Scenery

I found an alternative route back from Des Moines yesterday, up 65 to 330 from Altoona, then over on 30 through the rolling mostly harvested hills to Tama and home. It was good to look at something different and get away from the parade of semis and SUVs all in a hurry. Actually, the semis don't seem to be in a hurry, but the other traffic on 80 is often very rude and seem to view tailgating as mandatory. When one is driving a hockey puck sized sedan (albeit zippy) one begins to appreciate a little space between one and those laws-of-physics-defying maniacs.

I took this picture when Mom and the kids and I made our epic journey to Southern Illinois. The good thing about rivers is that they always change scenery and you just have to sit still. I used to love watching barges go by, seeing the men working through lighted doorways, or walking along the long decks purposefully. Once in a while a guy would take a leak over the rail into the river, as though we on the bank were just scenery, after all. No harm done. It's a wide river.

We pass, most of us, without giving much thought to the other. The pickup in front of me is mostly an impediment to me reaching my preferred speed. The farmer harvesting is a diversion to me, and I'm irrelevant to him, preoccupied as he is in quantifying his year's work in bushels. The trucker is thinking about his wife, the couple in the SUV are preoccupied with ignoring global warming.

Today I'll drive back and forth, to and from Iowa City. Maybe I'll take 218. Maybe I'll stop at a rest stop and have a meaniful conversation with someone. On the other hand, I could get busted for making an ill advised foot tap in the potty. Better mind my own business and hurry along.

Girth

I went to the doctor yesterday ready to celebrate my relatively normal blood pressure but the conversation turned fairly rapidly to my girth. I am enjoying doctor visits less these days. When one has a regular physician, she tends to keep track of things one says one will do. I said I'd increase my excercise and lose weight about three months ago, and apparently she wrote it down. Damn!

The staff refer to our doctor as "the Boss," and she's a good egg. She got me to do something about the low grade depression I carried around after years of deteriorating parents wore me down. She takes good care of my mother. Yesterday, she offered me Meridia, which is supposed to diminish appetite. Just what I need: a pill to do what I won't do. If the pill made me get off my ass and walk the dog every day, I might take it. The Boss mutters about risk for diabetes.

I have been battling issues of weight since I was a child. When I was six, I had a pre-cursor to an ulcer, an irritation of my stomach lining, and was hospitalized and put on a soft food diet. My mother felt very guilty about my ulcer, thinking as folks did in those days that it was the result of stress. We had plenty of that, but ulcers are actually caused by bacteria that can survive in stomach acid. I tell my mother that sometimes and she is immensely relieved, but then forgets. I get to ease her mind over and over again.

Anyway, at fifteen I went on my first diet. It was sponsored by the American Heart Association and was laden with milk and cheese and protein. Dieting makes one's body hungrier, and actually messes with one's "set point," the point at which we feel full. Over the years, I have lost enough weight to start a whole other human, and have gained that weight back. Girth embraces me like an old friend. In the end, I decided that the best route is to be more active, but I find excercise for it's own sake very tedious. (The Boss says "suck it up.") I like basketball and raquetball and cross-country skiing. Treadmills are awful. I used to like to run, but getting to the point where that is fun is pretty tough on one. I have started running a few times recently and find reasons not to.

I have a friend who is critical and almost anorexic in his monitoring of his own weight. "I've gained three pounds, I have to work out!" He worries about me in less than helpful ways. Last time I lost a bunch of weight, he was very happy for me and said he'd worried about it but didn't know what to say. "How can you tell your friend he's getting to be a fat fuck?"

What he doesn't realize is that girth stays inside us, whether it is visible or not. My inner fat fuck was offended.

I will walk the dog and play more ball and cultivate a local raquetball partner and be more active, because it really does make me feel better. I turn fifty this year and will feel better about it if I stay active. It would be fun to be one of those lean older men, jogging with ease along the highway and breaking a mild sweat. Maybe if I take Meridia college coeds will begin to fantasize about being mentored by me. Maybe my audience will stop cringing when I sing "I am lying naked in the garden."

