Life in Omaha (in Scottsdale)

Good Bye for Now

2006-07-27T15:47:00.000-07:00

Regular readers of LiO(iS) should note that we've corrected a grievous error regarding a local Scottsdale civic group. The Scottsdale Jaycees are not a French-hating organization after all.

The exchange between me and the president of the Scottsdale Jaycees--perfectly civil, I should point out--has caused me to reconsider the nature of the blog. I never had any concerns about putting my full name on this blog. I assumed I would be perfectly willing to back up anything I wrote, and I certainly would not publish anything compromising or private.

However, I never intended for the blog to be a public representation of myself or my family. It was always meant as an extended letter home, not as a public platform for my ideas. But with my name on the byline, as it were, and Blogger being a completely public forum, it has become that. LiO(iS) is now untenable in its current form.

Hence, Life in Omaha (in Scottsdale) will cease publication with this entry.

I will be creating a new blog in the near future, which will be written anonymously. Those of you interested can email me, and I will happily give you the new address. The content will still be the same--erratic postings, pictures of the kid, rantings that will still be only mildly amusing--but these will lack the signature at the bottom. As soon as I come up with a good psuedonym, I'll be up and running. Until then,

Ciao, au revoir and good bye.

Tickle those Ivories

2006-07-12T17:57:00.000-07:00

Tickle those Ivories
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Hello Mesa!

2006-07-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Hello Mesa!
Originally uploaded by shermans.

An Intimate Moment with the Audience

2006-07-12T17:53:00.000-07:00

An Intimate Moment with the Audience
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Happy 4th you French Bastards

2006-07-05T19:07:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: The President of the Scottsdale Jaycees informs me that the Jaycees themselves were not responsible for the signs. The editors of LiO(iS) apologize for the error. In the future, we're likely to be as careless, but we'll try to do better.

Since I tarred them with such a careless brush, I feel honor bound to point out that we had a good time at the event and for the record, we don't even like fireworks that much, as my parents will attest. We were very happy that the event was put on, can't fault them too much for the bad taste in music, ate three of their hotdogs, and were at least partially responsible for two of the watermelon seeds floating around. The Scottsdale Jaycees do many wonderful things in the area, and they certainly deserve praise for what they've done. We here at LiO(iS) salute them and look forward to participating and supporting them whenever we can.
________________

Our holiday wore us out. In the morning, Judy went running and I went for a ride in the hills. We don't know what Ciela did, but she was pretty sweaty when we got back. Then it was showers and relaxation while watching Germany v Italy. After that, on to the bikes and a ride over to the pool. Ciela and Judy splashed around. I swam 800m before sinking, and we all floated like jellyfish.

After we tired of swimming, we put on presentable clothes (although, I must say I look very fit in my new speedo 3/4 swim pants--they look more like biking shorts than the traditional speedo, and they do show off the Hermanson derriere quite nicely), and went to Chapparal Park's "Old Fashioned Fourth of July Celebration." They coined the name out of desperation, I think, because they didn't set off any fireworks.

But here's what I want to write about. All around the event, they (the Scottsdale Jaycees, I believe) had placed little patriotic trivia signs. Each sign had two questions, one for adults and one for kids. They were rather innocuous: "What president is on the penny?"; "Name the five branches of the armed service."; "Who wrote the Gettysburg Address?" and so forth.

And this one:

"Name one of the nations the USA fought during World War II."

Go ahead and think of an answer. I'll give you a few moments.

.
?
.
?
.
?
.
?
.
?
Okay, you probably, like me, guessed one of the three original Axis powers: Germany, Japan, or Italy. Probably in that order. But in case you were a little light in your history facts, they provided a hint:

"The Eiffel Tower"

Judy and I looked at each other.

"What the $%&*?!" was my eloquent thought.

Now, technically, they are right, I suppose. France, in a manner of speaking, did collaborate with Germany, but calling France one of our enemies in World War II smacks of historical revisionism, and certainly out of place in the extremely reductive genre of paperboard sign trivia contests on the Fourth of July. It ignores Charles de Gualle, the Free French Forces, and the fact that the US recognized Vichy France as the legitimate government of France--not our proudest moment.

I stood there for a minute, amidst the smoldering hot dogs, the seeds spit from watermelon full mouths, the bad music floating over the sound system (Toby Keith's "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue", a horrible piece of jingoistic and cliche-ridden country pablum completely appropos for the scene) and could just imagine some bitter, arrogant PERSON WHO IS NOT A JAYCEE AND WE REITERATE THAT THE JAYCEES ARE GOOD PEOPLE, smoldering at the indignities thrust upon this country by war protestors, the ACLU, Democrats, environmentalists, homosexuals, coloreds, jews and and Kennedys. He may not be able to swipe at all of them, but goddamn, he was going to get the French. Pass the Freedom Fries, Martha, I'll show them cheese-eaters. Your wine and brie would be beer and sausages if it weren't for good ole Uncle Sam. Take that froggy. And he prints out the delicious morsel of reactionary bile.

The irony, of course, is that the French were our key allies during the Revolutionary War, of which--and I'm sure you are way ahead of me here--this particular holiday celebrates. Were it not for the French, our baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and lemonade would be cricket, fish and chips, and mushy peas. How much would you enjoy your spotted dick and kidney pie, you Limbaugh-loving ignoramus?

This last part I apparently shouted out, much to the confusion and embarassment of Judy. Ciela thought it was pretty funny, though, and ran around saying "spotted dick" to everyone at the festival.

Mass-transit Op-Ed

2006-07-03T09:10:00.000-07:00

The Scottsdale Tribune published my first Op-Ed piece over the weekend. I had sent it in on Monday, and they responded right away, saying they were considering it and could I provide them with a photo. Then nothing for five days. They even ran a letter to the editor on the same topic. I had assumed they had decided not to run it. Then Saturday morning, as I got out of the shower, Judy yelled up that my picture was on the front page. They had given me a "refer" as my friend in the business calls it. A page one blurb about my commentary on the editorial page. In addition to my picture, they also ran a 3x4 picture of traffic above the piece. The whole thing was pretty cool, although my picture makes me look like a doofus who can't afford a haircut.

Here's the piece. The Tribune, unfortunately, doesn't put commentaries on their website. Just official editorials.

----
In Monday’s Tribune, Tom Patterson offered a paean to the highways that ignores the limited and deprived life that comes from a city dependent upon cars. Mr. Patterson argues that private ownership of cars gives us “privacy, mobility and autonomy,” but he doesn’t tell us that such benefits are not available to all. Children under the driving age, some of the elderly, and those who cannot afford a car are left behind. Those of us who would prefer other options—walking, biking or light rail—are out of luck. We must forfeit time and money to ever longer commutes on ever more congested roads.

Children, especially, are harmed by such a community. They are confined to a miniscule world of rec rooms, backyards, and for the fortunate ones, a nearby playground. They are completely dependent upon adults for any entry into the larger world. Such dependency perpetuates a state of adolescence until magically, at the age of sixteen, they are expected to become independent citizens. It is no surprise that such wrenching change is not always gracefully managed. Parents suffer as well, reduced to chauffer status for a sizeable portion of the day. And lest we forget, our widespread suburbs force us into paying for a mass transit system that runs only twice a day and is limited to children—school busses.

The sprawling communities created by building more highways lead to a spiritually deprived and economically wasteful city environment. Time sacrificed to commuting leaves us absent time to spend with friends and family, absent time for visiting the library, absent time for exercising, playing the piano, reading, or writing letters. Worse, such sprawl eats at the social fabric that holds our communities together. It makes it difficult to meet neighbors and it restricts our options for civic engagements such as attending council meetings, volunteering for political parties, or even merely participating in clubs or sports. Mass transit along with a more dense urban fabric can return this time to us, enriching our lives.

Patterson does make a slight nod to environmental and safety concerns, noting that cars are becoming cleaner and safer. Yet despite improvements, cars still are a major source of pollution and tens of thousands die every year in auto accidents compared to a scant few who die in mass transit accidents. And Mr. Patterson’s claim that more highways will reduce congestion shows a remarkable blindness to history. New roads always come with new traffic, and without an alternative, we are doomed to be forever behind the curve.

Advocates of mass transit are not taking away cars. Rather, they are offering the valley options and, in the long run, the only viable way of alleviating congestion on our roadways. Mr. Patterson, employing a tired anti-intellectualism, claims that environmentalists, academics and local media—“elitists” he calls them—are lecturing the residents of the valley. But it is Mr. Patterson who claims to know what the people want. It is he who would take away our freedom to choose and imprison all of us in small steel cages.

City Life

2006-07-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

City Life
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Ciela stands in the middle of the vast urban fabric we created for her cars and trucks: a more simple SimCity. She began with the cars and trucks, but soon grew weary of the punishing grind of play. On her knees, supplicant to the demands of the 1986 Aerostar, hobbling herself so that it might run, she finally gave up and stood upright. She liked to walk the streets after dark, alone with her thoughts. A solitary saxaphone wailed in the night while the misty rain settled around her shoulders, building and building until a single trickle would slip down her arm. At the turnabout near 8th, she met Two Nickles. She told him about the fireman, his failure and then collapse at the Mercantile. Two Nickles was sympathetic, but could do nothing.

"What's done is done, kid. Larry was a good man, but he didn't have it."

"That's bullshit," she said. She knew the swearing wasn't good. It revealed too much of her emotions, and it wasn't allowed in the house. She'd tried to cut back, but like the gin and the cigarettes, it was a part of her. "That's bullshit and you know it. He didn't lose it because of some weakness, some crack in his mortar. He was set up. The Chinese girl. The young one. She sunk him like a leaky boat."

Two Nickles wasn't buying it. "Look, kid. I know you liked the fireman. We all did. Like I said, he as a good man, but he was burning up, inside and out. If it wasn't the Chinese girl, it would have been the cop or the train conductor or the token black kid. He was going down."

They walked over to the plastic tree. The monkey was loud tonight, screeching of love and loss and the hidden terrors of some ancient jungle lost long ago. Ciela pushed the swing hanging from the branch. It was light, almost without substance.

"I loved the fireman," she said, "but he was too good for me."

Maybe so, thought Two Nickles, but he didn't say it. "He was too good for all of us," he said, and she offered up a rueful smile.

He looked at her, pushing the red plastic swing, her bare shoulders white in the moonlight. She was so small, even though she towered over these streets. Beyond her, he could see the turnabout, the dead end at the piano, and past that the fields and the golf course and finally the 101 stretching out into the desert. This world would burn her alive if she let it. Not as fast as the fireman, but slowly and inevitably, she would succumb to the heat. The fireman was gone, and that meant no one and nothing else could stop the heat.

The rain had stopped some time ago, and despite the darkness, they both could feel the temperature building.

"Let's go, kid," Two Nickles said.

"Yeah. Let's get out of here," she said. They headed toward the kitchen where there were milk and crackers and maybe, just maybe, some quiet and a nap under the circling fans.

The Evolution of a Joke

2006-06-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I mentioned Ciela's latest joke. Last night, Ciela showed the gift of a true writer by revising and updating her material.

Take small, green plastic fork.
Place fork on head.
Say, "fork-hat."
Laugh.

Open Letter to My Inept Representative

2006-06-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

To the Honorable J. D. Hayworth:

The Scottsdale Tribune reported this morning that you are circulating a petition to revoke the press credentials of the New York Times in response to their stories regarding various surveillance programs orchestrated by the Bush administration.

I find this action reprehensible. In a free and democratic society the press play a vital role. They ensure the actions of the government are transparent and honorable. One of our greatest architects of this country, Thomas Jefferson, valued the press even above the various branches of government. In 1787, he wrote that:

"The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

The last few years have shown a remarkable lack of oversight by the legislative branch. You and your fellow congressmen have abdicated your responsibility as a check on the executive branch. Without the free press, this administration, with a nod of approval from Congress, would eagerly violate and revoke our civil rights. Thankfully, the New York Times and other media outlets continue to demand accountability in the absence of a functioning legislative branch.

