Damaged Goods

Please send me evenings and weekends!

Okay, I really miss my family. The only thing about being here alone is playing music really, really loud. The house is quaking with Gang of Four, the post-punk geniuses.

Dr. and Mrs. Owen A. Rice

So, this temporary bachelor is going through his mother's boxes in the garage. Here's a photo of my grandparents, Owen and Betty Rice, on graduation day from medical school. Despite the fact that my grandmother finished (and, according to my grandfather, got him through) medical school, she only practiced for a short while and didn't go by the title "Dr." I love this photo of them in their doctoral gowns in Kirksville, MO when they both became Osteopathic physicians in the 1930s.

In the 30s, my Mom's dad went to Michigan State College. My other grandfather didn't go to college (he did, however, get an honorary degree from Grand Valley State College and served on their governing board; there's even a dorm there named after him!). I remember arguing with my grandfather about the campus. He claimed to have lived in Wells Hall. I knew Wells hall was built in the 50s or 60s. Turns out we were both right. My grandfather lived in the 2nd Wells Hall. The first one was built in 1877 and burned down in 1905; the one my grandfather lived in was built in 1907 and destroyed in 1966.

Pronto Pups, Sunfish, and Sand, Sand, Sand

When I was a small kid, my grandparents bought a place on Lake Michigan in Grand Haven. As I write this, I am next door to that lot--my Aunt has the cottage that was next door. My grandfather died in a fire when the cottage burned down. He and my grandmother would take us into Grand Haven for Pronto Pups--fantastic little corn dogs.

So we've been out here for the weekend, sailing a little Sunfish, cooking pork tenderloin on the grill, and watching the kids play in the sand.

After Barb, Dean and I puzzled over the rigging of the little Sunfish, we had a great time. The shot below is not their boat, but similar. We had a blast.

Kathy also used the remainder of the tenderloin to make some gorgeous pulled pork sandwiches. She pulled the tenderloin apart with a fork, marinated it in vinegar and barbecue sauce, and served it on whole wheat buns with her famous cole slaw. Oh man, were those good sandwiches!

The Sunfish sailing has me thinking about the family vacation with my Dad, Marti and The Swedes on Lake Michigan. I know Marti's going to want to sail the Clark's Hobie Cat quite a bit. That should be super fun.

How To Like It

True story. My 9th grade English teacher was pretty cool. I was a terrible 9th grader who wrote on my desk all the time and talked in class too much. She responded not by yelling, but by covering my desk in paper and putting it out in the hall (sometimes both). She was also my debate coach. She also let us do this cool assignment where we could put any message we wanted in a balloon and send it up in the air (I think that would be considered littering today). I sent the lyrics to XTC's "Melt the Guns" up with my balloon.

At any rate, fast forward to the end of my Ph.D. program, and who is my fellow classmate in my very last doctoral English class? You guessed it--my 9th grade teacher. It was her last class in the program, too... and we finished our degrees at basically the same time. It was kind of cool, and kind of strange. One of the things that made it strange was this poem. She gave me a perfectly respectable book of poetry by Stephen Dobyns. She flagged this poem--which is actually quite beautiful--and told the whole class it reminded her of me. I puzzle over this sometimes. Every once in a while, I think about this poem. My new running interest got me thinking about it yesterday. Here it is:

How To Like It
by Stephen Dobyns

These are the first days of fall. The wind
at evening smells of roads still to be traveled,
while the sound of leaves blowing across the lawns
is like an unsettled feeling in the blood,
the desire to get in a car and just keep driving.
A man and a dog descend their front steps.
The dog says, Let’s go downtown and get crazy drunk.
Let’s tip over all the trash cans we can find.
This is how dogs deal with the prospect of change.
But in his sense of the season, the man is struck
by the oppressiveness of his past, how his memories
which were shifting and fluid have grown more solid
until it seems he can see remembered faces
caught up among the dark places in the trees.
The dog says, Let’s pick up some girls and just
rip off their clothes. Let’s dig holes everywhere.
Above his house, the man notices wisps of cloud
crossing the face of the moon. Like in a movie,
he says to himself, a movie about a person
leaving on a journey. He looks down the street
to the hills outside of town and finds the cut
where the road heads north. He thinks of driving
on that road and the dusty smell of the car
heater, which hasn’t been used since last winter.
The dog says, Let’s go down to the diner and sniff
people’s legs. Let’s stuff ourselves on burgers.
In the man’s mind, the road is empty and dark.
Pine trees press down to the edge of the shoulder,
where the eyes of animals, fixed in his headlights,
shine like small cautions against the night.
Sometimes a passing truck makes his whole car shake.
The dog says, Let’s go to sleep. Let’s lie down
by the fire and put our tails over our noses.
But the man wants to drive all night, crossing
one state line after another, and never stop
until the sun creeps into his rearview mirror.
Then he’ll pull over and rest awhile before
starting again, and at dusk he’ll crest a hill
and there, filling a valley, will be the lights
of a city entirely new to him.
But the dog says, Let’s just go back inside.
Let’s not do anything tonight. So they
walk back up the sidewalk to the front steps.
How is it possible to want so many things
and still want nothing. The man wants to sleep
and wants to hit his head again and again
against a wall. Why is it all so difficult?
But the dog says, Let’s go make a sandwich.
Let’s make the tallest sandwich anyone’s ever seen.
And that’s what they do and that’s where the man’s
wife finds him, staring into the refrigerator
as if into the place where the answers are kept-
the ones telling why you get up in the morning
and how it is possible to sleep at night,
answers to what comes next and how to like it.

