Yesterday an astrologer told me that my domains include scholarly pursuits and foreign countries.
Today a half-burned mouse ran out of a bonfire I'd lit as part of a controlled burn. It squeaked terribly and I think his eyes were burned shut. He laid there panting in the snow, moving slowly, and when I moved a branch near him he ran blindly back into it. I ran into the fire after him to grab him and pull him out. I felt awful.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Ned mixes weak Jack & Cokes. I'm used to Jim's.
Saturday we worked on Scott Harrison's carousel. Sort of. The roofing panels needed moving from the community center to the carousel site across town. About sixty panels, 18' by 6' by 1' and about 400 or 500 pounds apiece-- a big block of foam sandwiched between two pieces of particle board.
Mr. Harrison was out of town for his grandmother's memorial service, but his son Max came from Denver to supervise. Max is 26 and pretty cool. He dresses in that kind of UFC style with the baseball cap and sagging pants and tribal-tattoo shirt. Speaking of, he's been a firefighter and an EMT and he's got each crest tattooed on either arm, surrounded by some sweeping tribal curves. They look neater than they sound, but then, the Rod of Asclepius wins me over pretty easily.
Max pulled up in his dad's beat-up pickup with a low-riding and shoddy-looking car trailer dragging behind it. We loaded these panels seven high and then hopped in the back of the truck while Max drove us to the carousel building, bottoming out the trailer on nearly every hill and turn. When the load was empty he tore through the town and around the roundabout and gave us an awesome ride back. Laying back and staring up at moving clouds, or staring out at mountains while Liam and Ned stared off into the distance.
Ned, Lauren and I were the only ones who'd went at first, and we were two-manning these big panels until Liam showed up a half-hour later, back from a morning hiking excursion. We worked for five hours. On one ride back he pulled into the gas station and said, "What color Gatorade do you like?" He came out with an armful and a case of beer. Lauren was in the front seat and he had her mixing liquor into a bottle of club soda or ginger ale or something for him. After a few hours he insisted we take a break and have a beer. "Come on, it's one beer, it's not going to get you drunk," he laughed. And then he gave us another just before we started the last load, too.
When we'd completed it he gave us double the hours we'd worked, justifying it by saying it was really hard work-- which, to be honest, it was-- And taking us to the smokehouse for dinner. His girlfriend met us there and she bartends in Breckenridge, a ski town about an hour and a half away, and she needed a ride. Max is well-known in this town and got us a table on the patio even though they were closing it, and ordered us wings and a pitcher of beer. He told us in May he throws a huge party and calls a bunch of bands he knows and gets them to play. "I've got about ten lined up for this next one. You guys are definitely all invited, I'll get you all VIP passes," he said.
"We've got to go really soon," he insisted, "So order whatever you guys like and enjoy your dinner. We're going to scarf down as many of these wings as we can in the next ten minutes and then take off."
He filled out our ISP form and left a long and appreciative note and to top it off, his dad sent me an appreciative email the next day saying how amazed he was that we'd gotten the work done in one day with only five people.
We came home and the rest of the team had bought beer and relaxed on the porch, played horseshoes, and then came in and set up Monopoly on the table. "Monopoly ruins friendships," Nate said, sitting down at the table nonetheless. Coby and I set up Risk next to them but didn't remember all the rules, having only an FAQ sheet but no actual rulebook available to us, so we winged it on the ones we were unsure of. As the night went on the Monopolists grew more belligerently drunk and Nate yelled, "OKAY. We're done! I told you! This game ruins friendships!" He started disassembling the board. I didn't catch the details, but the overall impression was a vastly amusing spectacle. Coby and I played a far-calmer game of Risk, very straightforward, that I ended up winning. I've just downloaded the rules so we can play for real next time.
I spent the rest of the night, all the way through to Sunday evening, playing Bioshock nonstop. I got pretty far and realized that the game has a ton of Ayn Rand references I'd missed for an embarassingly long time. The bad guy's an angry capitalist named "Andrew Ryan," anagramesque of Ayn Rand. The guy who leads you around by radio is named Atlas. The game's neat; it has this retro-steampunk vibe, and you give yourself injections that give you new superpowers. I'd called Grosse Ile Kat just before bed to see how her thesis paper was going, only to discover it had been completed on Wednesday. She told me she'd write me a letter and that I needed to write her a comic book script for her to paint, since I'd bought her bristol boards for it ages ago. A little sixteen-page number is in the works as we speak.
I've been kind of exhausted lately even though realistically work hasn't been that busy. We tried an experimental technique to prevent pine trees from being killed by beetles today: Kill the perfectly healthy trees and sell them as firewood before the beetles can kill them. I fail to see the logic.
Mr. Harrison was out of town for his grandmother's memorial service, but his son Max came from Denver to supervise. Max is 26 and pretty cool. He dresses in that kind of UFC style with the baseball cap and sagging pants and tribal-tattoo shirt. Speaking of, he's been a firefighter and an EMT and he's got each crest tattooed on either arm, surrounded by some sweeping tribal curves. They look neater than they sound, but then, the Rod of Asclepius wins me over pretty easily.
Max pulled up in his dad's beat-up pickup with a low-riding and shoddy-looking car trailer dragging behind it. We loaded these panels seven high and then hopped in the back of the truck while Max drove us to the carousel building, bottoming out the trailer on nearly every hill and turn. When the load was empty he tore through the town and around the roundabout and gave us an awesome ride back. Laying back and staring up at moving clouds, or staring out at mountains while Liam and Ned stared off into the distance.
Ned, Lauren and I were the only ones who'd went at first, and we were two-manning these big panels until Liam showed up a half-hour later, back from a morning hiking excursion. We worked for five hours. On one ride back he pulled into the gas station and said, "What color Gatorade do you like?" He came out with an armful and a case of beer. Lauren was in the front seat and he had her mixing liquor into a bottle of club soda or ginger ale or something for him. After a few hours he insisted we take a break and have a beer. "Come on, it's one beer, it's not going to get you drunk," he laughed. And then he gave us another just before we started the last load, too.
When we'd completed it he gave us double the hours we'd worked, justifying it by saying it was really hard work-- which, to be honest, it was-- And taking us to the smokehouse for dinner. His girlfriend met us there and she bartends in Breckenridge, a ski town about an hour and a half away, and she needed a ride. Max is well-known in this town and got us a table on the patio even though they were closing it, and ordered us wings and a pitcher of beer. He told us in May he throws a huge party and calls a bunch of bands he knows and gets them to play. "I've got about ten lined up for this next one. You guys are definitely all invited, I'll get you all VIP passes," he said.
"We've got to go really soon," he insisted, "So order whatever you guys like and enjoy your dinner. We're going to scarf down as many of these wings as we can in the next ten minutes and then take off."
He filled out our ISP form and left a long and appreciative note and to top it off, his dad sent me an appreciative email the next day saying how amazed he was that we'd gotten the work done in one day with only five people.
We came home and the rest of the team had bought beer and relaxed on the porch, played horseshoes, and then came in and set up Monopoly on the table. "Monopoly ruins friendships," Nate said, sitting down at the table nonetheless. Coby and I set up Risk next to them but didn't remember all the rules, having only an FAQ sheet but no actual rulebook available to us, so we winged it on the ones we were unsure of. As the night went on the Monopolists grew more belligerently drunk and Nate yelled, "OKAY. We're done! I told you! This game ruins friendships!" He started disassembling the board. I didn't catch the details, but the overall impression was a vastly amusing spectacle. Coby and I played a far-calmer game of Risk, very straightforward, that I ended up winning. I've just downloaded the rules so we can play for real next time.
I spent the rest of the night, all the way through to Sunday evening, playing Bioshock nonstop. I got pretty far and realized that the game has a ton of Ayn Rand references I'd missed for an embarassingly long time. The bad guy's an angry capitalist named "Andrew Ryan," anagramesque of Ayn Rand. The guy who leads you around by radio is named Atlas. The game's neat; it has this retro-steampunk vibe, and you give yourself injections that give you new superpowers. I'd called Grosse Ile Kat just before bed to see how her thesis paper was going, only to discover it had been completed on Wednesday. She told me she'd write me a letter and that I needed to write her a comic book script for her to paint, since I'd bought her bristol boards for it ages ago. A little sixteen-page number is in the works as we speak.
I've been kind of exhausted lately even though realistically work hasn't been that busy. We tried an experimental technique to prevent pine trees from being killed by beetles today: Kill the perfectly healthy trees and sell them as firewood before the beetles can kill them. I fail to see the logic.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Dull update.
So one of Carmella's team members, Glenn, got the boot from wildfire for being ineffectual, while another, Beth, resigned from Americorps. They replaced them with Will and Aaron, who had been on Carmella's team in the first place but had gotten kicked off for drinking. They accepted, and then Aaron changed his mind and quit the program. The other alternate So they're taking fun-loving light-hearted Cristian off of our team and putting him there instead. Carmella's team is at eight, ours is at nine, and I think Tristan's team is at nine as well. My roommate Dave, also wildfire, wanted to join a regular Americorps team. The unit leader told him the only way off wildfire is to quit the program. That's not what they has said to us in the beginning of the year when we'd decided to join wildfire in the first place. I do believe our class has set a record for most resignations.
This all came to us whilst staying in Denver. In more joyful news, it's been an otherwise delightful transition week, a practical vacation since we've finished all our paperwork obligations prior to our return. To top it off, Dave and some others discreetly shuffled rooms so that they can stay with their girlfriends; I've somehow ended up roommate-less and blissful. We've had some "life after Americorps" seminars, including an informative bit on planning a financial future and a fairly useless alcohol awareness discussion done privately in small randomly-assigned groups. We also had a list of choices of facilities to tour and I went to the National Renewable Energy Lab.
They had some neat displays and a knowledgable elderly tour guide who used an amusing voice whose tones are typically levelled at elementary school students. The real star of the show, though, was an enormous globe in the first room, perhaps ten feet in diameter. Four projectors mounted in the corners of the room synchronously played high-resolution videos upon the surface of the globe, so that when we first saw it it showed a flashing, moving, rotating sun. As he went through a discussion it switched to a globe of Earth, showing sunlight exposure throughout the year, wind exposure, energy production, energy consumption, oil production, population density, and even that gorgeous picture of Earth from space at night, indistinct continents alight with electricity. I'd seen it panoramically before but never as a moving image projected upon a globe, and I'm sure that the installation would be a stoner's dream.
I've completed my eighty hours of independent service but I love doing it so I'm going to keep at it; my private self-imposed goal is 200 hours. I'm volunteering a few hours every Friday at the movie theatre, and hopefully I can rally the team on Saturdays to help with the carousel. In April we're to help with a 24-hour race and we've got a few other events coming up as well. I'm going to volunteer eight hours each this Saturday and Sunday at the Children's Museum again, and Sunday night I'm going to play trampoline dodgeball with the local guys-- Nick, Dan, and Paul-- again too. All work and no play makes Robbie a dull boy. I just want to play somewhere besides the bar; I'm getting sick of spending thirty bucks a month on a few drinks.
This all came to us whilst staying in Denver. In more joyful news, it's been an otherwise delightful transition week, a practical vacation since we've finished all our paperwork obligations prior to our return. To top it off, Dave and some others discreetly shuffled rooms so that they can stay with their girlfriends; I've somehow ended up roommate-less and blissful. We've had some "life after Americorps" seminars, including an informative bit on planning a financial future and a fairly useless alcohol awareness discussion done privately in small randomly-assigned groups. We also had a list of choices of facilities to tour and I went to the National Renewable Energy Lab.
