’s even worse that I’d managed to hang on to the same ID card for almost fifteen years. The picture on that ID is of a very different me from a very different time when I didn’t need to pull out my ID so often but since COVID there are a lot more locked doors where I work and going somewhere for a meeting or even just to find a quiet place away from my desk to have lunch can mean swiping my ID half a dozen times. So it didn’t take me long to realize I’d dropped it somewhere and retracing my steps was hampered by a number of locked doors. I also needed it to get my car out of the parking garage, though the people at the card office told me I could download a parking app, submit my information, and after a 48-hour processing period would be able to use my phone to get in and out of the parking garage.

Fortunately getting a replacement card was easy and only took about five minutes and twenty-five bucks and my new card does everything the old card did except show me a younger, slimmer version of myself.

For a long time my work ID card was also a bus pass. The place where I work has an arrangement with the local transit authority to provide free service to employees. It was really easy—I just stepped onto the bus, swiped my card, and that was it, but last year someone decided that instead of allowing us to use our cards we should use a smartphone app instead. This was implemented quickly without any warning and without a chance for feedback. Still I’m sure there was a lot of careful consideration, thought, and discussion put into this and that, after weighing the pros and cons, they decided to do it anyway.

A few months ago I decided to try the new bus pass app after downloading it, submitting my information, and waiting a week for the 48-hour processing period. Then when I got on the bus and tried to scan the QR code the app generated I got an error. The driver said “That’s happening to everybody. Take a seat.” When I contacted customer service the response was, “Oh, we forgot to activate your account.” Of course any new technology is going to take time to work out the bugs.

I’m very careful with my new ID. In fact I’ve checked my wallet three times while writing this to make sure it’s still there. With any luck it’ll last until I retire, assuming they don’t decide to replace employee ID cards with a smartphone app, which is possible, and which will probably be done without any warning or opportunity for feedback. Still I’m sure there will be a lot of careful thought and consideration and after weighing the pros and cons they’ll do it anyway.

Adventures In Busing.

Stop And Look.

Author: January 25, 2025 2 Comments

I have so many questions about the small scenes created in the hollow of a tree on a regular walking path I take regularly. Sometimes there’s nothing there, just the empty hollow, but other times there are toys. Maybe some of them have been dropped by children. Others seem to be marking the season. Did someone put them there deliberately? Is it the same person every time? Who takes them? Is it just something fun? It probably is—it’s unlikely there’s any deeper meaning, but my mind still considers the possibility that someone has a purpose in creating these scenes. I have all these questions but, as I walk on, as I pass by people on the same trail, any one of whom could be the artist, I think, some things are better left as happy mysteries.

 

American Graffiti.

Winter Stillness.

Author: January 24, 2025 4 Comments

There’s no silence like that of a late winter night. It’s not muffled, as it’s so often described, though if you’re out on a late winter night you may be wrapped up in layers of wool and cotton. The silence of a late winter night is as clear and smooth as the surface of a frozen pool, and can be as sharp as the cracked edges of that same ice. Even the water in the air clings to the ground so that even a cloudy sky is deeply detailed. The stars are brighter, crystals shimmering. Jupiter directly overhead is like a lamp, and even Saturn, hanging just a few degrees away, is so distinct its rings seem like they must be visible even without a telescope.

In spring, summer, and even into late fall every night is alive all night. Crickets and katydids sing to each other, tree frogs blurp away on damp limbs, and as the night spins toward morning, even before the first hint of sun, birds start to chirp their annoyance that they’re awake before daylight. In winter there’s mostly silence. There may be the snort of a deer in the trees, the rustle of a possum or coyote, the cry of an owl. Lonely cars may hiss along the road. These sounds disappear as quickly as they come, swallowed by the stillness. It’s possible to stand outside on a late winter night, see a meteor flare across the sky, a whole world burning, and feel only the numbness. It’s possible to stand outside on a late winter night and believe that the world has dropped to absolute zero, the state where matter itself ceases all motion. It’s possible to believe the world is no longer living but is like the moon that slides like a scythe across the sky. It’s possible to stand outside on a late winter night and believe time itself has stopped.