If you like this poem, by all means rush out and buy the book Velocities: New and Selected Poems: 1966-1992. It's a good book of poetry.

Cancer BikeWeek III

Mountains outside Jackson Hole, WY.

On the eve of his 4-week checkup for tumor growth under Sutent, Dad pitched the idea of a 3rd motorcycle trip this Fall. He's got a meeting/conference in Jackson Hole, WY in early October and asked me to think about taking a ride to get there. He also asked me to think route thoughts (I've been the planner on the past 2 trips) and consider bringing Kath and the kids along for the ride.

Partly as a way of avoiding my anxiety over tomorrow's visit to Dana Farber, I am thinking about the following route:

JACKSON HOLE CYCLE TRIP [DRAFT]
UT/ID/MT/WY/UT

• SAT 9/26 Park City - Twin Falls, ID (Hot Springs)
• SUN 9/27 Twin Falls - Craters of the Moon NP
• MON 9/28 Craters - Bozeman, MT
• TUE 9/29 Bozeman - Yellowstone NP (Zen Route)
• WED 9/30 Yellowstone - Grand Tetons NP
• THU 10/1 arrive Jackson Hole
• FRI 10/2 ** Jackson Hole Meeting **
• SAT 10/3 ** Jackson Hole Meeting ** (back to Park City?)
• SUN 10/4 Return home

Of course I'd have to get the time off. We'll see. This route takes us through 3 very cool national parks--ones I have never visited (and one I'd never heard of). Plenty of time for exploring during the meeting.

Marti's Music Challenge

This is too cool:

So, guys, I think it might be fun if each of us is responsible for bringing some music with us to the lake that each of us discovered in the last year. That is my request. And, in exchange, I will furnish a great deal of wine.

So, I've got to start thinking... Brainstorm.

• Keith Jarrett Shostakovich preludes/fuges
• The Schele Manuscript lute recordings
• The Wave Pictures (maybe not)
• Thao Nguyen & The Get Down Stay Down (We Brave Bee Stings and All)
• A few of my 8tracks mixes: Radio Songs, Mr. Monkey Suit, Stockholm Syndrome, etc.
• Sam Sparro
• 
  

Great Video

This is the opener to my Stockholm Syndrome mix, embedded below.

Non Sequitur

Not that anyone really cares, but all this talk of Michael Jackson's death reminded me of how much I like Terence Trent D'Arby's version of "Who's Loving You" on his debut album. I remember how arrogant he was when this record came out--he made some comment that it was better than Sgt. Pepper--but I had no idea that he really is quite a freak. He changed his name to Sananda Francesco Maitreya based on some dreams he had and declared D'Arby "dead." Um.... okay.

In running news, Bill and I did our 2 miler on lunch today with the interval timer at 9:1 run/walk. We finished in the same time we usually do running without walk breaks. Felt good.

Tomorrow, I head out to do the 3-miler with Steve, but we won't do the walk break thing. We are going to start to attempt trimming the time. We usually do it in 32 minutes. I'd like to shave 3 minutes off and complete in 29 or less. I think we can do it. The watch will make this easier.

Follow Your Bliss

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are -- if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.

Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers, edited by Betty Sue Flowers. Doubleday and Co, 1988, p. 120.

Dad & Marti are anchored in the mouth of the Potomac River near St. Marys City, MD. There is a raging thunderstorm. They are celebrating 29 years of being together--today! Back on July 1, 1980 they met at the Caucus Club in Detroit.

The name of their boat is Bliss--a 49 foot Jeanneau deck salon. Gorgeous boat. Needs a better stereo. In the photo above, you can see my Dad, Marty, and Kathy near the stern. Owen is in the middle with a very visible life vest on, and you can just see my head poking out from down below--I was checking on Julia, who is below deck coloring.