They had some neat displays and a knowledgable elderly tour guide who used an amusing voice whose tones are typically levelled at elementary school students. The real star of the show, though, was an enormous globe in the first room, perhaps ten feet in diameter. Four projectors mounted in the corners of the room synchronously played high-resolution videos upon the surface of the globe, so that when we first saw it it showed a flashing, moving, rotating sun. As he went through a discussion it switched to a globe of Earth, showing sunlight exposure throughout the year, wind exposure, energy production, energy consumption, oil production, population density, and even that gorgeous picture of Earth from space at night, indistinct continents alight with electricity. I'd seen it panoramically before but never as a moving image projected upon a globe, and I'm sure that the installation would be a stoner's dream.
I've completed my eighty hours of independent service but I love doing it so I'm going to keep at it; my private self-imposed goal is 200 hours. I'm volunteering a few hours every Friday at the movie theatre, and hopefully I can rally the team on Saturdays to help with the carousel. In April we're to help with a 24-hour race and we've got a few other events coming up as well. I'm going to volunteer eight hours each this Saturday and Sunday at the Children's Museum again, and Sunday night I'm going to play trampoline dodgeball with the local guys-- Nick, Dan, and Paul-- again too. All work and no play makes Robbie a dull boy. I just want to play somewhere besides the bar; I'm getting sick of spending thirty bucks a month on a few drinks.
Friday, March 06, 2009
We spent a few days in Fort Collins for a class on pumps and hoses, including a day of running hose up a hill to see how far we could pump water. We hadn't brought enough food and had to eat out a few times. Big City Burrito in Fort Collins is really tasty and looks very hole-in-the-wall. Cheba Hut's a small chain with pot-themed subs and treats.
I was depressed all weekend, collapsing into bed immediately after work to stare at my telephone. The only people I talk to with regularity anymore are my mother and my brother. Desperate to talk to old friends and familiar people. I'm hitting that point again where I've no idea what I'm going to do with my life; Americorps is going to end and I'm going to be back where I started, no idea of where I want to go, what I want to do, or how I'm going to pay for it. As it stands now the options are University of Michigan, University of Maryland, and firefighting.
At least we're back in Denver this upcoming week. Transition week with an emphasis on careers and life after Americorps. A job fair, among other things. Everyone else thinks it's a joke and I'm absolutely rabid about the opportunity to figure my life out.
I want to be a professional languisher, book-reader, sleeper.
I was depressed all weekend, collapsing into bed immediately after work to stare at my telephone. The only people I talk to with regularity anymore are my mother and my brother. Desperate to talk to old friends and familiar people. I'm hitting that point again where I've no idea what I'm going to do with my life; Americorps is going to end and I'm going to be back where I started, no idea of where I want to go, what I want to do, or how I'm going to pay for it. As it stands now the options are University of Michigan, University of Maryland, and firefighting.
At least we're back in Denver this upcoming week. Transition week with an emphasis on careers and life after Americorps. A job fair, among other things. Everyone else thinks it's a joke and I'm absolutely rabid about the opportunity to figure my life out.
I want to be a professional languisher, book-reader, sleeper.
Lakeside, Wisconsin
After last weekend walking about exploring, I've kind of fallen in love with Nederland a little.
I woke up and went for a 4.5 mile run and stopped at the community center and talked to Dawn, the chick who runs it. She gave me a half-dozen volunteer opportunities around town: trail-building, the skate park, summerizing the ice rink into tennis courts, painting the movie theatre, oiling and rearranging the weight machines... And one that really stood out.
Scott Harrison is a Vietnam vet who ran Amnesty International's urgent action network and has spent 20 years hand-carving and hand-painting animals for a carousel. It sounds like a fantastic project, the Carousel of Happiness, and I'm trying to get the team excited about it.
I had lunch at Kathmandu, the Nepalese restaurant in town that'd I'd heard of, and heard of even more from Kayla, who we volunteered with at the movie theatre. They have an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet every day for ten dollars that changes every day-- a creamed spinach paste, stewed sweet potatoes, a kind of potato dumpling, and two chicken dishes. Faaantastic. I got a cookie at the New Moon Bakery-- an enormous oatmeal orange-coconut-pecan cookie for $1.50.
I walked into the gemstones, fossils and geodes store and saw this article framed on the wall, and as I read it the lady behind the counter called out "Scott?" to the man watering plants. "Yeah?" he replied. I walked up. "Scott Harrison?" Small world; he was, and I told him about what we are and what we do and how we'd like to help him with the carousel on weekends. He wants us to help him put in roof panels for the building the carousel's going to be put in. It's thrilling to think we're going to help this man finish his 20-year-old dream. One of the animals is an anthropomorphic moose created by George, cartoonist for Nederland's paper. "If you see George," one of the store clerks told me, "Wish him happy birthday. Everyone does it every day."
I found a farming co-op-- a little supermarket, three aisles, where the local farmers sell their fresh organic vegetables. Membership is $24 a year and if you volunteer there four hours a week then you get 20% off all your groceries. I talked to the stoneresque manager, a late-20s girl, who was pretty interested in our program and very flexible about letting us buy our groceries there and rotating clerk duties.
At night I went to see Revolutionary Road (really depressing Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio movie, about the stagnancy of a couple living in the suburbs) for free at the movie theatre and told Kayla about our wanting to help her paint. She gave me coupons for a dollar off anything at the previously-mentioned bakery. An elder man walked into the theatre and from across it a younger girl yelled "Happy birthday George!" "Hey, thanks!" The elderly man yelled back.
Nederland seems almost too nice, and I was waiting for the dark secret: the murderer they're hiding, or whatever. About as close as it comes is this festival... This weekend is a festival honoring a Norwegian who brought his Grandfather's body overseas to Nederland work on cryogenics and then was deported. They left behind the Grandpa and started a festival devoted to him.
Frozen Dead Guy Days
I woke up and went for a 4.5 mile run and stopped at the community center and talked to Dawn, the chick who runs it. She gave me a half-dozen volunteer opportunities around town: trail-building, the skate park, summerizing the ice rink into tennis courts, painting the movie theatre, oiling and rearranging the weight machines... And one that really stood out.
Scott Harrison is a Vietnam vet who ran Amnesty International's urgent action network and has spent 20 years hand-carving and hand-painting animals for a carousel. It sounds like a fantastic project, the Carousel of Happiness, and I'm trying to get the team excited about it.
I had lunch at Kathmandu, the Nepalese restaurant in town that'd I'd heard of, and heard of even more from Kayla, who we volunteered with at the movie theatre. They have an all-you-can-eat lunch buffet every day for ten dollars that changes every day-- a creamed spinach paste, stewed sweet potatoes, a kind of potato dumpling, and two chicken dishes. Faaantastic. I got a cookie at the New Moon Bakery-- an enormous oatmeal orange-coconut-pecan cookie for $1.50.
I walked into the gemstones, fossils and geodes store and saw this article framed on the wall, and as I read it the lady behind the counter called out "Scott?" to the man watering plants. "Yeah?" he replied. I walked up. "Scott Harrison?" Small world; he was, and I told him about what we are and what we do and how we'd like to help him with the carousel on weekends. He wants us to help him put in roof panels for the building the carousel's going to be put in. It's thrilling to think we're going to help this man finish his 20-year-old dream. One of the animals is an anthropomorphic moose created by George, cartoonist for Nederland's paper. "If you see George," one of the store clerks told me, "Wish him happy birthday. Everyone does it every day."
I found a farming co-op-- a little supermarket, three aisles, where the local farmers sell their fresh organic vegetables. Membership is $24 a year and if you volunteer there four hours a week then you get 20% off all your groceries. I talked to the stoneresque manager, a late-20s girl, who was pretty interested in our program and very flexible about letting us buy our groceries there and rotating clerk duties.
At night I went to see Revolutionary Road (really depressing Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio movie, about the stagnancy of a couple living in the suburbs) for free at the movie theatre and told Kayla about our wanting to help her paint. She gave me coupons for a dollar off anything at the previously-mentioned bakery. An elder man walked into the theatre and from across it a younger girl yelled "Happy birthday George!" "Hey, thanks!" The elderly man yelled back.
Nederland seems almost too nice, and I was waiting for the dark secret: the murderer they're hiding, or whatever. About as close as it comes is this festival... This weekend is a festival honoring a Norwegian who brought his Grandfather's body overseas to Nederland work on cryogenics and then was deported. They left behind the Grandpa and started a festival devoted to him.
Frozen Dead Guy Days
Sunday, February 15, 2009
Deadly Bookish.
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.
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.
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.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Pictures again!
I'm growing a goofy beard. I can't seem to take a decent picture of me these days.
This is work. Every day I'm on the job I'm in the mountains, burning bonfires or checking on yesterday's bonfires to make sure they haven't gotten a bit too spunky.
In the mildly-subpar Japanese restaurant there was an adorable baby. We made faces at her and she was very happy for it. I'd ordered a one-dollar sake that was quite watered down-- I finished all 3 ounces of it and felt nothing. I made up for it at the bar right now, though. There's some reaaally tasty peppermint liquor here. Nate says it's called... Rumblemintz? He spelled it wrong. Rumple Minze. German, apparently.
Downtown Denver. I actually missed this place, after being stuck in Nederland a while.
Cristian (a.k.a. Cali, as in California) took a picture of me in my work get-up. I have fun here.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Another small town.
Just this week the Forest Service installed two very art deco wind turbines next to their facilities, in the 100 yards or so between our bunkhouse and their workhouse. They look different from most wind turbines-- They're forest green and they rotate on a vertical, not a horizontal, axis. "These things are part of the efforts we're making to be greener," said Dave Buchanan, our boss, who looks like a burly Stephen King and acts like one of Stephen King's more... rural characters. "Once they get going, we'll be supplying ourselves with all our own power." He took a long pause, as he is often prone to do. "And we'll actually be selling extra power back to the city."
Last night, without disturbing anyone, one of them was knocked from its high post by one of the frequent powerful gusts of wind characteristic of Nederland. After some dumbfoundedness the next morning we went to work as normal-- checking prescribed burns from the day before, mopping up the ones that got a little out of hand. Sometimes stump roots will catch on fire and burn slowly, snaking heat into the ground and springing up elsewhere, somewhere unexpected. We dig up smoldering roots.
The day done, we went back the bunkhouse... And were told that we had to pack our stuff in fifteen minutes and go. An evacuation, in case the second turbine blew down and landed on our house, crushing us to death while we were eating, watching television, sleeping. The first one didn't make it very far at all, but they didn't want to chance it. So here I am, suitcase packed yet again for impromptu travel, in a Forest Service bunkhouse right off the expresssway in Idaho Springs. There's a McDonald's, a Starbucks, a Subway, a few gas stations and diners. Supposedly there's a proper town within driving distance; we'll see tomorrow when we hunt for independent service projects.
I'm about a third of the way through the massive British historical fantasy novel my family got me for Christmas, Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's lengthy, written in a Victorian voice, bears copious footnotes, and has many characters. I'm of mixed opinion: some of it is very neat, the magic is innovative and unexpected, some of the settings are very well-described... And sometimes it just seems to ramble on. The odd thing is, much like The Stand, I can't really straightforwardly say, "I feel this part is unnecessary." I'm plowing through it at a solid and steady pace, having typically an hour and a half of travelling mountains by truck each day to nap or read.
