"Yesterday evening as it was getting dark, I walked the path past a large sugar maple tree that had shed its leaves. It was drizzling very lightly, and I could hear the tiny patter of small raindrops. But as I passed the maple, I smelled that peculiar smell of autumn—just a quick whiff. I stopped to catch more scent and my mind flashed back to 43 years ago as I saw myself following my father on a dark evening. It was cool and damp then, and the leaves undoubtedly had given off that same aroma…At first it seemed that something had been lost, never to return. The thought touched me with a tinge of sadness, at the same time that the scent touched me with happiness. Yet, thoughts create feelings, and I then had another thought that made me feel better. The maple tree behind me is 99 percent dead. Its only living tissue is a thin layer of cambium just underneath the bark. Each year the cells of the cambium divide, and those that align themselves toward the inside of the tree die and become wood, its support. The autumn scent had given me access to the deepest growth rings of my life, which served a vital function—support for new experiences and new growth."
Bernd Heinrich—A Year in the Maine Woods
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Prophetic Words
Alfred Russel Wallace, on the beauty of wildlife in exotic locales:"It seems sad that on the one hand such exquisite creatures should live out their lives and exhibit their charms only in these wild inhospitable regions...while on the other hand, should civilized man ever reach these distant lands, and bring moral, intellectual, and physical light into the recesses of these virgin forests, we may be sure he will disturb the nicely-balanced relations of organic and inorganic nature as to cause the disappearance, and finally the extinction, of these very beings whose wonderful structure and beauty he alone is fitted to appreciate and enjoy. This consideration must surely tell us that all living things were not made for man. Many of them have no relation to him. The cycle of their existence has gone on independently of his, and is disturbed or broken by every advance in man's intellectual development; and their happiness and enjoyments, their loves and hates, their struggles for existence, their vigourous life and early death, would seem to be immediately related to their own well-being and perpetuation alone, limited only by the equal well-being and perpetuation of the numberless other organisms with which each is more or less intimately connected."Wallace is quoted in Iain McCalman's excellent Darwin's Armada.
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
What’s on My I-pod—Let’s All Commit Suicide and Go to Hell Edition
Mrs. Archaeopteryx gave me an I-pod Nano for Christmas last year, and I spent several months wondering how I had lived fifty years without one. Then I spent the next several months wondering why she had bought something with only 14 gigs of memory—the damned thing would only hold about 1500 songs. Lo and behold, after enough wailing and gnashing of teeth, an I-pod Classic with ten times as much memory appeared next to my laptop. I love it so much better—it looks and feels substantial. It’s too big to tuck into a shirt pocket, but I don’t care—I get to spend the next couple of months loading a significant portion of my CD collection into it, and I so look forward to listening to obscure tracks off of decades-old pirated discs.
Anyway, with the advent of the Thanksgiving Break, I’m trapped in my office for a day without classes, and only my new toy as company. It’s a perfect opportunity to play the game invented by Rundeep and Claude Scales—put the I-pod on shuffle and list the first ten songs that come up. So here’s the annotated list for this morning:
1. Carmelita—Warren Zevon. One of my favorite songs, and the impetus for today’s list. The song is sung from the point of view of a heroin-addicted artist who contemplates suicide (“I’m sitting here playing solitaire, with my pearl-handled deck.”) I’ve always assumed the song was at least partly autobiographical—Zevon had a life that was interesting in just about every sense. He was an obsessive-compulsive genius who counted Billy Bob Thornton and David Letterman among his closest friends, and who died at age 56 of mesothelioma.
2. I Still Miss Someone—Rosanne Cash. Rosanne recorded this version of her father’s song of broken love for the Kindred Spirits tribute album which was released a year before Johnny’s death in 2003. Apparently, everyone around the elder Cash understood that he wasn’t long for this world. It’s a sad song to begin with, but seems even more desolate when cast as the story of a girl singing about her missing father.