Your actions to censor one of our best papers show an incredible lack of understanding of democracy. Our district is ill served by such an ignorant and dangerous reaction.

Sincerely,

Scott Hermanson

Swimming and Diving

2006-06-27T13:02:00.000-07:00

Hey!

The ref gave Adriano a yellow card for diving. Horaay for Michel Lubos! Maybe he'll ref the Portugal or Italy game.

Ciela learned how to bob this morning. With a count of "two, free" (who needs "one"? everyone knows it's there), she sticks her head in the water. Not very far. Just over her nose. She closes her eyes and opens her mouth and does sort of a pump fake before going under. It's very cute, of course. Especially because she is so short that even in the very shallow end, the water comes up to her chin so that she's this little head bobbing around with waving arms coming up to splash beside her.

Soccer Orb

2006-06-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

Blog

Portugal 1 - 0 Holland

2006-06-25T20:16:00.000-07:00

What an awful game--but great to watch.

I wanted somehow for them to both lose. My sympathies were with Portugal when Cristiano Ronaldo was hard fouled and had to leave the game. Then I swerved to Holland when Robben got spiked in the shoulder--while jumping for a high cross. You really have to have dangerously high kick to connect with a guys shoulder who is jumping above you.

But then the game just degenerated into thuggish whinery. Only soccer players can combine bullying with such juvenile whining. A Dutch player collapses in agony when Figo gets too close to his face. The Portugese Deco runs away with the ball to try to waste a few seconds. The Dutch, in a remarkably poor show of sportsmanship, refuse to turn-over the ball after play had been stopped with Portugal in possession. Cynical and the mark of a desperate team. I sympathized when Deco took a man down hard from behind. The Dutch deserved it.

But as each card came out--13 in all, I think, with four players being sent off--I disagreed heartily with the ESPN team (and later pundits on the internet, and even Sepp Blatter of FIFA) who claimed the ref was doing a poor job. I thought nearly every card was warranted. The players played like drunk amatuers, and they deserved to be sent off. Costinha handles a ball on a meaningless cross for his second yellow. Just stupid. Deco runs away with the ball when he's already carrying a yellow card. Stupid. The hacking continued until the final whistle. The Dutch deserved to get beat, and Portugal deserve to get beat by England when they have to play without Deco and Costinha. That will be one of the few games in the knock-out rounds that I cheer for a clear favorite. Ingerland, Ingerland, Ingerland.

ADDENDUM: I especially got a kick out of hearing them constantly say Maniche scored the goal. For those of you without sound on your blog, it's pronounced MANEESH. Kudos to you Manny for such a fine strike.

World Cup in a Teapot Ghana 2-1 USA

2006-06-25T19:46:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I didn't think we had a chance to beat Ghana 5-0 or anything like that, but I thought we could beat them. Sure we got hosed by another bad call from the ref, but call or no call, we were not the better team. We just didn't show the conviction or energy that we had v Italy.

So we're done, and no I have to listen to all manner of pundits talk about how this will affect soccer in America. Every four years, the Americans who love soccer and the sportswriters and broadcasters have a mutual wank-fest yelling at each other across the gulf of understanding. The soccer lovers shout loudly about the inability of American sportswriters to adequately and accurately cover a game they know little about. The mainstream sportswriters cannot help but insert smug remarks about how boring soccer is. I find it amazing how each group can continually rehash the same tedious remarks. I side with the soccer lovers--the game is beautiful, full of tension and grace in equal measures.

I enjoy other sports like football (avec helmets), basketball and even a baseball game, but they all lack the fluidity, spectacle and social import of soccer. Basketball comes closest to the grace and fluidity, but is hampered by the fact that scoring happens continuously, diminishing each basket. Additionally, basketball in the final minutes repeatedly stops the action with free-throws and a seemingly infinite amount of time-outs. I watched a couple of Suns-Mavericks games of the NBA playoffs just before the Cup, and it was mind-numbingly frustrating to see the last 30 seconds drawn out for 20 minutes. Football approaches the spectacle, but the NFL ruins the game by creating superficial entertainment all around the action. The fans are relegated to automatons; though in the stands, they are merely watching a very large screen tv. Compare even the most intense rivalry of the NFL to a Barcelona-Madrid game or another match-up between England and Argentina. College football comes closest with rivalries like Michigan v Ohio State or Army-Navy. The stands are rolling with passion and devotion that sweeps the stadium beyond a game and into a transcendent, communal experience. Finally baseball captures an essence of Americana--especially at the minor league level. But even at it's best, baseball is such a bucollic and intellectual game that it simply cannot capture the passion of America. Witness the feeble World Baseball Classic this spring.

Soccer has all these three. Plus, it is a far better game than any of the other three to play. Speaking as a former child baseball player, baseball is a lousy sport for kids (sorry, dad). My memories of baseball are long stretches of boredom in the outfield watching two guys play catch. Baseball is perverse. The most fun in any sport is in the offense. We want to score, we want to be the guy who moves the team ahead. Baseball manages to create a game where almost no action exists on the field, and when it does, 70%-90% of the people on the field are playing defense. The game is so abstract, that at the highest level, they need 4 referees to make the most minute calls.

Football is just an insanely violent sport that shouldn't be played by anyone. Any game that requires so much protective equipment isn't a sport, but a gladitorial battle that ought to be sanctioned by civilized people. It's not so bad on the sand-lot level, with no pads. But any sport that glorifies a 400 pound lump of lard as an "athlete" and perhaps even a star "athlete," needs rethinking. 400 pound people are not athletes. They are medical conditions lacking treatment.

Basketball comes close, but height plays to strong a role in determining the better players. Yet because basketball includes such fast-paced motion, improvisation and teamwork, it comes close to being a viable competitor to soccer as a participatory sport.

Still, soccer can't be beat. Small players are often better than larger ones. No one player can dominate a game without help from teammates. Equipment requirements are minor. And the game, even on the small scale, provides for moments of beauty, even for such a plodding amatuer like me. The graceful arc of the ball over the wall and into the top corner of the net, just beyond the outstretched fingertips of the soaring goalkeeper: this is a thing of beauty that exceeds anything I've done in print. Or take the delicate one-touch passes among three players in the box, each avoiding the crasing tackles around them by fractions of a second until the last drives the ball past a keeper desperately scrambling into position; the action is like the solo cello over the massive power of the orchestra. A theme that sings above the thunder below.

Italy 1 - USA 1

2006-06-17T16:24:00.000-07:00

Oh man!

The card on Pablo was the worst. No way was that foul a red card. And doing my best not to be a homer, but Italy's man did deserve sending off. That was a blantant elbow, and McBride had all the blood to prove it. And I'll even admit that the second ball Italy put into the net should have counted. But the second yellow on Pope, c'mon! You don't give that a yellow in the second minute of the second half. Warn him, but don't exile him. Granted, Pope put himself in that position by getting the earlier yellow card. I don't think he should have gotten the second yellow, though. You don't send off a guy for that foul.

But why oh why didn't Arena use his last sub. With about 15 minutes to go, Cherundolo went right around Pirla (I think). He just pushed the ball past and ran right by him. The Italian put up no fight whatsoever. Arena should have pounced and put Johnson or Wolf in. Johnshon and Beasley could have run circles around some of those guys and really put some pressure. It might be overly optimistic to think they would have scored, but they would have helped ease the pressure on us. Time after time Keller was sending balls to McBride and nobody was up there in case he won them. At least Johnson could have run on to one of those and maybe taken it to the corner to eat up some time.

But better, he could have been deadly on a counter attack.

Still, we got a point after being hosed by the ref. And we can control our destiny. Even if the Czechs win, all we have to do is beat Ghana 5-0, I think.

I can't wait until Thursday. C'mon you freaking Italians. Put away those Czechs.

Ciela slept through the whole game.

World Cup

2006-06-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

It's about 45 minutes to game time. US-Czech Rep.

The US is going to play a 4-5-1, which is good, I think. Getting both Convey and Beasley on the pitch. I think they have their best 11 on the field with the option of bringing in Wolf or Johnson as subs if they need more offense.

I hope this turns out like Portugal, a fast opening that takes the Euros by surprise and they withstand the frantic attack in the second half.

I'm just hoping for a point.

Ciela and I are watching at home, but all things being equal, I'd rather be at a bar with people who know what they are watching. We seemed forever relegated to steerage in america. The US culture--it's showcaseing of individual effort, mania for stats, and willingness (even desire) to tolerate long stopages in play--will never really embrace soccer's team aesthetic, low scoring and lack of room for commercials. I'm sure that this antipathy may be one reason I like the game. And why I think baseball can be remarkably boring if it's not the world series--or god help me, if I have to play the game.

Okay 40 minutes to game time. Time to go paint my face, hang the big American flag, and crack open a beer. Hey, it's 6pm in Germany.

UPDATE: 0-3. Crap. Where the hell was the team? Blah. Too disgusted to write anything about it.

Adjudicating

2006-06-07T08:27:00.002-07:00

I did my civic duty yesterday and reported for jury duty. Having been a driving and voting member of the populace for almost 20 years, one would think jury duty would have popped up before. But neither Chicago or Cincinnati called on me, and Omaha asked me to serve two weeks after I would have left for Arizona. But here, finally, I would get to test my powers of reason, ethics and democratic ideals in the finest branch of government; the judiciary.

After biking down to the Courts at 7:30am (when it was already 90 outside), I hung around the door with the 30 or so other jurors waiting to be let into the building. Nice that they ask you to get there at 8:00am but won't open the doors until 8:00am precisely. Thankfully it was cloudy. Screening at the Courts turns out to be more restrictive than even the airports. I practically had to strip to my shorts before the metal detector gave me the green light.

I'd like to say that I served faithfully and impartially, wisely deciding the case on the merits of the facts, unswayed by prejudice. But after an hour and half of watching the Travel Channel and reading my book, a couple of cups of free but bad coffee, and a short, uneventful trip around the bathroom corridor and the smoking porch, they let me go. They let all of us go. The defendent had settled and they had no other cases. I volunteered to go ahead and try some Enron executives or perhaps a corrupt Republican official--I'm sure J.D. Hayworth must have something on which we could convict (failure to think humanely and rationally, perhaps)-- but the judge politely refused and quickly closed the door behind me.

Having fulfilled my civic responsibility (catch phrase used no less than 15 times in the ten minute video indoctrination for jurors), I am off the hook for the next 18 months.

Welcome to the Neighborhood

2006-06-04T11:47:00.000-07:00

One of the first things delivered to our mailbox after we moved in was a notice that a sexual predator had moved into the same complex. This week, we got another fun welcoming gift in the mailbox: a plain white envelope, addressed to me, no return address. Inside was a brief rant from one of my neighbors, complaining about us riding our bikes in the grass, and threatening to have us reimburse the Home Owners Association for damage done to the common areas. He or she also included a handy photocopy of the relevant page from the CC&R with key passages highlighted. The author of the note really liked exclamation points!!! and had a mastery of that passive bureacratic voice: "the tracks have been traced to your unit." I really like that last part, the refusal to provide a subject to the sentence, leaving me with the Kafka-esque dilemma of a faceless accuser, tracking my movements.