But I'll be damned if I'll take another pill. C'mon Tye. Let's take a stroll.

Thanks, coach!

This is the Wapsie river valley, early in the morning. There's a river in there somewhere.

I created a little stir over the weekend by inadequately proofing a letter to the parents of an Iowa City junior high school. It was supposed to introduce our services to families, but it included a phrase expressing pleasure that they had chosen to seek our services. Ooops. My agency, and the school, recieved numerous calls on this and I'm lucky we have a good relationship with school staff. I used to have the same problem with BWR emails. Sometimes I just get "in a hurry."

My driver's education teacher was the High School baseball coach. He was a nice man, easily mimicked. He had sage advice for new drivers, as well as for life. It is as follows:

Don't be in a HURRY! I obviously don't always recall this one. Coach Hendershot always said that most problems, on the road, an elsewhere occur because people are in a hurry and if we weren't in a hurry we'd have fewer problems.

Don't be a HORN TOOTER! Coach insisted that folks who were going around horn tooting should have been paying attention to their own selves rather than running around tooting when they should be paying attention.

Yesterday, because I got in a hurry on Friday, we had to deal with a lot of horn tooters.

So it goes. Mea Culpa. I now have written a nice letter of apology for the school newsletter. I'm going to have someone proof my proof. Toot-toot!

Time out from entropy

The corn is mostly in here. On the way to Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin a week ago I stopped to look at this field with its big cylinders of silage scattered as if by a big hand. I may have to make this one black and white and see what happens.

It rained, and rained and rained during the last couple days and we all took shelter. Last night I went to my mother's and helped her with the infernal cat box and had a glass of wine with her. Thanks to the miracles of medication which competes with alcohol for the same receptors, my mother can again have a glass of wine without doing a face plant on the bathroom floor. For a while it was a wonderful conversation, talking about therapy and what it means to me, and to my mom, who ran a classroom of the most disturbed kids in Wichita for 12 years. It was based on Glasser, and involved group therapy every day with the kids. Mom was amazing with those kids, and some of them were still stopping by, as adults to check on her or ask advice, when she finally had to move. Those that arent' in prison, that is.

For an hour, Mom and I had a great conversation that didn't involve Alzheimer's Disease, the elephant in the room. Then, as though to remind us, Mom's ideas and thoughts began to repeat themselves. The interlude was over too soon.

When I don't wish for other fates for her, which I have tried to train myself not to do, I am grateful for these interludes, which still allow us to enjoy each other. I am grateful that Mom can still enjoy a glass or two of wine and feel normal. I am grateful that she remembers us and can still excercise that enormous mind. I'm grateful that she doesn't, for a while, feel any different than she ever did. She still gives great hugs, too.

Boys

It has been raining since four in the morning. The rain is steady and constant, pouring down my front window. I got up early and read an article in Harper's while I waited for "my girlfriend," the paper delivery woman, to bring me my sunday paper, drinking strong coffee in the dark.

We went to the state middle school cross country meet yesterday, as I mentioned. Yesterday it was misting and cool, a perfect day to run. The course at Saydel High School in metro Des Moines, is pretty visible and allowed us to enjoy more of the race than usual. We know these boys pretty well, since Walker participates in a lot of sports, and there are always the "usual suspects." Here the suspects are forming a semi-human pyramid, working off nervous energy while the coach looks on, hoping they are not injured prior to the action.

Walker is in the striped hat.

The course was wet, and the path through the woods had roots and rocks, marked with orange paint, but rocks and roots nonetheless. The boys in 8th grade are allowed to wear spikes. Very vicious.
Walker got trapped in the back of the pack and didn't get off to a good start. He ran well, though, starting in a field of 150 with only about 4 boys behind him and finishing 70th. It was not enough to contribute to the team score, but he did the best he could with what he had, and the boys have to get used to running in such a crowd.