I'm back to counting calories, and keeping my numbers more modest, after two or three days (not in a row, thank god) where I'd consumed over 3000. If only I knew how many I burned in a typical workday.
Last night, without disturbing anyone, one of them was knocked from its high post by one of the frequent powerful gusts of wind characteristic of Nederland. After some dumbfoundedness the next morning we went to work as normal-- checking prescribed burns from the day before, mopping up the ones that got a little out of hand. Sometimes stump roots will catch on fire and burn slowly, snaking heat into the ground and springing up elsewhere, somewhere unexpected. We dig up smoldering roots.
The day done, we went back the bunkhouse... And were told that we had to pack our stuff in fifteen minutes and go. An evacuation, in case the second turbine blew down and landed on our house, crushing us to death while we were eating, watching television, sleeping. The first one didn't make it very far at all, but they didn't want to chance it. So here I am, suitcase packed yet again for impromptu travel, in a Forest Service bunkhouse right off the expresssway in Idaho Springs. There's a McDonald's, a Starbucks, a Subway, a few gas stations and diners. Supposedly there's a proper town within driving distance; we'll see tomorrow when we hunt for independent service projects.
I'm about a third of the way through the massive British historical fantasy novel my family got me for Christmas, Johnathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. It's lengthy, written in a Victorian voice, bears copious footnotes, and has many characters. I'm of mixed opinion: some of it is very neat, the magic is innovative and unexpected, some of the settings are very well-described... And sometimes it just seems to ramble on. The odd thing is, much like The Stand, I can't really straightforwardly say, "I feel this part is unnecessary." I'm plowing through it at a solid and steady pace, having typically an hour and a half of travelling mountains by truck each day to nap or read.
I'm back to counting calories, and keeping my numbers more modest, after two or three days (not in a row, thank god) where I'd consumed over 3000. If only I knew how many I burned in a typical workday.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
See the world, they said.
I am in a near-complete stranger's house. I don't even remember-- wait, it's Tony.
Nate, one of the new teammates, went to college in Fort Collins, Colorado. We'd spent a few days in Fort Collins taking chainsaw classes and then Nate asked if anyone wanted to stay the weekend with his friends. And so, here some of us are.
We played a most sinister drinking game, whereupon I yet again reaffirmed that I, unlike many of my peers, have a pretty good idea of when to call it quits. Like, say, before you start demanding your head be shaved into a mohawk by a fellow drunkard. Nate now has a very sloppy mohawk that's kind of an off-center wedge that looks nothing like the Chuck Liddell mohawk he demanded. I socialized a little before talking to Kat, using the internet, and falling asleep on the couch with the laptop on my chest.
On my last team Americorps did not feel like living life. I was in New Orleans, for God's sake, and I felt stagnant. It was suffocatingly controlled, mechanized, automated. Funny how just a change of leaders can make it so much better. Garrett and Chris were sad to see me go, and ever since they've said that they miss me, but that they're also jealous I got out when I did-- Carmella's stricter than ever, they say, and some of their new members to replace the ones who were booted off are a little infuriating. My new team leader, Coby, is the most laid-back guy around; when I told him I scraped the truck on a rock he just gave an amused half-smile and said "You'll probably lose your driving priveleges but that's all. It's no big deal. Don't worry about it."
But here, we live in a firefighting bunkhouse. We hike through the mountains and light bonfires and cut and stack brush and logs for a living. At the end of a workday, we look out over peaks bristling with pine trees, dusted in snow; sometimes fog rolls in over the tops of the peaks and the peaks turn indefinite. Opportunities are afforded that I would not otherwise have. Staying with new friends in their friends' houses, doors opened to us, partying at night.
I'm eating pancakes and sipping on a White Russian.
It's been a good month.
Nate, one of the new teammates, went to college in Fort Collins, Colorado. We'd spent a few days in Fort Collins taking chainsaw classes and then Nate asked if anyone wanted to stay the weekend with his friends. And so, here some of us are.
We played a most sinister drinking game, whereupon I yet again reaffirmed that I, unlike many of my peers, have a pretty good idea of when to call it quits. Like, say, before you start demanding your head be shaved into a mohawk by a fellow drunkard. Nate now has a very sloppy mohawk that's kind of an off-center wedge that looks nothing like the Chuck Liddell mohawk he demanded. I socialized a little before talking to Kat, using the internet, and falling asleep on the couch with the laptop on my chest.
On my last team Americorps did not feel like living life. I was in New Orleans, for God's sake, and I felt stagnant. It was suffocatingly controlled, mechanized, automated. Funny how just a change of leaders can make it so much better. Garrett and Chris were sad to see me go, and ever since they've said that they miss me, but that they're also jealous I got out when I did-- Carmella's stricter than ever, they say, and some of their new members to replace the ones who were booted off are a little infuriating. My new team leader, Coby, is the most laid-back guy around; when I told him I scraped the truck on a rock he just gave an amused half-smile and said "You'll probably lose your driving priveleges but that's all. It's no big deal. Don't worry about it."
But here, we live in a firefighting bunkhouse. We hike through the mountains and light bonfires and cut and stack brush and logs for a living. At the end of a workday, we look out over peaks bristling with pine trees, dusted in snow; sometimes fog rolls in over the tops of the peaks and the peaks turn indefinite. Opportunities are afforded that I would not otherwise have. Staying with new friends in their friends' houses, doors opened to us, partying at night.
I'm eating pancakes and sipping on a White Russian.
It's been a good month.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Survivor: Boulder
The team has 315 dollars per week for food. This amounts to $4.50 per person per day. Some members of the team (Liam) eat more than others and aren't really aware of HOW much they eat. This is more amusing than infuriating, to be honest; we manage just fine.
However, today Liam declared that we should split the budget into $31.50 per person per week and each take care of our own food. The more it was talked about the more people liked it. They were sold when I made a joke about people making secret food alliances (though this has been deemed against the rules).
So, no pre-existing food and no outside money is permitted. This is strictly on Americorps's dollar. I find the idea hilarious, because I think I'm going to be fine. Ned intends to eat a crate of ramen noodles.
My plan thus far includes oatmeal, bananas, eggs, tuna, bread, chicken breasts, rice, pasta, broccoli, sweet potatoes.
Vanity items include skim milk, spinach... This is going to be hilarious. I don' think Liam realizes how much peanut butter costs and he sincerely thinks he's going to be able to eat three PB&J's a day for lunch. I want to see who's going to pass out first.
However, today Liam declared that we should split the budget into $31.50 per person per week and each take care of our own food. The more it was talked about the more people liked it. They were sold when I made a joke about people making secret food alliances (though this has been deemed against the rules).
So, no pre-existing food and no outside money is permitted. This is strictly on Americorps's dollar. I find the idea hilarious, because I think I'm going to be fine. Ned intends to eat a crate of ramen noodles.
My plan thus far includes oatmeal, bananas, eggs, tuna, bread, chicken breasts, rice, pasta, broccoli, sweet potatoes.
Vanity items include skim milk, spinach... This is going to be hilarious. I don' think Liam realizes how much peanut butter costs and he sincerely thinks he's going to be able to eat three PB&J's a day for lunch. I want to see who's going to pass out first.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Upsy-downsy
Today my team and I shoveled snow for a few hours at a ski resort that has a non-profit which helps physically- and mentally-handicapped people ski. When we finished, we all got free passes and ski rentals-- a one hundred dollar value, yours for just a few meager hours of work-- and spent the rest of the afternoon skiing. It's more terrifying than I remember; I took several falls but still had a fantastic day.
I will never forget the look on Joseph's face when he first stepped onto the ice to ice skate at my cousin Abby's birthday party: his eyes were wide and he had a disbelieving smile stretched across his face. The whole of his expression wordlessly said, "Are you fucking kidding me!?"
I think if Joseph were on skis, his head would spin three hundred and sixty degrees.
To top the night off I designated drove some of the team to the bar and when I missed it and turned around in the bank parking lot I scraped it on a ridiculously-placed rock. So that's great too
I will never forget the look on Joseph's face when he first stepped onto the ice to ice skate at my cousin Abby's birthday party: his eyes were wide and he had a disbelieving smile stretched across his face. The whole of his expression wordlessly said, "Are you fucking kidding me!?"
I think if Joseph were on skis, his head would spin three hundred and sixty degrees.
To top the night off I designated drove some of the team to the bar and when I missed it and turned around in the bank parking lot I scraped it on a ridiculously-placed rock. So that's great too
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
"It was a pleasure to burn."
I.
Wildland firefighting is not like urban firefighting. We drove an forty-five minutes on a mountain road only as wide as our truck. Looking out the window, the view carried endlessly, mountains covered in trees-- and immediately next to the truck, nothing, the nothingness of a sheer drop only feet away.
We carry a can of gas with a screw-on neck, kinked once like a twisty straw to keep the fire from climbing into the tank. The end has a nozzle and a wick like a flamethrower. When you tip the can forward, gas pours past the wick and flame drips out in a stream. We broke into two groups of three, and each group had one of the Forest Service guys lead them along the slope. There was a pile of thin pine branches and some thicker logs stacked like a bonfire up to my chest. Nate and I each had a drip-torch and we tipped them forward. The branches were up in flames faster than we expected. Starting that fire started a fire within us, and we were practically running from stack to stack, putting them alight.
We stood next to a bonfire admiring our handiwork when the wind picked up and shifted, washing Sergio and I with flame. I was closer to it than him, but we both turned and backed away. Half of my face was hot, and I thought I could feel it creeping up under my cap.
"Am I on fire?" I called to Sergio, a little too matter-of-factly. Nate started laughing and Sergio checked me out. My cap was singed, as was one eyebrow and the stubble on half of my face. My eye felt sticky, like I got gum in my lashes, and I realized they were burned together at the tips. I brushed the ashy bits of hair off as best I could. Once we realized I was okay we all started laughing, and I couldn't help but think it was smart that I cut my hair when I did, or I'd likely not have that ponytail anyway.
We burned more piles and then we went back to the first and chunked them-- we dragged the burning edges back into the middle. The last pile we chunked was unbearably hot and the smoke rolled up off the logs into our faces. More than once we had to run a few feet away, choking and gasping for air. Our lemon-yellow shirts and olive-green pants are more than fireproof-- they resist heat more than I would have believed possible. Only my face was hot, hot like what happens when you sit too close to a campfire. I remembered the shroud in my hardhat and unfurled it, wrapped it about my head. Only my sunglassed eyes were exposed, and it was the only part of me that could feel heat. I stood, one foot in the fire, pulling pine needles in, and nothing but the space in the middle of my brow could feel any heat at all but the heat there was intense.
The smoke seemed clairvoyant, accomplice to the wind, and wherever I stood the two of them shifted near-instantly to surround me. The wind wasn't terrible all the time, though: Sergio pointed out a little whirlwind of snow nearby, two spirally arms moving lazily, gracefully, down the mountainside.
I have a little stomachache from swallowing smoke, and I've been told that on bad days, in the amount we drink it, it's like smoking two packs a day. Still, if ever you wanted to make a career out of camping, out of hiking, this is the job for you.
II.
Loki is a trickster god and a fire god, and it's suddenly easy to see why the two elements are paired together. The stuff is insidious; it creeps along the ground, all these pine needles and cones spread about. Little tendrils of smoke peek out from the blanket and we have to pull it all back towards the bonfire. A fallen, termite-chewed tree is too close to the fire. It catches, invisibly at first, underneath and then inside. The only hint that it burns is the smoke pulsing out from the nest-holes, like an old man breathing on a cold day.