In a number of other ways, the letter is a sad, suburban parody of the Kafka scene. Some person wants to intimidate me by co-opting the power of anonymity and bureacratic revenge. The letter presents itself as a missive from the system, something that cannot be questioned or even acknowledged. My only valid response is to cease riding my bike across the grass to the bike path. Interestingly, the excessive use of exclamation points actually undercuts the threat of the letter. As I always told my students, the exclamation point is most often a scream of impotency, the viagra sign of literary impotence. It is employed as an insistance of power where none exists. As such, Judy pointed out that we probably don't have to worry about this because anyone who would send an anonymous letter over such a miniscule matter probaby would never actually confront us face-to-face.

Such is our entry into the world of the HOA. I worried about buying property where an elected body typically made up of people with too much time on their hads would govern a sizeable fraction of what we could do with our townhome. On my good days, I saw it as a community bound together by a common interest in providing a pleasant place to live. On the bad days, I imagined it to be like every other group or committee I've ever had the misfortune of joining.

The Fountain

2006-05-24T20:03:00.000-07:00

The Fountain
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Yahoo! We just purchased a futon for the guest room/office. All of you anxious for an uncomfortable bed in ungodly hot weather, c'mon down. We've been abusing Craigslist for months, first unloading as much as we could before we moved. Then unloading all those things that really didn't fit into the new place (one too many bookshelves, one too many patio tables, one too many microwaves). Now we are nearly finished with buying the stuff we need. Got the new stereo speakers. Got the new end table. Got the new dressers and containers for all the toiletries. Got the new piece of luggage ($10-the best value yet). We are ready to roll. About the only thing left is the grill, but in this heat, who's thinking of grilling?

Ciela had her first really bloody fall yesterday at the park. After scaling the elaborate playground, running all around the edges of the pond, dancing on top of the picnic tables, she fell face first crossing from the grass to the parking lot. Lots of blood at first, sending dad to the edge of panic before we realized that it was just a cut lip and the bleeding quickly stopped.

The day before was better with two train rides and two carousel rides at the railroad park. We are members now, so we get unlimited rides, which for Ciela means great things. For me, it's more chances to get queasy on the carousel. Shouldn't those things go slower? I mean, little kids are riding them.

The train park is pretty elaborate, with a scale diesel train that we ride. Most of the cars are the sort of flatbed types, but the last one is a box car where little kids can actually sit inside the car. My Jewish friends find the unintended re-creation a bit unsettling, but still let their son ride in the box car if he wants. What they really object to is the blond-haired kid announcing over the loudspeaker, "Leave your luggage behind. Your luggage will follow you." We all agree that this is in poor taste and have talked about starting a petition.

Last week we saw Constructing New Berlin, the exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum. While contemporary art often leaves me cold, this one was moving in a variety of ways. Partly, I really groved on the giant photos of Frank Thiel documenting the dramatic renewal/upheaval of Berlin in the post-Cold War era. But it was Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's video installation, "The Berlin Files," that grabbed hold of me. Here is sort of a summary of the work, but the intriguing blur of reality, film noir, art and meta-narrative was nearly outdone by the powerful emotion of David Bowie's "Rock and Roll Suicide." The song floods the little theater in sound and feeling, seeping into the other abstract pieces. At times unsettling (we had a small struggle keeping Ciela from crying at times) with jarring, disorienting sounds of helicopters and trains, the piece kind of works like a post-modern noir. But instead of the modernist noir, the search for the truth in the detective story, this does away with narrative qua narrative. There isn't a story, only themes, only resonances and connotations. This is noir poetry on the screen. Any of you in Phoenix would do well to go see the exhibit.

This weekend we are heading up to Arcosanti, finally. We've been here nearly a year, and this will be our first visit up there. I have managed to get to Cosanti, but it's Arcosanti that really blows me away. When I visited it four years ago, I was enthralled with the innovation, the idealism and the beauty of Paolo Soleri's "urban laboratory." I still want to somehow become a factor in its creation. Ciela, however, has something to say about such things. So the best we can do is to attend the various cultural events they produce. This weekend is the three day poetry slam and concert. We're going up on Saturday evening after we do some peach picking in the morning.

And the picture of Ciela? It has nothing to do with anything. Just another in a series of random cute pictures.

chase

2006-05-15T20:22:00.001-07:00

chase
Originally uploaded by shermans.

We had our first real guests at the home. Our friends from the old apartment complex came by for dinner and, as you can see, frolicking. The menu was salad with orange-raspberry vinagrette, risotto, caprese, bread and a chocolate dessert courtesy of the guests. Plus lots of Chianti. Ciela and Pumpkin spent a good deal of the time chasing each other around. They're like the sister each never had.

We've got a long list of people that we have to invite over to the house. While we were moving and our apartment was in shabby condition (pretty much all the time), so many people invited us to have dinner with them. If we could keep up our stamina, we could have people over every weekend for the next month and still owe some return engagements. I wonder if other people feel like dinner becomes and home-and-away series like soccer tournaments. I'm not complaining, by any means. I really do like having people over for dinner, but my Emily Post-ish superego always nags me about social debts. It doesn't seem fair to always play the visitor and never have people at home. And here's were the sporting analogy breaks down (as they always do (poor Randy Johnson)): the away game is so much more taxing than the away dinner. If the visiting team could get away with bringing flowers to the locker room and then just sitting around drinking the home team's Gatorade, nobody would demand a reciprocal visit.

We don't get you.

2006-05-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

We don't get you.
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Brins Mesa Trail

2006-05-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

Brins Mesa Trail
Originally uploaded by shermans.

We've also headed up to Sedona a couple of times this month. Judy had a Monday off, so we spent the day up there. Which meant my legs, weary from a 90 minute game where we were two men down, nearly gave up before we reached this overlook on the last hike of the day. We all look happy because there were other hikers there taking our picture, but all I could think about was turning around and heading home for a beer.

Yesterday, for Mother's Day, we went with some friends back to hike the West Fork. The physical toll was much lighter thanks to Ciela and their boy, neither of whom could really muster the momentum to head deep into the trail. We spent a lot of time crossing and re-crossing the stream and then putting our feet in the water, and then asking to be put into the backpack and then asking to be let out of the backpack.

As with most of our trips to Sedona, we finished with pizza and a beer at The Hideaway, with it's view of Snoopy Rock.

Ciela Finally Goes Camping

2006-05-11T20:01:00.000-07:00

Ciela Finally Goes Camping
Originally uploaded by shermans.

We'd been wondering when we could safely take Ciela camping. She's been to a number of hotels and houses of relatives and friends, and even with indoor plumbing and real beds, the routine can get exhausting. We wondered how exponentially worse it might be trapped in a tiny nylon room.

Yet mere pondering never leads to results. No theory without praxis. We rounded up the sleeping bags, found the ground cover and tent, packed some snacks and drove deep, deep, deep...

In the rugged outdoors...

2006-05-11T20:00:00.000-07:00

In the rugged outdoors
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Of Dowtown Scottsdale.

Still, as you can see, it was deep, deep, deep center field.

The city had a sleepover in the stadium, so we were trodding the hallowed ground whence Barry himself Bonds had walked. Just standing in the grass Ciela put on 3 pounds and her neck grew so big we had to cut her out of her shirt.

We had a good time. They served a mediocre meal from a BBQ chain, which made things very difficult on the vegetarians in the tent. We colored, we ran through obstacle courses, we did a sack race, we looked through telescopes (where I actually saw Jupiter, and Saturn and its rings--pretty flippin cool.)

They showed "A Bug's Life" on an inflateable screen, and then we all went to bed.

Except for our very rude neighbors in the tent next door who spent a good two hours after "Lights Out" talking and yelling at their kids to shut up and go to sleep. I rarely heard the kids, but their mother's voice could cut through steel. I longed for an angry Barry Bonds and a 34" Louisville Slugger. After the first half-hour, I noisely scrambled out of the tent and gave them the long glare. After an hour, I went over and told them to please keep it down. By midnight, I was yelling out of my tent to shut up and go to sleep. I wonder where these people thought they were. Why they felt that at an event that was clearly geared toward families with young kids, they could hang out talking until the wee hours of the morning. In the end, it was another instance in a long line of instances where I wonder how people can be so inconsiderate.

But then morning came, the sunrise was beautiful and breakfast included lots of coffee and orange juice and tasty muffins. We packed up, hailed one of those little groundskeeper carts and piled everything back in the car. We then went home and took a nap.

They had activities for the kids

2006-05-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

They had activities for the kids
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Sunrise in Scottsdale

2006-05-11T19:58:00.001-07:00

Sunrise in Scottsdale
Originally uploaded by shermans.

A new day at the ball park

2006-05-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

A new day at the ball park
Originally uploaded by shermans.

That one's outta here!

2006-05-09T22:15:00.000-07:00

That one's outta here!
Originally uploaded by shermans.

For my father and mother who check the blog every day and surely must be disappointed in how long it's been since I posted.

Ciela in the dugout at Scottsdale Stadium, home of the San Francisco Giants spring training.

On the Passing of Jane Jacobs

2006-04-27T20:54:00.000-07:00

Jane Jacobs, Social Critic Who Redefined and Championed Cities, Is Dead at 89 - New York Times

Jane Jacobs, one of my heroes, died Tuesday. Her book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, captured so much of what is wrong with late 20th Century urban planning. But besides her ideas, I admired her because she was an amateur. Never attended college, certainly no architect, she threw a molotov cocktail at urban planners that is still burning today. The times obit captures much more than I'm prepared to write.

ABC meme

2006-04-25T20:27:00.000-07:00

Because I can't resist, here's my take on the ABC meme as seen at jo(e)'s page

Accent: Slight Southern one that means I pronounce "crayon" as "crown," use "y'all" and "all y'all" to great effect, and I know how to pronounce "Louisville" correctly.

Booze: If we are talking hard liquor, it has to be bourbon (see above), but mostly it's beer and wine: stouts, porters, ales, pinot grigio and shiraz.

Chore I Hate: Cleaning Ciela's high-chair try three times a day, every day.

Dog or Cat: Cat. Cat's don't suck up. I only like that in students.

Essential Electronics: Oh, the laptop. I love it like it was my other offspring.

Favorite Cologne: Good lord, this is a stretch. I have no favorite colognes.

Gold or Silver: Silver--but only because I have to choose.

Hometown: Louisville, KY.

Insomnia: On the occasion. I can't understand why it happens, and it has only happened as of late. I seem to sleep better with more stress.

Job Title: Faculty Associate--a high falutin term for adjunct.

Kids: One and only.

Living arrangements: Me and Judy and Ciela and a snake namned Hamilton all in our cozy townhouse overlooking the Indian Bend Wash.

Most admirable traits: Honest, smart and funny.

Number of sexual partners: Get a life!

Overnight hospital stays: Only one that I remember. Our dearly departed feline put me in overnight for antibiotics when she bit me. I was stopping her from mauling the little kitten next door. I also stayed all night when Ciela was born--but I had that pretty easy.

Phobias: Getting into a fight, even when I can clearly win. I'm pretty much an irrational coward.

Quote: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Religion: Grew up Roman Catholic but am now militantly anti-religion. The beliefs in mythic stories and poorly edited books continue to wreak havoc on the world. That said, I hope there is a god and my understanding of the world does not stop at the empirical or the material.

Siblings: One sister (hey, TD)

Time I wake up: 6:30 or 7:00am. Ciela would have it no other way.

Unusual talent or skill: I can imitate my dad preparing to wash the car with a precision that is eerie.

Vegetable I love: corn.

Worst habit: Eating in the middle of the night.

X-rays: two or three of my hand when I kept getting injured playing goalkeeper.

Yummy foods I make: Sweet potatoe quesadillas.

Zodiac sign: Gemini--but still lacking my twin self.

Ciela's latest joke

2006-04-25T11:00:00.000-07:00

Take small, red plastic spoon.
Place spoon on head.
Say, "hat."
Laugh

Having moved

2006-04-18T20:37:00.002-07:00

Having moved
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Ciela laughing

2006-04-18T20:37:00.001-07:00

Ciela laughing
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Ciela coy

2006-04-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

Ciela coy
Originally uploaded by shermans.