3. The Blues—Randy Newman. My friends are entertained by how much I love Randy Newman—“He’s got the Randy Newman boxed set” is how they make fun of my musical tastes. But I suspect that Newman’s the greatest American songwriter, and his songs of idiots who don’t know they’re idiots make me want to laugh and cry at the same time. This song is from his Trouble in Paradise album—Newman at the height of his powers. The lyrics are about a songwriter (anyone we know?) whose mother died in a factory fire, whose brother is a male prostitute, whose best friend was killed in a bar fight, and whose father abandoned the family for a woman he met on a train. Paul Simon sings the chorus.
4. Highway Patrol—Junior Brown. Country music at its finest. Brown plays a double-necked guitar with built-in steel, and his lyrics are usually funny. This song is just a straight-up paean to a state trooper, sung from the trooper’s point of view, funny only in that somebody wrote a paean to a state trooper.
5. 22—Richard Buckner. Oh boy. A lovelorn kid commits suicide when his girlfriend never calls to talk about their break-up. Sample lyric: “I didn’t leave a letter, I just wrote my baby’s name, on the mirror all steamed over, with water, heat, and shame.” The phone rings just as he loses consciousness. I still get chill bumps each time I hear this song. Why isn’t Buckner rich and famous?
6. Rehab—Amy Winehouse. Go ahead. Make fun if you like. I heard the song by mistake, and then picked up the disc Back to Black. It’s the album the Supremes would have made in 1962 if Holland-Dozier-Holland had used the word “fuck” in their lyrics a lot more than they did. Everyone knows Winehouse’s story, and it’s clear from this album that she knows it, too; she’s killing herself and kidding herself. How can you not feel bad for a kid who sings “I don’t ever wanna drink again, I just need a friend?”
7. The Wig He Made Her Wear—Drive-by Truckers. This band is my favorite discovery from this year. Think Lynyrd Skynyrd, but with funnier, smarter lyrics, and a rawer sound. This song recounts the true story of Mary Winkler of Selmer, Tennessee, who killed her pastor husband Matthew because he “made her dress up slutty before they had sex.” Her defense attorneys caused an “audible gasp in the courtroom that day,” when they exhibited “them high-heeled shoes and that wig he made her wear.” The jury reduced her charges to involuntary manslaughter, which the singer finds perplexing: “I ain’t judging either way, but she’s already out of jail.”
8. My Head’s in Mississippi—ZZ Top. Here’s a band that helped me enjoy a lot of weed back in the 1970s. These guys seemed to play flat-out rock and roll, and only later did I figure out that they had tricked me into liking the blues. This song is about a confused, drugged-out young man who doesn’t seem to remember if his encounter with a naked cowgirl was real or not. “Stumbling through the parking lot of an invisible Seven-Eleven,” may sound like fun to you, but it just seems scary to me. Maybe a trip to rehab is in order.
9. Hell—Squirrel Nut Zippers. Jimbo Mathus is a demented genius, and the music of this band is Jimbo at his most demented and most genius-y. Who would have thought up a calypso song about Hell? Apparently it’s not a pleasant locale: “This is a place where eternally / fire is applied to the body / teeth are extruded and bones are ground / then baked into cakes which are passed around.”
10. Daniel and the Sacred Harp—The Band. The Band was around for a long time, but only in the last several years has it become one of my favorites. Robbie Robertson wrote this song of a man who sells his soul in exchange for a beautiful harp and the ability to play it. Robertson said that he was inspired by the story of Robert Johnson, the Mississippi blues legend who claimed that he sold his soul for the ability to play the guitar. A high price, but still in all, a good trade.
Anyway, with the advent of the Thanksgiving Break, I’m trapped in my office for a day without classes, and only my new toy as company. It’s a perfect opportunity to play the game invented by Rundeep and Claude Scales—put the I-pod on shuffle and list the first ten songs that come up. So here’s the annotated list for this morning:
1. Carmelita—Warren Zevon. One of my favorite songs, and the impetus for today’s list. The song is sung from the point of view of a heroin-addicted artist who contemplates suicide (“I’m sitting here playing solitaire, with my pearl-handled deck.”) I’ve always assumed the song was at least partly autobiographical—Zevon had a life that was interesting in just about every sense. He was an obsessive-compulsive genius who counted Billy Bob Thornton and David Letterman among his closest friends, and who died at age 56 of mesothelioma.
