text:
I need to take a break for a bit.
Monthly Archives: January 2016
Reading: M(ore)F(atuous)A(rtiness)
In this post I talk about three debut novels: CALL ME HOME, Megan Kruse, YOUR HEART IS A MUSCLE THE SIZE OF A FIST, Sunil Yapa, ONLY LOVE CAN BREAK YOUR HEART, Ed Tarkington
Today, I was reminded by my favorite bookseller, Marlene, that we had discussed my being employed in position of Resident Curmudgeon at The Curious Iguana [click here]; a possibility first considered when I one day spent fifteen minutes ranting and raving about having read yet another book too-touted by the tight-knit clan of literati that I found to be less than tout-able. We (well, in fairness, mostly I) thought someone ought to be available to say rot and twaddle, and who better than I, who have found in my dotage an awful lot of parading naked Emperors, armed with MFAs and hawking Kool-Aid I refuse any longer to sip!
You've been warned. I'm in a mood. There are entirely too many books too much the same in tone and structure and they're oohed and ahhed over and I am sick and tired of them. I'm not a young man. When I'm promised something will thrill, excite, enthrall, and enrapture me, and am left tumescent only with disappointment, literarily blue-balled from lack of blue-penciling, I am bound to be a bit testy (testes – don't tes-teased me, something about that ought to have been funnier – but, see here, I am a one-man band, a one hander, a – oh forget it).
CALL ME HOME, Megan Kruse, Paperback, 292 pages, March, 2015, Hawthorne Books This was brought to my attention and passed on to me by a friend who thought it worth a read. It has all sorts of blurbing going for it and an introduction by Elizabeth Gilbert. This is a story of abuse mistaken for love, the damage and disaster of dysfunctional families, and the power of forgiveness. The writing is quite skilled, the emotions spent and sputtered are often powerfully moving, but, finally, for me, it was a trifle self-conscious in execution and when I ought to have been entranced, I was, instead, put off by a sort of reportorial, researched tone. A debut novel, I look forward to her next work.
YOUR HEART IS A MUSCLE THE SIZE OF A FIST, Sunil Yapa, Hardcover, 320 pages, January, 2016, Little, Brown and Company
Another debut novel by another MFA holder. One review (or two, maybe) talk of how good a heart this book has, how it means well. It takes place during the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, and it dances around one after another dichotomy and contradiction of character, basically good people doing rotten things in complicated circumstances. Admirable aim, exploration of such things, but the entire thing felt academic to me, without grounding in real, earned emotion.
Once upon a time, decades ago, I took a directing class. When it came time to present the scenes, one student-director had given the actor playing Don, a blind singer-songwriter, the action of throwing his music to the ground during an argument with his Mother, who was railing against his musical, free-spirited lifestyle. The professor stopped the scene there and ejected the student-director from the class (never go to a theatre school, kids, where the faculty is comprised mostly of people bitter about having failed to succeed at what they are now teaching) and while the punishment was too harsh, the reasoning was sound. Don loved his music, it was symbol of the very self and life he was defending, and no anger could justify his throwing it to the ground, an action which would only have been appropriate had the director meant to ultimately give sympathy and victory to the Mother. All wrong.
For me, in Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of A Fist, when the character of the head of the Seattle Police force, Bishop, burns a stack of books belonging to his late wife, it was the very same thing; It did not make sense, the event meant as motivation for him to set the flames did not, for me, justify the action, and so everything else about him, and all the things which happened because of that, were un-grounded, false, flawed, an unearned pyrotechnics, as it were.
Which sums this book up, rather. I am exhausted by writers auteur-ing like Tarantino; exploiting & exploding for effect rather than exploring and earning emotions. This book has the feel of something annoyingly over-workshopped. One can near hear the other MFAs in the room cooing and ahhhing at all the literary pyrotechnics – or – pyrotechniquing – and by the last third I was skimming through the pages of self-congratulatory, masturbatory describings and ruminatings. More editing. Less posturing.
Sorry, I warned you I was cranky.
ONLY LOVE CAN BREAK YOUR HEART, Ed Tarkington, Hardcover, 320 pages, January, 2016, Algonquin Books This is another debut novel. Hmm. Maybe I ought not read three debut novels in a row? I'll tell you this, I was liking this book for about the first two-hundred pages. It felt old-school in the good way; lots of plot, lovely writing, a story well-told. Then, off the rails it went. I don't think it needed the murder. I would much rather have spent more time with Paul and Leigh. I'm not sure Rocky narrating was the way to go if one wanted the final third of the book to happen and the way it was tied up, ribboned, bowed, happy-ended(ish), seemed random and less than honest as well. But, there was much to love in this and I think Bethanne Patrick (you ought to follow her on Twitter, the BookMaven, click here) said it best, and far better than can I, in her review at NPRBooks (click here for that review).
Probably unfair to these three debut novels to have read them so soon after the brilliant few books I read the week before (click here for those recaps) but, there it is. And, it is not impossible that I, book blogger, who have failed to be a published author, am as bitter as the directing teacher I spoke of above — but I think not. I love many, many books, as anyone who follows me knows. And, I am truly looking forward to new books by Paul Lisicky and Garth Greenwell, both of which come out tomorrow and will be waiting for me at The Curious Iguana.
So, until next time kids, Love and Light from the curmudgeon, and forfreakssake, write from your heart, not from a formula, and listen to what your soul tells you, not the advice from your writing group.
Here I am, before I offend anyone else, going.
Reading: 5 Days, 5 Books
Today I will be writing about: THE SELLOUT, by Paul Beatty (library), I CAN GIVE YOU ANYTHING BUT LOVE, by Gary Indiana (purchased), WAYS TO DISAPPEAR, by Idra Novey (advance copy sent by literati-industry pal), YOU ARE NOT A STRANGER HERE, by Adam Haslett (library), MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, by Elizabeth Strout (library – but after reading, bought a copy), and, as always, talking about myself. This is, after all, my blog.
Those of you who have come here for a discussion of books, I've got five today, some of which are fantastic, but pardon me for a moment while I speak to another part of my audience, those who — for the briefest of ecstatic, orgasmic moments yesterday — led me to believe some lit-type had linked me, praising my blog as a don't miss, must read, savant-ish polyglot's potpourri of belletristic babble and the off-color, onanistic emotional offal of a train-wreck in progress. But, hell no . . . instead . . .
In the past 48 hours this blog has gotten a ridiculous number of hits. "Huzzah!" said I, all a-tingle and a-glow with that endorphin rush only impact play can bring, "Hit me some more, sir!"
Now, were I a different kind of person, say, perhaps, NOT one who'd first been BDSM-ed by the School Sisters of Notre Dame and Roman Catholic-brainwashed into the mindset in which every pleasure requires requisite punishment, I might have enjoyed this spanking of popularity without regard to its residual bruising and scarring; alas, I am bottom-trained to the bondage of guilt and suspicion, a man accustomed to taking it while on his knees, and so, I assumed the position and investigated.
Charlie Carver came out yesterday on Instagram [click here]. Good for him and it means nothing to me other than this: In March of 2014 I posted pics of Charlie and his twin brother, shirtless, in a piece about my objectification of men. The picture above is from that post on my blog and it comes up first when one types "Charlie Carver Naked" into a search engine. While I am sore disappointed that the hits to my blog are not driven by people hungry for my prose-stylings, I can imagine just how disappointed are those confronted with my prose-stylings when they'd hoped for Charlie Carver's dick, so, apologies, and please, when taking it out on me, try not to leave a scar. My safe word is "READ!"
During January of 2015 I read ten books. So far, in January of 2016, I have read six, mostly good books, one so fantastic I hesitate to write about it because doing so seems sacrilegious. But, this blog is about more than the good pain/bad pain humiliations I suffer along the way as I worship at the altar of attractive and unattainable young men, it is also a platform for sharing how I feel about the things I read, and for promoting those books I love, this my humble effort to spread the joy and love and light books bring to me. Well, here goes.
THE SELLOUT, by Paul Beatty, hardcover, 304 pages, March 2015, Farrar, Straus & Giroux This is another of those very buzzy books, about which much has been written, superlatives bandied about, mad-love admirations by the erudite literati gushed in the usual-suspect-we-all-ride-the-same-morning-train-and-talk publications. For the first hundred pages or so I was ready to hobo-hop my way onto that train as I often do; it was a salient satire about race and class and cynicism, one after another funny – sometimes hysterical – riff on stereotypes and ignorance and self-delusion, but then, it bogged down in what was for me a plotless plod of too much plot. I know, that makes little sense, but, it took too long for too little to happen and the variations on the social commentary that had been riveting the first one hundred pages were just repetitive in the next two hundred.
Here's the thing about being the literati equivalent of a freight-hopping hobo: I'm not paying for the tickets to get on the trains, I'm wandering and wondering, a flaneur, going where I want, when I want, dawdling, dallying, and yes, diddling, at a pace all my own on a journey of my catch-as-catch-can design, and, my dears, doing it this way has proven to be a little dangerous, true, sometimes I'm hungry, almost always I am a little (or, in truth, quite a lot) lonely, but having already lost everything more than once, the only voyages remaining for me are those junkets in which I've got nothing to lose — as in, job, reputation, followers. I mean, hell, the most traffic my little book-exploration-sometimes naked guys blog has gotten in the past year has been driven by Charlie Carver's dick, so, you know, here I am, going (on and on and on and on), not likely to be intimidated by the threat of further dissipation.
Thus and so, here is another of the things about me, like I said, literati-freight-hopping-flaneur with a catholic (and Catholic, I guess) penchant for being abused: As foul-mouthed as I am, as rabid an advocate for freedom of speech as I am, as far-left as I am, the use of certain words makes me uncomfortable. I never use the N-word. Mr. Beatty uses it — and other equally triggering words — throughout The Sellout, which I understand is part of his point. I get it. And, Mr. Beatty, being African-American and writing from that perspective and using the word as ironic commentary, all gotten. But, back to that thing about me, see, I think words are incredibly powerful, able to cast spells, takers and givers of energy with lives that continue after we've said or written or thought them, words have the power to make things happen just by being said, written,
thought. Words create energy waves in our minds, in our hearts, in our world and so, I am one of those gay men who doesn't think gay men (or anyone else) ought say the Fa-word nor should lesbians (or anyone else) say the Dy-word. I also don't care for the use of the Bi- and Ba- words and I despise the Cu- word. I get the whole "We are reclaiming them and making them harmless and powerless" thing but I think that is a specious defense for using words born of hate. I think the world is still too full of ignorant people who upon hearing we minorities using words once (and, often, still) pejorative in nature to refer to ourselves will take that as liberty to continue to use them in ugly, distasteful, violent, abusive and damaging ways. We should be very careful about filling our mouths, hearts, and environments with those words, because, we need to protect our hearts and the hearts of others. So . . .
I CAN GIVE YOU ANYTHING BUT LOVE, by Gary Indiana, hardcover, 240 pages, September, 2015, Rizzoli Ex Libris . . . Gary Indiana's use of sometimes pejorative terms for gay men in his memoir also gave me pause. I don't know, perhaps I am the duddiest of fuddies, but the phrase "buxom giddy queen" is the sort of thing meant to cut and harm and I just would rather not live in that or read about it. That said, otherwise, I loved LOVED LOVED this book. Perhaps it is because Mr. Indiana and I are long-distance contemporaries belonging to a cohort of shared experience if not geography, and at this crepuscular state in my life, finding resonance and kind — even at the remove of hardcover pages — is a comfort. Mr. Indiana's writing is compelling, evocative, and eviscerating in its honesty; he spares no one, including himself. My (bought) copy is festooned with sticky-notes and scribbled marginalia. Here, just a few lines I marked:
Time is glacially slow in this country, but my face races on, across all the mirrors, en route to the eternity of nothingness behind the finish line. [page 12]
I'm told I think too much, and have too many emotions. For some reason this terrifies people. In my own estimation, I'm emotionally blocked, stupid in practical matters, and cursed with an isolating intelligence that's worthless, . . . I can be whatever somebody wants temporarily, if I glean a clear intuition of what it might be. I'm so solitary that roles I try playing for other people seem contrived and arbitrary. I'm uncertain enough of my existence to absorb nearby tastes and opinions, as if claiming them as my own will bring me into clearer focus. . . . I don't fit with anyone I meet, except in a lubricious, sweaty, transient junction of organs and holes, a fusion of raw desires that discharge themselves with two spurts of jism. The guys I pick up are impervious to emotional complications, . . . What I look for is an abridged version of what I want: a no-fault fuck in the parking lot of time between last call and the morning reality principle, and a modicum of cordiality. [page 81-82]
I had the sense of always standing a little apart from the narrative, of missing the point, of nothing ever being quite enough or never adding up. Life was a choppy sequence of images unfolding in several worlds whose only connection was the fact that I slipped into one after another like an actor performing several plays in the same twenty-four-hour span. [page 170]
And this, story of my life:
It sounds ridiculous now, but his sexual indifference embarrassed me for years after this whole period was finished, as a high point of humiliation. It was a purely willful, physical attraction, but I had fastened on Don as the person I wanted to love me back, imagining my desire could make this person I didn't really know into the person I wanted him to be. [page 172]
And one-offs aplenty, like, "At least with an ex-convict, there's a little damaged tenderness." [page 228] and, "…the inbred assurance of an upper-middle-class Eagle Scout, a wide-eyed, impervious optimism that only needed a dusting of freckles and a few amphetamines to turn him into Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz." [page 199] and, ". . . Ferd sighed, with an oracular exhaustion I can still hear after thirty-five years." [page 205]
I share an exhaustion with Mr. Indiana, if not quite as oracular, at least as weary, and brought on more than a little by having come of age in an age where a coming out like Mr. Carver's would have meant the end of many possibilities and opportunities, and so we internalized our self-hatred and fear, the disgust with ourselves into which we'd been brainwashed and acculturated, seeking lovers and tricks and John Rechy-esque numbers for partners, those men who were but were not what we were and were afraid of being, reflections of our own rejections of self.
Damn it's been a freaking long road. And Bowie has died. On the day Charlie Carver came out. And there are echoes and connections there. And I am feeling ancient. And Mr. Indiana's book echoes and ruminates on all of the angst and agita that brought him to this same place, from where we were, who we were, what we have been, to here, where we are, going.
WAYS TO DISAPPEAR, by Idra Novey, Hardcover, 272 pages, February, 2016, Little, Brown and Company I read with far more hope than I trick, perhaps because I have far better luck with hook-ups in my literati-hobo-flaneur-ing than I have ever had with men, and one such connection brought me an advance copy of this beguiling, enchanting debut novel by poet and translator, Idra Novey. Ways to Disappear defies categorization and genre. It is like nothing else I've read, an un-doing of form, a translation of emotion and relationship into a unique shape that is at whiplash inducing, breakneck pace funny, frightening, instructive, and heartbreaking with dollops of magic realism and heapings of lyrical prose, imagery run carefully amok — I know, carefully amok, but there's the incongruous truth and beauty of it. Ms. Novey manages a mordant burlesque of character and circumstance into a fast-paced, page turning meme-noir of great beauty and wit with fascinating finesse. First paragraph, listen:
