I'd forgotten!
I went down to Boulder this weekend to spend some hard-earned money. Ned drove, since he wanted a nerd's weekend out as well. We went to the comic store, where I bought Neil Gaiman's first of two issues on Batman, "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?"-- They killed Bruce Wayne, because Grant Morrison is a terrible writer. I bought a one-shot of the new Marvel event, because Marvel just wants to string together event after event after event now, without any break to allow people to adjust. You can't shatter the world ten times in a row, guys, or it's never going to heal. House of M, Civil War, World War Hulk, The Initiative, Secret Invasion, and now Dark Reign-- Norman Osborne, the Green Goblin, is now a famed savior for shooting the queen of the alien-invader body-snatchers, and now he runs the Marvel universe and not Tony Stark, so he's setting it up so the bad guys have all the perks. I only bought the issue I bought because it was written by Bendis and drawn by Maleev, and I liked their run on Daredevil quite a bit. Ned and I went to a Gamestop and a small movie shop, too-- I bought two games I'd had my eye on, Final Fantasy Tactics A2 and The World Ends With You. The movie shop was a bit overpriced, but had a few neat sections, some thoroughly packed: award nominees, grindhouse, and a well-stocked foreign films shelf.
For a more pedantic than plebian spin on literature, I went to a used bookstore. It's such a charming store, shelves packed tight with books, peculiarly organized by subject, books overflowing in huge piles on the floor. The shopkeeper is fantastically eloquent, too, a middle-aged guy who looks a little gruff and gave me a small tour of the packed store.
"Where are the classics?" I asked.
"Classics like, Greeks and Romans...?"
"Sure. Or more contemporary stuff too. Both."
"So more like... Flaubert?" I agreed, only recognizing the name thanks to Franny and Zooey. He started talking.
"Classics begin here and move along this shelf, into the next alcove here... Then they make a bit of a serpentine loop back to this shelf standing here, to finish on the other side of it." I was instantly entertained. He went on to point out the comic books (he recently bought up the stock of a street vendor who closed up, and has a ton of Sandman and all of Promethea at half-off, among other gems and some garbage), war, philosophy, mythology, religion ("And cookbooks, too. ...Don't ask."), psychology, and sci-fi/fantasy. I pestered him with various questions about where I might find certain books or authors, and was a on occasion disappointed by the absence of one book or another: Herodotus's Histories and Blood Meridian by Cormac McArthy, particularly. I went to the shop a few doors down afterwards but it was closed-- Just as well, the guy who ran that one, who I met last week when I bought Dune, was obnoxious, and the store was maddeningly claustrophobic. (Did I already say that in a prior entry?)
Sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks are in a little room on the back, each wall a shelf with a shelf in the middle too. It spills out into the main room, and I picked a copy of War of the Worlds, and the complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy hardcover for nine dollars. In classics, I picked up Catcher in the Rye. In the poetry at the front of the store I found a copy of Paradise Lost. My prized find, though, is a thick beautiful paperback copy of the Inferno: original Italian on the left-hand page, translated English on the right-hand page, and annotations at the end of each canto. When I finish these all in like, three months, I'll go back and drop another 40 dollars, I'm sure, and probably twenty more shipping all these books home at the end of AmeriCorps.
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Comedy; No Drama, No Tragedy.
This one is partially dedicated towards my cinematically-poised cohort, Matthew.
I've spent the last two weeks arranging some independent service opportunities around Nederland. We've got a community center here. I'd volunteered at a community center in New Orleans with Carmella's team and it was... Ramshackle. Two bookshelves with an array of battered books, a few old computers where a bunch of gangsta kids were huddled, checking myspace, and about a dozen circular tables where people come for meals. We cooked terrible food in a cluttered kitchen-- soggy rice, beef chunks with gravy, and a brownie cake with cherries and a glaze made of confectioner's sugar. Sorry-looking people filed in to eat. Some wouldn't even make eye contact; others were pretty upbeat, with an "at least it's not worse" attitude. It was an interesting blend of heartwrenching and uplifting.
Nederland's community center is so far removed from that. It's a refurbished elementary school, three floors. They have a yoga room, an art room, a gymnasium where people play basketball whose balcony has a long line of cardio machines looking down on it. It's got a weight room. The auditorium was converted into a movie theatre. I was expecting them to pop in whatever DVDs they had laying around, but no-- The lady who runs the non-profit theatre, Kayla, has some broker she's worked with for years, and she gets movies only two or three weeks behind most theatres. It's an honest-to-god, one-screen theatre. I saw Doubt two weeks ago. Valkyrie was this weekend. Next is Inkheart, then Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Turino, and Milk. They sell candy and soda for seventy-five cents and a dollar. A small, medium, and large popcorn are one, two, and three dollars, respectively. A movie ticket is six dollars. When you buy a ticket, they're these raffle tickets from Office Depot, two stubs with matching numbers, so they raffle off candy before the movies. Your chances are always pretty good-- they raffle off five or ten things, and no more than 150 people show up to this thing each week, it seems. When I'd gone, they raffled off two free movie tickets amongst the candy.
