My Life

My Coffee Mug

Fellow Pittsburgh blogger, Rob of Unspace asks "What's Your Morning Coffee Cup Like?" I can't resist answering because I have such a great mug, and I love coffee.

My oldest son used to go to City Charter High. Consequently, he had the whole month of December off. So, the year before last, under our encouragement/arm twisting, he made a deal to help out at Manchester Craftsmen's Guild. In return for cleaning and toting he got to work on some projects, including this Christmas present for me.

Please note the white glaze running over the top capuccino-style. There's also a a little deformity on the inside with which I judge the level of two shots of espresso. I'm sure once I post this photo, others will have lost the will to compete. That's too bad, but I can never feel too bad about anything, because I've got my coffee cup.

Taking It in the Shins

I know it could be worse, but I do have a complaint about the remodeled Giant Eagle store. I have a couple actually. Calling the thing a "Market District" is a problem. Having to walk a half a mile to get a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread is a problem. But the real problem are those carts with the cupholders. I don't have a problem with the cupholders, but if you're pushing the cart along and happen to take a longer than usual stride, WHACK, you get hit right in the shins.

I'm wondering if I'm the only one in the world that this happens to. I'm currently reading Guns, Germs, and Steel, and finding out how certain civilizations evolved due to their environment. It makes me imagine that in a few generations there will be a short-strided people that takes over the planet, and a less advanced people who must shop in convenience stores or spend all their time piling all their groceries on their head.

Feelings

Whatever happened to curb-feelers, those antenna like deelies that stuck out from car wheels. Originating in lowrider culture, curb feelers went fairly mainstream during the '80s. They signaled the driver when he or she was too close to the curb. I don't see them any more and wonder if people just run over the curb to find how close they are like I do. By the looks of my right front tire, it shows.

What about the curbs? Don't curbs have feelings, too.

Thoughts on Breakfast

I had some name brand nonMeat sausage this morning, and had to come face to face with some of the problems of eating vegetarian.

I'm all for the idea of living lightly on the planet. And if each American eats nearly two hundred pounds of meat each year (my estimate), that makes for 60 billion pounds of slaughtering a year. Ethics aside this is a disturbing statistic.

I've always heard that raising meat is very inefficient. Cows eat thousands of pounds of vegetable matter to bring forth a small fraction of that in meat.

To do our part and to avoid clogging my arteries any more than necessary, I've been eating Morning Star or Boca sausages. We buy them in ten ounce packages at four dollars a package, as opposed to sausage which can be had at three dollars a pound. So it's hard to see how the efficiencies of not passing our vegetables through a cow are making their way to the consumer.

So let's look at nonMeat products like TVP:

TVP® is a food product made from soybeans. It is produced from soy flour after the soybean oil has been extracted, then cooked under pressure, extruded, and dried.

First off, food that has a copyright by its name makes me nervous. The crux of the matter is that we're looking at a fairly processed food by the time it winds up as sausage (Don't tell me it's not sausage, because the definition of sausage is anything you can stick in a casing, and actually you don't even need the casing.), enclosed in a plastic lining and colorful cardboard box.

My hunch is that we can lighten our load on the planet without our doomed bovine friends. Though the urge to have processed and packaged foods foils even vegan purists. How many petrochemicals go into manufacturing and shipping the product, how much waste packaging does the product create, what's the premium in price?

I guess I could just eat the soybeans (edamame) themselves, which I like to do. But I grew up eating sausage for breakfast, and I might as well pay a premium to keep my arteries clean and keep eating soy-sages. I don't think that my conscience is any cleaner for it, though.

I've Been on a Fast Train to Georgia

I've been on fast train to Georgia. I wasn't born no yesterday. I've had a good Christian raisin' and an eighth grade education.

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Ain't no reason for y'all to treat me this-a-way.

Chop Wood, Carry Water

Our lives are filled with the trivial and mundane. Do you realize that the average person spends more than a hundred hours in their lifetime chopping wood and carrying water?

The End[less] of Summer

Just sitting here and trying to keep the spirit of vacation alive. Here are some of the pictures I took with some commentary.

Watch my slideshow.

The plant in question is seabeach sandwort, I think. Have a happy Summer (what's left of it).

Returning from Ipswich Bay

Am now back in Pittsburgh.