I couldn't decide which of these pictures to post. Ciela is all dressed up to go to dinner at her friend's house, and we were allowed to tag along. We had a very nice dinner of salad, dahl, a sort of potato pancake thingy, rice and wine. A very good Indian meal. Ciela's friend also invited another family, half of whom, it turns out, are professors in English at ASU. Renaissance, but whadda ya gonna do. And he was a doctor, so Judy got to talk medicine, and I got to talk books. Our hosts genially watched and we occasionally remembered that they were not doctors or professors. Computer and science types--but nice anyway.

The Academic Moves

2006-04-07T15:50:00.000-07:00

Coincidently, Michael Berube posted a longish essay about his move from Illinois to Pennsylvania. A bit of insight into what I might say if I bothered to write a 2000 word essay on moving--just for the hell of it. Among lots of other things, he is prolific.

******
One hundred and ten of those boxes contained books. I know, I know: among academics, let alone academic couples, 110 boxes is a light load. Janet and I simply don’t own enough books, partly because (as we admit to ourselves only when we move) we simply haven’t read enough books. But in the world of professional movers, 110 book boxes is quite enough for any ten people; there wasn’t a single mover, on the Illinois or on the Pennsylvania end of the deal, who didn’t walk through our inventory and whistle or gasp or curse. [ ... ] And then we had to declare our valuables: crystal, china, jewelry, furs, guns. Checking “none,” “none,” “none,” “none,” and “none,” we thought that this was as useful an emblem as any other for the academic move: 110 book boxes, no valuables.
*******

I don't think we'll hit 110 boxes. We eliminated a lot of books before hitting the road for Arizona, and then decided that lots more could go once we saw our shelf space diminishing. Hell, that's what libraries are for. A lot of the fiction went. Painful, but liberating as well. Anything that I figured I wouldn't teach, write about or likely even read again...off to the second hand shop. This wasn't so bad. I'm certainly not going to forget about Wuthering Heights or Charlotte Bronte, and if need arises, I can certainly locate a copy.

The book reduction is part of a commodity-wide reduction in our lives. Berube writes about enjoying moving, enjoying the cataloging and redistributing of a life. Myself, I enjoy the opportunity to rid myself of excess weight. My friend, another academic who just finished moving, wrote me that "if your stuff doesn’t fit on a single horse and travois, you’ve got too much stuff." He's right of course. Even pared down, I still feel that my life is imprisoned in these objects. I feel a step closer to freedom each time someone hands me the cash and takes away the desk, the lawnmower, the carseat, the compost bin, the dresser, the old computer. It's as if the very real weight of these has been lifted, and I'm no longer carrying them--physically or mentally. There is much to be said about clearing space for a life to happen. Without it, one's life is little more than caretaking, and in the end can be summed much like the final images of Citizen Kane: endless stacks of crates, statues and furniture in a decaying Xanadu.

Moving

2006-04-05T22:05:00.000-07:00

We are in the process of the slow motion move. Because we are trying to paint a lot of the townhouse before it's loaded with furniture, we are staying in our apartment two weeks after the closing. This whole week has been a series of short trips back and forth, unloading smallish and mediumish boxes, loose shoes, plants and garden implements punctuated by long hours painting.

Tonight, for a break in the action, we hauled Ciela around IKEA looking for a new dresser. Our older furniture, a gift from friends of my parents, is just to mammoth for our tiny, tiny bedroom. Those pieces are better suited for an older home, say from the 19th century. IKEA has that sleek, I'm-living-in-a-reconditioned-wharehouse look that would fit nice in our reduced quarters.

Just chiming in. I'm actually pretty beat and ready to go to bed. My class tomorrow should be enjoyable as I scramble to catch up to the students.

Welcome Back

2006-04-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged because I haven't cared.

Nah, I've just been living a life and not particularly inspired to tell anyone about it. How often do you want to read about something Ciela did or what we managed to scrounge up for dinner, or what colors we plan to paint the townhouse?

How 'bout one more time?

We're looking at a remarkably similar color scheme from the house in Omaha--which very few of you ever saw, but I'll forgive you for not visiting. Yellow downstairs with perhaps one purple wall to match our furniture. Brown and cream in Ciela's room--to match her leopard skin rug. Blue and cream in our bedroom--to go with the curtains, shams, and duvet that Judy sewed. Everything else remains the same neutral color (unless we do something with the stairwell.

We've been eating a winter stew with carrots, potatoes, celery and onions from the Phoenix Public Market.

And Ciela fell asleep in her bike seat, head bouncing off her mother's back for the 40 minute bike ride over to our new townhouse and then across the canal and around the golf course. We had a nice little ride.

(Wait. Did he just write "we"?)

Yes, yes, yes. I'm back on two wheels.

My friend Bike Boy and I drove down to Tuscon for the big Bike Swap and I bought a mountain bike and a road bike. We took the latter out for a spin this afternoon. It's nice to be back in the saddle--literally.

I'll post pictures later, but we scored a pretty good deal with the mountain bike, and the road bike isn't perfect, but I was getting tired of looking and not buying. I don't want my life to be a continual shopping experience. This was the right price and close enough to what I want for now. It's my transition bike until I can justify spending more for something faster, stronger and sleeker.

So thanks Mom and Dad. It took until nearly Easter, but Christmas finally came.

Can I Help You?

2006-03-26T16:37:00.000-07:00

Can I Help You?
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Burton Barr Library--North Face

2006-03-22T15:21:00.001-07:00

Burton Barr Library--North Face
Originally uploaded by shermans.

I've been on an architectural tear the last few weeks. The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art has been producing a series of lectures on the city with Linda Hirshman (prof of philosophy and law), Nan Ellin (prof of Urban Design) and Will Bruder (famous modern architect guy). Plus, we travelled down to Oracle to see Biosphere 2 before it bites the dust at the hands of a developer. And Ciela and I finally wandered over to Cosanti, Paolo Solari's home in Paradise Valley. Last week I went out to Taliesin West, Frank Lloyd Wright's studio, to hear Solari speak. I'm hip deep in the world of urban renewal in Phoenix and the visionary plans of people like Solari, Bruder and Wright. Interestingly, all this is happening as we get ready to move from our soul killing apartment into our new townhome. The angst I felt at selecting a new home has become that much more taut as I view these remarkable designs for what the city could be. Like opposing toggle bolts stretching a canvas over the landscape, the fabric of my life is hovering in a scary but graceful tension.

Burton Barr Library-detail, children's courtyard

2006-03-22T15:21:00.000-07:00

Burton Barr Library-detail, children's courtyard
Originally uploaded by shermans.

The Will Bruder-designed Burton Barr Library in Phoenix, Arizona.

Burton Barr Library--5th Floor Reading Room

2006-03-22T15:20:00.000-07:00

Burton Barr Library--5th Floor Reading Room
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Cosanti-South Courtyard detail

2006-03-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

Cosanti-South Courtyard detail
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Cosanti: Paolo Solari's home and workshop in Scottsdale.

Cosanti-North Apse

2006-03-22T15:17:00.000-07:00

Cosanti-North Apse
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Desert Biome

2006-03-22T15:14:00.001-07:00

Desert Biome
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Biosphere 2

2006-03-22T15:14:00.000-07:00

Biosphere 2
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Original Music

2006-03-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

Ciela and I recorded a duet. Ciela does lead vocals. I'm on guitar and backing vocals. Near the end, Ciela decides that the guitar part should be a four-handed piece, and she experiments with my tuner as a slide. (For those of you at work, the song's two minutes long...you should be able to squeeze it in before the boss gets back.)

(If you have trouble loading it, try pausing the song until the loading is complete and then hit play.)

Powered by Castpost

Okay, now everybody sing. La la la la la la. La la la la la la.

iTunes as Oracle

2006-03-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

As usual, I rely on Scrivener to keep me from working. Here's meme from his site.

Go to your music player of choice and put it on shuffle. Say the following questions aloud, and press play. Use the song title as the answer to the question. NO CHEATING.

How does the world see you?
"Wave" by Alejandro Escovedo
[as in "see you later, sucker"?]

Will I have a happy life?
"Pensacola" by Soul Coughing
[okay, this makes no sense. My iTunes is not very prophetic]

What do my friends really think of me?
"Flatness" by Uncle Tupelo
[a man who needs a little spice]

Do people secretly lust after me?:
"Eating Cake" by Dhamba 8
[I'm not sure how to interpret this, but it sounds positive]

How can I make myself happy?
"Wake Up" by XTC
[yes, I am generally a happy person--even in the morning]

What should I do with my life?
"Find My Baby" by Moby
[check. next item]

Will I ever have children?
"Six Different Ways" by The Cure
[oh dear god, no. Although, Ciela is definitely a girl of multiple personalities]

What is some good advice for me?
"Neighborhood" by Punkinhead
[should I move? Did I pick the wrong place to buy? iTunes, you are being too oblique.}

How will I be remembered?
"Born into the World" by Supersystem
[I will be remembered for having been.]

What is my signature dancing song?
"Bye Bye Blackbird" by Rahsaan Roland Kirk
[Well, exactly how do you dance to this?]

What do I think my current theme song is?
"Only a Story" by the Molly's
[I am writing stories these days. Clever iTunes, clever.]

What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
"My Iron Lung" by Radiohead
[Either I don't understand my friends, or iTunes, you don't understand my friends.]

What song will play at my funeral?
"Blind" by Talking Heads
[This would be a good, peppy way to say sayonara.]

What type of men/women do you like?
Men: "Silly Lullaby" by Natasha Richardson (from the Philadelphia Chickens original cast recording)
[iTunes, you reveal too much.]
Women: "Wired" by Big Hat
[I like my women strung out on caffeine...or toddlerhood.]

What is my day going to be like?
"Hard Times" by Boiled in Lead
[seeing the result of Scrivener ("Hard, Ain't It Hard" by Woody Guthrie), I'm wondering if iTunes has it in for us human operators.]

Describe the Ordinary

2006-03-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

I've been fooling around with some writing exercises in the vain hope that I might actually switch teams from the critics to the artists. One exercise was to describe the ordinary. I thought they turned out rather interesting--as exercises go.

The big chair
The arms gracefully sweep in arches, bending from the flat plane, both enclosing and projecting from the chair. At the center, the cushions wrinkle, caving into a depression, a well-worn plushness. The pillow, always studiously propped in a casual angle, suggests an excess of comfort, and indeed, that is exactly what it offers, excess. People sitting in the chair regularly toss the pillow aside, finding nowhere to comfortably place it once they have occupied the seat. Large, overstuffed and eschewing any formality, the chair aptly represents the growing size and casualness of the populace. It is the anti-antique. It will never command attention, garner awards, be praised in magazines for its elegant lines or its austere appearance. It serves to assure people that it is permissible to relax, to lounge, to do nothing because they have earned the right to be lazy in their own homes.

The cordless phone
A phone once, like many of the earlier electronic devices, attempted to hide its machinery under a skein that reflected old craftsmanship, handmade items. Indeed, the earlier phones were as much the product of cobbling together boxes and horns and cables from existing materials rather than flaunting a design of the future. The crank, the hand held earpiece, the arcane but linguistic telephone numbers were linked to humans and places, not distant factories. The princess phone exemplified this. Smooth, unassuming, designed to be an object d’art, sculpturally reclining on the surface of the glass end table, the black lacquered night table.