2. I Still Miss Someone—Rosanne Cash. Rosanne recorded this version of her father’s song of broken love for the Kindred Spirits tribute album which was released a year before Johnny’s death in 2003. Apparently, everyone around the elder Cash understood that he wasn’t long for this world. It’s a sad song to begin with, but seems even more desolate when cast as the story of a girl singing about her missing father.
3. The Blues—Randy Newman. My friends are entertained by how much I love Randy Newman—“He’s got the Randy Newman boxed set” is how they make fun of my musical tastes. But I suspect that Newman’s the greatest American songwriter, and his songs of idiots who don’t know they’re idiots make me want to laugh and cry at the same time. This song is from his Trouble in Paradise album—Newman at the height of his powers. The lyrics are about a songwriter (anyone we know?) whose mother died in a factory fire, whose brother is a male prostitute, whose best friend was killed in a bar fight, and whose father abandoned the family for a woman he met on a train. Paul Simon sings the chorus.
4. Highway Patrol—Junior Brown. Country music at its finest. Brown plays a double-necked guitar with built-in steel, and his lyrics are usually funny. This song is just a straight-up paean to a state trooper, sung from the trooper’s point of view, funny only in that somebody wrote a paean to a state trooper.
5. 22—Richard Buckner. Oh boy. A lovelorn kid commits suicide when his girlfriend never calls to talk about their break-up. Sample lyric: “I didn’t leave a letter, I just wrote my baby’s name, on the mirror all steamed over, with water, heat, and shame.” The phone rings just as he loses consciousness. I still get chill bumps each time I hear this song. Why isn’t Buckner rich and famous?
6. Rehab—Amy Winehouse. Go ahead. Make fun if you like. I heard the song by mistake, and then picked up the disc Back to Black. It’s the album the Supremes would have made in 1962 if Holland-Dozier-Holland had used the word “fuck” in their lyrics a lot more than they did. Everyone knows Winehouse’s story, and it’s clear from this album that she knows it, too; she’s killing herself and kidding herself. How can you not feel bad for a kid who sings “I don’t ever wanna drink again, I just need a friend?”
7. The Wig He Made Her Wear—Drive-by Truckers. This band is my favorite discovery from this year. Think Lynyrd Skynyrd, but with funnier, smarter lyrics, and a rawer sound. This song recounts the true story of Mary Winkler of Selmer, Tennessee, who killed her pastor husband Matthew because he “made her dress up slutty before they had sex.” Her defense attorneys caused an “audible gasp in the courtroom that day,” when they exhibited “them high-heeled shoes and that wig he made her wear.” The jury reduced her charges to involuntary manslaughter, which the singer finds perplexing: “I ain’t judging either way, but she’s already out of jail.”
8. My Head’s in Mississippi—ZZ Top. Here’s a band that helped me enjoy a lot of weed back in the 1970s. These guys seemed to play flat-out rock and roll, and only later did I figure out that they had tricked me into liking the blues. This song is about a confused, drugged-out young man who doesn’t seem to remember if his encounter with a naked cowgirl was real or not. “Stumbling through the parking lot of an invisible Seven-Eleven,” may sound like fun to you, but it just seems scary to me. Maybe a trip to rehab is in order.
9. Hell—Squirrel Nut Zippers. Jimbo Mathus is a demented genius, and the music of this band is Jimbo at his most demented and most genius-y. Who would have thought up a calypso song about Hell? Apparently it’s not a pleasant locale: “This is a place where eternally / fire is applied to the body / teeth are extruded and bones are ground / then baked into cakes which are passed around.”