Here I am in the kayak that I found ashore last year. I just plugged the hole in the stern with some duct tape, and the only water the kayak took on was the water from me paddling. I made it from the Lighthouse to Folly Point, about three miles. Consequently, I got too much sun. But it was worth it. Along the way, I started writing this poem:

Mortimer B., or The Rime of the Persnickety Mariner

Mortimer B. went out to sea in his Pamlico Kayak Shell.
For an afternoon’s leisure, Mr. B. sought the pleasure
Of paddling his boat for a spell.

The ocean was calm the weather was warm;
Mort he knew nothing of the oncoming storm
He also learned that he forgot his rudder,
and his boat had developed a crack
“I like to go boating,” he said with a shudder.
“But I also like to get back.”

The thunder was sounding, the rain it came pounding,
The flood found its way to the hull.
Three miles from land, with lightning at hand,
Said Mort, “At least it ain’t dull.”

Mortimer B. was never the kind to confront a problem sitting,
And standing for battle,
With only a paddle,
He told the sea, “It’s you should be quitting.”

He might have been saved but a forty-foot wave approached that Pamlico Shell
And Mortimer stood (Like a hardy fool would)
Shook his fist, and said, “Go to hell.”

In spite of his curse (You know the ocean’s heard worse),
The kayak went down to the briny,
And Mortimer thought,
Though his life had been bought,
“At least I got off my heiny.”

The kayak eventually went back to port,
But the ocean decided to keep our dear Mort.
He’s stayed in the ocean just bobbing and floating,
A reminder to others we can’t always be boating.

Kayakers come and go, but plastic you know,
Seems to last on this earth forever;
So to honor the man and his courageous last stand,
I’ve decided to do something clever.
I have named the shell after Mortimer B.
What once was his joy and his doom —
His legacy has become his namesake
And both are linked now in perpetuum.

So if it’s life you treasure, instead of true pleasure,
Stay off the Mortimer B.
But if you’re not too weak,
And it’s pleasure you seek,
And you love the swell and the tide.
Grab yourself a paddle,
Set out for the sea,
And join Morty and me for a ride.

The View from Here

Haven't done too much lately. I'm getting the hang of GarageBand and podcasting, but also spending time at the beach.

The view at the beach is even better, and the color is less spotty.

Canoeing on the Allegheny

We started out at the Kinzua Dam. The canoe is facing up river towards Cornplanter's Kingdom. Right after we were dropped off, Thomas saw the little toads along the bank, and couldn't help picking one up.

My compatriots making their way down the river. The portion of the Allegheny River we paddled, from the dam to approximately two miles north of Tidioute, is lined with hemlocks, oaks, cherries and silver maples.

A peaceful little inlet near Warren.

Mondo Pittsburgh

This is posted on a telephone pole by the Quiet Storm along with a few other interesting things. I titled it "Mondo Pittsburgh" because I was inspired to take it by seeing some of the photos on Eye Control a photoblog by Joey Harrison. The connotation of "mondo" for me is something that's bizarre, but also somewhat like a zen koan, a riddle that might not be solved by traditional rational methods.

Fascinations

I took Piper to the Carnegie Science Center yesterday. We had a great time and got a good tour of the coral reef aquarium by a friendly docent named Wesley. I didn't know that all the separate aquariums were attached to the same water system.

Piper wanted to try most everything. She loved the Miniature Railroad and Village and we took two circuits and she probably would have liked taking a couple more just to see everything, including the 100 animations — swingers on swings, farmers chasing pigs, batters at home plate, carousels turning . . .

The outstanding thing about the Miniature Railroad and Village is the layered complexity of it. The display had its origins not in corporate benevolence or well-researched pedagogy but in one man's vision. Charles Bowdish started the display in his Brookville home in 1920. It was in 1954 that the Buhl Planetarium invited Bowdish to bring his trains and miniatures to Pittsburgh. It seems as if the energy comes from within the exhibit, as opposed to the other science center exhibits, which almost have a pandering quality to them. The only thing missing from the Miniature Railroad and Village is some kind of hands on component, although approximately 68 volunteers work on the display. There must be some way to pass on the miniature railroadists' enthusiasm, craft, and ingenuity.

Sometimes I think I'm a socialist and sometimes I think I'm a capitalist, but if I have any kind of economic theory it must be that of the transcendentalist. What I mean is that if all of us hitched our wagons to our own pole stars, built our better mousetraps, or mangled whatever metaphors we could in order to do what we wanted, that somehow it would all work out. And if it didn't we would at least have the works of people like Charles Bowdish and Achilles Rizzoli amidst all the rubble. As John Gardner said, "We are all building castles in the sand. Some of us are just building more elaborate castles."