So we went to volunteer, working for two hours. She joked with us and swore up a storm. She gave us soda and candy while we worked. She let us pick over her stash of dozens of old movie posters for all the movies they'd played here in the past several years. And insisted that any time we wanted to see a movie, come in and say hi to her and since she runs the show, so to speak, we could always get in for free. She wanted to take us out for pizza, too, but we turned her down, telling her she'd already given us way more than we'd deserved, and that we'd love to work with her again. So on the weekends we can volunteer to work in the theatre, work concessions, sweep up afterwards. The people in the community typically get into the movies for free for this, but-- we Americorps, we get in for free anyway.
Living in a small town is neat-- When people know you're volunteers, when you're doing work like firefighting, they treat you so fantastically. Everyone knows who we are and they'd bend over so far backwards for us that we feel kind of guilty. But it's still fantastic, knowing there are people like that still in the world.
"You don't have to do all this for us, you know," I'd said to her.
"I know I don't," she replied, "But it's the nice thing to do.
I've spent the last two weeks arranging some independent service opportunities around Nederland. We've got a community center here. I'd volunteered at a community center in New Orleans with Carmella's team and it was... Ramshackle. Two bookshelves with an array of battered books, a few old computers where a bunch of gangsta kids were huddled, checking myspace, and about a dozen circular tables where people come for meals. We cooked terrible food in a cluttered kitchen-- soggy rice, beef chunks with gravy, and a brownie cake with cherries and a glaze made of confectioner's sugar. Sorry-looking people filed in to eat. Some wouldn't even make eye contact; others were pretty upbeat, with an "at least it's not worse" attitude. It was an interesting blend of heartwrenching and uplifting.
Nederland's community center is so far removed from that. It's a refurbished elementary school, three floors. They have a yoga room, an art room, a gymnasium where people play basketball whose balcony has a long line of cardio machines looking down on it. It's got a weight room. The auditorium was converted into a movie theatre. I was expecting them to pop in whatever DVDs they had laying around, but no-- The lady who runs the non-profit theatre, Kayla, has some broker she's worked with for years, and she gets movies only two or three weeks behind most theatres. It's an honest-to-god, one-screen theatre. I saw Doubt two weeks ago. Valkyrie was this weekend. Next is Inkheart, then Revolutionary Road, Slumdog Millionaire, Gran Turino, and Milk. They sell candy and soda for seventy-five cents and a dollar. A small, medium, and large popcorn are one, two, and three dollars, respectively. A movie ticket is six dollars. When you buy a ticket, they're these raffle tickets from Office Depot, two stubs with matching numbers, so they raffle off candy before the movies. Your chances are always pretty good-- they raffle off five or ten things, and no more than 150 people show up to this thing each week, it seems. When I'd gone, they raffled off two free movie tickets amongst the candy.
So we went to volunteer, working for two hours. She joked with us and swore up a storm. She gave us soda and candy while we worked. She let us pick over her stash of dozens of old movie posters for all the movies they'd played here in the past several years. And insisted that any time we wanted to see a movie, come in and say hi to her and since she runs the show, so to speak, we could always get in for free. She wanted to take us out for pizza, too, but we turned her down, telling her she'd already given us way more than we'd deserved, and that we'd love to work with her again. So on the weekends we can volunteer to work in the theatre, work concessions, sweep up afterwards. The people in the community typically get into the movies for free for this, but-- we Americorps, we get in for free anyway.
Living in a small town is neat-- When people know you're volunteers, when you're doing work like firefighting, they treat you so fantastically. Everyone knows who we are and they'd bend over so far backwards for us that we feel kind of guilty. But it's still fantastic, knowing there are people like that still in the world.
"You don't have to do all this for us, you know," I'd said to her.
"I know I don't," she replied, "But it's the nice thing to do.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Growing branches.
I've finished the book my family got me for Christmas, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It was long, but well worth the read. There are some very cool descriptive passages, plenty of English humour, good characterization, fun wordiness-- Kat's sort of, with her own wordiness, compelled me to begin looking up new and strange words in a dictionary--, and an ending that Delivers, which seems a bit less common than I'd like in literature I read these days. I'm rereading Franny and Zooey and loving the little intricacies of language and depth of character far more this time around. It's a cute book, and certain bits strike me just so. Then I move on to Dune-- I picked it up at a claustrophobic little used bookstore in lovely Boulder. I'm glad I was only in there a few minutes; something about the dust and the tight shelves and the nonstop talking of the shopkeeper to an employee and his girlfriend was making me crazier by the minute. If I was in there any longer I might have started thrashing. The closed-looking-but-not-really bookstore two doors down was far more welcoming.