Rocks grab hold of any heat and lock it away but look no different until a shovelful of snow is thrown onto one. It bubbles and steams and boils the snow to nothing in a matter of seconds. The squarish rocks crack and splinter and turn into a pile of Indian arrowheads and flint knives. Our gloves are leather, white-- or once-white; they turn brown and ashy in a half-day's work-- and they make our hands invincible. We pick up branches by the cinders, carry them back to the pile, and drop them in.
The wind is erratic: it blows suddenly, fiercely, and in any direction. A sudden burst of it, and the column of smoke ran along the ground just inches over the snow off the backs of a few logs, and what was grey glowed again. Tiny embers were carried a dozen feet away to a rotten stump, and the stump went up. We piled snow on it and cleared away the brush. When the wind's gentler, white flakes would drift by us; snow and ash indiscernable from one another when both take flight.
III.
It's funny how much different this team is from my old team. I was reading in my bedroom, which is also Sergio's and Cristian's bedroom, while the others were playing cards in the living room. I went out for a moment and they invited me to play and I smiled and said I was fine. They asked me what my old team was like and I said that we never played cards together. We were a team of individuals. Chris would sit on the couch and strum, Jeremy would lay in his cot and read, Garrett would put on headphones and watch The Office on his laptop and I'd hear nothing but the occasional stark laugh. Will and Aaron, who conjoined themselves into one person anyway, sat at the computer and played flash games. If we weren't working or exercising or eating dinner we didn't see much of Carmella.
I dwelled on them a moment until I was pulled back to awareness by laughter, my new team socializing over Uno. It really does seem like they're a single friendly unit. They're more lighthearted, I think-- when someone does something dumb, we vote on whether or not they get an X on our white messageboard. At the end of the week the person with the most X's has to wear a black forest service jacket to work, its only discerning feature a patch on the sleeve: "Special."
They had a girl on their team, Beth, who traded places with me; she's on Carmella's team now. It doesn't seem like they have an active dislike for her, but they do seem to poke fun. Today Fusi (a last name, not some strange ethnicity you can't place; don't worry) made jokes about taking an assault rifle and running around Rocky Mountain National Park hunting elk without a license-- illegal and over-the-top on many fronts. The next thing out of someone's mouth when the laughter died down was, "Man, Beth would have left the dinner table by now. 'I don't want to hear anymore of this!'" Last night at dinner they pointed out that now that she was gone they had to decide who was next in the chain of cannibalism. They'd picked her because she eats a bunch of organic, healthy stuff. I called her "a free-range human." The joke was well-received.
We get to give our trucks radio designatons. It's possibly the most difficult decision we'll ever be faced with; the possibilities are endless. Ned said, "I think we should go with 'Maverick' and 'Goose'," and I said, "Way to be fucking original," and he was shot down instantly with a chorus of laughter.
After much deliberation ("blue steel" and "magnum," "Iron Man" and "War Machine," "blue moon" and "gold schlager," "Jesus" and "Lucifer") we've settled on "Han Solo" and "Indiana Jones."
IV.
I read and read and read. I've read so much since I've joined Americorps. I just finished "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. The translation was interesting; an American did it in short choppy sentences, feeling that Camus was trying to capture an American style in his original French writing. I liked the book, and all of the one-sentences descriptions of his other works listed in the back each sound philisophical and compelling and I'd love to read more.
I read my former teammate Chris's manuscript, "All the Broken Boys Go West," (formerly "The Insane Gorilla") a semi-autobiographical story about his fiance dumping him and his subsequent soul-searching road trip across America. It gave a lot of insight into him, perhaps a little too late.
I read Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, the first of any of his books that I've read. Kat read the first half aloud to me one night over Christmas break, vibrantly and with adorable intonation, clearly enjoying herself. The characters take some warming up to but invariably will turn your heart in a single line. I realized halfway through how much the Glass family reminds me of the Tenenbaums, and there are other short story collections about them that I'm interested in now: "Nine Stories" and "Raise High the Roof Beams/Seymour: An Introduction." I guess I should read "Catcher in the Rye" too.
I read Joseph's book, an astonishing 450? pages written in two months: a fantasy story telling a war between humans and monsters from each side. The human side focuses mostly on a small adventuring party and the internal conflict of the main character Ithy; the monster side focuses on Grim, a newly-birthed monster, the only of his kind, who is compelled to unite the scattered monsters under one banner and give them a purpose in life. It's a first draft, a little rough around the edges, but conceptually strong. Joseph writes mysteries like no other, he develops characters well, ensures every action taken happens for a reason with no unseemly coincidences "saving" the cohesion and integrity of his book, and he writes fantastic final-line, cliffhanger-esque chapter-ends.
And I still have more but never feel like I have enough. My head feels elastic, like I could never fit enough books into it. I want nothing more to consume, chew on style and word choice, characters and messages, tone and theme and metaphor. Kat's instilled in me the need to read with a purpose. I peruse the dictionary for each foreign word in a novel that I stumble across (both in my travels and intellectually).
This is my address for the next six months. Send me things to read. Frank Herbert, Robert E. Howard, Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, Hunter S. Thompson, Borges. The mountains are cold and lovely and my evenings are empty.
Robert Reeve
534 Ridge Road
Nederland, CO 80466
Wildland firefighting is not like urban firefighting. We drove an forty-five minutes on a mountain road only as wide as our truck. Looking out the window, the view carried endlessly, mountains covered in trees-- and immediately next to the truck, nothing, the nothingness of a sheer drop only feet away.
We carry a can of gas with a screw-on neck, kinked once like a twisty straw to keep the fire from climbing into the tank. The end has a nozzle and a wick like a flamethrower. When you tip the can forward, gas pours past the wick and flame drips out in a stream. We broke into two groups of three, and each group had one of the Forest Service guys lead them along the slope. There was a pile of thin pine branches and some thicker logs stacked like a bonfire up to my chest. Nate and I each had a drip-torch and we tipped them forward. The branches were up in flames faster than we expected. Starting that fire started a fire within us, and we were practically running from stack to stack, putting them alight.
We stood next to a bonfire admiring our handiwork when the wind picked up and shifted, washing Sergio and I with flame. I was closer to it than him, but we both turned and backed away. Half of my face was hot, and I thought I could feel it creeping up under my cap.
"Am I on fire?" I called to Sergio, a little too matter-of-factly. Nate started laughing and Sergio checked me out. My cap was singed, as was one eyebrow and the stubble on half of my face. My eye felt sticky, like I got gum in my lashes, and I realized they were burned together at the tips. I brushed the ashy bits of hair off as best I could. Once we realized I was okay we all started laughing, and I couldn't help but think it was smart that I cut my hair when I did, or I'd likely not have that ponytail anyway.
We burned more piles and then we went back to the first and chunked them-- we dragged the burning edges back into the middle. The last pile we chunked was unbearably hot and the smoke rolled up off the logs into our faces. More than once we had to run a few feet away, choking and gasping for air. Our lemon-yellow shirts and olive-green pants are more than fireproof-- they resist heat more than I would have believed possible. Only my face was hot, hot like what happens when you sit too close to a campfire. I remembered the shroud in my hardhat and unfurled it, wrapped it about my head. Only my sunglassed eyes were exposed, and it was the only part of me that could feel heat. I stood, one foot in the fire, pulling pine needles in, and nothing but the space in the middle of my brow could feel any heat at all but the heat there was intense.
The smoke seemed clairvoyant, accomplice to the wind, and wherever I stood the two of them shifted near-instantly to surround me. The wind wasn't terrible all the time, though: Sergio pointed out a little whirlwind of snow nearby, two spirally arms moving lazily, gracefully, down the mountainside.
I have a little stomachache from swallowing smoke, and I've been told that on bad days, in the amount we drink it, it's like smoking two packs a day. Still, if ever you wanted to make a career out of camping, out of hiking, this is the job for you.
II.
Loki is a trickster god and a fire god, and it's suddenly easy to see why the two elements are paired together. The stuff is insidious; it creeps along the ground, all these pine needles and cones spread about. Little tendrils of smoke peek out from the blanket and we have to pull it all back towards the bonfire. A fallen, termite-chewed tree is too close to the fire. It catches, invisibly at first, underneath and then inside. The only hint that it burns is the smoke pulsing out from the nest-holes, like an old man breathing on a cold day.
Rocks grab hold of any heat and lock it away but look no different until a shovelful of snow is thrown onto one. It bubbles and steams and boils the snow to nothing in a matter of seconds. The squarish rocks crack and splinter and turn into a pile of Indian arrowheads and flint knives. Our gloves are leather, white-- or once-white; they turn brown and ashy in a half-day's work-- and they make our hands invincible. We pick up branches by the cinders, carry them back to the pile, and drop them in.
The wind is erratic: it blows suddenly, fiercely, and in any direction. A sudden burst of it, and the column of smoke ran along the ground just inches over the snow off the backs of a few logs, and what was grey glowed again. Tiny embers were carried a dozen feet away to a rotten stump, and the stump went up. We piled snow on it and cleared away the brush. When the wind's gentler, white flakes would drift by us; snow and ash indiscernable from one another when both take flight.
III.
It's funny how much different this team is from my old team. I was reading in my bedroom, which is also Sergio's and Cristian's bedroom, while the others were playing cards in the living room. I went out for a moment and they invited me to play and I smiled and said I was fine. They asked me what my old team was like and I said that we never played cards together. We were a team of individuals. Chris would sit on the couch and strum, Jeremy would lay in his cot and read, Garrett would put on headphones and watch The Office on his laptop and I'd hear nothing but the occasional stark laugh. Will and Aaron, who conjoined themselves into one person anyway, sat at the computer and played flash games. If we weren't working or exercising or eating dinner we didn't see much of Carmella.
I dwelled on them a moment until I was pulled back to awareness by laughter, my new team socializing over Uno. It really does seem like they're a single friendly unit. They're more lighthearted, I think-- when someone does something dumb, we vote on whether or not they get an X on our white messageboard. At the end of the week the person with the most X's has to wear a black forest service jacket to work, its only discerning feature a patch on the sleeve: "Special."
They had a girl on their team, Beth, who traded places with me; she's on Carmella's team now. It doesn't seem like they have an active dislike for her, but they do seem to poke fun. Today Fusi (a last name, not some strange ethnicity you can't place; don't worry) made jokes about taking an assault rifle and running around Rocky Mountain National Park hunting elk without a license-- illegal and over-the-top on many fronts. The next thing out of someone's mouth when the laughter died down was, "Man, Beth would have left the dinner table by now. 'I don't want to hear anymore of this!'" Last night at dinner they pointed out that now that she was gone they had to decide who was next in the chain of cannibalism. They'd picked her because she eats a bunch of organic, healthy stuff. I called her "a free-range human." The joke was well-received.
We get to give our trucks radio designatons. It's possibly the most difficult decision we'll ever be faced with; the possibilities are endless. Ned said, "I think we should go with 'Maverick' and 'Goose'," and I said, "Way to be fucking original," and he was shot down instantly with a chorus of laughter.
After much deliberation ("blue steel" and "magnum," "Iron Man" and "War Machine," "blue moon" and "gold schlager," "Jesus" and "Lucifer") we've settled on "Han Solo" and "Indiana Jones."
IV.