Broadway Musicals That Might Not Make It

Given the unlikely plays that have turned up on Broadway — Spamalot, Avenue Q, Urinetown, the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee — I'm wondering what won't make it to Broadway. Here's a few that show very little promise:

Pornographic Movie: A Musical Adventure. This has probably been done.

R. Crumb. Would like to see this just for the idea of a production number with a bunch of skinny cartoonists riding on the backs of full figured women.

Dexter. Based on the Cartoon Network character. Dexter takes his project to the Junior Academy of Sciences. Shades of 9/11. Can be seen as a kind of uplifting, Angels-in-America, type of play.

Paintball.

John Leguizamo Cooks. The talented actor does a tour de force by evoking multiple personalities cooking up multiple recipes on a television cooking show.

Delay: The Early Years. Captures how this cunning and charismatic congressman worked his way to a seat of power from the extermination business. Think dancers in jumpsuits waving metal spray wands.

The World of Henry Darger. The Mary Jane girls at the apocalypse. Pre-adolescent girls take on the forces of evil. I think this one has been done also.

Eat 'n' Park Destroyed

The Eat 'n' Park on Penn Avenue is being demolished to make room for a senior housing complex, one example of many of construction projects going on in Pittsburgh's East End. The building looks like it was built for the ages. Notice all the steel I-beams. Amidst all the heavy brick and twisted steel, one end of the building maintains perfect composure. I'm not sure if this comes through in the photo; but if you're there in person, the juxtaposition is striking.

Think Cool Thoughts

This is the cover of Liz's book Think Cool Thoughts. The book will be distributed at the end of June. Of course it's a wonderful book, and it'll be just the thing to help beat the hot summertime nights. Piper loves it. The book can be ordered through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Took a Hike

We celebrated the New Year by walking along Allegheny riverfront trail. We started out at 43rd Street. The half-mile path is about twenty or thirty to feet above the river. There's a pleasing park right under the 40th Street Bridge.

Here's my attempt of a panorama of the trailhead. A little junky, but still scenic:

Where Is George Jetson?

I saw this picture of George Jetson when I was cutting coupons on Sunday. For just a short instant I was wondering, "Whatever became of George Jetson? Has he died yet?"

Can someone tell me why such a thought should pop into my head?

God Bless You, Mr. Derrida Everyone

During the weekdays, I drive Liz to work, which gives us time to talk in the morning. This morning Liz was talking about people she knew and their outward displays of sexual orientation, whether they seemed straight or gay, what made them seem straight or gay or somewhere in between. To paraphrase, it seemed to her, as it probably does to many people these days, that the labels sometimes don't do justice to people, maybe not even describing people's sexuality as being along a continuum can provide us with sufficient understanding.

If we think about how gender status and gender expression manifests itself: secondary sexual characteristics, the sound of one's voice, and one's gestures, it becomes clear that each time you try to categorize something or develop hard, fast rules for defining gender, you come up short. One can see this in how gay subcultures in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the Village People, and The Simpsons turned the idea of macho on its head.

She says that what brought the thoughts to mind was this article in the New York Times about the late Jacques Derrida. The author, Mark C. Taylor, writes about how Derrida expressed how language can exclude, and eventually become a force for oppression, and that his seemingly arcane lessons are ones we should be learning.

During the last decade of his life, Mr. Derrida became preoccupied with religion and it is in this area that his contribution might well be most significant for our time. He understood that religion is impossible without uncertainty. Whether conceived of as Yahweh, as the father of Jesus Christ, or as Allah, God can never be fully known or adequately represented by imperfect human beings.

And yet, we live in an age when major conflicts are shaped by people who claim to know, for certain, that God is on their side. Mr. Derrida reminded us that religion does not always give clear meaning, purpose and certainty by providing secure foundations. To the contrary, the great religious traditions are profoundly disturbing because they all call certainty and security into question. Belief not tempered by doubt poses a mortal danger.

So how do we illuminate who we are? How do we define ourselves and others? As a writer, someone who explores this idea of character, I deal with this question. In writing class I was told about and read about Flaubert asking his student Maupassant to characterize a cab driver. Maupassant wrote a description of a hunched man in a cap smoking a gauloise. Flaubert returned it to him saying that to understand the cab driver's character Maupassant must write about everything but those characteristics. This wonderful anecdote has perhaps not made a miraculous change in my writing, but I'm sure it's changed my life.