In a crumbling park in the crumbling back end of Copacabana, a woman stopped under an almond tree with a suitcase and a cigar. She was a round woman with a knob of gray hair pinned at the nape of her neck. After staring a minute up into the tree, she bit into her cigar, lifted her suitcase onto the lowest branch, and climbed up after it.
Read that out loud. Sit with it a moment. Is it prose? A poem? Hilarious? Tragic? All of the above? Whatever else it might be, it is gorgeous and courageous writing. Ms. Novey takes all sorts of terrifying and satisfying chances, all the while making music of syntax and rhythms that roll luxuriously off the tongue – read it out loud, I dare you. There is so much on which to meditate in this short novel, I read it twice in one day and have read the ending a few more times since. It is a meditation on how we translate emotion into reality and relationship, on the way we shape our lives through such translations, and the search for those who hear things in the same syntax as do we, who share our vocabulary of the heart. Yes, there is romance as well, romance that scars. Truly, my efforts to further describe might do the disservice of dissuading you from picking this up, and you really ought to read it. So go, get a copy now. I'll wait.
YOU ARE NOT A STRANGER HERE, by Adam Haslett, Hardcover, 256 pages, August, 2002, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday Why did I order this book from the library? I wish I could recall where first I heard about it, who recently wrote about it, which website or Twitter-Literati recommended it, but, I didn't share decades with Gary Indiana and David Bowie and not suffer some brain-cell loss in the process.
However it came to me, I am grateful. A collection of nine short stories dealing with disturbing degrees of alienation from the world, from others, from the self, this is a well-written though hardly easy read. I devoured all the stories in a two-day binge and that was not, I think, the ideal way to appreciate this work. One should space these stories out, as having them all too quickly follow one another is akin to spending too much time with that friend whose life is one after another tragedy and trauma and who, one suspects, enjoys the agony just a little more than they ought. Too much.
Still, nice work, the opening story, Notes to My Biographer, about a schizophrenic father on a manic high was especially compelling and wrenching. The Beginnings of Grief was a horrifying study in where the numbing effects of loss and despair can strand a person. Devotion, about a brother and sister and the man they both loved and the secrets and lies between them is beautifully wrought, its construction my favorite in the collection and it contained my favorite passage, this;
He won their games of hide-and-go-seek because he never closed his eyes completely, and could see which way she ran. He could still remember the peculiar anger and frustration he used to feel after he followed her to her hiding place and tapped her on the head.
That's a perfect evocation of what goes on between a brother and sister, the summing up of a relationship in which one's own misdeeds being allowed are a source of anger. He cheats. He is angry because she has accepted and forgiven it. There is every indication she knows, early hinting of which is finally revealed to be true. He needs not to lose more than she needs to win, a flaw in him to which she acquiesces, which infuriates him. That's some glorious imagery there.
But, the story by which I was most moved was Reunion. A fellow has contracted AIDS, is dying, and the emotional and physical peregrinations through which he chooses to contort as he moves toward his end, the letters through which he shares this with his father, a devastating telling.
And now, I must somehow find a way to write about a book I loved so much I fear sullying its near-perfection by speaking of it. But, I have put it off long enough, here goes:
MY NAME IS LUCY BARTON, by Elizabeth Strout, hardcover, 208 pages, January, 2016, Random House I first cried reading pages 41 and 42 of this book. I almost never cry when reading. I said this on Twitter; "No words of mine in any combination seem worthy of speaking of this book — that is how much I love it. Ms. Strout's limning of the failure of love that meant well and knew no better, her exploration of the ways in which we disappoint while doing all we can — it is glorious. There is not one single word, space, mark of punctuation, presence, absence, breath, that is not absolutely essential to the telling, each a necessary part of a transcendent whole. Rarely have I been this moved. People, if you've ever trusted my lit-taste for a moment — even if you haven't — I beg you, stop everything. Read My Name Is Lucy Barton now."
I don't know if I've the skills to say it better. I can tell you this, every time I start trying to describe this book to anyone, I begin weeping anew. Here is what the Penguin Random House site says about the novel:
A new book by Pulitzer Prize winner Elizabeth Strout is cause for celebration. Her bestselling novels, including Olive Kitteridge and The Burgess Boys, have illuminated our most tender relationships. Now, in My Name Is Lucy Barton, this extraordinary writer shows how a simple hospital visit becomes a portal to the most tender relationship of all—the one between mother and daughter.
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy's life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
Yes. And maybe it is the Mother and child angle that gets to me in particular, the ways in which they find and lose and fail and comfort and disappoint and love — oh how they love — one another. Maybe. Or, perhaps it is that Ms. Strout is a writer of such proficiency and profound gifts, a talent so rare, I was transported by that alone. Oh people, I don't know. I only know this book took me to a world so vividly made, so real, so powerful, I could not stop once I started.
I would begin quoting from the book, Ms. Strout's beautiful lines, but they belong so ineluctably to the wholeness of it — as I said, every letter of it contributes to its completeness, is essential, and so to pull-quote without context diminishes. Still, I will try, just briefly, this:
But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine.
Have you ever? And, okay, this, oh holy mother of all that is holy, this, from page 41-42 where began my weeping:
One more thing about Jeremy: The AIDS epidemic was new. Men walked the streets, bony and gaunt, and you could tell they were sick with this sudden, almost biblical-seeming plague. And one day, sitting on the stoop with Jeremy, I said something that surprised me. I said, after two such men had just walked slowly by, "I know it's terrible of me, but I'm almost jealous of them. Because they have each other, they're tied together in a real community." And he looked at me then, and with real kindness on his face, and I see now that he recognized what I did not: that in spite of my plenitude, I was lonely. Lonely was the first flavor I had tasted in my life, and it was always there, hidden inside the crevices of my mouth, reminding me. He saw this that day, I think. And he was kind. "Yes" is all he said. He could easily have said, "Are you crazy, they're dying!" But he did not say that, because he understood that loneliness about me. That is what I want to think. That is what I think.
To have achieved that paragraph in this lifetime would be enough for me. Had I written it, I could happily say, "Well, now I have done all I ever need do." Such beauty. So many stories in so few words. Spare. Perfect.
I cannot imagine there will be many books this year (or, ever) that move me in the way My Name Is Lucy Barton did and continues to do. So beautiful. Such artistry. So much truth. Please, please, PLEASE read it.
Here I am, nearly gone, 3500 words and eighteen hours (and the death of David Bowie and the coming out of Charlie Carver and an afternoon of my own Mother's stories and a few secrets I dragged out of her) later, my blog hits are double what they were yesterday –entirely attributable to the search of Charlie Carver's dick – and if you've made it here, to this end, my end, today, well, darling, bless you. Love and Light and thank you for joining me here, where I am going.
David Bowie was, for me and I suspect many others like me, a beacon of what freak could achieve. He not only didn't apologize for being other, he cultivated its colors, reveled in its complications and possibilities, making it clear that somewhere there existed a world in which we outcasts were not only cool, but, desired. We could rule.
He played a role in my Bildungsroman, unpublished novel, Libertytown, and I include part of that here, this morning, because, well, here it is, going.
LIBERTYTOWN, the novel (an excerpt from Chapter 9, August 2004, u no what i mean)
It was that summer, my thirteenth, when I discovered my talent – not for theatre, but for appearing to know myself, an ability to hide the terror I felt inside behind an assumed sophistication gleaned from movies, books, and those Sunday New York Times clippings I'd hung on my walls, I perfected my imitation of who I thought I might be; a scathing wit possessed of an extravagant vocabulary and cultural frame of reference.
At Theatre Camp, I actively cultivated the persona of sophisticated libertine and I played the character with aplomb. It was my signal achievement of the summer, becoming someone I had never been, seemingly at ease and intimidating to both the other students and the staff. Unaccustomed as I was to being thought cool, interesting, urbane, or – most of all – dangerous, I embraced it with vigor and encouraged the myth.
The camp was at a college on the fringe of Baltimore an hour from Libertytown, and of the one hundred or so students attending ranging in age from thirteen to forty-something, only six of us were "dormers", residing on campus, the others were all local. This resulted in we male theatre dormers, of which there were exactly two, being housed amongst summer students from other programs, most of whom were football players struggling to maintain eligibility. The night we resident campers arrived we were herded to the theatre building for a meeting where we were told the rules which consisted of no underage drinking and no drug use. It was a simpler time, much less fearful, and the notion now of a group of thirteen to sixteen year olds being given such unsupervised freedom would be actionable in most states. After the brief lecture, we were handed our meal tickets and given a tour of the areas of campus we'd need to know, ending back at the theatre building where we were seated and told to wait for our leader.
Lavinia Kazakh swept into the room, bellowing a bravura "Welcome fellow explorers and adventurers in the performing arts. " She was a prematurely gray thirty-something fast riser in the department who'd begrudgingly taken on the summer program. Soon enough she would label many of us in that room "dilettantes and hobbyists," but that night, Lavinia hid her frustration that we were children, or, worse, untalented children, by lighting lavender candles and patchouli incense and forcing us all into a cross-legged floor sit, hand holding circle in the center of which she stood – or, rather, twirled and posed and gesticulated as she bestowed upon we humble disciples forty-five minutes of imperious oration on the importance of the bohemian artist in the world, and the pride we should take in being considered "malcontents of unconventional stripe." It soon enough became clear she did not mean this incited swagger to extend to questioning her superciliousness nor the benefit of spending hours pretending to be a piece of frying bacon, or chatting with trees. However, at the introductory session, she had not yet been disabused of her vision of how grateful we would all be to worship at her mime instructor feet.
When Lavinia finished her reception shtick she encouraged us, well – encourage is perhaps not quite strong enough a word – she demanded we proud malcontents begin to familiarize ourselves with the souls of our fellow adventurers, at which point I was approached by Carrie and Stash, both clad in safety-pinned adorned, torn garments of black and purple, the kind of painfully hip deviant poseurs who might appreciate my Earth shoes and erudition in ways my hometown peers could not, the faux-punk-Beat generation-cum-Bloomsbury/Algonquin-Studio 54 cohort I had always dreamed of befriending. Carrie, who looked like David Bowie with Joni Mitchell-long blonde hair, wore cooly her heroin addict thin frame, and impenetrable sneer of disappointment, was the speaker.
"We can tell you saw through that too. She's so full of shit. We love fags. You are a fag, whether you know it or not. I'm infallible about these things."
"She is," Stash agreed, more personable but less well-kempt, she disdained personal hygiene in a misinterpretation that Patti Smith's rats-nest hair implied a distaste for bathing, deodorant, and other modern ablutions. "She's Carrie and I'm Stash, which is, alas, not about drugs, but short for Anastasia. My parents. Dicks. Russian. Stupid name. Anyway, you are a total fag, right?"
It was the first time in my life where the secret I'd never spoken seemed it might be a plus. I leapt.
"Yeah, I'm a total fag."
The liberation of that utterance is still difficult to describe; the lifting of the weight as they came from me sounding, as they did, so guilelessly true, unpracticed, natural, was as if I had never before actually taken a deep breath. The feelings, urges, and shameful lusts I had tried completely without success to hide but which clearly shone brightly enough to invite the name calling and locker tossings to which I had been regularly subjected throughout my life were now an asset; there was such a throwing off of chains and fear when at last I was able, out loud, to not just own, but celebrate them. I immediately became a new person.
"Goddammit I wish I had a dick so I could be a fag." Stash, with her kohled eyes, ravishing cheekbones, and bountiful breasts was the least androgynous of we three, who had become in those moments, what Lavinia would later call "the unholy trinity." I continued my development of the new Parker character, taking my improvisatory cues from Stash.
"Not with those tits. You don't look like a dyke either."
"No. Fuck all. I've done some diving but I'm totally into dick."
"Yeah. A day without dick is like a day without …"
"Dope." Carrie was back into what I would later realize was likely no less a fabricated confession of personal revelation than were my own that summer. "You got any on you?"
"Shit, no. I didn't bring any. You?"
"Fuck all. Nazi parents checked our bags. They sent us here to the gulag to get us away from all that. Like goddam theatre camp isn't gonna be all about drugs."
"And dick. I hope." And I did. Though I had not yet touched a dick other than my own, though I had spent my life attempting to subsume my desire to do so, within five minutes of meeting Stash and Carrie, I had debuted fully formed the Parker appropriated from the ether of movies, books, media, and my imaginings. He had – clearly – been around the block, perhaps even, worked it. Without hesitation I'd shed who I'd been, the naïve Catholic boy, the unpopular, petrified pussy and become a proud, out bohemian Sissy.
We made our way back to the dorms, where we inaugurated what became our nightly posing as nodded-out junkies, nearly incapable of lifting our heads or coherent speech, a ritual of worshipping at the altar of Carrie's collection of Bowie albums played on her fold-up stereo at volumes and in enforced isolation meant to alienate us from the three remaining residents; Betsy, a curly red headed white girl from California with "connections in the biz", Lisa, an ingénue already on the wane and my first exposure to bulimic-anorexics, and the other male, Abe, "a Manhattan Jew," as he liked to say, whose parents had – for reasons that were soon all too clear – sent him far from his home in the actual center of the theatrical world to study at a second tier Maryland college for the summer. He was my roommate.
I had arrived earlier in the day and claimed the top bunk, but when we reached our room, Abe, who had said almost nothing through Lavinia's communist indoctrination session, tried to speak.
"I n-n-n-n-need to be … n-n-n-need to be … on top." I thought he said, but he whispered, barely audible, his back to me as I was unpacking. I turned, not sure he'd really been speaking to me.
Abe turned to me, never raising his eyes from the industrial carpet.
"I n-n-n-need the top … the top … top … bunk." This time it was a little louder, but equally slow, as if each word required gargantuan effort of breath and mind, as if, somehow, speech was unnatural to him, as if every time he spoke it was like a child learning to ride a bike; he couldn't just do it, he had to concentrate on every aspect of it and so it was this painfully uncertain, wobbly exercise.
"You need it?"
He slowly raised his eyes to mine, and revealed something frightening, something angry, something pleading. He clearly thought I was taunting him by having required clarification of someone for whom communication was such torture. He would make sure I did not ask again by answering in what began as a whisper, but grew in volume as he hobbled closer and closer to me, getting louder and louder with every word, until I felt like Nell, tied helpless to train tracks, a locomotive hurtling toward me, looming huger and more thundering until I was pulverized.
