Turnip Season
9.19.2003
Public Displays of Opinion
When I park my truck at work, I walk by everyone's car and notice the bumper stickers.
"It's Socialism, Stupid"
"Laws off my body"
something about Faeries
"Sublime"
"Galicia"
of course, plenty of Grateful Dead stickers
and my RedHat.
What really impressed me the other day was the box of Midol sitting on someone's dashboard, ripped open. On a trip to the Boundary Waters back when I was in high school, we came upon a campsite that had bears visit. My strongest memory of that day is the bottle of Squeeze Parkay shredded by the bears. That's what the Midol box looked like. I wish I knew who this person is so that I can avoid her on those days.
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Just for the Record
I don't understand playing the national anthem before sporting events. Is there something inherently patriotic about athletics? Are sports fans prone to forgetting in what country they are located?
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I am a patriot
And I love my county
Because my country is all I know
I want to be with my family
The people who understand me
I've got nowhere else to go
...
And I ain't no communist
And I ain't no capitalist
And I ain't no socialist
And I ain't no imperialist
And I ain't no democrat
And I ain't no republican
I only know one party
And it is freedom
I am, I am, I am
I am a patriot
And I love my country
Because my county is all I know
And the river opens for the righteous
And the river opens for the righteous
And the river opens for the righteous
Someday
And the river opens for the righteous...
- Steven Van Zandt
9.18.2003
A Triumph
If it sounds as though, from my last post, that my day sucked, I have unintentionally misled you.
I was to be at work at 5:00 AM today, early, I know but that's life in retail. I can live with that.
I set my alarm for 4:00 AM and went to bed. I woke up and looked over at the clock out of the corner of my eye. Thinking it read 6:30, I momentarily panicked, or tried to consider whether this was one of those bad dreams. I decided to put on my spectacles and check what the correct time was and face my day, such as it was. It was 3:30 AM. The surge of adrenaline had gotten me awake, somewhat.
I got to work before 5:00 and Eric already had put in 75% of the ice. I set the shellfish and cooked set for the day when I heard the call for Team Leaders from Christina. It was time.
During our team build last month, we had such a good time cooking together that I wanted to bring that to the whole store team, so I suggested we do "Ready, Set, Cook" for a store meeting. Those of us that were sitting around watching the rest of the team leaders cook began brainstorming on how to make that happen. We kept it a secret and planned it as a way to involve everyone in the store and make it a contest. Christina did a ton of legwork, chasing down prizes and tradeouts with other merchants along Metcalf.
6:30 came and the team members came trudging in, expecting another desultory meeting ("What's happening in grocery, Mike?"). They got rounded up into teams and set to shopping and prepping food, working in groups of people unfamiliar to them and coming up with some great breakfast entrees.
I rode that high through my work day and about halfway into my commute home. I got home and took an hour nap.
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In which I receive the bad news
The mailbox bore yet another rejection notice today. "We will keep your resume on file." In the meantime, don't make any major purchases, like a container of milk larger than a quart.
Nonetheless, I have somewhere to go every day and something to do and health insurance, not on COBRA. I could be working at Sprint and have my job sent to India, after I train my replacement. On it goes.
On another note, Mark Lidman, mentioned to me that he read my story about him in this setting. If you're reading me now, Mark, hello.
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9.15.2003
WWWD (What world Warren do?)
On a live show I've got on CD somewhere, Jay Bennett & Edward Burch pose the "What world Warren do?" question and then proceed to do a great rendition of "Gorilla, you're a desperado".
What world Warren do? Like John Wayne in "The Shootist", he went out with his boots on, working until the end on The Wind, which has received great reviews. I picked Life'll Kill Ya up a couple years ago and enjoyed it immensely but it was the early Asylum era work that got me, that woke me up. About the same time that punk was coming around, there was Warren. The plate with the pistol. "That's fucked up, " said Darryl Parker, seeing on my dorm room wall. "Politely Berserk" was the headline in the ad.
You didn't have to lose your edge just because you could read, just because you studied with Stravinsky. You could be educated and still rail against the world. But you could love Ross MacDonald novels, you could nearly kill yourself with Stoli and still find yourself. You could take Linda Rondstadt's royalties, hang with the Eagles and still be punk. You could live until the end came. You didn't have to be Sid Vicious. You could grow up and be productive, hang out with David Letterman, joke about Jackson Browne and still be a wild man. On Sentimental Hygiene, Neil Young played one of his trademark solos. Those things still inspire me today.
I was wondering if Johnny Cash ever sang a Warren Zevon song. "Accidentally Like A Martyr" or "Empty Handed Heart" would have sounded great in JC's rumbling voice. Listening to Transverse City on the drive to work today, he was still good at that point, but just seemed unfocused or uncertain of himself, trying new things.
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9.14.2003
And everytime I feel it slipping away
Finally got to go see American Splendor this afternoon. Worthy, tour-de-force, in cinema. I've been interested in Harvey Pekar since seeing him on Letterman in the 80's. Some of the things he says about everyday life being fascinating are coming to fruition in Blogging.
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2 Hours on the trail with Bad Ben and Kyle. Totally coated in mud at the end. You have to go through the middle of the puddles or you just tear up the trails too much. Anyway, we saw 3 kinds of fauna, deer, box turtle and crayfish.
On another front, I finally got the RAM off eBay that I need fo the Mini-ITX project. I'll get this thing up and running if it kills me.
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Farewell
When we visited Nashville a couple years back, we briefly visited Hatch Show Print and I bought a poster of Johnny Cash, which today hangs in my den over my sofa. I sometimes sit and meditate under Johnny's picture. When I got the Unchained album, it spent more time on my CD player than most other things I've bought.
Friday morning, I woke up and saw on the Yahoo! news that Johnny Cash had died. I made coffee and walked around the block with Chester, came back to the kitchen and reached into the cabinet for a cup. There was a plain white cup on the top shelf which I reached for and found it was the Sun Records cup that we bought on our trip down south. Laurie and I rode our bicycles all over downtown Memphis that day. Never have I felt a placemore hallowed than I did visiting Sun Studios. When you imagine that Elvis made those great records there and Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee and Howlin' Wolf (where Chester got his name). But Johnny Cash has been there my whole life, the music from my parents radio station that I really loved. I remember hearing "What is Truth" on the radio when I was, geez, 10 years old or something, during the Vietnam War. Maybe that's what gave me the courage to be a 12-year-old McGovern supporter and what's made me the bleeding heart liberal I am now.
Years later, going through one of my periodic "catching up on Bob Dylan" phases, I picked up the Nashville Skyline album (yes, on vinyl) and there was Johnny, playing and singing with Dylan, in his best voice, on "Girl From The North Country".
There was something about the man that made him rise above the material he sang. Songs like "Solitary Man" or "Bridge Over Troubled Water" which are great songs but have been played so much that their weight , their gravitas has been lost and would be lame or campy in lesser hands. And the newer songs, like "Rusty Cage" or "Hurt", he fully inhabits them and brings that gravitas to them and transforms them from the vain cries of some disaffected youngster to the songs of a man who has experienced real loss.
On my personal Mount Rushmore, I imagine Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Hank Williams and Johnny Cash, the ones who seem to exemplify what it means to be a man in America, to have experienced hurt and loss and to continue holding your head up, to keep hoping.