The cordless phone revels in its technology, making a fetish of the buttons, the chrome, the lights, the whistles, the constant evocation of black as the palette of high-tech. This particular one tattoos itself with icons of direction, indications of forward, reverse, play and stop. Each icon accompanied by tasteful labels indicating their function—redundancy necessitated by either the obscurity of the images or the imbecility of the user. The keypad continues to include both numbers and letters: the archaic phone designations of “Butterfield 8” and “Lawndale 12” however, now transformed into the trite marketing of 1-800 4 HOT SEX.

At the top of the handset, the phone insists on marketing itself by proclaiming it has “2.4 Ghz”—of memory, one presumes, I cannot recall the packaging nor the instructions. But do people seriously worry about the capacity of their answering machines? Perhaps those more in demand socially or politically than myself. Taking its cue from the hawkers of computers and their peripherals, the cordless phone participates in that common desire for more: more memory, more speed, more functions. Beneath the keypad are three more buttons offering “chan, mem and flash” (perhaps an Asian law firm of the 25th Century?). Even each of these buttons also do dual duty: “ring,” “del,” and “prog” (a jaunty name for a Spanish musician: Ring del Prog). Above the keypad, “redial” and “format” are inset gracefully in the curve of the chrome ear piece. Redial I can deduce, but format’s function has to this day escaped me. Ciela has occasionally pushed it, and eventually I have to unplug the phone in order to get it to work again. I have no idea what she formats, but the phone (and all other objects in the apartment) seem to remain in their original format, save for the phone itself no longer working. Perhaps there are two formats for the phone: format one, a sophisticated telecommunications device that can both transmit and receive messages as well as receive and record messages in the absence of a human operator; and format two, a paper weight.

(On reading these again, I'm afraid I come off as a sarcastic, poor man's version of Roland Barthes. The deleted scenes from Mythologies.)

rain

2006-03-12T20:15:00.000-07:00

rain
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Let the Heavens Open

2006-03-12T19:45:00.000-07:00

Let the Heavens Open
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Finally, after 143 days, it rained in Scottsdale. And it didn't just drizzle. We had a steady, British-dreary, Seattle-soaked, wet that started at 1:00am Saturday and was still going strong when I went to bed about midnight. When we woke up this morning, the air was clean, the view crisp, and snow (I mean flippin' SNOW) covered the tops of the mountains in North Scottsdale. Further on toward the horizon, we could see mountains absolutely white.

Ironically, this winter rain and snow inverted our standard response to Spring weather. After 5 months of sunshine, we were giddy with the rain. It was like a 60 degree day in February back in Chicago. When I woke up, I just lay in bed and listened to the shish of cars leaving the parking lot and the steady hollow drip of the water in the downspout. Later, Ciela and I went out and splashed in puddles. Seeing the snow-capped mountains this morning was like seeing daffodils along the sidewalks. Well, not daffidols because I can't stand daffodils. They are the most simpering flower. They are the fauna equivalent of the happy face and I just want to step on them whenever they start to bloom. Seeing the snow-capped mountains was like being in Greektown in Chicago, sitting in the open windows of The 9 Muses or Artopolis Cafe.

Best of all, the rain cleared the clogged air--a buildup of carbon monoxide, smoke and most of all dust. For the last month it's been like inhaling a dirty sponge. You get a cough this winter and it stays around forever.

But now, everything's pristine. That smell of the desert--the smell that Judy and I could never quite place back in the summer--has returned. The desert has a cinnamon-y, spicy smell, especially after a rain. The brown haze had smothered it for months, but it was back today, and we inhaled deeply as we drove out to Tucson (contributing more pollution because too much of a thing like clean air can go to a person's head).

Great Opening Lines

2006-03-10T08:39:00.000-07:00

This year's 10 winners of the Bulwer-Lytton contest, aka "Dark and Stormy
Night Contest" (run by the English Dept. of San Jose State University),
wherein one writes only the first line of a bad novel:

10) "As a scientist, Throckmorton knew that if he were ever to break wind in
the echo chamber, he would never hear the end of it."

9) "Just beyond the Narrows, the river widens."

8) "With a curvaceous figure that Venus would have envied, a tanned,
unblemished oval face framed with lustrous thick brown hair, deep azure-blue
eyes fringed with long black lashes, perfect teeth that vied for
competition, and a small straight nose, Marilee had a beauty that defied
description."

7) "Andre, a simple peasant, had only one thing on his mind as he crept
along the East wall: 'Andre creep... Andre creep... Andre creep.'"

6) "Stanislaus Smedley, a man always on the cutting edge of narcissism, was
about to give his body and soul to a back alley sex-change surgeon to become
the woman he loved."

5) "Although Sarah had an abnormal fear of mice, it did not keep her from
eeking out a living at a local pet store."

4) "Stanley looked quite bored and somewhat detached, but then penguins
often do."

3) "Like an over-ripe beefsteak tomato rimmed with cottage cheese, the
corpulent remains of Santa Claus lay dead on the hotel floor."

2) "Mike Hardware was the kind of private eye who didn't know the meaning of
the word 'fear'; a man who could laugh in the face of danger and spit in the
eye of death -- in short, a moron with suicidal tendencies."

AND THE WINNER IS...

1) "The sun oozed over the horizon, shoved aside darkness, crept along the
green sward, and, with sickly fingers, pushed through the castle window,
revealing the pillaged princess, hand at throat, crown asunder, gaping in
frenzied horror at the sated, sodden amphibian lying beside her,
disbelieving the magnitude of the frog's deception, screaming madly, 'You
lied!"

ADDED BONUS: GREAT LITERARY TAUNTS

"I feel so miserable without you, it's almost like having you here." --
Stephen Bishop "

A modest little person, with much to be modest about." --- Winston
Churchill (about Clement Atlee)

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial."
--- Irvin S. Cobb "

I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great
pleasure." --- Clarence Darrow "

He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the
dictionary." --William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway)

"He is not only dull himself, he is the cause of dullness in others." ---
Samuel Johnson

He had delusions of adequacy." --- Walter Kerr

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it." --- Groucho
Marx

"They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human
knowledge." --- Thomas Brackett Reed

"He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." --- Forrest Tucker "

I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of
it." --- Mark Twain

"His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork." --- Mae West

"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go." ---
Oscar Wilde

"He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends" --- Oscar
Wilde

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." --- Billy Wilder

Jon Fasman-On how to be a writer

2006-03-09T09:33:00.000-07:00

Decided you want to be a writer but don't have the bucks to go get an MFA? Move to Moscow.

How do they do it?

2006-03-08T16:37:00.000-07:00

I'm at a loss as to understanding how and why people who blog blog so regularly. I never seem to find the time nor have the catalog of interesting material to share. In fact, my most interesting material I save for other projects. Mostly my long procrastinated great american novel.

But here's what's been going on out here in the west for those people who just want to peek into my life--voyeurs of the bland and uneventful.

I've been attending a lecture series at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. The series looks at the city, especially Phoenix metro, via the thoughts of some local intellectuals: Linda Hirshman, whose Homeward Bound caused quite a stir when it appeared in American Prospect; Nan Ellin, professor of urban design at ASU and a former teacher of mine at UC; and Will Bruder, a local architect who designed, among other things, the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and a development in Tempe The Vale that I really wanted to move to.

The lectures--two so far--have been very interesting, with lively conversation in the Q&A and the reception afterwards. I've met a few interesting people, reintroduced myself to Nan Ellin, and garnered a few business cards in perpetuating the illusion that I might be somebody worth knowing. Last night, the lecture focused heavily on some interesting developments in Phoenix and other towns that looked to invest this rather woeful excuse for a city with a sense of community, activity and urbanity that it really lacks. I left thinking that there was a tremendous amount of opportunity in the valley of the sun (there are vacant lots all over this city) but a real lack of financial and imaginative investment by those who could do such things. Phoenix may ultimately be hampared by its rapid growth in the mid-to-late 20th century. The city really lacks the building infrastructure to draw the sort of design that might make Phoenix into another Chicago, NYC, Paris or Rome. It may always be the second biggest suburb in the world.

We're also still planning to move next month, so we have been once again trying to minimize the excess that we will cart from one domicile to the next. Certain evenings have been spent surgically removing the consumerist tumors that have metastisized in our closets, under our beds, on our bookshelves and in our storage areas. Anyone want a used queen size bed? Did we actually move a push mower from Omaha to Scottsdale? What does one do with a hamper full of used (but washed) cloth diapers?

Ciela and Pumpkin

2006-02-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

Ciela and Pumpkin
Originally uploaded by shermans.

In a nice exchange of services, some friends of ours watch Ciela one night a week in exchange for us walking their dog during the day. I'm not sure who's getting the better end of the deal. They really like Ciela, but Ciela loves walking Pumpkin. We've only been doing it a couple of weeks, but today Ciela took over. She must have been watching all of us and how we relate to the dog, because once she had the leash in her hands, she became the alpha dog.

She would pull on the leash and yell "Punky, no!" and "Punky, down!" which in her language sounds like "Punky, own!" Then she would pull on the leash and motion with her hand for Pumpkin to follow her, which Pumpkin would refuse, just as she refuses for me.

It's amazing to watch this transformation in Ciela. She's so dependent at times on her mother and me. And in crowds, she's very quiet, observing intently, or playing on her own. Even when she interacts with other kids or adults, it's very subtle or tentatively. But with Pumpkin, she somehow recognizes that the dog should obey her in a way that is strikingly different than her expectations of her mother or father giving her milk or crackers. She can already sense that she has some sort of superiority over Pumpkin that she doesn't have with anyone else.

A couple of videos to start the week

2006-02-25T16:04:00.000-07:00

Chris Bliss: Must-See Finale

Autistic basketball player creates mayhem at game

2006-02-25T15:59:00.000-07:00

Take a break from your rather dull day and give thanks for home video.

YouTube - Autistic basketball player creates mayhem at game

No Football Player Left Behind

2006-02-22T20:45:00.000-07:00

A little light-hearted humor for all my friends out their in the school system.

(from a widely dispersed email)

No Child Left Behind: The Football Version

1. All teams must make the state playoffs, and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they have won the championship. Coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship, their footballs and equipment will be taken away until they do win a championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. No exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL.

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own without instruction. Coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.

4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in 4th, 8th and 11th games.

5. This will create a New Age of sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimal goals. No child gets ahead, therefore no child is left behind.

If parents do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private schools that screen out non-athletes. Parents can then rest assured that their children are not attending school with bad football players.

Museum Plaza

2006-02-16T18:40:00.000-07:00

Museum Plaza
Originally uploaded by shermans.

This is the rendering for Louisville's new landmark building that will hold a contemporary art museum, residential condominiums, commercial office space and the University of Louisville's Fine Arts Program. It is being designed by Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Koolhaas's firm. Koolhaas is a huge name and a rather large plum for Louisville to get. Some of you Chicago types can see OMA's work in the recent Illinois Institute of Technology Campus Center.

I really like the idea the museum center. My praises to Steve Wilson and Laura Lee Brown, the lead developers, in investing a lot of money and energy into creating an architecturally explosive statement in the downtown area. And I also appreciate the desire to include residential units. Downtown Louisville seems to lag behind a lot of other urban areas when it comes to bringing back 24 hour residences. A lot of things are happening down there, but the successes will be short lived without people coming back to live downtown.

All that said, I don't like the building. It has some fundamental flaws in how it relates to the surrounding buildings, and the underlying assumptions about how people use buildings. Now to be fair, the site selected is a tricky spot. As I understand it, it's in a flood zone, it has to deal with a major expressway right next to it, it's got another major landmark building--the Muhammed Ali Center--competing with it for visual space. Such constraints can lead to creative, innovative solutions. They can just as easily lead to awkward, souless failures. I think the museum plaza skews toward the latter.