"I can't … I can't … I can't … I CAN'T SLEEP … UNDER SOMEONE!"
"Uhm … okay." I grabbed my stuff off the top bunk and moved it to the bottom, wondering how I would make it through the next weeks with this psychopath. While I was, at the time, unusually thin, Abe was nearly invisible; where I was blonde and sharp and quick of tongue, Abe was dark and slow and stuttering, the simplest of spontaneous conversations a challenge for him. But God, or, Whomever, works in mysterious and unfair ways.
Abe was an acting genius.
Supplied with a script, Abe morphed instantly with no visible effort into someone else. It wasn't so much acting as psychic channeling. That such a tiny little frame and agonized little psyche could contain all the people he became that summer fascinated me. And infuriated me. We would not be friends. I could not forgive his divinely ordained talent nor could he control his envy of my social dexterity, both of us resenting the other's gift as undeserved fluke of nature, resentment aggravated by the incompatibility of my verbosity and his aphasic disorder.
Our second day of camp, we were divided into cutely named "discipline collectives" of fifteen to twenty students who rotated teachers throughout the day. During the four week session we would be instructed in mime, dance, improvisation, musical theatre singing, acting, classical acting, and for the few remarkably gifted among us, directing, and beginning the second week we would be cast in various shows to be performed the final day. I was relegated with thirteen other students I immediately perceived as the least talented into the Chekov Group. I'd never read Chekov, nor had anyone else in the group, but I at least knew – if vaguely – who he was, while others thought we'd been named after a STAR TREK character. It was clear we were outcasts of whom little was expected, neither as pretty nor as effusive as the other pods with their far better names; the Bernhardts who would concentrate on classical acting, the Barrymores who would focus on modern texts, the Isadoras who would focus on dance-based theatre, the Marceau's who would concentrate on mime (for whom, of course, Lavinia was the mentor), and the Martins who would concentrate on musical theatre. We Chekovs drew as mentor a tired, wasted looking professor with shoulders so stooped as to appear deformed and prematurely gray hair, Dr. Peter Boynton, who substituted effusiveness for skill and was one of those adults who try to curry favor by sharing secrets and information with their students in tones denigrating the authority they themselves represent.
"The others would never tell you this, my little Chekov's, but there's a competition between the mentors to see who has the most talented kids. Sorry Charlotte and Pat, I know you're not kids. We're lucky to have you two – grown-ups – I'll be expecting you to jump in and correct me when I'm wrong."
Pat and Charlotte were not kids, true enough, but two of the five adults who were taking the course. I learned little of Pat's biographical details but that she was gray, overweight, old, and a high school chorus teacher who'd been assigned to take over the drama program despite the fact that her theatrical experience consisted wholly of directing her church Christmas pageant: The Enemy.
Charlotte, on the other hand, was glamorous. Pale almost to the point of translucence, with hair dyed the blonde and arranged in what I thought was the style of Debbie Harry but which she'd meant to call to mind Marianne Faithful, she floated amongst us in a cloud of floral scent and unfiltered Gauloises, and despite the summer heat, wore always a vampirish black cape and long purple scarf that matched its lining. She was all the shades of a bad bruise, this blotch of inky onyx and violaceous shadow, evanescing into sallow, jaundiced flesh, edged with the shocking yellow coif.
While Pat was prone to saying things that made us view her with contempt when we acknowledged her at all, such as, "I know the world has changed and you're not my students, but, as a favor to me, could you please – it just bothers me so much to see those sweet faces of yours saying – using the – that F word." On the other hand, Charlotte's favorite word was "cunt" and she affected a slightly British accent – which she'd somehow acquired growing up in Michigan – and gossiped of backstage goings on at Bowie concerts and how he and Mick Jagger fucked. She attached herself to Stash, Carrie, and me in a way that would now be frowned upon – a woman in her late twenties glomming onto a trio of misfit teens – but in 1974 – joined in our love for Ziggy Stardust and his ambiguous sexuality, Lou Reed and his drug addled diatribes, Mick Jagger and his lips, Patti Smith and her militant iconoclastic retro-romanticism, and Jim Carroll (who Charlotte, and thus Carrie and Stash, insisted I was exactly like) and his hustler death vibe. We idolized outcasts and pretended we too were anarchists. The Age of Aquarius hadn't quite ended, and the sexual revolution was in full swing, and the scourge of AIDS was yet to infect us, the news was neither instantaneous nor filled with parents murdering their children, priests raping altar boys nor teachers molesting and marrying their teenaged students. I'm sure it was all going on, but it wasn't polite to discuss it. We hadn't yet become inured, un-shockable, and terrified like we would once Phil and Oprah had their way with us. So while Pat became someone else to distrust and defy, Charlotte became, along with Carrie and Stash, someone else to impress, another someone willing to recognize the me I longed to believe I was and feared I would never become.
I had not yet learned to recognize this fear in others. I was, at thirteen, incapable of conceiving that grown-ups could be as terrified – or, perhaps, more so – than we young people were. At the same time, I had never thought of myself as a child. My earliest memories have to do with wondering why I was trapped in the body and life I had. I had always wanted to believe that I was unique with a momentous destiny ordained by God to change the world. It was simply a matter of waiting for others to recognize my gifts. God had a special purpose for me, that's what Sister Michael Immaculata had leaned into me and whispered when the test results for Maryland had been returned.
"Oscar Francis Parker, you have achieved the highest scores of any second grader in the entire state. Your I.Q. is in the high genius range. That means God has a very special plan for you. He has chosen you and you must always listen very carefully for His call, and not waste your gifts or disappoint the Lord."
It wasn't until I was in my thirties, when my therapist told me she wished she could throttle the now deceased Sister Michael Immaculata for having put such a burden on a child, that it ever occurred to me the nun could have been mistaken in telling me that. I firmly believed the Pope's infallibility conveyed directly through his minions. Thus, I have just naturally assumed my entire life that I have somehow failed to live up to the gifts and expectations of the Gods – whichever of them by whatever name I happened to believe at the time – and if I could just try a little harder or be a little better (or a lot harder and better) then everything would happen, the inevitable miracle working I was meant to do would occur.
At thirteen, somehow finding myself a member of the cool and popular group at theatre camp, I believed that miracle to have begun. What difference did it make that I had completely invented myself, that the experiences I claimed in sex and drugs were almost entirely borrowed from books I'd read and things I'd imagined? From this perspective, here in my forties, having grown into someone more Pat than Charlotte, I know that Carrie, Stash, and Charlotte were likely no less invented than was I, but at thirteen, I had no idea, and so when Bernard approached and came on to me in his overt and challenging way, I was panicked about appearing the sophisticate I'd claimed to be.
READING: All about me and, oh, right, Dear Mr. You, by Mary-Louise Parker
[I do FINALLY talk about the book about 1500 words in. Marked in red, down the page.]
DEAR MR. YOU, Mary-Louise Parker, Hardcover, 240 pages, Scribner
I've cobbled together a complex and recondite personal cosmology, imagined into being during decades of this autodidactic wayfaring, any(every?)-port-in-a-storm wandering (wondering?) and rambling I call "My Life" with its digressions and deviations and diversions and driftings; all of which is prologue to this: I consider time to be largely an illusory crutch required by those who need lines, labels, and margins to keep things like reality and emotions safely-sized and manageable, easy to digest. If I've any goal other than be here, going, in every moment, with as much Love and Light as possible, it is to eschew lines, labels, and margins and the world requiring them as much as I can, to see to the essence of all that is behind and beyond and beneath all those measures we use to try to tame it.
(I am not unaware the above makes me sound a patchouli wearing, weed-smoking, hippie throwback, but, there I go with the labels again. P.S. I am none of those things. Not that I've anything against any of those things.)
So, New Year traditions — they mean little to me. I don't do resolutions. And as far as the Bacchanalia and orgies of drunken foolery on its Eve; fireworks, balls dropping and crowds, oh my! Thus, on December 31, I returned to my home base from two weeks of house/pet sitting and planned on spending a quiet evening with my sister — well, not with exactly, as she is having an intimate relationship with The Walking Dead, and so was enraptured by its marathon, while I meant to enjoy Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin from Times Square, so — with me in my batcave and she in her living room recliner, 2016 would plod right in, mostly un-remarked save for one glass (for me) of cheap champagne. However, despite the humdrum, torpid, hibernating life I live, and the speeding, drunken, criminally boisterous fools terrorizing the land that night (and in the presidential election process), turned out I had managed to Tweet in a way warranting a visit from local law enforcement types. Here I thought a pizza was being delivered, opened the door in glee at the speed with which my large-Italian meat-special had arrived, and standing before me was a medium-sized-Scottish-meat special of an entirely different kind.
Anyway, I already described in my Twitter TL my visit from the Scottish-accented gendarme I briefly thought was a stripper sent by friends [I'm MIRACLECHARLIE on Twitter, click here] and won't go through it again except to say I'm not sure six days later how I feel about it: Abashed. Abused. Affronted. Agitated. Alarmed. Amused. Angry. Annoyed. Ashamed. And that's just some of the A-words. All of which have been conflagrating in my consciousness ever since, blazing and searing alongside holiday-feels, family behavior-feels, back-pain, odd explosions of intense loneliness, many dream-visits from the dead, and many of my buttons being pushed, including those I thought no longer pushable, result being a combustion of moody-existential questioning and even more weepiness than is usual for me.
All of this because a word I used in a Tweet about the entitled-asshat Whole Foods but with less crunchy granola and patchouli vibe shoppers who terrorize its aisles, pissed off Wegman's.
A word. By which I was judged. A word. For which I was hunted down on New Year's Eve and lectured and threatened and reproached. One word from a Twitter timeline which is generally full of Love and Light and Peace. Which I said to the very sexy Scottish flasher (alas, of badge only):
"If you can waste time enough to locate me from a Tweet, surely you've looked into me enough to know I never have and never would own or use a weapon of any kind and am one of the least likely persons on the face of the earth to harm another human being."
Answer from ScottyHottie:
"Well, obviously. If I thought you were a real danger this would be a very different conversation."
At which point I said:
"Unless you intend to arrest me, get out. You've irritated me by being a tool of a huge corporation trying to intimidate me out of speaking my mind. I didn't threaten anyone. Read the Tweet. And this is a huge waste of time and money in a world full of awful, heinous people, most of them running for the Republican Presidential nomination, and especially on a night when the roads and bars are full of people who are actually dangerous. I'm insulted and annoyed and you don't get to call me irresponsible."
He huffed and puffed, Scottishly, which was cute-ish, and went on his way.
A word.
Here's the thing: I love words. I believe in the power of words to move people, to change things, to influence and advocate and, yes, harm and destroy. But, back to that convoluted and complicated cosmology of mine, I also think words — like time — are merely the costumes in which we wrap reality to try to make sense of it, to shape it into smaller-bite-sized, digestible chunks. Words, our words and vocabularies, are the garb, the regalia, the costumes in which we dress our belief systems, our frames of reference, and, as such, they are unique and individual and shaped by experience and environment and exposure to others, to the world, to realities not our own.
So, the NEXT thing: it is so incredibly important to give energy to the intention BEHIND BEYOND BENEATH the words. When I said, "If I ever commit murder it would be at Wegman's" – I meant;
"I wish people were nicer, smiled, said hello and excuse me, moved when I said 'excuse me', acknowledged me, could be polite, and, too, wish this didn't bother me so much, wish I wasn't so first-world I shop here for chocolate croissants and roasted-chicken salad I think I need, and how did I turn out to be so poor, shopping in a store so over-priced and why don't I just leave? How did I get sucked into this consumerism and who are these awful people and am I one of them? What's wrong with me that I put up with this? What's wrong with the world that we are all shopping here in this nirvana of consumerism when people are dying of starvation every day and we will throw out half of what we buy to eat? And don't these people get that? And how pretentious am I in my own way thinking of judging them – I should be judging me – or evolve dammit to a place where I don't judge and am just going. But if I had, would I be going here?"
These are the kinds of conversations I have with myself, every day, all day long. These are the kinds of conversations everyone has. Life is about examining, even when we think we are not doing so. We are making sense of it — or, we are trying to make sense of it.
We are trying to shape the vastness of All That Is into something we can live.
And, here's the hard part. I have guilt about the Tweet. A person who claims to have my cosmology — incomprehensible as it may be — but founded in a belief in going, being, living in the Love and the Light, ought not to have Tweeted so cavalierly about an act I'd never even consider. It was, indeed, a joke, and a snarky dig at the Wegman's shoppers, but, who am I to judge them? They were all busy with their own private existential conversations, post-holiday, pre-New Year rush and blues and let-down and build-up and who knows what else?
I'll tell you what else, because in the days between Christmas and New Year, people I know experienced felony, death of a parent, departure of a mate, loss of a job, sick pet, sick child, bill due without adequate funds to pay it, upcoming loss of home, rejection by a "date", on and on and on and on … and asked to describe any of those things, we would all use very different words and have very different feelings about them.
A word: Empathy. I lacked it when I used that other word.
So, then, here I am, going into 2016, feeling the pressure of First Blog Post of 2016 and First Book Read of 2016. Well, they're out of the way now.
What? Oh, right. The book! I am, or so I say, a book blogger. Well, darlings, I also say I'm in my early forties. Words. Time. I keep telling you, costumes we use to try to define the undefinable.
DEAR MR. YOU, Mary-Louise Parker Fantastic read. Don't miss it. Also, don't read it all at once. Ms. Parker writes thirty-four letters to men who have touched her life, influenced her personal cosmology, shaped her emotional language and reality. These are mostly gorgeous, often insightful, wonderfully funny, touching, terrifying, and so very generous in their honesty and sharing of her truth and experience. But, again, I read them one at a time. No more than one a day. Sometimes just one a week. Because they are personal letters, to be cherished, savored, and not, so much, lumped in a great mass because they then lose their impact and become just words. And as I've said, it is important to give energy to the intent and essence behind the words others use, to allow time and space for the meaning beyond symbols of symbols for symbols we call language to wash over you, to move you, to touch you.
Well, then, dear ones, I am off. Tomorrow is my first ever (and likely, last ever) colonoscopy (there's a word and concept the meaning behind which I could do about ten thousand more words on) and I am mid-fast/cleanse and think it best I stop posting ANYTHING until this is over.
Love and light and happy to share this journey where we are here, going.