I read and read and read. I've read so much since I've joined Americorps. I just finished "The Stranger" by Albert Camus. The translation was interesting; an American did it in short choppy sentences, feeling that Camus was trying to capture an American style in his original French writing. I liked the book, and all of the one-sentences descriptions of his other works listed in the back each sound philisophical and compelling and I'd love to read more.
I read my former teammate Chris's manuscript, "All the Broken Boys Go West," (formerly "The Insane Gorilla") a semi-autobiographical story about his fiance dumping him and his subsequent soul-searching road trip across America. It gave a lot of insight into him, perhaps a little too late.
I read Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, the first of any of his books that I've read. Kat read the first half aloud to me one night over Christmas break, vibrantly and with adorable intonation, clearly enjoying herself. The characters take some warming up to but invariably will turn your heart in a single line. I realized halfway through how much the Glass family reminds me of the Tenenbaums, and there are other short story collections about them that I'm interested in now: "Nine Stories" and "Raise High the Roof Beams/Seymour: An Introduction." I guess I should read "Catcher in the Rye" too.
I read Joseph's book, an astonishing 450? pages written in two months: a fantasy story telling a war between humans and monsters from each side. The human side focuses mostly on a small adventuring party and the internal conflict of the main character Ithy; the monster side focuses on Grim, a newly-birthed monster, the only of his kind, who is compelled to unite the scattered monsters under one banner and give them a purpose in life. It's a first draft, a little rough around the edges, but conceptually strong. Joseph writes mysteries like no other, he develops characters well, ensures every action taken happens for a reason with no unseemly coincidences "saving" the cohesion and integrity of his book, and he writes fantastic final-line, cliffhanger-esque chapter-ends.
And I still have more but never feel like I have enough. My head feels elastic, like I could never fit enough books into it. I want nothing more to consume, chew on style and word choice, characters and messages, tone and theme and metaphor. Kat's instilled in me the need to read with a purpose. I peruse the dictionary for each foreign word in a novel that I stumble across (both in my travels and intellectually).
This is my address for the next six months. Send me things to read. Frank Herbert, Robert E. Howard, Vladimir Nabokov, Ayn Rand, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, Arthur Conan Doyle, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Henry David Thoreau, Hunter S. Thompson, Borges. The mountains are cold and lovely and my evenings are empty.
Robert Reeve
534 Ridge Road
Nederland, CO 80466
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Bourgeoisie.
For forty dollars you could have bought a ticket to tour seven historical homes owned by rich people this weekend. I volunteered for this project because our team volunteered for it, and then was told that the high cost meant it wouldn't count as ISP, but by then we were all stuck with it.
Rich people can be awfully rude. It's not that their gaze passes over you, comes to you and stops, recognizing you as a person, only to move on. It's more like they've perfected the art of not even registering the presence of those in a lower tax bracket than them. Their eyes pass from wallpaper to drapes as if you're a fixture in the room, a table set between the two.
---
When you stand in the same room for three hours as hundreds of people sift in and out, patterns emerge. Someone says "This room'd keep you awake!" every ten minutes. I was fortunate enough to have a chair in my room that I took advantage of, sure to sit as dignified as possible. This was still not enough for some.
"I see," one said to me as he passed through the room, all the entitlement of an aristocrat. "Sitting." How much contempt can you possibly put into one word spoken to a stranger doing nothing wrong?
And another, skipping hellos: "And what information do you have for me about this room?"
"I'm afraid they didn't tell me much more beyond that it's the guest bedroom for the owner's granddaughters."
"Ah. They already mentioned this. Not very informative; perhaps you'll be fired." There was not a hint of amusement in her voice, and I wore a shit-eating grin all throughout.
People smile if you smile, and continue about their business. Occasionally someone will say hello; once an hour someone will talk to you, as a human might to another human.
---
The walls are a mustard-orange background with magenta toile print, and three triangular scenes repeat all across the wall in thin rosy lines: Tigers stalking through a jungle, people riding elephants, people chasing ostriches. The bedframes match the Indian motif of the wallpaper: headboards upholstered with magenta curves like the dome of the Taj Mahal. Many pillows all embroidered. I hear a lady in the other room say the floors are pickled wood, but it just looks like painted wood to me. The wallpaper continues into the bathroom, and the shower curtain and drapes and the trim of the beds have the same print on them.
The room on the other side of the hall is a living room with beautiful bookshelves. The sea-green walls are shiny, smooth and laquered. There's a sofa and two high-backed chairs surrounding a coffee table, a Persian rug beneath them all leading out to the back deck where a flutist is playing.
A tiny bathroom-- they insist on calling it a "powder room"-- is at the end of the hall, formerly a broom closet. A sharkskin-covered door opens to a dark room, black and red and gold wallpaper in some Asian scene I can't recall. The ceiling makes me think of Escher, since it's cut to accomodate the bottom of the stairs just above.
Each room is unbelievably tall, easily fifteen feet. The doors stop but the walls keeps going. Transom windows perch atop each doorframe, double doors made of tall thin slats of wood built like a drawing of a raft. Random paintings hang upon every wall, no unified style at all. Textured modern art hangs beside realistic oil portraiture, calligraphy and abstract watercolors the next room over. Every room is lavishly decorated and not at all tied to the next, chaotic jumble of pattern and texture and color permeating the whole of the house.
Old rich people get old, but their houses sure are something to aspire to.
Rich people can be awfully rude. It's not that their gaze passes over you, comes to you and stops, recognizing you as a person, only to move on. It's more like they've perfected the art of not even registering the presence of those in a lower tax bracket than them. Their eyes pass from wallpaper to drapes as if you're a fixture in the room, a table set between the two.
---
When you stand in the same room for three hours as hundreds of people sift in and out, patterns emerge. Someone says "This room'd keep you awake!" every ten minutes. I was fortunate enough to have a chair in my room that I took advantage of, sure to sit as dignified as possible. This was still not enough for some.
"I see," one said to me as he passed through the room, all the entitlement of an aristocrat. "Sitting." How much contempt can you possibly put into one word spoken to a stranger doing nothing wrong?
And another, skipping hellos: "And what information do you have for me about this room?"
"I'm afraid they didn't tell me much more beyond that it's the guest bedroom for the owner's granddaughters."
"Ah. They already mentioned this. Not very informative; perhaps you'll be fired." There was not a hint of amusement in her voice, and I wore a shit-eating grin all throughout.
People smile if you smile, and continue about their business. Occasionally someone will say hello; once an hour someone will talk to you, as a human might to another human.
---
The walls are a mustard-orange background with magenta toile print, and three triangular scenes repeat all across the wall in thin rosy lines: Tigers stalking through a jungle, people riding elephants, people chasing ostriches. The bedframes match the Indian motif of the wallpaper: headboards upholstered with magenta curves like the dome of the Taj Mahal. Many pillows all embroidered. I hear a lady in the other room say the floors are pickled wood, but it just looks like painted wood to me. The wallpaper continues into the bathroom, and the shower curtain and drapes and the trim of the beds have the same print on them.
The room on the other side of the hall is a living room with beautiful bookshelves. The sea-green walls are shiny, smooth and laquered. There's a sofa and two high-backed chairs surrounding a coffee table, a Persian rug beneath them all leading out to the back deck where a flutist is playing.
A tiny bathroom-- they insist on calling it a "powder room"-- is at the end of the hall, formerly a broom closet. A sharkskin-covered door opens to a dark room, black and red and gold wallpaper in some Asian scene I can't recall. The ceiling makes me think of Escher, since it's cut to accomodate the bottom of the stairs just above.
Each room is unbelievably tall, easily fifteen feet. The doors stop but the walls keeps going. Transom windows perch atop each doorframe, double doors made of tall thin slats of wood built like a drawing of a raft. Random paintings hang upon every wall, no unified style at all. Textured modern art hangs beside realistic oil portraiture, calligraphy and abstract watercolors the next room over. Every room is lavishly decorated and not at all tied to the next, chaotic jumble of pattern and texture and color permeating the whole of the house.
Old rich people get old, but their houses sure are something to aspire to.
Saturday, December 13, 2008
Objectively hilarious, subjectively creepy.
Magazine street is lined with antique shops and thrift stores. I must be getting older; my interests have shifted to looking at furniture, imagining what I'd like in the house years distant in my head.
I wandered in an out a few of them, most of them closing by 5pm on Saturday. The last one I had time for was nothing special, and the man running it was in his 50s, unattractive. A bit of a belly, and that bushy backcombed hair that mobsters have in the 80's movies. He was taking a phone call, and spoke each keyword into the receiver three times. "It's in storage, storage, storage. No, you can come get it Tuesday. Tuesday, Tuesday." I took a slow lap around the big store. Compared to the others, not much caught my eye.
As I approached the door he cut the voice on the other end off, said he had a customer, and hung up. He stood right by the door, not quite blocking it but not quite giving me enough space to leave, and he asked if I needed help finding anything, and how long I'd been in New Orleans, a smattering of other questions to make conversation. Almost immediately I started to suspect I was being come on to, and when he'd mentioned a gay bookstore on Frenchman street, mmmmy suspicions were confirmed. I told him that I stumbled upon it and saw the fiction section right up front and had been duped, that I moved a shelf too far and began to realize this was not the kind of bookstore I first thought it was. I left in a hurry.
He talked about his ex-wife briefly and how he'd been caught with another guy while he showed me around the antique store. He said that with all the work we do rebuilding the city, we must get very sore, and that I should come back to his house with him for a massage sometime. I told him my teammates were probably expecting me for dinner about now.
I left almost instantly after he laughed, touched me on the shoulder for just a second-- but still a second too long-- and noted that my Americorps situation sounded like it lacked privacy, that I probably didn't ever find the time to jerk off, and that I must be very horny.
I was out the door in about five seconds or less, a polite goodbye and a swift walk down the block while calling any of my teammates I was out with to find out where they were and tell them about this, the most forward anyone's ever been while hitting on me.
I wandered in an out a few of them, most of them closing by 5pm on Saturday. The last one I had time for was nothing special, and the man running it was in his 50s, unattractive. A bit of a belly, and that bushy backcombed hair that mobsters have in the 80's movies. He was taking a phone call, and spoke each keyword into the receiver three times. "It's in storage, storage, storage. No, you can come get it Tuesday. Tuesday, Tuesday." I took a slow lap around the big store. Compared to the others, not much caught my eye.
As I approached the door he cut the voice on the other end off, said he had a customer, and hung up. He stood right by the door, not quite blocking it but not quite giving me enough space to leave, and he asked if I needed help finding anything, and how long I'd been in New Orleans, a smattering of other questions to make conversation. Almost immediately I started to suspect I was being come on to, and when he'd mentioned a gay bookstore on Frenchman street, mmmmy suspicions were confirmed. I told him that I stumbled upon it and saw the fiction section right up front and had been duped, that I moved a shelf too far and began to realize this was not the kind of bookstore I first thought it was. I left in a hurry.
He talked about his ex-wife briefly and how he'd been caught with another guy while he showed me around the antique store. He said that with all the work we do rebuilding the city, we must get very sore, and that I should come back to his house with him for a massage sometime. I told him my teammates were probably expecting me for dinner about now.
I left almost instantly after he laughed, touched me on the shoulder for just a second-- but still a second too long-- and noted that my Americorps situation sounded like it lacked privacy, that I probably didn't ever find the time to jerk off, and that I must be very horny.
I was out the door in about five seconds or less, a polite goodbye and a swift walk down the block while calling any of my teammates I was out with to find out where they were and tell them about this, the most forward anyone's ever been while hitting on me.