I've been busylike. One of our controlled burns wasn't so much, and we had a small half-acre fire to contain. Did I say that already? Not long after we went to Fort Collins for a 25-acre meadow fire in the mountains. Grey Rock Meadow. The meadow itself was burned out long before we got there-- grass burns quick. It hit the trees and slowed down, creeping and smoldering. We dug lines in the dirt to contain it and then put out what we could. It was like a scavenger hunt: take your gloves off and rummage around in ash until you burn yourself. Then you take your shovel and throw snow on it, chop it up and mix it in to cool it off. I've got pictures of this fire floating around on my camera, but I keep forgetting to upload them. Soon.
We used the wood chipper today. It is quite literally an engine of destruction, as big as a truck. You can throw an entire tree into this thing and it turns it into mulch. There's a solid metal drum of blades in there that weighs so much that it takes ten minutes to coast to a stop once it gets going. It is one of the more frightening devices on the job. It looks very easy to fall in, or to turn into a tank-like weapon.
Spring break is a Friday and a Monday off in April, and Mom and Adam are visiting. I'd love to have other company sometime in my stay here-- I'd like to get Kat out here at one point, it'd be nice to see Joseph and Amanda. (Everyone should see these mountains.) When this program ends I'd like to go to Florida and see Noel and John. Or maybe over to Oregon to see Bonnie, this cool chick I'd met in this program who quit last time we'd all gotten together. She's very friendly-likeable, a very honest person. This whole program opened a door to me, and it must have been a car door, because I love traveling and seeing new places.
I'm writing letters, reading, calling people to set up opportunities for us to advertise to future generations of wee Americorps lads and lasses at high schools and colleges as per part of our suggested, yet unenforced, diplomatic whateverthehelltermtheyuse. I'm thinking of applying to colleges soon-- U of M and MSU are both on my list. I still know so little about other schools in the nation, who would want me, scholarship opportunities... I almost certainly want to go abroad a semester if I get the opportunity. I've never been overseas. For certain particular reasons, Venice has an appeal, would be worth investigating. But then, I've also put thought into staying here a few extra months as a seasonal firefighter, saving up before drifting off.
Liam is studying for the GRE, Lauren's applying to law schools like mad. The forest service keeps hinting at Coby that he should start applying to places nearby. Nate's got it easy: he's got a degree in natural resource management, with a focus in forestry. This work is exactly what he wants to do. His foot is so far in the door, he'll be through it and a professional firefighter, doing what he wants to do, the moment this program ends.
I've been busylike. One of our controlled burns wasn't so much, and we had a small half-acre fire to contain. Did I say that already? Not long after we went to Fort Collins for a 25-acre meadow fire in the mountains. Grey Rock Meadow. The meadow itself was burned out long before we got there-- grass burns quick. It hit the trees and slowed down, creeping and smoldering. We dug lines in the dirt to contain it and then put out what we could. It was like a scavenger hunt: take your gloves off and rummage around in ash until you burn yourself. Then you take your shovel and throw snow on it, chop it up and mix it in to cool it off. I've got pictures of this fire floating around on my camera, but I keep forgetting to upload them. Soon.
We used the wood chipper today. It is quite literally an engine of destruction, as big as a truck. You can throw an entire tree into this thing and it turns it into mulch. There's a solid metal drum of blades in there that weighs so much that it takes ten minutes to coast to a stop once it gets going. It is one of the more frightening devices on the job. It looks very easy to fall in, or to turn into a tank-like weapon.
Spring break is a Friday and a Monday off in April, and Mom and Adam are visiting. I'd love to have other company sometime in my stay here-- I'd like to get Kat out here at one point, it'd be nice to see Joseph and Amanda. (Everyone should see these mountains.) When this program ends I'd like to go to Florida and see Noel and John. Or maybe over to Oregon to see Bonnie, this cool chick I'd met in this program who quit last time we'd all gotten together. She's very friendly-likeable, a very honest person. This whole program opened a door to me, and it must have been a car door, because I love traveling and seeing new places.
I'm writing letters, reading, calling people to set up opportunities for us to advertise to future generations of wee Americorps lads and lasses at high schools and colleges as per part of our suggested, yet unenforced, diplomatic whateverthehelltermtheyuse. I'm thinking of applying to colleges soon-- U of M and MSU are both on my list. I still know so little about other schools in the nation, who would want me, scholarship opportunities... I almost certainly want to go abroad a semester if I get the opportunity. I've never been overseas. For certain particular reasons, Venice has an appeal, would be worth investigating. But then, I've also put thought into staying here a few extra months as a seasonal firefighter, saving up before drifting off.
Liam is studying for the GRE, Lauren's applying to law schools like mad. The forest service keeps hinting at Coby that he should start applying to places nearby. Nate's got it easy: he's got a degree in natural resource management, with a focus in forestry. This work is exactly what he wants to do. His foot is so far in the door, he'll be through it and a professional firefighter, doing what he wants to do, the moment this program ends.
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