Jacob Aune, a kid Walker is on a lot of teams with, is third in the picture above. He has just thrown an elbow to get in front of the kid behind him. Just missed the elbow, dammit. Aune is very cocky but pretty talented. There is such a thing as too much self-esteem.


Walker's friend Jamison lost his shoe early, but kept running, placing in the top 15 with a "flat tire." He has a big crush on Caitlin and kept lookng at her when she cheered for him.




















Walker kept passing people right until the end. Here he comes up the big hill before going down into the woods. His father would have long since been vomiting in a bush. As you know from yesterday's post, puking is a very honored form of expression in cross country. Then the hit the snack table and gobble "puppy chow.

I work with unhappy people (my clients, I mean). It's good to enjoy thing and hang out with kids and families who, ostensibly, seem to work well together. Our young men are growing up, their voices are changing and their bodies are taking on angles and lines they once did not have. The tent smelled like boy funk and tennis shoes after the race and they all gathered around to celebrate their win (first place 8th grade 4A).

They crowded around a game boy and passed the time until the awards ceremony. Some things don't change.

Puke?

This morning I took Walker to the bus so he could travel with his cross-country team to Des Moines for the state meet. We will follow, soon. Walker played baseball but did not run the drills he was supposed to run this summer for cross-country, so he is just now getting into top shape. Yesterday he claims he came in first at practice.

State meet is fun because you can actually see a lot of the competition. At many meets, what the fans see is the boys taking off, then about 15 minutes later, boys coming across the finish line and puking.

Never underestimate the importance of puking in the culture of middle school boy's cross country. "Did you puke?" Gasp. "Yeah, you?" It's a badge of courage, effort, and gross boyness. Since I used to be a nursing assistant and parented young children, I'm used to puke, and enjoy the rest. I'll try and get some pictures and will put in a full report of Prairie Hawk glory later this weekend.

Wisconsin light show

You never really know what will happen when you take a picture, in the dark, with a relatively new camera.

I don't know what this is, but it happened at Barnapalooza, last weekend, in Wisconsin. I like it. I'm willing to send a fresh pack of gum to the person who comes up with the best interpretation of this photo. Something profound would be good.

I have to shower and hustle off to a community meeting frought with political import. There will be intense interagency and county politics in the next few days and it feels strange to be involved, as I generally let others at my job take on this sort of thing. Actually, I generally am not invited by my agency to participate in this way. I must be learning to keep quiet at meetings. I usually put myself on the "every third comment" program at meetings, censoring two of three potential utterances. These days, I'm employing the "one in six" principle.

My quiet friends will not appreciate how difficult this actually is. My old friends may not believe I self-censor at all. Believe what you will. It's Friday, and after the meeting, I get to go to my cozy office and finish things, then see a very sweet young client who worries too much. She's a good kid and just needs some affirmation. That's a nice way to end the week.

The leaves are predicted to explode in the next week or ten days. Don't forget to look around.

No need to apologize

It's the middle of October and I just realized I forgot my Dad's birthday. It was September 23rd, 1930.

I actually forgot it a few times while he was alive. Dad would posture that it was "just another day," but woe betide us if we forgot. He liked birthdays and holidays more than he let on. So, while I don't feel guilty, I stopped for a moment this morning and gave him a long thought.

Because he died so slowly, our relationship diminished over a decade, but I'll always remember our intense letters back and forth, the phone calls, particularly as I separated and divorced from my miserably unhappy first wife, his brutal, intense honesty, loyalty, and forgiveness.

Dad forgave me anything. It used to drive my first wife nuts, because no matter how foolish or arrogant or tactless I was, Dad was on my side. As illness diminished and isolated him, I found myself pulling away from him, angry at how his needs consumed my mother, isolated my parents, and deprived my children of a set of grandparents. Consumed by the ever increasing maintenance of his own body and by fear of total, inevitable loss of control, he seemed not to notice my anger. He seemed preoccupied with tracking my mother and reminding her of things she needed to do.