Friday, December 12, 2008
The first set of last days.
Yesterday it snowed, a once-every-four-years occurrence in New Orleans. We were going to work in a house with the all the back walls torn off, utterly stripped-- a deconstruction project, salvaging the house for wood. 45 minutes in we were reassigned. We worked in a house with no heat, and I painted trim and watched a bifold closet door get installed in one room and watched kitchen cabinets get installed in the other. Another instance of there being more hands than work, which makes for a slow day.
I spent my last day of work today canvassing neighborhoods, surveying and passing out fliers for Rebuilding Together. They gave us a map of a few city blocks, with the lots' boundaries outlined. We looked at the houses and decided if they were completed, rebuilding, blighted, or a vacant lot. Some houses look fine on the outside and are really fucked up on the inside, or completely gutted. A lot of these are bank-owned. A whole lot of the houses have been completely abandoned; not many people really want to rebuild this area. The completed houses look lovely, but are still sad spectacles alongside ten unhouses. We finished at about one p.m., and I worked on a frame for a trash can as part of the extra hours I have to do.
We played football today, three injuries in fifteen minutes. Garrett elbowed solidly in the nose, myself tripped and sent tumbling to land on a metal water bottle marking an end zone, and Aaron hit in the face, contact knocked out. Huge dent in the water bottle; my hip is killing me whenever I move. Fuck football, I never get hurt when I just go for a run.
---
Since I've come here, I've done a variety of things:
Replace broken window panes
Intall curtainrods
Lay grout and tile
Repair holes in wood and drywall
Lay bamboo flooring
Cut and lay baseboard
Paint, paint, paint, interior and exterior
If one were to distill the experience into the moments of good, strong work, I would tell you it was immensely enjoyable. Especially lately, now that all of this garbage has passed, it's been very fun. Disappointed to leave New Orleans behind with so little exploration, so little time spent seeing the things to see.
But when you hand me a rag, though, and tell me to wipe a floor, get the dust out from between the bamboo boards because we don't use brooms, to get on my hands and knees with a wet rag because we don't use mops. When you hand me a paint brush and tell me to touch up spots smaller than a fingernail on the underside of an overhand of a roof in the backyard two stories up. When you have me standing around doing absolutely nothing for an hour because you've got too many people in one place. This is when I'm upset. It's a great program, and it's great work. I just wish there was more of it.
---
My brother wrote a book. It is a novel set in his D&D world, I'm sad that I have to wait two weeks after its finish before I can read it, and that by the time I get my hands on a copy, a dozen other people will already have finished it. I am excited to read tales of a place I wish was my home, in the comfort of my home.
I spent my last day of work today canvassing neighborhoods, surveying and passing out fliers for Rebuilding Together. They gave us a map of a few city blocks, with the lots' boundaries outlined. We looked at the houses and decided if they were completed, rebuilding, blighted, or a vacant lot. Some houses look fine on the outside and are really fucked up on the inside, or completely gutted. A lot of these are bank-owned. A whole lot of the houses have been completely abandoned; not many people really want to rebuild this area. The completed houses look lovely, but are still sad spectacles alongside ten unhouses. We finished at about one p.m., and I worked on a frame for a trash can as part of the extra hours I have to do.
We played football today, three injuries in fifteen minutes. Garrett elbowed solidly in the nose, myself tripped and sent tumbling to land on a metal water bottle marking an end zone, and Aaron hit in the face, contact knocked out. Huge dent in the water bottle; my hip is killing me whenever I move. Fuck football, I never get hurt when I just go for a run.
---
Since I've come here, I've done a variety of things:
Replace broken window panes
Intall curtainrods
Lay grout and tile
Repair holes in wood and drywall
Lay bamboo flooring
Cut and lay baseboard
Paint, paint, paint, interior and exterior
If one were to distill the experience into the moments of good, strong work, I would tell you it was immensely enjoyable. Especially lately, now that all of this garbage has passed, it's been very fun. Disappointed to leave New Orleans behind with so little exploration, so little time spent seeing the things to see.
But when you hand me a rag, though, and tell me to wipe a floor, get the dust out from between the bamboo boards because we don't use brooms, to get on my hands and knees with a wet rag because we don't use mops. When you hand me a paint brush and tell me to touch up spots smaller than a fingernail on the underside of an overhand of a roof in the backyard two stories up. When you have me standing around doing absolutely nothing for an hour because you've got too many people in one place. This is when I'm upset. It's a great program, and it's great work. I just wish there was more of it.
---
My brother wrote a book. It is a novel set in his D&D world, I'm sad that I have to wait two weeks after its finish before I can read it, and that by the time I get my hands on a copy, a dozen other people will already have finished it. I am excited to read tales of a place I wish was my home, in the comfort of my home.
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Saved for Obama. Or your mother.
So since my last entry I've made my blog invite-only thanks to a long procession of drama.
I have 4 hours of extra instruction I have to do for running by myself Thanksgiving weekend. I was given (and accepted) the option to write a rebuttal, which I emailed to the unit leader. He won't be back in office until the 15th.
I have 12 hours of extra instruction and a $25 fine for an alcohol offense. Anyone who knows me (which is all of you, now that things are private) know that this is not at all the sort of thing that I would ordinarily be involved with. But because we have retardedly strict rules, the one sip I had in the housing is severely punished, while the teammates who stumbled in drunk that night but had nothing in the house itself are fine. Originally I was also told I wasn't a firefighter for spike round two-- effectively giving me a six-week delay on firefighting-- but this was rescinded.
They dismissed us from the over-the-phone disciplinary hearing in tiers-- the unpunished (Chris, Garrett, and Andrea), the "lightly punished" (Wendy and I), and the severely punished (Will, Aaron, Jeremy, and Haley). They were given 12 hours, $100 fines, and were kicked off of firefighting. Carmella, for being gone all weekend and playing dumb about the party, got only one punishment: not being a firefighting team leader for spike round two. This punishment was rescinded. I guess she got the displeasure of being chewed out, but I'll take that over a fine any day. I stormed out, angry I was punished so harshly, despite it being a first offense, despite my being the only sober person all weekend. I knocked over a ladder accidentally and was called back in, chastized by Barbara Lane, Region Director for my anger management problem and my authority issues. Great, now I'm a belligerent crazy person too. When I found out they broke up our team just after this, I ducked in the room where Carmella was on the phone with Barbara and Kevin Rumery and said, "I quit." We stared at each other silently for a few moments, and I walked out.
A half-hour later I changed my mind. She said it was too late; they bought a bus ticket and I was expected in Denver and was leaving tomorrow morning at 8:30am. I called Kevin, told him I changed my mind. He called Barbara and she said I could stay, but only if I paid the $150 ticket. Sigh. I agree, and Kevin hints that one of the reasons it went through so quickly may have been that Carmella was not sad to see me go. Surprise surprise.
---
Fortunately Garrett, Will, Aaron and I made $230 in two days-- almost as much as I make in a month, now-- campaigning for Joseph Cao, congressman in an election delayed by Hurricane Rita. The democratic incumbent was caught with $90,000 in bribery money in his freezer and so a hard push was made to get him out of office. Apparently the election was narrowly won, and some of the districts we campaigned in were battleground districts that had huge jumps in voting just after my teammates and I worked them. Cool sensation, that your actions might have decided an election.
We learned of the job from our co-workers at Rebuilding Together. We worked three hours Friday night and made $50, went home and slept 5 hours and woke up at 3am. Chris joined us and we got back to the barbershop the campaign operated out of by 4am to work seventeen more hours and make $180. Like the twist ending of the movie, as we walk in to get our paychecks at the end of the night Saturday, in walks Kristen Palmer.
This lady, she runs the program we work for, Rebuilding Together New Orleans. She's on the board for the Preservation Resource Center, one of the power players in rebuilding the city. She is our boss's boss's boss. It does not get higher up than her. She gave us a really neat presentation on architecture in New Orleans when we first got here. We were a little surprised to see her, and a little afraid. But she walks in and hugs Wilma, this pleasant Southern lady who's been sending us driving 170 miles and walking god knows how many throughout the day. They insist we come to the party tonight. "Thanks For Volunteers Party," Wilma insists. "It's bad luck to say 'victory party.'" Given that she was about the nicest boss I've ever had and she paid for our lunch at an excellent, huge Chinese food/sushi/dessert buffet, and she says the party has free booze, we're considering. But we're getting tired. We decline.
On the drive home we change our mind. We hoped for an even $200 for Saturday and decided to make up for our lost money in alcohol. We get to the place for the party, the Palace Cafe, and it's a three-story, very classy restaurant downtown. Everyone's in suits, everyone's older than us. We're in our Joseph Gao t-shirts we've been wearing for two days. We are clearly underdressed. We move quickly to the small bar, the waiter in a dress shirt and bow tie. He has red and white wine and some bottled import beer. I opt for the red wine as Kristin comes over, dressed in earth tones, a 20's style flapper hat the same brown as her sweater and a cream shawl draped over her shoulders. "We feel out of place. Underdressed," I tell her.
"Don't be ridiculous, we need people like you here. Look at me, I'm underdressed too," she says earnestly. I don't buy it, she looks great. "This stuff doesn't get done without you guys, and you've got that hardworking look going on. It's fine," she insists. She's just a little drunk, she smiles and winks at me. The other guys are pretty quiet, slip off to drink. I finish my first glass of wine and grab another and Kristin continues to make conversation.
"I'm out of my element, I'm serious. I've never been to one of these high-class things with all these big names. All I know about this, I've picked up in the last two days," I tell her. She's happy to help. She starts pointing people out, leaning in and talking right into my ear over all the crowd-rabble. I have a hard time remembering the names, but one of the first people she points at is a guy with a huge nose and a little chin, balding. She says his name and says, "Fucking icon in this city-- Ugly as sin, though. His wife over there," she points, "She's a classy lady, always dressed to the nines." I remember Will, I think, mentioning that Kristin's apparently kind of a name in this city too, and I move to flatter. "From what I hear, you're kind of a fucking icon here too," I say. It works. She smiles, acts dismissive, but still elaborates. "I ran for office, but I didn't win-- it was a black neighborhood, but I came way closer than any white candidate ever did, because of my work, because they know me, and I help those communities out."
A Vietnamese man in a polo I remember from the barbershop approaches, thanks me for my work. It's Joseph Cao's brother from Texas, and he and Kristin talk about disaster non-profits and their lack of funding thanks to presidential decrees. She talks about her programs, and introduces me again, mentions that I'm volunteering for her. She gives another wink. "I worked seventeen hours campaigning today," I say with a grin. It becomes my standard opening line for the rest of the night. "I'm working for Rebuilding Together, but I'm part of Americorps." I explain Americorps briefly, and throw in that Bush wanted to cut our program completely but instead gave us a quarter our usual budget. Already I find myself playing the game, and Kristin's smiling away.
When the conversation ends Kristin says, "Almost everyone here's a Republican. Fuck the Republicans, but you've gotta play the game, you know? The budget's going to come up and now he's going to mention us when he talks to his brother, and that's that. It's all about these little connections--" Someone walks within earshot and she instantly conjures an easy smile and a greeting like that you'd give a close friend. "If you go to the dark side and go corporate it's even worse, the schmoozing you have to do. At least I still have my integrity," she assures me.