The most serious flaw is in elevating the main concourse--the museum plaza itself--into the air. Civic buildings like museums are focal points for a community. They should be monumental public spaces that remind us of what's noble and good about our humanity. (Yes, this is an old-fashioned humanist understanding of art, civics and design--sue me). Key to this existential experience is the transition from the commonplace, quotidian life into the realm of beauty, ideas and challenge of art.

Yet this transition, by way of extended elavator rides or funicular ride (that diagonal strut across the lower half), mutes the experience, isolating the public element of the building behind distancing technology. Literally, it puts art above the people instead of in contact with the people.

The secondary function of civic buildings is to create a focal point for the surrounding area. A place where spontaneous public interaction can occur. For example, look at the front of The Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts. The wide, accommadating stairs lead up to a monumental entrance way. People meet on the stairs before shows. Festivals use the stairs as a main staging area. One of my favorite concert moments was watching Buddy Guy play his guitar standing on the Jean Dubuffet statues looking at his reflection in the mirrored glass. The Museum Plaza has none of this. Rather, it sits at a remove, beyond an impassable gulf, admitting only the favored through sliding doors.

Ultimately, the building off gasses artistic arrogance. Rather than see the difficult site as a challange to create a civic space for the city, OMA saw it as a chance to subvert the idea of civic architecture in pursuit of innovation solely for the sake of innovation.

Watch the video. See the clever modeling bit where the sub-titles read "identify public elements, insert public elements at grade (street level, in other words)...flip...connect to context."

This is marketing bullshit to seduce us into thinking that their _radical_ design works in relation to the rest of the city. "connect to context" cannot be done by a lame diagonal escalator. The title cards should read: "identify public elements, completely destroy their function as public elements, create an isolated, elitest private sky box for people who like looking down on the peasants."

The developers have the right idea to integrate museums, commercial and residential aspects in one significant building. They just selected an architectural firm more enamoured of their daring and innovation instead of concerned with what's best for the city.

Renaissance Fair

2006-02-15T21:13:00.000-07:00

Renaissance Fair
Originally uploaded by shermans.

I got 'em eating outta my hand

2006-02-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

I got 'em eating outta my hand
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Even this easy, he still shot the wrong bird

2006-02-15T09:23:00.000-07:00

Cheney's Canned Kill, and Other Hunting Excesses of the Bush Administration

When things go awry

2006-02-13T20:28:00.000-07:00

We travelled way out east this past weekend to go to Arizona's Renaissance Fair. Lots of towns have these attractions on the outskirts. Arizona's is just outside Apache Junction, a town known for the lower rent section of RV and trailer parks populated by the blue-collar snowbirds in contrast to Scottsdale's chardonnay and plum collared royalty. For two or three months in the summer (or winter here in the Southwest) a bunch of people in fake Elizabethian accents and often anachronistic costumes, gather every weekend to pretend they are royalty and peasants, wenches and knights, attractive, witty and perfectly capable of pulling off that bodice and/or pirate shirt. Scattered amidst these adult dungeon and dragons gamers are people like me who show up in jeans and a t-shirt to drink beer and watch the frivolity.

Surprisingly, I had a good time. The jousting knights were rather anemic and more comical than catastrophic in being unhorsed. The food was expensive and mediocre. We thought we'd stay three hours until Ciela fell asleep, but ended up spending most of the day there. The shows--outside of the jousts--were entertaining, the shops and craftspeople were intriguing (mostly because we were amazed at how much the costumes actually cost. You're average Lord-y coat going for around $200).

The Royal Falconer's show was one Judy wanted to see, and it started out like most bird shows, a hawk comes out, grabs a dead mouse, flies around a bit and then goes back into a cage (or in this case, a medieval tower). Judy likes them just because she can see raptors up close, and this is about the only thing going for them. We already know most of the educational patter spat out, and the jokes are invariably of poor quality and dubious taste. This one was perhaps a bit better than most, but nothing worth remembering.

Until the red-tail hawk refused to fly to the post, refused to return to the roost, and pretty much refused to behave at all, bringing the show to a halt. The falconer tried in vain, employing various baits, lures and cajolery to get him back. Amidst his increasingly frantic attempts, he mentioned that the bird kept looking up, and he wondered if there was another bird around. The sky was absolutely clear, but after five minutes or so, a speck appeared high up in the sky. Slowly circling and over the course of the next ten minutes, dropping steadily toward the park. We were amazed at the unplanned demonstration of how powerful the eyesight of a hawk is. Even when we finally could see the predatory bird, the whole crowd repeatedly lost sight of him in the distance.

The trainers finally coaxed the hawk back into the roost and brought out a different bird less susceptable to a bullying eagle defending his turf. Yet despite the derailment of the program, or rather because of it, the show was much more successful. The trainers were truly worried about the bird and their ability to protect it or keep it from flying away in escape. The very material existence of these birds was brought home in the sudden danger of the moment. They were no longer zoo animals on display, but points in a very complicated and serious web. We have a tendency, a prediliction to isolate animals into distinct monads. Our pattern is to anthropomorphize them, and at the most extreme we make of them pets and members of the family. But animals (even the human animal) are more process than product. We are intersections in a series of forces, and the presence of the circling eagle revealed quite explicitly one of those lines of force, a pulsating line of fear and adreneline between a grounded hawk and an eagle circling thousands of feet above.

After that, we saw a guy shoot an arrow through an apple on his wife's head. Same principle of forces, but that arrow lacked the metaphoric resonance of the hawk and eagle. That and the John Tesh sound track was without nuance.

The dictator defense

2006-02-09T20:44:00.000-07:00

David Cole has a nice rundown of Gonzales's weaseling before Congress this week, but let me just point to something Gonzales said that disgusted me and pretty much sums up this administration's one and only guiding principle in foreign policy: fear.

From Gonzales's statement:

"Now, we all agree that it's a necessary and appropriate use of force to fire bullets and missiles at Al Qaida strongholds. Given this common ground, how can anyone conclude that it is not necessary and appropriate to intercept Al Qaida phone calls?"

This is just blatent fear mongering. The objection is not about intercepting Al Qaida phone calls, but about an executive branch usurping Congress and a law that provides for this action but with legal oversight. Gonzales knows this, but rather than address the objection directly, Gonzales choses to re-frame the issue as an executive branch that wants to hunt terrorists and a legislative branch that wants to neuter W.

....
More in that vein:

"Our enemy is listening. And I cannot help but wonder if they aren't shaking their heads in amazement at the thought that anyone would imperil such a sensitive program by leaking its existence in the first place, and smiling at the prospect that we might now disclose even more or perhaps even unilaterally disarm ourselves of a key tool in the war on terror."

Again, Gonzales goes back to the pail to carry more water for an administration absolutely bereft of ideas or explanations for their actions. When caught red-handed breaking the law, the response is to yell "Look out! Behind you!" And then run like hell when we turn our heads.

What jerks

Tournament of Books

2006-02-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Morning News has announced the line-up for the 2006 Tournament of Books. Unlike last year, where I picked David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas to win (which it did), I have no real knowledge of this years field, having read none of them so far.

But that's not enough to stop me from picking a winner.

Unfortunately, they haven't yet listed the matchups, so I can't pick a final four, but I'm going to guess that The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and The King of Kings County by Whitney Terrell go down to the wire, with The King beating the Vampire.

On Athiesm

2006-02-09T12:36:00.000-07:00

Richard Dawkins on why science and reason have failed to win out over mythology.

"That trend toward enlightenment has indeed continued in Europe and Britain. It just has not continued in the U.S., and not in the Islamic world. We're seeing a rather unholy alliance between the burgeoning theocracy in the U.S. and its allies, the theocrats in the Islamic world. They are fighting the same battle: Christian on one side, Muslim on the other. The very large numbers of people in the United States and in Europe who don't subscribe to that worldview are caught in the middle.

"Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. Each believes that if he could kill the other, his path to paradise in the next world would be even swifter. The delusional "next world" is welcome to both of them. This world would be a much better place without either of them."

The full interview here

I've been blocked out of my own blog

2006-02-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

I can't read my own blog. I can post to my blog. I can change the template of my blog. I can alter the settings of my blog. But I cannot read my own blog. I would like to take this as an existential metaphor for being unable to know thy true self, but I'd rather be able to see my blog.

I am unable to read the story of my life. I have been cut off from the narrative that is me. Textual schizophrenia has divided me in two. I am in complete control of all my faculties. I can alter my appearance. I can communicate with the outside world. I can send and receive messages. But access to who I am remains denied.

Yet even this is paradoxical. I can, indeed, view my profile. I can see who I am. But I cannot see me.

Moreover, I can see my other blogs. My other me's. My writing me. My professorial past. But not my present.

Where am I?

Who am I?

I am not in Chicago. In Omaha. In Scottsdale.

I am denied access to my life.

A better view

2006-02-01T19:58:00.000-07:00

A better view
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Where it's at

2006-01-30T09:04:00.000-07:00

Where it's at
Originally uploaded by shermans.

So this is the new digs from the bird's eye. Look closely and notice that we overlook a golf course; one that I've played a couple of times. We have two pools. The high school is just across the street. And lots of dirt.

Word Cloud

2006-01-29T20:56:00.000-07:00

Word Cloud
Originally uploaded by shermans.

The New Home

2006-01-29T12:30:00.000-07:00

The New Home
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Offer accepted this morning. We await all the crazy bureacratic wallowing, but we should be living here in April.

the back

2006-01-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

the back
Originally uploaded by shermans.

The living room

2006-01-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

The living room
Originally uploaded by shermans.

The Kitchen

2006-01-29T12:26:00.000-07:00

The Kitchen
Originally uploaded by shermans.

The Patio

2006-01-29T12:24:00.000-07:00

The Patio
Originally uploaded by shermans.

iMeme for iTunes

2006-01-25T13:44:00.000-07:00

Thanks Scriv For giving me a reason not to work.

Total number of tracks in iTunes
1725 songs (4.9 days' worth of music)

Sort by song title
First song: "....6" by The 88
Last song: "ZYX" by They Might be Giants.

Sort by time
Shortest song: 0:08 "Intro" by Bumpus is the shortest actual song. However, a bit of dialogue from the soundtrack to "Bend it Like Beckham" squeaks in at the shortest track, "It's Beckham's Corner."
Longest song: Discounting the digital copy of part one of my interview with Rick Powers, clocking in at 46 minutes, the longest song is "Years and Tears" by Steve Ferguson and the Midwest Creolo Ensemble 15:20. (Ferguson was one of the founding members of NRBQ, but split early on. Thanks to my dad for the CD.)

Sory by artist
First: 3 Mustaphus 3
Last: Zykos

Sort by album
First: ...To the Last Dead Cowboy by The Waco Brothers
Last: Zap Mama by Zap Mama.

10 most played songs
"We All Fall Down," Danny Michel - In Radio 7
"Shy," Ani DiFranco - Living in Clip
"Here with Me," Dido - Dare
"Snow is Gone," Josh Ritter - In Radio 3.1
"Freedom Park," Marah - In Radio 9
"Sacrifice," Rachel Sage - In Radio 11
"Goodbye Caroline," Aimee Mann - In Radio 3.4
"Clean Up for Christmas," Aimee Mann - The Forgotten Arm
"Allowed Loud," Desoto Reds - In Radio 9

So you can see how much I depend upon my subscription to In Radio to feed my musical desires. Actually, this is very skewed because most of the whole library was transferred over to a new computer and that wiped out all the play history. Still, I can't figure out how Dido made it up there. That might be because of Judy.

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle
"True Dreams of Wichita," Soul Coughing
"Red, Red Robin" Rosie Flores
"Get it Jumpin" Devin Chenault (the demo tape from one of my former students)
"Skin Is, My" Andrew Bird
"Mound" Phish

Number of search returns for:
sex: 5
love: 61
you: 153
death: 3
hate: 8
wish: 15

The world Ciela has to change

2006-01-24T16:56:00.000-07:00

From Mother Jones, here are some statistics that suggest packing a penis can really help you get ahead in the world. We've put one on Ciela's Amazon.com wishlist.
______________

Women make 80¢ on the male dollar, even accounting for time off to raise kids. If that factor is not accounted for, women make 56¢.