There’s a folk tale of a man who went to the town square on a late winter night and confessed all his sins to the sky. There was only silence, his own voice muted by the stillness. When the spring thaw came his words dropped from the air, heard by everyone; for months they’d been frozen in place.

It’s only a story but I can stand outside on a cold winter night and believe it’s possible, that even words can freeze and hang in the air. There’s the threat of frostbite, of numbness, of hypothermia. I don’t want to stay out in it long but I can stand outside late on a cold winter night and feel there’s true magic in the world, that it comes to the surface when everything else is stilled.

I just wish it weren’t so damn cold.

The Weekly Essay

Do You Want To Build A Snowman?

Author: January 18, 2025 6 Comments

Because we don’t get snow around here very often it’s a special thing. That might explain why I’ve seen so many snow figures, and while normally I’d grumble about the ongoing cold it helped a lot of those snow figures stay around even after most of the snow that just blanketed the ground had melted away. A lot of them were the standard oversized snowballs stacked on top of each other. Many years ago I was in Russia in late December. Some friends and I went to Gorky Park and built a regular snowman using kopeks for the eyes, nose, and buttons. The Russians who walked by seemed confused by what we were doing—ours was the only snowman I saw the entire time I was there. I also wondered what Maxim Gorky himself would have thought of it. He didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor. If only there’d been a Daniil Kharms Park…

Anyway I love creative snow sculptures like this one I found. I like to think it’s a gryphon—one of my favorite mythical beasts for obvious reasons, standing guard over the small quad where it was placed. Or maybe it’s a sphinx, though I was able to safely walk around it without having to answer any riddles.  

 

American Graffiti.

Plays Well With Others.

Author: January 17, 2025 5 Comments

Of course I have more thoughts about the ukulele, and music in general, because, as with so many other things in life, there’s always some new aspect to cover. And I knew when I started that there’d be things I’d discover that would surprise me. I just had no idea what they were because if I did they wouldn’t have surprised me. One of those is that by picking up the ukulele I was actually joining a community. Of course that’s true of any musical instrument, and it’s true of singing, and really it’s true of almost any pursuit, but unlike, say, writing, which I’ve done for most of my life and which is very much a solitary activity, music is something you can do by yourself or with others. Some people do play music just for themselves and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it can also be a lot of fun in a group, and, yeah, it sounds like I could just as easily be talking about something else, but fossil hunting is an entirely different subject.

I first realized I’d become part of a group a few months after I started playing the ukulele. I was at work and found an empty conference room to practice in during my lunch break. I was sitting there by myself happily playing chords—badly—and a woman came in and sat down. She told me there was going to be a meeting in there later but that she really liked the ukulele. She told me she remembered watching Tiny Tim when she was young and also that her father played the ukulele. I thought, wow, what are the odds I’d meet a random person who knew a ukulele player? Then another woman came in, there for the same meeting, and told me she played the ukulele too, although it had been a few years since she last picked it up. And I thought, wow, what are the odds of that? Then a third woman came in and told me she’d taken up ukulele playing when she had a really stressful job and that it was the one thing she could do on her lunch break that relieved some of the stress. At that point I stopped wondering what the odds were and regretted not buying a lottery ticket because a fourth woman came in and told me she didn’t just play; she had a woodworking shop and had built her own ukulele. I was starting to wonder if I’d walked into a convention, but then several other people came in who were talking about fourth quarter earnings or something else business related. That seemed to be for the best because I had to get back to work. But as I’ve continued playing I’ve found that so many people, some I’ve known, some I’ve just met, play or used to play the ukulele too.

I picked it up because I wanted to try learning a musical instrument, and it seemed simple and inviting and fun, and it is, but I didn’t realize I was also joining a group.

Now for a completely random thought that came to me one day as I was strumming the strings: Ukulele players tune their instruments by singing “My dog has fleas”, guitar players tune their instruments by singing, “My dog does not have fleas”, and sitar players tune their instruments by singing, “Enough with the dogs and the fleas, I don’t know why you’re talking about them, and anyway I have a cat.”

Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Off The Roof.

Author: January 13, 2025 4 Comments

There are several reasons I like parking on the roof of the parking garage next to my office. Most of them are practical. It’s the easiest place to find a parking spot and that has a related benefit that it’s less likely anyone will park around me. That makes it easy to get in and, more importantly, to get out in the afternoon. The one downside of that is it takes a little longer to go in and out but I don’t mind. It’s also easier to remember where I parked. Consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds but it can be useful. Routine can be limiting but it can also create a space where even a little mind can explore other ideas, other possibilities.

There’s also a psychological, or maybe philosophical, aspect to parking on the roof. It prompts me, every morning, to look out at the city and even, on very clear days, beyond, to imagine what’s happening in all those buildings out there—all the people going to work, all the people in hotels who are just waking up, or maybe just going to sleep. I can see at least half a dozen restaurants that don’t open until lunch. In the mornings I know they’re not open for business but busy-ness is still going on: all the prep work that can be done is being done. Dough is being prepared for pizza crusts and bread, frozen items are being pulled out to thaw, griddles are being heated. In offices people are just starting to trickle in; computers are being turned on, emails that came in overnight are being read, replied to, most likely deleted. There’s always construction work, and that’s usually just starting when I go and work.

In the afternoon I also take time to stop and look and think about all the people who are leaving work, going on to whatever’s next. In those same restaurants the lunch rush is over but there’s so much to be done for dinner. The construction crews are still going, cranes swinging back and forth, and sometimes I can see the electric glare of welding, sparks competing with the sun.

In the winter there’s a practical reason too: the sun warms my car throughout the day. In the summer it’s not so great. Then I might change my routine enough to find a shady spot, but in the winter it’s nice to not have to wait for the heater to warm up.

Today, though, was a little different. I could have probably safely parked on the roof, and it looks like some people already did, but I decided I’d rather not risk sliding around and instead allowed the change to be the focus of my little mind.

Adventures In Busing.

Clean Slate.

Author: January 11, 2025 4 Comments

Nashville usually gets only one major snowfall, enough to blanket everything, every winter. That’s just enough to keep it exciting. In places that get more snow more often, where it’s measured in feet rather than inches, it’s routine, something people are prepared for. Here it shuts things down. A day before it snowed I went into one of the giant home supply stores and walked by a handwritten sign that said “No Snow Melt, No Snow Shovels”. Fortunately I was looking for something else. I also went to the grocery store where shelves were cleared, people stocking up on bread, eggs, and milk. Fortunately I was looking for something else.

It started overnight so we woke up to a world silent under snow, tree branches already hanging low, the street empty. By noon people were out, the first footprints breaking the swaths of white. Sleds came down from overhead storage in basements, kids sliding up and down the street. Their laughter sailed through the crisp, clear air and was absorbed by the snow. Cold weather keeps us inside but snow calls to us.

When nightfall came the world took on a lavender glow.

By the second day the reality starts to settle in. Plans have to be changed. It won’t last but there’s no way to know exactly how long it will last. I check the supplies, calculate how many days we might be able to get by. I probably should have gotten more laundry detergent but I was looking for something else. A path needs to be made from the door to the yard so the snow that’s already tamped down won’t melt and freeze into a skating rink. Cars are moving slowly up and down the road which is too clear now for sledding. Birds chirp their discomfort. The snow I see falling isn’t coming from the sky; it’s shaken from tree limbs and blown from roofs.

Soon things will go back to normal. Snow will turn to slush, slush will turn to puddles. For now, though, snow has changed everything.

American Graffiti.

Facing The Music.

Author: January 10, 2025 4 Comments

When I got my first ukulele I told myself I’d give it a year and if I didn’t see noticeable progress—if I couldn’t at least play a song by then—I’d put it away. I told my wife I’d be happy if I could just learn to play “Greensleeves”, which was a joke because that’s a fairly complicated tune and I knew it would be a long time, if ever, before I’d even try it.