text:
Thank You, Intern James!
Tuesday, April 25th
Tuesday, April 25th
It's his last day! So for better or for worse, we asked what he's learned from us.
Transcript - Not for consumer use. Robot overlords only. Will not be accurate.
Sorry not before one okay. Terna Nande. And Jesse James show all of now. Okay James is our aims turn that who came came down here every single day twice a week. Every single day he made the ride gain from Athens a UGA student very dedicated for an entire semester. James thank you for your service to this great radio Russia it is in my absolute pleasure Jeff and James. James is way too buttoned up torque of as late season he's a Fulbright scholar. Today the pub program is gonna pay for his next life ear of life in Germany. And you're gonna go represented America well. Well thank you but you guys have been good for me I'm I'm not quite as up titans this is I was the intense and sometimes you hit got my girlfriend thanks. I can't imagine what that was like. I would say typical. What a typical Saturday night's. 43 huge games and I don't know I mean I'm probably in bed by the 1130. Ish and gang and the like that and what's what's catch up so late. Homework probably okay for James what's your nickname with your friends. All my friends call me dad took it up and and you know I wanna say that I was just a fluke. But if it started. So it started in my dorm Ayman RA. And so some of the other RA started calling me dad oh my god in the RA is army granted the right. And then I was like oh that's cute ha ha ha and then. People in my campus ministry started calling me dad and then I went on a study abroad trip and they started calling me dad and I never told any of them. That the other groups of of my friends called me that so it all happened. Organically. IE I'm. I imagine you in my mind your nickname is pastor Jim good. And you have a good car we is a rainbow on it and they have three wins tonight you get together and you saying testimony with whoever wants to me Jones. Out in the on campus in the in the corner of the campus seemed to me I'm more pictured James as caring a briefcase to class of phone and he's started drinking black coffee. Haas Larry I'm here are a high school. Well I have to admit and and in this whole bad things my own fault because I used to I would get up at like seven. And grab a newspaper go to the dining hall and sit my coffee while reading. The New York Times yeah and so yeah just it was inevitable at how they've got that they've they've put the newspaper on the phones now. It's not the same. I mean I don't. You can't smell the news print how are you Tony to. I'm 22 and I think I'm in in reality like my soul is 37 years old. What is your going on 55. When is the last time where if you're remains really upset you base stealing one of your slippers Suffolk. Well fortunately or oriented tobacco. Three years ago because I haven't had a roommate found which is which is lucky because you know. I guess they're missing out because I could've really offer somebody some real dad advice keep it. Mr. O dietary and so you have Ben with us for one semester he had you taken any thing worth YL. Away from the Russia absolutely I have learned so much. And and the first thing that I learned I learned very quickly. I came here to see you guys are you guys might remember the first time I came to start 94. Was on a little field trip with degree from UGA last semester right and so we came and we were just hanging around the studio watching you guys do your thing we. Said he was JP and watched him run run the board in all that's where I think. And then. And at some point you guys did a break with us in the media and you asked if we have learned anything. And I said. More and has anybody learned anything today all right now I got something. I've learned that this show and presumably most of the morning shows are one big continuous brainstorming session they are. So I did not realize. How accurate that was or all the different steps that go into that brainstorming process. I guess when you have to talk for hours every day ideas are kind of the currency of your business for at and I guess ideas of the currency of a lot of different industries it just happens that these ideas are about pregnancy cravings are we regulation. But just getting to sit in on. You're your meetings your post show meeting your pre show meetings and just seeing how that process works. Has been really enlightening for me and it's and it's something that I can totally see myself participating and as a career someday. So I've really enjoyed that. You by the way having great future in a smooth jazz the more I listen your boys. Similar high and and now a.'s selection from mr. miles is third album. And pour yourself a cup of Scotch and sit back as we would have made the journey. Hey yeah. So I did learn a dribble other things as well of course I got to drive time did you get a contaminant okay. So of course I got to what you guys I watched Kelly do you phone screening learned how that works. Got to learn about editing audio to get ready for the showed JP tell me all about running the board Jane nine on the social media stuff which was great. I also learned all the lyrics to all the top forty song NASA. I say them backwards in my sleep now yeah did. And and before this as you might have guessed top forty wasn't exactly my musical genre of choice right this is this is really expanded. Expanding my horizon isn't also never Wear a seat to a radio station and from my interview day I showed up in a suit and I walked in and everybody looked at me kind of funny was like all you don't get a the entire point. And then the final. Being that I learned and this this really has nothing to do with radio but I I think it's just very important for life in general yeah. And that is never calling guys from Boston Cirque. Because I called our station engine Irish got ice I called Scott Rask sir and he tried to fight that's out. So I will never make that mistake again. That guy has more to deal I think with the time he spent in the army okay and the Boston thing well army Boston yes got to be careful so people don't take that the same way that others do right but you know you guys have just become my radio family. I just I really appreciate that you know I've never had a Big Brother before the JP radio Big Brother. Kelly and Jane nine of our radio sisters Janzen a radio can't. And I am not related suggest in any way I never thought it shout it from the rooftops it's easy easy non related. She's jazz. So thank you guys so much for everything I'll remember this experience and all of you. Forever I. You green chasing Gil getter you'll be. For example do you drive which reminds you man thanks JP yeah delivers between James and me this is why we're not related but when that whole field trip came thrilled. Like I was like god these guys are the smartest in the world is there like six guys and two doesn't smoke in you Diego and and I. Those guys are brilliant now trying to James is actually not in it for the girls he was an a for an education and to learn things and it was so weird to me. I've already got the girl part handled and you got that three in many breakfast this morning nice honest. And all all the girls who have morning radio. DJ Steve that confronts for a week for a yeah. As the and she I'll star.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
February 28, 2007--Eclipse
The Bulletin's weather forecast predicts rain for today, but it's now nearly 6:00 p.m. here and it's been glorious. Maybe this is also attributable to the full moon buildup.
And, the paper reports, there will be a total eclipse of that full moon this Saturday.
Anyone willing to place bets?


