Small Streams

New Hampshire Gothic

"Do people just walk out the front door one day?"

So asks one of the visitors to the Nason house in a radio story about an abandoned house in New Hampshire. The whole of this week's This American Life was devoted to one reporter's detective work over decades to finding out what happened to the Nasons, owners of the House Near Loon Lake. The neighbors were close-lipped, but Adam Beckman was, in a desultory way, relentless.

Beckman slowly releases the details: a perfectly intact grocery store from the past decade, a dress with a withered rose pinned to it, a $5 gold coin from 1892, a baby doll with a face burned off, and a car with a tree growing out where the engine had been.

"I was thirteen years old and had a crush on a house," says Beckman.

You can see why a past, a family's past, any family's past, should have a story to it. It seems the Nasons' story ended abruptly. "It was so overwhelmingly abandoned . . . It was like leaving a corpse," says Peckney's mother. Having been in the housing rehab business, I've seen my share of abandoned houses, and I've assumed a certain amount of tragedy that went into the abandonment, and worried over household artifacts to understand the lives of the people who lived there. Ira Glass was right when he said "I hope you have a long car trip ahead of you." I spent a lot of time just sitting in the car just to hear the story of the Nason house.

The "House Near Loon Lake" is from April 23, 2004, and you can listen here.

Hackin' USA

I know, and may even use, three different definitions of the word "hack."

1.) To approach an enterprise as someone who is less than a virtuoso, e.g., a tennis hack, golf hack, or hack journalist.

2.) To enter other people's computers and/or communications systems without their consent, usually for nefarious purpose.

3.) To find "creative solutions to interesting problems."

This Boston Globe article illustrates examples of the third definition. Given the Glob's mainstream audience I see it as somewhat a shot across the bow of the public conscious. O'Reilly's Hack Series, and Ready Made magazine are linked, Rael Dornfest is quoted and some interesting but limited use projects are described, such as an electronic pet-sitter, and salt and pepper shakers made from light bulbs. I think, though, that a whole wide world of repurposed objects await.

Perhaps, it's evidence that Americans are striving for a higher form of consumerism. We may no longer want to just buy things, but take them apart and modify them. Detroit might not make Chevy Novas that can be souped up, but more and more items are fair game for hacking treatment.

Some Flotsam

John and Holly found this kayak ashore at their home in Gloucester. The seats are damaged and most of the ornaments, devices, controls, and whatever else was screwed on, is damaged. The stern has a couple of holes in it. But mostly it's in seaworthy condition. And I can spend some of the summer filing away the plastic spurs the kayak received as it was buffetted about Ipswich Bay.

According to the literature, "The Pamlico is the ideal choice for someone needing a tandem boat which can also solo paddle well." Of course for that I'll need to recable the rudder system.

Uncle (Yosemite) Sam

In an essay written sixty years ago called "Raffles and Mrs. Blandish," George Orwell reviews two novels written at the beginning of the 20th century. Orwell puts the manners and morality of popular literature through his own prism to reveal the fascism, sadism, and imperialism contained in our literature.

Until recently the characteristic adventure stories of the English-speaking peoples have been stories in which the hero fights against the odds. This is true all the way from Robin Hood to Pop-eye the Sailor. Perhaps the basic myth of the Western world is Jack the Giant-killer, but to be brought up to date this should be renamed Jack the Dwarf-killer, and there already exists considerable literature which teaches, either overtly or implicitly, that one should side with the big man against the little man. Most of what is now written about foreign policy is simply an embroidery on this theme, and for several decades such phrases as "Play the game," "Don't hit a man when he's down" and "It's not cricket" have never failed to draw a snigger from anyone of intellectual pretensions.

Sixty years ago, however, it was Walt Disney who created a cartoon where Donald Duck gave Adolf Hitler a raspberry, "Right in the Fuhrer's face." And at Warner Brothers, my favorite underdog cartoon character, Bugs Bunny, had a "live and let live" attitude. Bugs tended to his own garden until a character like Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, or the Tasmanian Devil showed up and provoked him. Bugs was no pacifist, though, and at a certain point exclaimed, "Of course you know, this means war." By the end Bugs fulfilled his Jack the Giant-killer role, and the aggressors were put in their place.

So what does it mean now that we're more likely to see a Yosemite Sam or Tasmanian Devil sticker on the back of a car, or on the mudflaps of a pickup truck? In some way I think people sympathize more with the buffoonish aggressors rather than the passive underdogs. Even America's underdogs, such as Bruce Willis, Will Smith, and Keanu Reeves spend much of their time onscreen kicking butt. Definitely more than a Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton would ever have done. "Might makes right," becomes engraved in our psyche so much so that the closest analog to American behavior might be the ambivalent mobster Tony Soprano. To all appearances Tony Soprano is a regular guy, even a sensitive guy, but if somebody needs to be whacked, Tony's the man to do it.

Let's just hope this attitude is having no effect on our foreign policy.