I’ve always loved music but I’ve also spent most of my life feeling like it was something I could only enjoy as an outsider. I’ve never been able to sing, but then the voice is only one instrument. Then there was my attempt at learning the violin when I was ten. That was one of a series of mishaps that had left me with the belief that I was hopelessly non-musical. In retrospect my experience with the violin, or rather lack of experience, was the result of a lot of factors, at least some of which were beyond my control. I had no previous musical experience and the violin isn’t exactly an instrument a novice should cut their teeth on, though I did manage to produce some sounds that shook loose my grandmother’s fillings. In retrospect, while the violin may not have been my best choice I gave up on playing an instrument much too easily. Though the idea that I should pick another, maybe something less challenging, flitted in and out of my mind for decades, it was easier to just tell myself that I had no musical ability, and anyway musical instruments are expensive. It would be a shame to invest so much in a futile pursuit.

My first ukulele was free so I figured, well, even if I fail all I really have to lose is some time. After I gave up the violin a couple of older kids came to my class to talk about music and to try and get us to join the school band. One played the clarinet, the other played the saxophone. They both said that just learning the basics of their instruments took about a year. I didn’t connect it to my experience with the violin, which I’d only spent a few months trying to master, but I did think a year sounded like a really long time to learn something. Now that I’m older a year doesn’t seem as long as it once did.

It was also something I didn’t fully understand until I made a serious commitment to learning to play the ukulele. The idea of “musical ability” I’d held onto for so long has nothing to do with reality. Bona fide musical prodigies exist but they’re extremely rare, and even they have to put in the time and effort to learn their instruments. No one just picks a violin and plays “Flight Of The Bumblebee” on their first try. And it’s not a coincidence that, historically, most musically gifted people were born into musical families. Mozart was a genius but he was also dropped on a harpsichord while he still had an umbilical cord.

In retrospect—this pursuit has led to a lot of looking backward—that’s something I wish I’d understood sooner. It seems silly that I didn’t, especially having experienced the confidence that comes with playing music. The first time I plucked out “Oh! Susanna” on the ukulele it was a revelation. Yes, it’s a pretty simple tune, but it gave me the feeling I could do anything. Some things may just take more work than others. The fact that I did it after just a few weeks of lessons–my wife found a ukulele teacher because she wanted to encourage my interest—made me realize my initial ambition of just being able to play a song after a year was a ridiculously low bar to set. The teacher’s a really good guy and at the end of our first lesson I said “I think I can do this.” He said, “I know you can do this.”

I hadn’t realized it before but that’s what I’d needed to hear—something I still need to hear on occasion because I still have doubts, but it’s been a year and, while I need to stop focusing so much on the past, in retrospect I’ve learned a lot, I’ve made a lot of progress, and I know I can do this.

I’ve already made a pretty good start on learning to play “Greensleeves”.

American Graffiti., Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Lightening Up.

Author: January 6, 2025 4 Comments

It was dark when I left for work and still dark when I got to work. There were bits of ice on the car and light snow was falling. It was nice to get a white Twelfth Night. The rain doesn’t really raineth every day, despite what Shakespeare said, but I did like seeing the weekend rain transition to snow. The down side was, of course, going back to work in it. I’d taken just enough time off over the holidays to get used to sleeping until after sunrise, feeding dogs, going back to sleep, and having a leisurely breakfast later. Now I have to relearn my regular work routine of getting up before sunrise, feeding dogs, getting showered, and getting out the door and on the road hopefully ahead of the worst of the traffic.

On my way in a funny memory popped into my head from one summer at Camp Ozone. Maybe my brain was trying to keep me warm by conjuring thoughts of summer but also I remembered a specific summer, I think when I was thirteen, when one of the camp counselors was an exchange student from Spain. Her name was Gabriela but she was from Montserrat and for some reason that led to all of the kids calling her “Mons”. Mons was really funny and a fun counselor, and she taught us all some Spanish which I really enjoyed. She also sang some Spanish songs and taught, or tried to teach, them to us. One was a sad-sounding song sung by children who have to take a three-day holiday from school and they’re sad because they won’t see their teachers, they won’t have to do their lessons, they won’t have any homework, and the textbooks are sent to a pawn shop.