text:
7 Sep
Thinking of Suciwati
And Soultan Alif Allende and Diva Suukyi Larasati, the widow and children of the late Munir Said Thalib.
Today is a time of sorrow and remembrance. As it should be for all Indonesians, who owe Munir so much for his tireless struggle in the name of human rights.
So says the Jakarta Post in today's editorial.
A year ago today I wrote the following:
It was a year ago today that Munir was assassinated, by arsenic poisoning, on a flight to Holland. What was immediately clear, and remains clear, was that the sinister forces of Suharto's 'New Order' were behind this tragic loss.
In a week when we are outraged to hear that the blackguard Tommy Suharto can seemingly get away with murder ~ sentenced to 15 years, out after four ~ perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to see that no progress has been made to apprehend those behind Munir's assassination.
Tempo reports that 500 members of the Solidarity Alliance for Munir (whose website needs updating) are demonstrating outside the police HQ in South Jakarta, still Seeking Truth and Justice.
I have mentioned Munir 10 times before today. Unfortunately it seems that because SBY is reluctant to release the report he commissioned which, presumably, named names, I'm going to have to continue mentioning him. As will the mass media.
When will Suciwati, her family, friends and the rest of us have closure?


text:
From an evolutionary perspective, our brains do not like to be satisfied with what we have. Our brains also like to prepare us for things that might happen in the future.
Sometimes, these two functions go crazy and a person ends up with ANXIETY. In more severe cases, an Anxiety Disorder.
Anxiety is like the magic stress juice, Adrenaline, that is supposed to give you energy when you need it. But instead, Anxiety gives you negative energy when you don't need it and too much anxious energy can be crippling.
Over the years, I've had a lot of encounters with different people wherein I felt it would benefit our relationship to tell them about my Anxiety issue. This happens particularly when I'm having an anxiety attack or have been having a bad anxiety time and can't do things we would normally be able to do together.
Many people will give me a head pat and tell me they're sorry I'm having Anxiety. THIS IS THE RIGHT WAY TO APPROACH IT. Some might respond with similar understanding but leave out the head pat. THIS IS ALSO JUST FINE.
But more often than that, I get people who decide they can fix my problem by telling me why I'm wrong to feel the way I feel. This special response comes in a few terrible flavors:
The Secret
Some years ago, this philosophy went around saying that your attitude attracts things to yourself. If you want good things, you have to VISUALIZE. This was good for most people but it implied something dangerous for Anxiety sufferers. If you VISUALIZE bad things, those bad things will happen.
Telling me that my anxiety over a bad thing happening is going to make the bad thing happen IS GOING TO MAKE ME ANXIOUS ABOUT MY ANXIETY. That's all it's gonna do. I'm not gonna realize: hey, this illogical stress response is illogical and I should stop myself from having it. If I could stop myself from having Anxiety, I WOULD STOP MYSELF FROM HAVING ANXIETY.
Check Your Privilege
This is another approach that really kills me. People who use this approach think they're giving you perspective and reminding you that you have it pretty good. What they're really doing is telling you that other people have it so much worse than you do and that you should FEEL BAD about the ILLOGICAL STRESS RESPONSE THAT YOU CAN'T CONTROL. So instead of just feeling anxious, you get to feel anxious and guilty. They hand you a good deal of shame to go with your anxiety without actually helping you with the anxiety.
You Don't Have To Be Anxious
This is some ableist bullshit right here. They aren't even pretending to try to help in this case. They're straight up telling you that what you're facing isn't actually a problem BECAUSE IT IS NOT A PROBLEM FOR THEM. That means that whatever you're going through is weakness and you can just CHOOSE to get better.
But we all know that Anxiety isn't something anyone would choose to have. It's a response in our brains that can be triggered by a fast heartbeat, loud noises, flashing lights, or a single troubled thought.
Like all privileged explaining, these responses invalidate and often shame the Anxious person, making the Anxiety worse.
If you really want to help someone with Anxiety, don't try to fix their Anxiety. You can remove the trigger and you can try to reassure them that things will be okay, but don't tell them that their feelings are wrong. Don't tell them that they're self-centered or selfish for feeling that way, and especially don't tell them that the think they're afraid of is going to happen because of their anxiety.
So, most importantly, let me reiterate the CORRECT APPROACH.
Tell them you care. Tell them it'll be okay. Tell them you're sorry they're having a tough time. Possibly give them head pats.
Reinforcing Anxiety, Guilt, and Shame = Bad.
Sympathizing and giving head pats = Good.