A few people talk to her, one of her standard lines is "Our kids should be carpooling together," and I stand peripheral, quickly learning my role: working boy accessory. She works people over well, and I'm having fun watching, participating. The wine helps, I'm smiling an earnest-looking smile, and I'm learning a lot about the secret charms and deals that go on here. She's a little drunker as the night goes on, and when the bar closes at 11:30 she says "What? Fuck this, that means it's time to go! Where's Wilma?"
We find her and she's drunk too, she hugs me and thanks me and introduces me to still more people. "Don't listen to Kristin," she says seriously. "You've done more for rebuilding the city this night than you could ever do in any of the rest of your time here." Kristin feigns upset and waves it off. "Not if we don't work to keep him here, we won't. He barely won, even in spite of Jefferson's garbage. Do you have a ride home?" She asks me. I'm really curious to see what they plan on getting up to for the rest of the night, but I tell her I do. She walks toward my team, all drinking together at a table in the back, thanks them for their work, says goodbye to me. I grin at them. I'm happy I've had a wildly entertaining night learning about political maneuverings. They're happy they've gotten free drinks. I realize that as far as I'm concerned, they've completely missed the point of the evening.
---
Last night I worked in a community center. Unable to help myself, the first thing I did was peruse the free bookshelf. Almost took a children's book on the myth of Cadmus, founder of Thebes. Some of us wrapped presents. Tuesday nights they serve free meals to the communities and we helped prepare it-- sort of. The cook was utterly self-sufficient and hilariously, charmingly rural. Talked about hating his time in the army and being drunk literally every day of his two years there Insisted he could cook perfect rice. We ended up serving the meals to sad-looking people. Undercooked, wet rice. Gravy with bits of hamburger broken up in it. Corn. I was very hungry until I actually ate it, and then realized I could barely get it down. The chocolate brownie mix with dried cherries and a powdered-sugar-based glazing made it tolerable.
I couldn't decide if it was hopeful or depressing. Some of the people who came for dinner just loved that a place like that existed, where they could get donated clothes, books, toys for their kids. Others never looked up from the floor, never said a word, battered clothing.
---
I haven't run in five days and I'd really like to soon. This is my last weekend in New Orleans and I still haven't eaten at Cafe du Monde, haven't eaten alligator, haven't taken pictures of the old mausoleums or the collapsing houses covered in ivy. I still feel like I didn't get enough time to see New Orleans the way I'd like to have seen New Orleans. In five days I leave for Denver again. In eleven I'll be home and I'll get to see my family again (I'm excited to go home; I miss them). In fifteen days I'll see Kat again, whereupon I will be even further delighted. Right now, I have a lot of happy things to look forward to, and even though I was pretty angry and upset last week, I realize that I'm pretty happy right now.
I have 4 hours of extra instruction I have to do for running by myself Thanksgiving weekend. I was given (and accepted) the option to write a rebuttal, which I emailed to the unit leader. He won't be back in office until the 15th.
I have 12 hours of extra instruction and a $25 fine for an alcohol offense. Anyone who knows me (which is all of you, now that things are private) know that this is not at all the sort of thing that I would ordinarily be involved with. But because we have retardedly strict rules, the one sip I had in the housing is severely punished, while the teammates who stumbled in drunk that night but had nothing in the house itself are fine. Originally I was also told I wasn't a firefighter for spike round two-- effectively giving me a six-week delay on firefighting-- but this was rescinded.
They dismissed us from the over-the-phone disciplinary hearing in tiers-- the unpunished (Chris, Garrett, and Andrea), the "lightly punished" (Wendy and I), and the severely punished (Will, Aaron, Jeremy, and Haley). They were given 12 hours, $100 fines, and were kicked off of firefighting. Carmella, for being gone all weekend and playing dumb about the party, got only one punishment: not being a firefighting team leader for spike round two. This punishment was rescinded. I guess she got the displeasure of being chewed out, but I'll take that over a fine any day. I stormed out, angry I was punished so harshly, despite it being a first offense, despite my being the only sober person all weekend. I knocked over a ladder accidentally and was called back in, chastized by Barbara Lane, Region Director for my anger management problem and my authority issues. Great, now I'm a belligerent crazy person too. When I found out they broke up our team just after this, I ducked in the room where Carmella was on the phone with Barbara and Kevin Rumery and said, "I quit." We stared at each other silently for a few moments, and I walked out.
A half-hour later I changed my mind. She said it was too late; they bought a bus ticket and I was expected in Denver and was leaving tomorrow morning at 8:30am. I called Kevin, told him I changed my mind. He called Barbara and she said I could stay, but only if I paid the $150 ticket. Sigh. I agree, and Kevin hints that one of the reasons it went through so quickly may have been that Carmella was not sad to see me go. Surprise surprise.
---
Fortunately Garrett, Will, Aaron and I made $230 in two days-- almost as much as I make in a month, now-- campaigning for Joseph Cao, congressman in an election delayed by Hurricane Rita. The democratic incumbent was caught with $90,000 in bribery money in his freezer and so a hard push was made to get him out of office. Apparently the election was narrowly won, and some of the districts we campaigned in were battleground districts that had huge jumps in voting just after my teammates and I worked them. Cool sensation, that your actions might have decided an election.
We learned of the job from our co-workers at Rebuilding Together. We worked three hours Friday night and made $50, went home and slept 5 hours and woke up at 3am. Chris joined us and we got back to the barbershop the campaign operated out of by 4am to work seventeen more hours and make $180. Like the twist ending of the movie, as we walk in to get our paychecks at the end of the night Saturday, in walks Kristen Palmer.
This lady, she runs the program we work for, Rebuilding Together New Orleans. She's on the board for the Preservation Resource Center, one of the power players in rebuilding the city. She is our boss's boss's boss. It does not get higher up than her. She gave us a really neat presentation on architecture in New Orleans when we first got here. We were a little surprised to see her, and a little afraid. But she walks in and hugs Wilma, this pleasant Southern lady who's been sending us driving 170 miles and walking god knows how many throughout the day. They insist we come to the party tonight. "Thanks For Volunteers Party," Wilma insists. "It's bad luck to say 'victory party.'" Given that she was about the nicest boss I've ever had and she paid for our lunch at an excellent, huge Chinese food/sushi/dessert buffet, and she says the party has free booze, we're considering. But we're getting tired. We decline.
On the drive home we change our mind. We hoped for an even $200 for Saturday and decided to make up for our lost money in alcohol. We get to the place for the party, the Palace Cafe, and it's a three-story, very classy restaurant downtown. Everyone's in suits, everyone's older than us. We're in our Joseph Gao t-shirts we've been wearing for two days. We are clearly underdressed. We move quickly to the small bar, the waiter in a dress shirt and bow tie. He has red and white wine and some bottled import beer. I opt for the red wine as Kristin comes over, dressed in earth tones, a 20's style flapper hat the same brown as her sweater and a cream shawl draped over her shoulders. "We feel out of place. Underdressed," I tell her.
"Don't be ridiculous, we need people like you here. Look at me, I'm underdressed too," she says earnestly. I don't buy it, she looks great. "This stuff doesn't get done without you guys, and you've got that hardworking look going on. It's fine," she insists. She's just a little drunk, she smiles and winks at me. The other guys are pretty quiet, slip off to drink. I finish my first glass of wine and grab another and Kristin continues to make conversation.
"I'm out of my element, I'm serious. I've never been to one of these high-class things with all these big names. All I know about this, I've picked up in the last two days," I tell her. She's happy to help. She starts pointing people out, leaning in and talking right into my ear over all the crowd-rabble. I have a hard time remembering the names, but one of the first people she points at is a guy with a huge nose and a little chin, balding. She says his name and says, "Fucking icon in this city-- Ugly as sin, though. His wife over there," she points, "She's a classy lady, always dressed to the nines." I remember Will, I think, mentioning that Kristin's apparently kind of a name in this city too, and I move to flatter. "From what I hear, you're kind of a fucking icon here too," I say. It works. She smiles, acts dismissive, but still elaborates. "I ran for office, but I didn't win-- it was a black neighborhood, but I came way closer than any white candidate ever did, because of my work, because they know me, and I help those communities out."
A Vietnamese man in a polo I remember from the barbershop approaches, thanks me for my work. It's Joseph Cao's brother from Texas, and he and Kristin talk about disaster non-profits and their lack of funding thanks to presidential decrees. She talks about her programs, and introduces me again, mentions that I'm volunteering for her. She gives another wink. "I worked seventeen hours campaigning today," I say with a grin. It becomes my standard opening line for the rest of the night. "I'm working for Rebuilding Together, but I'm part of Americorps." I explain Americorps briefly, and throw in that Bush wanted to cut our program completely but instead gave us a quarter our usual budget. Already I find myself playing the game, and Kristin's smiling away.
When the conversation ends Kristin says, "Almost everyone here's a Republican. Fuck the Republicans, but you've gotta play the game, you know? The budget's going to come up and now he's going to mention us when he talks to his brother, and that's that. It's all about these little connections--" Someone walks within earshot and she instantly conjures an easy smile and a greeting like that you'd give a close friend. "If you go to the dark side and go corporate it's even worse, the schmoozing you have to do. At least I still have my integrity," she assures me.
A few people talk to her, one of her standard lines is "Our kids should be carpooling together," and I stand peripheral, quickly learning my role: working boy accessory. She works people over well, and I'm having fun watching, participating. The wine helps, I'm smiling an earnest-looking smile, and I'm learning a lot about the secret charms and deals that go on here. She's a little drunker as the night goes on, and when the bar closes at 11:30 she says "What? Fuck this, that means it's time to go! Where's Wilma?"
We find her and she's drunk too, she hugs me and thanks me and introduces me to still more people. "Don't listen to Kristin," she says seriously. "You've done more for rebuilding the city this night than you could ever do in any of the rest of your time here." Kristin feigns upset and waves it off. "Not if we don't work to keep him here, we won't. He barely won, even in spite of Jefferson's garbage. Do you have a ride home?" She asks me. I'm really curious to see what they plan on getting up to for the rest of the night, but I tell her I do. She walks toward my team, all drinking together at a table in the back, thanks them for their work, says goodbye to me. I grin at them. I'm happy I've had a wildly entertaining night learning about political maneuverings. They're happy they've gotten free drinks. I realize that as far as I'm concerned, they've completely missed the point of the evening.
---
Last night I worked in a community center. Unable to help myself, the first thing I did was peruse the free bookshelf. Almost took a children's book on the myth of Cadmus, founder of Thebes. Some of us wrapped presents. Tuesday nights they serve free meals to the communities and we helped prepare it-- sort of. The cook was utterly self-sufficient and hilariously, charmingly rural. Talked about hating his time in the army and being drunk literally every day of his two years there Insisted he could cook perfect rice. We ended up serving the meals to sad-looking people. Undercooked, wet rice. Gravy with bits of hamburger broken up in it. Corn. I was very hungry until I actually ate it, and then realized I could barely get it down. The chocolate brownie mix with dried cherries and a powdered-sugar-based glazing made it tolerable.
I couldn't decide if it was hopeful or depressing. Some of the people who came for dinner just loved that a place like that existed, where they could get donated clothes, books, toys for their kids. Others never looked up from the floor, never said a word, battered clothing.