The slow, sad nature of the tune played nicely against the very funny premise, but after a few tries Mons realized it just wasn’t a great camp song. She switched instead to teaching us a Spanish version of the Chicken Dance song. Because that was the first time I’d heard it I thought for a really long time it had originated in Spain so I was always surprised when it popped up in the playlist at Czech family weddings. The original composer was actually Swiss but it belongs to the world now.

I haven’t been able to find the song about schoolchildren being sad about a three day holiday but the idea still made me smile as I was driving to work. By the time I’d parked the sky had gotten lighter. Street lights were still on but I realized we’re past the solstice now and the days are already getting longer. There will be a time when, even though I’m going to work, I’ll get up after sunrise. After all the sun it shineth every day.

Adventures In Busing.

A Place For Stuff.

Author: January 4, 2025 6 Comments

Source: Wikipedia

My neighbors moved out in early December. I went over and helped them move some stuff out of their attic, though we had trouble figuring out where to put it because their den was already packed with boxes. That’s what happens when people live in one place for more than three decades: they accumulate a lot of stuff. That reminds me of George Carlin: “That’s all your house is: a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time.” I know my neighbors had some arguments about whether they needed so much stuff, and how much of their stuff was shit, and while they left some stuff behind I don’t think either of them could agree whether it was enough.

Their house is empty now but I know soon the developer who bought it will do the same thing he’s done with three other houses on our street: he’ll knock it down and build a new house that’ll be at least four times bigger and two, maybe three storeys. They’re downhill but the new owners may be able to look down on us.

The empty house also makes me think about the painting Last Day At The Old Home by Robert Braithwaite Martineau. Martineau studied under the Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt, who also painted some moralistic scenes, but it’s more like those satirical paintings by William Hogarth: stuffed with details, and every detail hammers the point home. On the far left there’s the dying tree seen through the window, the grandmother weeping while a man—according to Wikipedia he’s the butler—holds the keys to the house, but he could be a realtor, purchasing the house for a nouveau riche owner who wants the trappings of old money. The youngest child, a daughter, looks at her grandmother sadly. In the middle the mother half-heartedly tries, and fails, to take the glass of liquor her son is holding. Or maybe she could use a drink herself. Son and father are raising their glasses in a toast. The son looks anxious, uncertain, but the father looks like he’s saying, “Well, them’s the breaks!” The armor on the mantle probably symbolizes the family’s proud, chivalric history, hollow now, merely a decoration.

Also according to Wikipedia it’s the father’s gambling, symbolized by the painting of a horse in the front left corner, that’s led to the family’s ruin. I’ve read other interpretations that it’s a warning against the dangers of alcoholism—the father drank up all the old wealth and is not only still drinking but is passing the love of alcohol on to his son. I saw the original in an exhibit years ago and spent a long time admiring the details. It’s a large painting which makes it impressive. But the message was so heavy, so obvious, I also thought it was funny. Addiction is a terrible thing—there’s nothing funny about how it destroys lives. But Martineau was just so earnest it’s less of a study of the toll addictions take on families and more like a Victorian version of Reefer Madness. The fact that  he used his friend, Colonel John Leslie Toke, and family, and their home, Godington House, as models is also funny to me, even though there’s no hidden message there. I don’t think Martineau was subtly calling his friend a spendthrift, gambler, or alcoholic—there’s nothing subtle here. It was just convenience: he had a friend who could pose for his “This is your centuries old home on [insert vice], kids!”

About thirty years later Toke would sell Godington House, but this wasn’t art imitating life. The house had been in his family for more than four hundred years but the world had changed, and 1895 was a very different time even from 1862 when Martineau made his painting, which further undermines the painting’s thesis. It was mostly changing economics and the rising middle class, among other things, that led to the decline of the so-called “great families” that had persisted for centuries, not moral turpitude. Godington House passed through a couple of private owners and is now held by a non-profit trust, which seems like a good way to preserve all that stuff.

American Graffiti.