text:
The (many) places you can hear my voice.
- Winning Slowly – a show about technology, religion, ethics, and art (or, as I sometimes like to joke: literally everything humans do), cohosted with Stephen Carradini. Biweekly episodes when in the middle of a season; otherwise at our leisure.
- New Rustacean – a show about the Rust programming language. Publishes roughly 3× monthly.
Mass Affection – a show about the Mass Effect trilogy, cohosted with my wife Jaimie. We'll be back at this… just as soon as we unpack our Xbox 360, because we forgot we might want it and some of the games with it, including Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3, while between houses.
Run With Me – a micro-podcast about running. I may pick this up in the near future; I enjoyed this show a lot, but had my headphones, with their built-in microphone, destroyed by our cat.
- Sermons by Chris Krycho (dedicated RSS feed hosted on this site) – if ever I preach anywhere, it'll be in this feed. Currently just limited to the sermons I preached for my sermon delivery class in seminary.
- Sap.py – a short podcast I did with Jaimie about her adventures learning Python. Life got in the way and she chose to focus her many talents on other efforts.


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Beach and Shallow water metal detecting articles, guides and tips.
Below are listed all of our articles that cover treasure hunting in or near water, this selection covers metal detecting the beaches/shorelines, shallows and even underwater in fresh and salt water.
Water hunting, be it in the sea, lakes or even rivers can be one of the most productive and profitable types of metal detecting. Searching around or in any body of water that has been used for recreation or to transport good gives you more opportunities over more traditional places, to find gold, silver and other precious metals as well as coins. I am always I am allays adding more articles and resources about water and beach detecting so bookmarks us and check back soon
Beach and Shallow Water
- Spanish Coins off the Florida coast
- Buying The Right Sand Scoop
- Buying the Right Underwater Metal Detector
- Freshwater Beaches – The Coin Hunter's secret
- Metal Detecting Freshwater Beaches
- Responsible Target Recovery for Water Hunters
- Secrets of Metal Detecting Beaches
- Selecting and Using the Proper Equipment
- Shallow Water Hunting – Hookah and Scuba Rigs
- Surf and Deep Sand Recovery
- Underwater Tools & Techniques
- Secrets Beach Metal Detecting Part II
- Beach Detecting Resources
- Dry Beach Metal Detecting
- Beach Sanding
- Hot Pockets
- Meatal Detecting the Changing Beach
- Beach Erosion finds


text: It is with the support from our partnerships that Mending the Soul is able to continue to develop new resources and trainings to support those who desire healing and those who walk alongside them. We consider all those who invest in this ministry as partners. Some invest by giving of their time and resources and others by giving financially. No matter how you are able to partner with Mending the Soul we are grateful for you!


text: Dan_Vader Play via YouTube OPEN IN APP NSFW Safe Is this playlist safe for work? Zone Out May 15, 2009 | 8 tracks | 109 4 | Stats Pavement Acid King Black Sabbath indie rockheavy metalstoner rock Liked Collect Share Edit Liked! Share this mix with friends: Zone Out Wrong video Collect Share Liked! Share this mix with friends:


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Enjoy free parking Saturday and Sunday when you park at the Snohomish County Parking garage located on Oakes Avenue between Wall Street and Pacific Avenue.
Heralded as your "home improvement source," the Everett Home & Garden Show offers a variety of vendors, wine and beer tasting, and the opportunity to hear multiple guest speakers, including instruction from certified horticulturists.
March 10 – 12
Friday, noon – 7 pm
Saturday, 10 am – 6 pm
Sunday, 10 am – 5 pm
XFINITY Arena at Everett
2000 Hewitt Ave
Everett, WA 98201
Getting to the Everett Home & Garden Show


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Salamanders can bite, although it is rare in most cases. On rare occasion a salamander may nip at a human if it is being handled, as this is quite stressful for the creature. Salamanders typically are known to defend themselves by displaying their colors to predators as a way to try and thwart them off. It also signifies that these creatures are toxic and not safe to ingest. Salamanders generally are harmless to humans and do not have a poisonous bite or anything of that nature. Probably one of the worst things a salamander could do to a human is simply frighten it with its presence.
Are Salamanders Cold Blooded or Warm Blooded?
Salamanders are amphibians which are typically cold blooded vertebrates which change from an aquatic, water breathing limbless larva or tadpole to a terrestrial or partially terrestrial air breathing four legged adult that matures and develops lungs. Also included in this group are frogs, toads, newts, and caecilians.
The word amphibian literally means to live a double life, which is exactly what amphibians such as the salamander do. Starting off residing in the water as creatures who have gills and later develop lungs as they age. They are usually required to stay near water to prevent their smooth skin from drying out. Differing from reptiles such as the lizard, these creatures have a soft gel that surrounds the eggs they lay and can usually be found in water or around damp places. Lots of amphibian's defense against predators includes a type of toxic skin that releases secretions, and many amphibians also bite. These creatures do not have claws or nails as reptiles such as the lizard do.
Are Mudpuppies Amphibians or Reptiles?
A mudpuppy is a type of salamander and is classified as being an amphibian, although it is the only aquatic species of salamander within existence today and also never leaves the water.
Are Toads Poisonous to Dogs?
Keep toads away from your dogs! The venom that toad's secrete from their skin is very toxic to dogs, especially if ingested. It causes hallucinations, convulsions, weakness, pain, vomiting, diarrhea, cardiac arrest and can even result in death. Two of the most venomous toads in the United States are the Colorado river toad and the giant toad also known as the marine toad.
Because dogs are more curious and extroverted than other animals, they are often treated more often for toad poisoning. However it should be noted that as dangerous as it is for a dog to ingest a toad, ingestion is not the only way for a toad to poison a dog. There have been some cases where a toad or frog have been attracted to the dog's water dish and left enough toxins in it to leave the dog sick.
If you live in an area where toads reside, then you should limit your pet's exposure to warm, moist, outdoor environments, especially in areas that are located in the desert southwest. A few symptoms that most likely indicate that your pet has been poisoned by a toad or frog are as follows:
- Mouth irritation
- Foamy salivation
- Depression
- Lethargy
- Weakness
- Collapsing of the body or hind legs
- Seizures
- Difficulty breathing
- Fever
- Vomiting
- Diarrhea
If your pet ate, licked or somehow came into contact with a toad some other way, you should not hesitate to flush his mouth with water to remove traces of the toxin. If your dog is experiencing any of these symptoms it is also crucial that you get him or her to a vet immediately for medical assistance. An electrocardiogram may even be conducted to determine whether your pet has an abnormal heart rhythm. Although there is currently no way to find the presence of the toxin in dogs, diagnosis can usually be made based on whether the pet was seen eating a toad or if toad parts are found in the gastrointestinal tract.
Your veterinarian may give your pet cardiac drugs such as propranolol to combat abnormal heart rhythms. Anxious, frightened or painful pets may need sedatives. Pets suffering from a high fever may be benefit from being given a cool bath. A hospital stay with intravenous fluids is very likely, with your pet's heart monitored by an electrocardiograph.
Are Newts Amphibians or Reptiles?
Newts are amphibians. It is part of the salamandridea family and related to frogs, salamanders, and toads. There are quite a few differences between reptiles and amphibians. The word amphibian means to live a double life, which is exactly what amphibians such as the newt do. Starting off residing in the water as creatures who have gills and later develop lungs as they age, these creatures are cold blooded vertebrates that were the first animals to leave the sea and venture onto land. They breathe water through their gills until they develop their lungs later on in life whereas reptiles are born resembling miniature adult reptiles that have lungs from the get go. Amphibians are usually required to stay near water to prevent their smooth skin from drying out. Differing from reptiles such as the lizard, these creatures have a soft gel that surrounds the eggs they lay and can usually be found in water or around damp places. Lots of amphibian's defense against predators includes a type of toxic skin that releases secretions, and many amphibians also bite. These creatures do not have claws or nails as reptiles such as the lizard do.
The word reptiles means to creep. These creatures are known to creep both on land and in water. However they do not require water to keep their skin from drying out as amphibians do. This group of animals is equipped with scales or modified scales, and are known to breathe air through their lungs and reproduce by laying eggs. Most reptiles spend most of their time on land and lay their amniotic eggs there or keep them inside of their body until they are ready to hatch. These amniotic eggs are protected with a hard, leathery covering.
Are Frogs Asexual?
Asexual reproduction is the formation of new individuals from the cell(s) of a single parent. It is very common in plants but less common in animals. Asexual reproduction can occur however in some animals, and usually does so in a variety of ways depending on what type of species the animal is. Some animals may develop offspring by budding, whereas other animals may develop offspring by fragmenting into smaller pieces and maturing into a new animal. (worms are an example of fragmentation).
It is true that some frogs are in fact asexual beings. When the female organism lays eggs and they develop into an offspring without any fertilization it is known as parthenogenesis. This is how few fish, insects and even frogs are able to reproduce asexually.
There are a few disadvantages to asexual reproduction. One being that since the offspring is literally a clone of the parent, there is no difference at all and this can hinder the process of evolution. Another factor against asexuality is that these organisms that are asexual, reproduce this way because they are unable to adapt to their changing environments, which has brought a few species of animals close to extinction.