Over her career, the average working woman loses $1.2 million to wage inequity.

Since 1963, when the Equal Pay Act was signed, the wage gap has closed by less than half a cent per year.

In 1963, RFK withdrew his nomination to a club that had spurned a black official and formed a club that didn’t admit women.

86% of guests on Sunday-morning political talk shows are men. So are 80% of the guests on The Daily Show.

Since orchestras started requiring musicians to audition behind screens, the number of women hired has increased 20%.

Men only earn 3/4 as many B.A.s as women. Some colleges now admit to practicing affirmative action for male applicants.

Only 1/3 of female Ph.D.s who get on the tenure track before having a baby ever do so.

31.5% of Iraq's parliament are women. Only 15% of the U.S. Congress are women.

15 African nations have a higher percentage of female legislators than does the U.S.

See the full list at Mother Jones

More Angst

2006-01-23T16:00:00.000-07:00

We've embarked upon the second most existential quest of our lives. The first, naming a child, left me humbled and hollow. Taking on the authority to name a person, conferring an identity upon a being felt like the emperor disrobed. What power did I think I possessed to call this person into existence? This, I suspect, is the frightening abyss at the edge of parenthood. It still troubles me on days when Ciela (not a bad name from the existentially fraught hero of our story) looks up at me as if to say, "I cannot possibly be expected to define myself as your daughter for the rest of my existence."

Now, Judy and I have to face the equally fraught aspect of determining the very foundation of our future in Arizona.

We are going to buy real estate.

This monumental decision will ultimately determine our daily lives, our adjacent community, our sense of life, our very being.

I wish I were exaggerating, but the machinery in which we act our lives greatly determines what that life will be.

Winston Churchill said "We shape our buildings; thereafter they shape us," and he's correct. Look at the misery wrought by the modernist hell holes called public housing. Say it loud and say it proud "Pruitt-Igoe!" They designed warehouses for people, and the dehumanizing architecture did everything to push the inhabitents toward less-than-human.

Our cities are designed for cars, making of us exclusively drivers.

The default housing is the single-family detached home: an isolated factory for producing the american family. The moniker of "domestic engineer" rings true in that each home is manned (personned) by a small staff devoting most of their lives to keeping the house in working order. Housework, yardwork, repair, home projects, the job jar. This is the vocabular of the skewed domestic life, one in which we are laborers instead of humans.

Or consider the soul-killing box I've lived in for the past few months. Our apartment complex is certainly average. Probably better than a lot, but by no means luxurious (at least by western, urban standards). We have three bedrooms, living room, kitchen, small patio and two bathrooms. Spacious for most apartments. Our complex has four pools, one spa, a small fitness center, and nice grounds that are partially lawn and partially desert landscaping. We sit in a somewhat exclusive neighborhood of one of the wealthier cities in the valley.

And for all that, the apartment sucks.

And it sucks for completely avoidable reasons. Yet the design takes into account only the most superficial acknowledgements that people with ideas, desires and spirits will live here.

For starters, why in heaven's name would anyone build a structure on an east-west orientation in the flippin' desert? ALL of our windows face west meaning that June, July, August and September see our apartment morph into a solar oven.

The courtyards are quite nice, and the lucky few who have patios and balconies facing the courtyard are blessed (except for those open to the west, of course). Yet half of the apartments have their outdoor space overlooking parking lots. I can place my nightly bourbon and water on my neighbor's hood ornament. My view is of one palm tree and five Honda's, three Fords, two Saturns, and too many pickups for me to care. Meanwhile, all of the doors to the apartments open into the interior courtyards. Nice except that the doors are completely solid, so when closed, no view of the courtyard exists. Furthermore, putting the doors on the interior means that we are that much further from our cars. I think of this each time I carry groceries into the apartment. Now I'm far from being the type of person that dreams of inviting my car into my home via a heated, tiled garage with cable tv and stereo speakers. But if I'm going to park my car eight feet away from my bedroom window, why in the name of Frank Lloyd Wright can't I just have a door off the parking lot. It's not as if the door to the courtyard is making my life that much richer for the connection to grass and the view of the pool and hedges. I can't even see the fire extinguisher that welcomes people into my apartment.

Of course, all of this is understood by economics. The building plan was not drawn to connect people with their homes or the land on which they sit. If it were, all the apartments would have windows on at least two sides and views of the courtyard. No, the plans were drawn to maximize the number of units and the number of parking spaces within easy access of the major streets that access the community. In fact, the plan was drawn in absolute ignorance of the land, the climate, and the way people interact with these and with the architecture.

The apartment building is a way station. A limbo for people on their way up to better housing, or on their way out. The saddest aspect of this dreary place are those balconies and patios of the long-term residents. Those for whom this is home. Overcrowded with plants, candles, hanging knick-knacks. Packed with too much furniture for guests that never come. They are desparate pictures of failure to find a liveable life in this building.

So I do not overstate the importance of buying a house. The very essence of life is at stake.

NPR : Group Offers Money for Reports on Left-Wing Faculty

2006-01-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

A UCLA alumni group is paying money to students who tape lectures from a group of professors that they have branded as radical and using the classroom improperly. Perhaps these alumni are an indication that a UCLA degree is worth less than one might have presumed. However, the mandatory core course for all freshmen, Witch Hunt 101, should boost their standings in US News and World Report's annual report.

The Edge of Memory

2006-01-18T21:37:00.000-07:00

The Edge of Memory
Originally uploaded by shermans.

Einstein on the Beach

2006-01-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

Einstein on the Beach
Originally uploaded by shermans.

A couple of pictures from our trip to Florida to see my sister and her family and my parents. These are on the Disappearing Islands at Ponce Inlet, just south of Daytona Beach.

He knows that sea like the back of his hand

2006-01-18T21:29:00.000-07:00

He knows that sea like the back of his hand
Originally uploaded by shermans.

And one of Ciela proper so people won't complain that I don't show enough cute baby photos.

Updating

2006-01-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

It has been a while without any decent postings. I'm basically blogging in my head these days; gorgeous, epic-length diatribes on various aspects of culture that cross my path. Then I forget them by the time the day winds to a close and I can write.

School started yesterday--although this semester will be odd because the class (yes, still just one class--I can't recommend enough the one-one course load) I will be teaching is a hybrid course: one day in class and one day online. The day online is actually misnamed. We don't meet online but through asynchronus postings and such through Blackboard. I've always been a big fan of Blackboard, but used as a supplement to the classroom experience, not as a substitute. I think long-distance learning, especially in English courses, and most especially in writing courses, deprives students and teachers of critical face-to-face time that allows for immediate improvisation. If I'm a good teacher--let the debate begin--it is because of a dynamic presence in front of a classroom. What I've always seen as my strength is an ability to "work" the room so that I can lead students step by step as they work their way through understanding a text or discovering their own ideas.

This seems much more difficult online. Perhaps impossible. I simply cannot type fast enough nor can expect a rapid exchange of dialogue as an idea ferments.

But man is it much more convenient for me. No bus ride to campus. I can work the class in various stolen moments during the day and while pursuing other projects. So I prostituted myself: selling my scruples for more time.

So far, the whoring has been fun. The discussion board forum for introductions quickly degenerated into a flame war over the "war on Christmas" and the separation of church and state ("so-called" according to one of my students). To be fair, I started it, but mine was a very innocuous statement that was inspired by setting up modules over the holidays.

Tomorrow will be the first time I get to put a face to the words and ideas I've already seen from these people. I somehow doubt that the right wing ideologue will be dressed in khakis and oxford nor will the radical secularist show up in a pink mowhawk. But for the next 12 hours, that's how they look in my head.

Fore!

2006-01-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

In a life where I'm more popular, Scrivener would have tagged me for this meme.

Four Jobs You've Had
1. Paid entertainer for two pre-teen boys (glorified babysitter, but I was expected to create games, engage in art work, be the ideal big brother)
2. Development Director for a non-profit radio station (which resulted in such spectacular failure that I was let go after one year).
3. Lighting designer for various small theaters in Chicago.
4. Secret Agent for Her Majesty the Queen (oops, I probably wasn't supposed to mention that).

Four Movies You Could Watch Over and Over
1. Breaking Away
2. It's A Wonderful Life (which i do watch every year)
3. Angels in America
4. Apocalypse Now

Four Places You've Lived
(at the risk of repeating the title of this blog)
1. Cincinnati, OH
2. Champaign-Urbana, IL
3. Evanston, IL
4. Louisville, KY

Four TV Shows You Love to Watch
1. Six Feet Under
2. Scrubs
3. Arrested Development
4. The Office (BBC version)

Four Places You've Been on Vacation
1. Positano, Italy
2. Quebec City, Canada
3. Orcas Island, Washington
4. Fossil Rim, Texas

Four Blogs You Visit Daily
Scrivener, Writing as Jo(e), Michael Berube and, well, that's about it. There's always my very small blogroll that one can refer to. I don't read many blogs.

Four of Your Favorite Foods
1. Sweet potato quesadillas
2. tiramisu gelato
3. tofu burrito
4. Beer

Four Places You'd Rather Be
1. Oak Park, IL
2. Rome
3. Sails up somewhere in the carribean
4. not in the USA

Four Albums You Can't Live Without, Lately
1. Aimee Mann, The Forgotten Arm
2. Andrew Bird, The Mysterious Production of Eggs
3. The Drovers, World of Monsters
4. In Radio #6

Four Vehicles You've Owned
1. 1978 Honda Prelude: first and still the best car I've ever owned.
2. Hyundai Excel: the first car I bought with my own money.
3. Chevrolet Cavellier; god what a lousy car.
4. 1999 Silver Honda Civic.
4a. 1999 Silver Honda Civic. (At one time, we owned two cars almost exactly the same type. We called them our fleet.)

The Latest Work

2006-01-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

The Latest Work
Originally uploaded by shermans.

This is how I spent my winter vacation. My parents have always liked a painting I did for Judy back when I was just out of college. I tried once before, but that one never went over. So this time, I tried to duplicate the mood and aesthetic of the first painting while not repeating myself. They say they like it, but then again, they said that about the first one, and that one is hanging in their closet. It's the adult version of hoping my parents will put my drawing on the refridgerator door.

Detail

2006-01-12T18:58:00.000-07:00

Detail
Originally uploaded by shermans.

This is a detail of the above work. I may not be able to draw a dog--something that got me thrown out of a group project back in 7th grade--but I do have a bit of style. They amuse me and they make for cheap gifts. Well, not really all that cheap when one adds up the new paints and brushes, the canvas and shipping. Oh god, the shipping.

Some funny rants about troubled times

2006-01-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, these are a little blue as they say, but they are pretty funny.

*%&$ Christmas
%&*# the South

Hiking on Christmas Day

2005-12-31T12:32:00.000-07:00

Hiking on Christmas Day
Originally uploaded by shermans.

We wandered around in the South Mountains on Christmas Day. The hike wasn't too bad, unless you are carrying a young child. Shortly after this picture was taken, the "Hidden Valley" trail seemed to end in a minature box canyon. We wandered around a bit before we decided we need to go up and over. This was not a terribly difficult scramble except that I couldn't do it with Ciela on my back, and she was too short to walk it on her own. Judy and I ended up doing a Ciela hand over to get her up and over the rocks. Awkward and a little bit risky, but we got her up.

Then we had to do it again about 200 yards down the trail.