Finally, I realized that Mom was losing her memory and that Dad was obsessing, holding things together, keeping things running from inside the prison his body had become. Shortly before he died, when we knew his death was imminent, I went to Dad in his big metal bed and told him "I know what's happening with Mom. I promise I'll take care of her." We hugged, and he told me again that he loved me.

I left for Iowa and my busy family, and he passed away quietly about a week later, at home. I had talked with Mom a day before he died, and she passed on a message: "Dad says 'Semper Fi.'" I knew I was forgiven again.

Showing up

My friend Doug didn't start playing guitar until he was 30 or so, starting out as an "earnest strummer." He has worked hard and learned a good deal and now is fronting his first band, the Feral Cats. I went up to see him this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed this music scene, dubbed Barnapalooza. This is a silouette of the barn as the sun went down. Many of my pictures from the evening were somewhat unsteady. Go figure.

I wish I had some pictures of Doug and the Feral Cats performing. Reference the unsteady pictures comment above. Performing is an interesting thing, in that there is a competetive aspect to it, if you're not careful. When I worked at the Youth Center, teaching guitar, the young men I worked with were a little like gunslingers, working on their chops and sizing each other up. There was a definite pecking order.

There was a band that played at the end of the night that turned in to a wall of sound, several guitars, piano, a strange woman with a banjo strung like a guitar, quite a menagerie. One person invited me up but it didn't make much sense for me to get involved so late. At the end of the row was a skinny older man with no chin, greying hair and glasses, who had been going with the flow for quite a while. He had a 72 telecaster with a bigsby tremolo bar (the big metal one that faintly resembles an old Buick front end), and an old Fender tweed studio amp. He had no pedals or effects, just the guitar and the amp. Finally, it was his "turn" and he stepped up. It was as though someone flipped a switch and he tore into "My Woman She Left Me ('Cause I Wouldn't Put the Guitar Down)" and took a lead break that was at once melodic, bendy, and rockabilly. He worked the Fender using only tone and volume knobs with a familiarity born of years on the road with the same axe.

I talked to him a little after the show, and he was as gracious as he was talented. We agreed that wherever you go, there are fine musicians working it out, contributing to the local scene. No matter how long you play, if you play, you are working on a song, a phrase, a riff you can't get right, and the process is the same, whether you're starting out, or have been at it for 40 years. If you're ever in the Madison area and get a chance to hear a band called The Westerners, you might want to take a gander. The man can flat play. Didn't remember his name, either. It was a great party.

Keith Dempster told me one time, between long monologues about Mexico, that "90% of performing is about showing up." Doug and the Ferals Cats practiced, developed a sound, and were able to show up and execute. That's as good as that gets.

It was a beautiful Saturday, and I spent some more time stopping along 151 to collect photos. I have a bunch, so I'll not squander them all now. Just one or two. The leaves are about to change, and there's finally the scent of Autumn in the morning air. Peace be with you, and remember to show up.

Autolalia

My friend Diana paid a lovely automotive homage to her father, Shorty Paulina in her blog yesterday. A Dearborn native, Diana captured how the cars we owned defined us, a container for our memories of childhood and beyond.

After the 1953 Ford, my Dad got adventurous and bought an English Ford Anglia. It was black with a red interior and a four speed transmission. It was not fast or safe, with a metal dashboard and bucket seats which tipped forward on hinges at the front, and with no latch to hold them down. My mother, to this day, puts her hands across the other front seat passenger's chest at any hard stop.

No one else had a car like this, and we kept it from 1963 until 1971. People would ask Dad if it was a sports car and he would reply that it was "a poor man's sports car." I had a theory that normal families drove Chevy's and Buicks (particularly Buicks). Once we drove it from southern Ohio to Kansas in the heat of summer (no air conditioning in this baby) with my grandmother and a tranquilized cat in the back seat. We probably should have shared the tranquilizers with Grandmother as well. I can still feel the sweat and cat hair.

I shared my Buick theory of normalcy with a client who had suffered horrific abuse as a child and he paled and shook his head. "My family always drove Buicks," he said. Thus perished another of my theories of order in the universe.