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KINGSTON, N.Y. >> A Port Ewen man who was drunk behind the wheel when he struck and killed a bicyclist last September pleaded guilty to vehicular manslaughter Friday, the Ulster District Attorney's Office said.
This is the second vehicular manslaughter conviction for John J. Ronk, 41, of 272 New Salem Road.
Ronk entered his plea Friday in Ulster County Court before Judge Donald A. Williams and faces a maximum of five to 15 years in state prison when he's sentenced July 26.
Ronk admitted that on Sept. 14, 2017, about 7:30 p.m., he drove a Nissan Xterra SUV while intoxicated and struck and killed Brian Jones, 41, also of New Salem Road in Port Ewen. The District Attorney's Office said Jones was a father of six.
Ronk's blood-alcohol content was 0.32 percent, four times the state's threshold for drunken driving, the prosecutor's office said.
Ronk said in court Friday that he drank several large cans of beer with a high alcohol content prior to the collision and that he was on his way to a store to buy more beer when he struck Jones, according to the District Attorney's Office.
Evidence collected at the scene by the Ulster County Sheriff's Office and state police found Ronk had crossed the double-yellow line on New Salem Road in Port Ewen and struck the rear tire of Jones' bicycle, causing Jones to be thrown, authorities said.
Jones died soon after at the HealthAlliance Hospital's Broadway Campus in Kingston.
After striking Jones, two wheels from Ronk's vehicle went up onto a guardrail before Ronk corrected and struck a telephone pole, and he then tried to flee on foot, according to authorities.
A passing driver called 911, and Ronk was arrested within minutes, the District Attorney's Office said Friday.
When Ronk was 23 and living in Rhinebeck, he pleaded guilty in Dutchess County Court on Aug. 17, 2000, to vehicular manslaughter in connection with a crash that killed 32-year-old Albert J. Glosque, who lived at the same address as Ronk.
In that case, Ronk admitted in court that he drank at least 18 beers while he and Glosque were fishing on July 4, 2000, and said he lost control of his pickup on the way home after swerving to avoid a deer on Morton Road in Rhinebeck. The truck rolled over twice, and Glosque, a passenger, was pronounced dead at the scene.
Ronk was sentenced on Oct. 30, 2000, to a maximum of three years in state prison. The state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has said he was in prison from November 2000 until July 2002.


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Clover vs. Spring Valley
Site: Clover Memorial Stadium.
Game notes: Spring Valley is coming off a bye week after launching the new campaign with a 27-6 road win at Lower Richland in Week Zero. In the bad weather, the Vikings kept it simple on offense, and threw only two passes. John Miller was the offensive headliner with 92 yards and one touchdown on 15 carries. Defensively, Josh Harlan and Chaz Talbot led the way with nine and eight tackles, respectively. Harlan's total included two tackles for loss and he also intercepted a pass Clover's glory days are gone at the moment. The Blue Eagles are off to a 0-2 start and are mired in a nine-game losing streak.
Series history: The teams are meeting for the first time.
Dutch Fork vs. Fort Mill
Site: Dutch Fork Stadium.
Game notes: Dutch Fork put on a good show last week at the Bluegrass Showcase in Louisville. The Silver Foxes dueled hometown St. Xavier in a triple-overtime thriller, but came out on the short end of a 49-48 score. QB Derek Olenchuk was 22-for-39 passing for 258 yards. His favorite targets were Jordan Berry and Brigg German. Berry had 10 catches for 95 yards and one touchdown, while six snags for 102 yards. Marquis Spearman rolled up 115 yards and two TDs on seven carries Fort Mill opened the season with an easy 39-21 win over Lugoff-Elgin. The Yellow Jackets had a balanced attack – 157 yards by land, 155 by air.
Series history: It's the first meeting of the teams since 2005. Dutch Fork's back-to-back wins in 2004 and 2005 evened the slate at 4-4.
Lexington vs. Blythewood
Site: WildCat Stadium.
Game notes: Ben Ruiz's 25-yard scolring run and Greg Huegel's PA staked Blythewood to a 10-7 lead over South Pointe midway the second quarter in last week's season opener. The defending Class 3A state champion Stallions, however, regained the lead one minute before halftime and dominated after the break on the way to a 39-16 win. It was a tough night statistically for the Bengals, who gave up 373 yards on defense and managed only 114 yards on the attack. The rushing net was 10 yards on 35 attempts Lexington also struggled on both sides of the ball in a 37-21 loss to Ridge View. Veteran quarterback Will Hunter had a tough night – completing just 12 of 26 passes for 105 yards and one interception and no touchdowns. He was also sacked three times. RB Grays Chumley was the surprise offensive leader with 154 yards rushing on 21 carries.
Series history: Lexington leads the series 2-1. The teams split two games last season. Lexington humiliated the Bengals 52-17 during the regular season. Blythewood stunned the unbeaten Wildcats 32-28 in the first round of the Class 4A Division I state playoffs.
Lugoff-Elgin vs. Nation Ford
Site: Lugoff-Elgin Stadium.
Game notes: The Demons dropped to 0-2 with last week's 39-21 road loss at Fort Mill. The host Yellow Jackets built a 39-7 lead by the start of the fourth quarter. QB Shon Belton provided a few highlights with 128 rushing yards and two scoring runs on 20 carries. Illichris Gorden led the Demons with nine tackles on defense Nation Ford (36-32) is coming off a tough 36-32 loss to Boiling Springs.
Series history: Friday's game marks the first meeting of the teams.
Ridge View vs. Lancaster
Site: Blythewood District 2 Stadium.
Game notes: Ridge View opened the season with a solid 37-21 win at Lexington. Quarterback Nolan Randolph was 11-for-19 passing for 153 yards and one touchdown and ran for 93 yards and one score on eight carries. Fleet senior Gary Bradshaw darted for 139 yards, including a 75-yard TD jaunt. On defense, DeMario Evans led the hit parade with 10 tackles, while Javarrus Mickle was credited with nine stops. Curtis Bey, Obinna Ntiasagwe and Zane Smith had sacks. Daryl Shamlee accounted for the one takeaway – an interception Lancaster opened the season last week with a 41-23 conquest of county rival Andrew Jackson.
Series history: Ridge View has won two in a row to even the series at 5-5.