And then nearly a third time at what the trail guide cleverly calls Fat Man's pass (I think I've walked through 8 or 10 Fat Man's passes, miserys and dilemmas in my hiking and spluenking). Except that Ciela is very skinny, and just walked through the 14 inch passage way between two house-size boulders. She found it very funny, laughing the whole way through. Her father, unexpectedly, was able to go through sideways and did not freak out from the claustrophobic sensation of being pinned between two very immobile rocks.

Citrus

2005-12-31T12:17:00.000-07:00

Here's something that should become a new Christmas tradition. On Boxing Day--that's the day after Christmas, right?--Judy Ciela and I gathered with a group of parents and kids and strangers to pick oranges and grapefruits off trees. Citrus trees are all over the valley, with lots of homes having two or three in their yards. Because we water the Noah out of our plants...because we can, dammit...these trees produce a lot of fruit. Most people can't make use of even a tenth of the oranges. But there are plenty of homeless shelters that can, so we pick fruit and take the boxes and bags (literally tons of fruit) to the shelters.

In addition, Phoenix has started to see the infiltration of roof rats in the last few years. These little guys like vitamin C and also like to live in attics. Trees with lots of fruit hanging just over the roof make for a very appealing little roof rat estate. Picking the fruit from the trees helps keep the population under control. Everyone one wins--except for the roof rats. Poor little rodents.

We picked close to 3000 pounds the day I was there, and that was mostly in one yard. I'm astounded to think how much is out there that probably gets landfilled.

In any case, I'm enjoying my fresh squeezed orange juice these mornings. I think everyone should do this on the day after Christmas. Do oranges grow in Chicago?

What we left. What we've got.

2005-12-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

No Cold. No Snow. No Relatives. No Turkey or anything with Velveeta or Cheez Whiz. No Tree. No Fire. No Midnight Mass. No bourbon. No punch. No distant cousins. No party (after 13 straight years).

The view out of the rear-view contains much.

We miss people all the time, but December reminds us that we are very far away from all of you. We hope you all had a good holiday season in your frigid climates, huddled by the coal-burning stove, reading by candlelight. We thought of you as we wandered the hidden valleys of South Mountain, clad in shorts and t-shirts, looking forward to a quick dip in the pool before we settled in for Christmas Eve dinner.

We wish you all the best in the New Year.

Scott, Judy and Ciela

Excerpt from a Christmas email to a former student

2005-12-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

I hope you have a nice break, read some good books, and get excited about the new year. I love January if only for the delusions that I have a second chance to do better. If there's one thing I really like about time, it's that it keeps going. There's always the future. If I had to live with my past, I'd kill myself for being lazy, unfocused, petty, slothful and cowardly. But with the promise of time, we are all dedicated, ambitious, noble and brave. God bless the new year, and may the devil take the past.

Sobriquet Magazine Online: Conversations With Don DeLillo?

2005-12-22T06:59:00.000-07:00

I reviewedConversations With Don DeLillo for Sobriquet Magazine. I take a small swing at the book, noting that for all its pages, DeLillo doesn't reveal a tremendous amount. Sadly, this is probably the meanest I've ever been as a critic.

The Panda's Thumb

2005-12-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

In case you missed the news, the Dover, PA "intelligent design" decision was handed down yesterday. The judge ripped the flat-earthers in two. A few favorite moments from the decision:

"We first note that since ID is not science, the conclusion is inescapable that the only real effect of the ID policy is the advancement of religion."

"The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy."

"The breathtaking inanity of the Board’s decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

Right, so they are unscientific, they lie, they are inane, and they have wasted a lot of people's time and money on a shell game. Perhaps they will crawl back under their rock and await evolution or (god help them) divine intervention.

For more analysis and general schadenfreud, seeThe Panda's Thumb.

Ciela with Her Mentors

2005-12-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

Ciela with her Mentors
Originally uploaded by shermans.

The Snow Baby Surveys Her Work

2005-12-21T08:36:00.000-07:00

The Snow Baby Surveys Her Work
Originally uploaded by shermans.

From the Gonzales press conference

2005-12-19T21:01:00.001-07:00

Daily Kos: State of the Nation:

Q If FISA didn't work, why didn't you seek a new statute that allowed something like this legally?
ATTORNEY GENERAL GONZALES: That question was asked earlier. We've had discussions with members of Congress, certain members of Congress, about whether or not we could get an amendment to FISA, and we were advised that that was not likely to be -- that was not something we could likely get, certainly not without jeopardizing the existence of the program, and therefore, killing the program. And that -- and so a decision was made that because we felt that the authorities were there, that we should continue moving forward with this program."
-------------------

So Gonzales is saying that Congress would have seen the program as illegal, so we didn't ask for a new statute. Isn't this the executive branch saying "We'll respect Congress as the legislative branch unless we want a law that they don't want. Then it's executive privilege and fuck the constitution."

Exactly how would a strict constitutionalist interpret this?

Why not use FISA?

2005-12-19T20:37:00.000-07:00

One of the things that gets me about the president subverting FISA is that the govering rules of FISA): are so broad that there is almost no chance of a FISA request getting rejected. In fact, in 2004 the FISC approved 1758 out of 1758 requests. Talk about a rubber stamp.

From the Electronic Frontier Foundation FAQ about FISA. See especially the last paragraph where the AG can authorize immediate surveillance but "must as soon as practicable, but not more than 24 hours later seek judicial review."

That seems pretty clearly a prohibition against spying without the FISC overview.

_____________________________________________

Does FISA authorize surveillance without a court order?

Yes. In general, the Justice Department may engage in electronic surveillance to collect FII without a court order for periods up to one year. 50 U.S.C. ? 1802. There must be no 'substantial likelihood' that the intercepted communications include those to which a U.S. person is a party. ? 1802(a)(1)(B).

Such electronic surveillance must be certified by the Attorney General and then noticed to the Senate and House intelligence committees. ? 1802(a)(2). A copy of the certification must be filed with the FISC, where it remains sealed unless (a) an application for a warrant with respect to it is filed, or (b) the legality of the surveillance is challenged in another federal district court under ? 1806(f). ? 1802(a)(3). Common carriers must assist in the surveillance and maintain its secrecy. ? 1802(a)(4).

In emergencies, the Attorney General may authorize immediate surveillance but must 'as soon as practicable, but not more than twenty-four hours' later, seek judicial review of the emergency application. ? 1805(e)."

UPDATE: From Daily KosCheney's Latest Fib

"Indeed, from 1979 to 2002, the FISA court issued 15,264 surveillance warrants. Not a single warrant application was" rejected

Snow Baby Strikes Again

2005-12-17T20:53:00.000-07:00

Last year, when a vicious snow storm struck southern Illinois and Indiana in late December, we spent two days stranded in a small Illinois town and then a terrifying 9 hour trip across an icy, sparsely travelled highway. At the time, we joked that Ciela was the Snow Baby, capable of wreaking havoc with industrial-strength weather systems that cripple interstates and break century-old records for snowfall.

All in good fun.

How clever we thought ourselves.

But no one truly believes a baby to be that malevolent and that powerful. Certainly not one as cute as Ciela.

Just in case, we elected to spend The Winter Solstice Festival That Was Cynically Co-opted by Christians in Their Brutal War Against Pagans (take that John Gibson) in Scottsdale were we could be assured that there would be no snowstorms. Instead, we travelled in early December to Chicago to see family and friends.

The Snow Baby was not fooled.

Just outside of Kansas, the pilot informed us that it was starting to snow in Chicago. As we neared Midway, we were told to go into a holding pattern. Visibility was down to a half-mile and we needed a mile to land. I've landed in bad weather at Midway. It's not fun. The runways are so short that any tricky landing that involves the pilot doing something other than just floating in requires a dramatic descent and then hair-raising breaking patterns.

We circled for 20 minutes and then were sent to Cleveland for fuel and lots of paper shuffling. The Snow Baby laughed and pooped in her pants. (The changing of which earned her father a vicious scolding from the bitchy flight attendant who from my observations is not the sort of man interested in reproducing.)

In Cleveland we jettisoned one lady who fortuitously was actually going to Cleveland--the Snow Baby blesses the less fortunate of us who have to live in Cleveland--and a woman going to NYC who negotiated a connecting flight out of Cleveland rather than return to Chicago. We headed back to Chicago, apparently in the belief that the Snow Baby had been placated.

Ciela fell asleep on the return trip, and the snow seemed to have lessened. The bitchy FA announced that seatbacks were to be set aright and tray tables locked. The announcement startled Ciela awake, and the snow instantly showered outside the windows. Mere minutes later, the pilot announced that we had been exiled back to a holding pattern. The Snow Baby smiled with thinly disguised contempt.

There is an eerie quiet that pervades in the holding pattern. Conversation is whispered. Flight attendents are silent and unable to dispense beverages or pick up trash. There is a gentle anticipation that extends to a very near point into the future, but a point maddenly obscured by a misty fog. The whole plane hovers in limbo.

Perhaps fifteen minutes later engines reved. With no announcement from pilot or crew, we started to dive. We were, apparently, going to land. As we headed earthward, the snow outside the windows was thick. How, we wondered, could this weather be better than our first aborted attempt? The Snow Baby merely cooed. Judy had the window seat, and when we finally broke through the cloud layer we were nearly at the runway. "Hold on to Ciela," she said and exclaimed at all the snow on the runway.

We hit hard, ran for what to me felt like an extended time, and then the reverse thrusters hit and threw up a huge cloud of snow. I swear we skidded around the last turn off the runway, but we were safe on the ground. The Snow Baby never relented, however, as 10 inches fell in 10 hours with the epicenter of the storm landing right on top of Midway Airport.

40 minutes after we landed, a Southwest jet slid off the runway and onto the intersection of 55th and Central. The NTSB has said that the reverse thrusters of the airplane did not fire properly, but the Snow Baby knows the cause lies elsewhere.

a look back

2005-12-17T20:23:00.000-07:00

While I was looking to reference the Snow Baby entry, I ran across this (dreadfully misspelled) entry about Tom DeLay. Once again, I feel warm and fuzzy knowing that he's looking at the very real possibility of removal from office and a prison sentence. The fact that the Supreme Court is reviewing his diabolical redistricting in Texas only intensifies the feeling. The republican scandals substitute nicely for the lack of a roaring fire on winter's day.

Just a few weeks after the election of W for a second term, the world looked very bleak indeed. Nearly a year later, things are still pretty screwed up with the US leading the screw ups internationally and the ethically-challenged White House driving us further into soviet style central policing, but I feel a bit better as the Bush downward slide seems to be picking up steam. With the recent revelations that W authorized domestic spying in direct disobeyance of legal prohibitions, do we dare hope the slide ends in impeachment?

Ciela's Activity This Morning

2005-12-16T07:35:00.000-07:00

Banging her head against the glass patio doors.

Work for Google

2005-12-06T11:21:00.000-07:00

Now this is a business model we should all aspire to.

Just in case anyone is believing the new history

2005-12-01T15:07:00.000-07:00

The White House has apparently put the word out to refute claims that the president linked Iraq and Al Qaeda to justify the war. I heard Lynn Cheney deny it yesterday on NPR, and FOX's Chris Wallace insisted that the president never made such claims.

The President's Radio Address of February 8, 2003, however, convincingly proves that Bush did specifically link the two.

Here's the relevant excerpt:

---
Saddam Hussein has longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks. Senior members of Iraqi intelligence and al Qaeda have met at least eight times since the early 1990s. Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training. And an al Qaeda operative was sent to Iraq several times in the late 1990s for help in acquiring poisons and gases.

We also know that Iraq is harboring a terrorist network headed by a senior al Qaeda terrorist planner. This network runs a poison and explosive training camp in northeast Iraq, and many of its leaders are known to be in Baghdad.
---

Seems pretty clear-cut to me.