10. Daniel and the Sacred Harp—The Band. The Band was around for a long time, but only in the last several years has it become one of my favorites. Robbie Robertson wrote this song of a man who sells his soul in exchange for a beautiful harp and the ability to play it. Robertson said that he was inspired by the story of Robert Johnson, the Mississippi blues legend who claimed that he sold his soul for the ability to play the guitar. A high price, but still in all, a good trade.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
"Liberal Media" Strikes Again
Next time somebody starts whining to you about the "liberal media," point them to the Manchester, New Hampshire, Union Leader. Turns out that the newspaper has decided not to publish wedding notices for gay weddings, even though gay marriage is legal in New Hampshire. In other words, owners of the newspaper don't like the law, so they're going to pretend that it doesn't exist. The Union Leader clearly wants to make the news, rather than report it. Or maybe, they're going to report the news the way they think it should be, rather than the way it is. In other words, the Manchester Union Leader is just like every other "mainstream" media outlet operating in this country.
Monday, August 16, 2010
You Need to Shut Up About the Damn Mosque
The United States of America is not a place. It’s not a flag. It’s an idea. The idea was set forth in the Constitution. If you bother to read the Constitution, what you find out is that it’s mostly just nuts-and-bolts instructions about how to run a government. Yeah, there are some good ideas there, but really, it’s about as exciting and revolutionary as the instructions for assembling a cheap Wal-Mart bookshelf. The part that is groundbreaking, and breathtaking, is the bit tacked on at the end—the Bill of Rights.
And the one that comes first is the most important. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Now, I know that some of y’all really love that Second Amendment. And the Fifth, and Ninth, and Tenth are pretty awesome, too. And even the Third is underrated—who among us wants a bunch of soldiers hanging out in the rec room, drinking up the beer and scratching up the pool table? But the Founding Fathers—and y’all keep telling me how important their intentions are, all the time—put the First Amendment first. That should tell you how important they thought it was.
And it’s what makes this country America. Up to that time, pretty much every country in the world reserved the right to make you worship the way they wanted you to worship, and they could throw you right in prison for saying the wrong thing, or writing the wrong thing, and if you decided to have yourself a Million-Man March, or a Vietnam War Protest, or God-help-you, a Tea Party Rally, they could beat you with nightsticks, or squirt you with fire hoses, or do whatever they did to people who mouthed off in the 1700s. But the First Amendment changed all that. It protected your right to say whatever stupid-ass thing you wanted to say, or to worship Baal if that was your predilection. If you didn’t like what the government was doing, the First Amendment gave you the right to bitch about it. In other words, the First Amendment says that you are a human being, and you have the right to think whatever you want to think.
Now, I know some of you don’t like Islam, and that’s your right (your First Amendment right!). I know I don’t like it, what with the beating women down, and the blowing shit up, and the America-hating and whatnot. But guess what—I don’t like your fucked-up religion, either, whatever it is. I don’t like that you think that your god should have some say into whether I can buy a beer on Sunday, or that you think that somehow posting the Ten Commandments up in the courthouse makes sense, or that I shouldn’t be able to marry a dude if I get hit by lightning and burn out the heterosexuality circuits in my brain. I don’t like that you think that your god should have some input into my biology classes. But I’ll tell you this—I would fight to the death to defend your right to believe whatever crazy-ass thing you want, and there’s not many things in this world that I think are worth dying over. The First Amendment is the United States of America. It’s why your grandfather died on Omaha Beach, and why your uncle came back from Vietnam as your crazy uncle. The First Amendment is the “free” in “The Land of the Free.”
I never liked George W. Bush (how’s that for an understatement?) but he said something once that was pretty insightful (especially for him). Somebody asked him why the Muslim extremists didn’t like us, and he replied something along the lines of “They hate us for our freedom.” And he was right. They don’t hate us for our freedom to choose from eight flavors of Mountain Dew, or our freedom to help select the next American Idol. They hate us because we don’t have to worship their god if we think their god is silly. If the people who died on 9-11 are heroes, here is why—they died because of the First Amendment.