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High-Capacity Cool Mist Humidifier from Best: Modern Technology & Features
Best Cool Mist Humidifier Ratings
Performance - 10/10
Features - 9.7/10
Design - 10/10
Customer Support - 10/10
Best Cool Mist Humidifier (Full 10+ HOUR CAPACITY) - UltraSonic Steam Vaporizer - Whisper Quiet Technology - Personal Small Single Room Use or Large Whole Home - Moistair Electric with Warm LED Light
Click to See All Verified Purchase Reviews on Amazon
Our health and personal comfort are very important for each of us. No matter where we are, we need to live well, to feel comfortable and maintain our health in order to function properly and be able to engage in our daily activities feeling well and able to do anything we want.
Whether we are at home or at the office, the air we breathe is of utmost importance for our health. This is why many users have decided to improve the air quality in their homes and offices where they spend 8 or more each day in order to make sure that they breathe fresh air and keep themselves healthy.
This can be done by anyone of us by using a well-performing humidifier that keeps the air we breathe at proper humidity levels making sure we do not have to worry about dry skin, fly and cold symptoms or any other issues that can be encountered in a dry air environment.
We have analyzed some of professional humidifiers available to purchase these days and today we will let you know all about the new product from Best.
A high-capacity cool mist humidifier based on Ultrasonic steam technology that is quiet, well-performing and comes equipped with smart features that enable it to function well and offer you the best results that you can get from a professional device. Let's see what it has to offer.
High Capacity Humidifier
This humidifier offers you full ten hours of amazing performance in terms of proper humidity air levels wherever you decide to install it. The way in which it manages to do so is through its rapid pulse system that is capable of emitting cold moisture into the indoor air thus helping you breath easier and engage in a comfortable good night sleep that will make you feel well-rested every morning.
It includes a 3 L tank that places it among the most popular humidifiers available out there for purchase and makes it one of the most appreciated brands worldwide.
Good Performance and 100% Safety
The humidifier does not only function perfectly so as to cover your needs but it is also 100% safe to use in any environment.
The device includes an auto shut-off option that enables it to shut down whenever the water levels reach a critical low level thus not harming the humidifier in any way and keeping it doing a great job for a very long time since the initial purchase and installation.
Adjustable Settings
Well-performing humidifiers include smart adjustable settings that make things so much easier for you when using them. This humidifier includes a 360 degree – vapor flow that can be easily adjusted thus enabling you to customize and properly calibrate the unit in no time.
What might the result be in this case? Perfect comfort due to maximum output levels enabled by modern technology.
Silent Technology Comes to the Rescue
Professional humidifier manufacturers have thought of everything when it comes to creating well-performing devices that might offer you 100% comfort whenever these are being used during the day or at night.
At night, being able to sleep well and not be disturbed in any way is very important because you need to wake up well-rested for your daily activities. This humidifier functions perfectly without making any noise that might disturb your good-night sleep.
Its whisper silent technology enables it to function at its best levels without making strange noises or requiring any extra settings for operating while you sleep.
Innovative, Stylish Design
The performance of a modern humidifier is the most important feature that characterizes and which users are interested in when choosing a product to purchase and use at home.
Nevertheless, the design of the new device is also very important because you need it to match your home decor while performing well. We have good news from this point of view as well. The new cool mist humidifier from Best does its job well while featuring a stylish design that will just make it your favorite new accessory at home.
Click to Check Amazon Price
- New Levels of Comfort into Your Life: This humidifier has been created based on modern technology that can bring new levels of comfort into your daily life. It performs the way a professional device should perform so as to offer the best results and does all that while looking great and being silent. Just install it and it knows on its own what to do next.
- Get Rid of Allergies: The humidifier ensures proper levels of humidity in the indoor air your breathe thus helping you get rid of all unwanted allergies that you might have dealt with in the past. Stuffed nose and annoying sneezing while trying to get some rest are now history due to this cool mist humidifier based on Ultrasonic steam technology.
- Easy Installation and No Useless Extra Components: The humidifier is very easy to install without the help of professionals and it does not require any useless extra component that might help it function well. It does not even include a filter, which is a major advantage because you do not need to have replacements for it and seems to help get rid of allergies faster this way.
- Bright LED light: The bright LED light can be annoying during the night if you install the humidifier right next to the bed. Installing it somewhere where the light might not have a direct influence on you can help solve this problem.
- Easy to Get Damaged when Not Installed Correctly or Properly Maintained: The humidifier offers excellent performance as long as it is well installed and maintained. In case you install it incorrectly or not maintain it properly or place it on improper surfaces it can get easily damaged.
Taking into account our analysis and what other customers have also had to say about this product, we can conclude that it is a humidifier worth purchasing for what its has to offer in terms of features and modern, smart technology.
Forget about dry air and all the issues it causes on your health and precious home items with this new professional humidifier from Best.


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The Ideal Fashion Show
There are many event spaces in the city of Chicago, but there are few that can accommodate an elegant fashion show. From the guests to the lighting, music, and food, it takes dedication, experience, and a lot of inspiration to put on a show no one will soon forget. This is where Food For Thought can help.
Our Venue
Food For Thought is a professional catering company with over thirty years of experience and a team of creative chefs who know how to elegantly present mouthwatering cuisine no matter the occasion. Our goal is to highlight the individuality of our clients and their event, bringing their vision to life. We have been fortunate enough to cater heart-stopping fashion shows, and our premiere event location 19 East has been the site of many of them.
19 East is a vast, urban event center with wide-open spaces, private lounges, offices, and contemporary architecture that makes a statement. There are four distinct spaces – the Hideaway, Alumina, Commonwealth, and Bridgestone Rooms. Each can adapt easily to any number of styles and meet every expectation. The Alumina and Bridgestone Rooms are perfect for large gatherings; the Commonwealth leads to the balcony and the Hideaway, a modern loft space ideal for smaller groups.
With over 10,000 square feet of space, 19 East can host up to 500 guests. It also features adjustable lighting, a speaker system, complimentary Wi-Fi, built-in marble bars, twelve to twenty-eight foot ceilings, hardwood floors, steel beams, draped partitions, and more.
Our venue also offers security, valet and street parking, and easy access to a nearby garage. The CTA green line is two blocks away while McCormick Place is only six blocks away, putting you in the center of Chicago's south loop.
Contact Us
If you are searching for the perfect event venue for a upcoming fashion show, look no further than Food For Thought's very own premiere event location. 19 East is more than an event space, it is a versatile, one of a kind showstopper that accommodates even the most wondrous visions and ideas – bringing them to life.
Contact us by calling 312-561-4678, or emailing us today.


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Member Levels
Impact 100 Sonoma ensures that 100% of each membership ($1000) goes toward funding local grants. The organization is run almost exclusively by volunteer members, but we do have some budgetary needs, so we invite you to become a Member Plus by donating beyond the membership amount. These Member Plus donations help us maintain our website, host member events, recruit new members and many other activities.
- Basic Membership, $1000
- Partner Membership, $1100
- Advocate Membership, $1200
- Leader Membership, $1500
- Visionary Membership, $2000
Payment Options
Impact 100 Sonoma offers several ways for members to pay.
Credit or Debit Card*
Impact 100 Sonoma offers online payment with a credit or debit card through our PayPal account. You do not need your own PayPal account for this option. This option does require a fee to process the payment. To use this option you will need to agree to donate an additional $25, which is built into the online system. The great news is that your tax donation letter will include this amount.
Pay now by selecting your membership level below and clicking the "Pay Now" button.
Your PayPal Account*
Impact 100 Sonoma has created a PayPal account to process credit and debit card payments. This also means that if you have a PayPal account set up, you can simply use your personal account through the system to pay for your membership. To use your PayPal account now, click the "Pay Now" button above and login to your account.
Pay by Check
We know that many members continue to prefer writing a check, so you are welcome to use this option. To pay by check, please mail it to Impact 100 Sonoma, P.O. Box 1958, Sonoma, Ca 95476.
*If you choose to pay online, please note that a $25 additional donation will be added on to cover the cost of credit or debit card processing. You will receive a tax donation letter that will include the full amount.
Friend of Impact Donations
In 2018, Impact 100 Sonoma will be able to take online donations from individuals and companies who want to help our mission. To make a donation, please click on the Donate button below or send a donation by check to Impact 100 Sonoma, P.O. Box 1958, Sonoma, Ca 95476.
Please contact us with any questions at firstname.lastname@example.com
Impact100 Sonoma is incorporated in the state of California as Women Giving as One, Inc. and is registered with the Registry of Charitable Trusts (Department of Justice of the State of California – #CT 0155935). Impact100 Sonoma is classified as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code section 501(c)(3). As a 501 (c) (3) organization, we are classified as a public charity and contributions are deductible under section 170 of the Internal Revenue Code. Impact100 Sonoma is also qualified to receive tax deductible bequests. Our tax id number (Employer Identification Number) is 27-0845497.


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It is no secret that Mars was once rich with water and could have supported life. Now new evidence, at least to some, that Mars may once have been more hospitable to life than the Earth was. The suggestion is not that complex, highly developed life evolved on Mars and then deliberately travelled to Earth. However it is possible that simple life may have begun there and that life was then transferred to Earth via meteorite (or something similar) prior to Mars losing its atmosphere.
From the BBC:
"Details of the theory were outlined by Prof Steven Benner at the Goldschmidt Meeting in Florence, Italy.
Scientists have long wondered how atoms first came together to make up the three crucial molecular components of living organisms: RNA, DNA and proteins.
The molecules that combined to form genetic material are far more complex than the primordial "pre-biotic" soup of organic (carbon-based) chemicals thought to have existed on the Earth more than three billion years ago, and RNA (ribonucleic acid) is thought to have been the first of them to appear.
Simply adding energy such as heat or light to the more basic organic molecules in the "soup" does not generate RNA. Instead, it generates tar."
I don't know yet whether the theory will prove to be true, but I kinda hope it is. I like the idea that we are all the Martian invaders that early science fiction writers feared and that when and if we build a Mars colony we are just 'going home'.
Hopefully, at the very least, this will give NASA a better idea of what to look for when the next Mars probe is sent.
Sign up here with your email


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New Candy Crush Jelly Saga is full of delightful new game modes, features and boss battles featuring the Jelly Queen. Playing as Jenny, show off your Jellylicious moves and take turns switching Candies against the jiggling Jelly Queen. Every sweet move will spread more Jelly and whoever spreads the most will win the level! Have you got the moves?
- Over 100+ Jellylicious Levels
- New Jelly Queen Boss Modes
- Marvelous game modes including: Spread the Jelly & Release the Pufflers
- Tasty new Color Bomb Lollipop booster
- Mezmerizing new Candies
- Dreamy new treetop world and a host of quirky characters led by the Jelly Queen and her stooges.
- Easy and fun to play, yet challenging to fully master
- For players that Facebook Connect, there are leaderboards for you and your friends to compare your Jellylicious scores
- Easily sync the game between mobile and tablet devices and unlock the full game features when connected to the internet
Candy Crush Jelly Saga v1.43.11 Apk


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Can I see only one country at a time on hoseline [closed]
asked 2017-03-07 20:34:46 +0200
This post is a wiki. Anyone with karma >750 is welcome to improve it.
i am using Chrome in windows 10 and i would like to see only the US TG in last heard Chris KG4CFX