Lately I've been in the habit in the morning of going around silently blessing people, just as an odd exercize. "Bless you, Mr. Young Man in a pickup. Bless you, Ms. Older Woman with a black umbrella." I noticed when I did this I saw -- or should I say imagined -- some more of a person's character than I otherwise would have. I can imagine that each of these people have weaknesses, perhaps they're overweight, or slovenly, or they look impatient, or they're overly fastidious; but each time I imagine that these people have great strengths that get them out of the house, or to the market, or to their kid's soccer practice.

I, of course, am the one most affected by blessing of others. It gives me a general good feeling, and maybe it might lead me to write better characterizations, or maybe I might get to know some interesting people.

I must confess I only have a weak knowledge of Derrida, tried to read Glas, saw him speak once and hardly understood a word he said – and yes he was saying it in English. But I do think he was on the side of the angels and somehow after the confusion I sometimes reach a clarity I otherwise wouldn't have.

Memento Mori

Had a physical last week. Blood pressure down. Cholestorol down, but not by enough. Goodbye salami. The doctor also recommended I take a baby aspirin each day. Studies have shown that aspirin is just as good as anything for preventing blood clotting after a heart attack. I'm guessing then that taking an aspirin each day would make me less vulnerable to death. Why do I feel then that taking an aspirin will be a daily encounter with my own mortality?

Carrying It in My Head

Went to the beach and wondered whether I could remember some of the thoughts that occured to me. I kept repeating the first two to myself, then I counted them off with my fingers, and then I tried a little visualization, with a little pertinacity, or is it perspicaciousness, I was able to bring home the following words and attached ideas from the beach.

• Pastoral. I'm noticing that people have large lawns that are periodically attacked by lawn care professionals with loud and angry mowing machines. I thought this was fairly ironic since the style of having large grass lawns, which has been traced to George Washington's Mt. Vernon, had been cultivated to evoke the pastoral and the peaceful.

• Cleat. I need to buy a cleat and pulleys and hooks and ropes for storing the kayak I found washed ashore.

• Lamps. I really like paper party lanterns. Especially the fact that they are made of paper and you can fill them with fire.

• Granite. I'd love for there to be a Cape Anne Natural History which do things like explain why granite has different colors.

• Activity Book. Saw my eight-year old niece with an activity book, and am thinking, "activity books are wasted on the young." I do think that adults would start buying up well designed activity books just like they do "for Dummies" books. I remember a pastor asking the congregation to spend the week repeating a single psalm and reflecting on it. Pretty good activity, I think. But the book doesn't have to be a doctrinaire Christian book, nor would it have to be a self-fulfillment book, or anything like that, just a lot of thought problems and exercises. Something to amuse ourselves until death strikes.

• Mussels. Flipped through the rackweed on the big, granite rocks to look for mussels. Would love to have mussels in white wine sauce.

• Shelves. I love the way the some people keep order in their lives. Looking at these shelves makes me happy.

Dancing

On Friday, I went to see my sister-in-law Sally Stroup's final dance recital. For 15 years she's been putting on shows with kids from four and up. This year's recital was held in the Marwick Boyd Auditorium. A thousand people. Two hundred dancers. Five hundred costumes. Forty-five acts.

The performance ran the gamut from old to new, from innocence to experience, from six year-olds in their tutus, to debutants in their black leotards and diaphonous skirts, to my niece Katie Martin, all of 24 years old, doing "All That Jazz." I got particularly choked up at the young girls pirouetting to "Edelweiss" (was trying to figure out some kind of geometry where chicken fat bisects love to create the point called schmaltz).

Seeing the performance gave me a chance to think about what we consider classical dance and how various forms of dance are added to what we call classic and how sensuality is added and subtracted from dance. Finally, it gave me a chance to not think at all, which is, of course, one of the best things about dance.

One more thing, something Benjamin pointed out to me: Sally included a note at the beginning of the printed program, but she didn't sign it, an example of how self-effacing she can be. In fact, her name was nowhere in the program. I can hear her now, "It was nothing." Yeah, Sal, the next time I feel like doing nothing I'll help raise hundreds of kids, teach them their right from their left, have them push the limits of their abilities, and then have them perform in front of a thousand people.