---
I haven't run in five days and I'd really like to soon. This is my last weekend in New Orleans and I still haven't eaten at Cafe du Monde, haven't eaten alligator, haven't taken pictures of the old mausoleums or the collapsing houses covered in ivy. I still feel like I didn't get enough time to see New Orleans the way I'd like to have seen New Orleans. In five days I leave for Denver again. In eleven I'll be home and I'll get to see my family again (I'm excited to go home; I miss them). In fifteen days I'll see Kat again, whereupon I will be even further delighted. Right now, I have a lot of happy things to look forward to, and even though I was pretty angry and upset last week, I realize that I'm pretty happy right now.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Pale Blue Eyes.
The computer at my house (I am careful to use the word "house" and not the word "home;" they have very different connotations) is a public computer. Some people have laptops; I did not wish to inconvenience them with borrowing theirs when this perfectly serviceable one is available to me. I am using it even now.
But after the incredibly lengthy lecture I received from Carmella last night, I'm not so sure I ever care to again. It turns out that Carmella goes through the history of this computer periodically "because it's not ours," in case we're using it for anything subversive. What she's looking for, exactly, I'm not sure-- but in the process she apparently found this, and told me it was incredibly rude to her and my team members. Hi, Carmella.
When Carmella gets mad, she adopts a tone and body language that could be a cousin to sarcasm. First she told me that she saw me running on Decatur, and that she was going to write me up and that I have to do four hours of additional learning.
Then she told me that "By the way, I read your blog, and you even talk about your running there, and you say some pretty rude stuff in there." She said it's going to alienate me from people with how rude I am, and that she sent it to Kevin Rumery, earth unit leader-- as if it were worth the effort for him to read. This was the exact moment it started to feel like an interrogation; I a suspect, my journal submitted to headquarters as evidence. Hi, Kevin.
The subtext to the blog discussion was that I shouldn't be allowed to say anything negative in my blog about anyone and that if I do then I shouldn't have it, or why can't I just make it private. I said that it was a sort of release for me, and that it was for my friends and family back home to read, not my team members; I have no intention of changing my tone. Nobody is making you read this but yourself. This is no smoking gun; I am not actually stupid enough to post anything I know will get me in tangible trouble-- or apparently not. I thought running would be forgivable compared to the massive amounts of drinking that took place this weekend, but as far as I know, I'm the only one to receive a punishment yet. (The truth of the matter is that in this place, I am being polite-- I know better than to post my angriest and most frustrated opinions where anyone can see them. You are viewing, have always been viewing, my thoughts in moderation.)
Then she told me that I was a terrible worker last week and that she saw me taking frequent breaks, standing around doing nothing. She had the audacity to say that the group would have actually gotten more work done if I hadn't been there; that someone more productive would have been able to use the ladder I was on. I reminded her that I was sick last week, and that I was doing the best I could. She told me that if I was sick I should just call off for the day rather than waste everyone's time. I told her I'd rather do some work than no work at all, and that the idea that I was actually making less work happen with my presence was ridiculous.
After the speech about how I was going to alienate my teammates, she asked me to tell her everything about who drank, how much, and when, perhaps failing to miss the point that this would be the most self-damning thing I could do if people found out I did it.
Then she asked me what my problem was with Haley; that I said some pretty rude things about her. I went through my blog in my head, recounting. I knew I hadn't said anything that rude about her. It was all informative. I cannot change what she does or says. I do not make these things up; I simply write them as they happen. Certainly I interject a frustrated comment here or there, but this is only natural: It is a frustrating situation, putting me in a frustrated mood.
"You snapped at her when she wanted to help you with the turkey on Thanksgiving--"
Irked. "Carmella, you haven't seen me snap at someone yet."
She pauses. "Still, you were awfully curt with her."
I like to do things myself. I didn't need help with the turkey, and I didn't want help with the turkey. And then I recalled a brief team meeting shortly after I put the turkey in the oven: Carmella said we needed to be patient with one another because the kitchen was going to be busy and to try not to raise our voices at one another. At the time I felt like this was directed specifically at me, but then I remembered Joseph periodically scolding: "You always think everything is about you and it's not." I am sometimes paranoid, but I am also still calculating, analyzing; it turns out that yes, it is about me a lot of the time.
Next, talking about her. She was very mad I called her a boozer, angrily asked why I would say that. I told her her teammates last year said she used to drink in spike housing and the firefighting house all the time, and that some people saw her carrying around drinks downtown. "You weren't there last year, and apparently they never talked about second, third, or fourth round, all of team leader training. But I'm a boozer because I was carrying one drink. You're judging me on one drink." She settled with, "Last year was last year and this year was this year and they're two completely different things in my mind."
She wanted to know how I felt about her, and I gave her my honest answer: I think she is a nice girl, and I've had some good times with her, but I think she is unnecessarily ironclad with the rules because of past misgivings, and she's trying to overcompensate for them. That she is keeping an incredibly tight grip on the team because she doesn't want to be punished if we do something wrong.
Then we talked about me, which basically amounted to: What is your problem? Do you even want to be on this team? Is this going to be an issue come firefighting? On firefighting we'll be even closer, have less time to ourselves, and you can't have any issues with anyone when you're working that close to them (a silly notion, getting along perfectly with every co-worker). I told her I can separate my frustrations with co-workers from my work ethic, and that I am perfectly capable of keeping my head down and getting through the job. She said this was no way to go through a year, and if I'm not happy with things now and I'm not happy when we get to firefighting, then what? And I told her I'd quit, and I told her I am not a happy person, and I started to tear up.
She said she'd picked everyone on this team for a reason and we work well together and that I shouldn't just quit if something can be done to make it work, and a blurry, lengthy rambling about my discontent, depression. She asked if I wanted to talk to someone about it, Jamie Brennan in Denver or the Gulf Coast lady whose name I can't remember, both Americorps human resource psychiatrist people. I think it's awkward to talk to someone who barely knows anything about me about my problems, and I told her as much-- that there's something to be said for shutting up and dealing with it.
Kat told me I should talk to one of them, though, and she's probably the only one who could actually convince me it's worth doing, so I guess I will. But first I have to write a rebuttal to this running offense, and tomorrow we've got some team Kevin-yells-at-us-over-the-speakerphone-of-Carmella's-cell-phone disciplinary hearing.
Some people work very hard
But still they never get it right
Well I'm beginning to see the light
But after the incredibly lengthy lecture I received from Carmella last night, I'm not so sure I ever care to again. It turns out that Carmella goes through the history of this computer periodically "because it's not ours," in case we're using it for anything subversive. What she's looking for, exactly, I'm not sure-- but in the process she apparently found this, and told me it was incredibly rude to her and my team members. Hi, Carmella.
When Carmella gets mad, she adopts a tone and body language that could be a cousin to sarcasm. First she told me that she saw me running on Decatur, and that she was going to write me up and that I have to do four hours of additional learning.
Then she told me that "By the way, I read your blog, and you even talk about your running there, and you say some pretty rude stuff in there." She said it's going to alienate me from people with how rude I am, and that she sent it to Kevin Rumery, earth unit leader-- as if it were worth the effort for him to read. This was the exact moment it started to feel like an interrogation; I a suspect, my journal submitted to headquarters as evidence. Hi, Kevin.
The subtext to the blog discussion was that I shouldn't be allowed to say anything negative in my blog about anyone and that if I do then I shouldn't have it, or why can't I just make it private. I said that it was a sort of release for me, and that it was for my friends and family back home to read, not my team members; I have no intention of changing my tone. Nobody is making you read this but yourself. This is no smoking gun; I am not actually stupid enough to post anything I know will get me in tangible trouble-- or apparently not. I thought running would be forgivable compared to the massive amounts of drinking that took place this weekend, but as far as I know, I'm the only one to receive a punishment yet. (The truth of the matter is that in this place, I am being polite-- I know better than to post my angriest and most frustrated opinions where anyone can see them. You are viewing, have always been viewing, my thoughts in moderation.)
Then she told me that I was a terrible worker last week and that she saw me taking frequent breaks, standing around doing nothing. She had the audacity to say that the group would have actually gotten more work done if I hadn't been there; that someone more productive would have been able to use the ladder I was on. I reminded her that I was sick last week, and that I was doing the best I could. She told me that if I was sick I should just call off for the day rather than waste everyone's time. I told her I'd rather do some work than no work at all, and that the idea that I was actually making less work happen with my presence was ridiculous.
After the speech about how I was going to alienate my teammates, she asked me to tell her everything about who drank, how much, and when, perhaps failing to miss the point that this would be the most self-damning thing I could do if people found out I did it.
Then she asked me what my problem was with Haley; that I said some pretty rude things about her. I went through my blog in my head, recounting. I knew I hadn't said anything that rude about her. It was all informative. I cannot change what she does or says. I do not make these things up; I simply write them as they happen. Certainly I interject a frustrated comment here or there, but this is only natural: It is a frustrating situation, putting me in a frustrated mood.
"You snapped at her when she wanted to help you with the turkey on Thanksgiving--"
Irked. "Carmella, you haven't seen me snap at someone yet."
She pauses. "Still, you were awfully curt with her."
I like to do things myself. I didn't need help with the turkey, and I didn't want help with the turkey. And then I recalled a brief team meeting shortly after I put the turkey in the oven: Carmella said we needed to be patient with one another because the kitchen was going to be busy and to try not to raise our voices at one another. At the time I felt like this was directed specifically at me, but then I remembered Joseph periodically scolding: "You always think everything is about you and it's not." I am sometimes paranoid, but I am also still calculating, analyzing; it turns out that yes, it is about me a lot of the time.
Next, talking about her. She was very mad I called her a boozer, angrily asked why I would say that. I told her her teammates last year said she used to drink in spike housing and the firefighting house all the time, and that some people saw her carrying around drinks downtown. "You weren't there last year, and apparently they never talked about second, third, or fourth round, all of team leader training. But I'm a boozer because I was carrying one drink. You're judging me on one drink." She settled with, "Last year was last year and this year was this year and they're two completely different things in my mind."
She wanted to know how I felt about her, and I gave her my honest answer: I think she is a nice girl, and I've had some good times with her, but I think she is unnecessarily ironclad with the rules because of past misgivings, and she's trying to overcompensate for them. That she is keeping an incredibly tight grip on the team because she doesn't want to be punished if we do something wrong.
Then we talked about me, which basically amounted to: What is your problem? Do you even want to be on this team? Is this going to be an issue come firefighting? On firefighting we'll be even closer, have less time to ourselves, and you can't have any issues with anyone when you're working that close to them (a silly notion, getting along perfectly with every co-worker). I told her I can separate my frustrations with co-workers from my work ethic, and that I am perfectly capable of keeping my head down and getting through the job. She said this was no way to go through a year, and if I'm not happy with things now and I'm not happy when we get to firefighting, then what? And I told her I'd quit, and I told her I am not a happy person, and I started to tear up.
She said she'd picked everyone on this team for a reason and we work well together and that I shouldn't just quit if something can be done to make it work, and a blurry, lengthy rambling about my discontent, depression. She asked if I wanted to talk to someone about it, Jamie Brennan in Denver or the Gulf Coast lady whose name I can't remember, both Americorps human resource psychiatrist people. I think it's awkward to talk to someone who barely knows anything about me about my problems, and I told her as much-- that there's something to be said for shutting up and dealing with it.
Kat told me I should talk to one of them, though, and she's probably the only one who could actually convince me it's worth doing, so I guess I will. But first I have to write a rebuttal to this running offense, and tomorrow we've got some team Kevin-yells-at-us-over-the-speakerphone-of-Carmella's-cell-phone disciplinary hearing.
Some people work very hard
But still they never get it right
Well I'm beginning to see the light
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)