We should be reveling in the fact that people can build goofy religious buildings wherever they like. We’re the United Fucking States of America, and we’re not afraid of your religion. If you like, you can ignore what the First Amendment means, but if you do, you’re no American. Yeah, a mosque down by the big hole in the ground might hurt some people’s feelings, but if you want to suspend the First Amendment for that, you’re no better than somebody who thinks it’s okay to kill people because they dared to make a cartoon of Mohammed (remember how we made fun of those people?). And if you’re a person that would demagogue this—somebody who would undermine the First Amendment to score political points, or to attack the President because you don’t like him—I’m talking about Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich, and I’m talking about you—than you’re no patriot. You’re a treasonous rat bastard who isn’t worth the spilled blood of the American soldiers and the other martyrs of our freedoms.
And the one that comes first is the most important. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” Now, I know that some of y’all really love that Second Amendment. And the Fifth, and Ninth, and Tenth are pretty awesome, too. And even the Third is underrated—who among us wants a bunch of soldiers hanging out in the rec room, drinking up the beer and scratching up the pool table? But the Founding Fathers—and y’all keep telling me how important their intentions are, all the time—put the First Amendment first. That should tell you how important they thought it was.
And it’s what makes this country America. Up to that time, pretty much every country in the world reserved the right to make you worship the way they wanted you to worship, and they could throw you right in prison for saying the wrong thing, or writing the wrong thing, and if you decided to have yourself a Million-Man March, or a Vietnam War Protest, or God-help-you, a Tea Party Rally, they could beat you with nightsticks, or squirt you with fire hoses, or do whatever they did to people who mouthed off in the 1700s. But the First Amendment changed all that. It protected your right to say whatever stupid-ass thing you wanted to say, or to worship Baal if that was your predilection. If you didn’t like what the government was doing, the First Amendment gave you the right to bitch about it. In other words, the First Amendment says that you are a human being, and you have the right to think whatever you want to think.
Now, I know some of you don’t like Islam, and that’s your right (your First Amendment right!). I know I don’t like it, what with the beating women down, and the blowing shit up, and the America-hating and whatnot. But guess what—I don’t like your fucked-up religion, either, whatever it is. I don’t like that you think that your god should have some say into whether I can buy a beer on Sunday, or that you think that somehow posting the Ten Commandments up in the courthouse makes sense, or that I shouldn’t be able to marry a dude if I get hit by lightning and burn out the heterosexuality circuits in my brain. I don’t like that you think that your god should have some input into my biology classes. But I’ll tell you this—I would fight to the death to defend your right to believe whatever crazy-ass thing you want, and there’s not many things in this world that I think are worth dying over. The First Amendment is the United States of America. It’s why your grandfather died on Omaha Beach, and why your uncle came back from Vietnam as your crazy uncle. The First Amendment is the “free” in “The Land of the Free.”
I never liked George W. Bush (how’s that for an understatement?) but he said something once that was pretty insightful (especially for him). Somebody asked him why the Muslim extremists didn’t like us, and he replied something along the lines of “They hate us for our freedom.” And he was right. They don’t hate us for our freedom to choose from eight flavors of Mountain Dew, or our freedom to help select the next American Idol. They hate us because we don’t have to worship their god if we think their god is silly. If the people who died on 9-11 are heroes, here is why—they died because of the First Amendment.
We should be reveling in the fact that people can build goofy religious buildings wherever they like. We’re the United Fucking States of America, and we’re not afraid of your religion. If you like, you can ignore what the First Amendment means, but if you do, you’re no American. Yeah, a mosque down by the big hole in the ground might hurt some people’s feelings, but if you want to suspend the First Amendment for that, you’re no better than somebody who thinks it’s okay to kill people because they dared to make a cartoon of Mohammed (remember how we made fun of those people?). And if you’re a person that would demagogue this—somebody who would undermine the First Amendment to score political points, or to attack the President because you don’t like him—I’m talking about Sarah Palin, and Newt Gingrich, and I’m talking about you—than you’re no patriot. You’re a treasonous rat bastard who isn’t worth the spilled blood of the American soldiers and the other martyrs of our freedoms.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
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