A walk on the wild side

Needles and pins

2011-12-31T20:24:00.003-06:00

This post comes from the sleeper berth of my truck in Needles, CA. It's just Elvira (my truck) and I, the desert and, somewhere not too far away, the Colorado River. I am parked in a lonely gravel lot across from a gas station on the edge of town.

I've never been one to celebrate much on New Year's Eve, though I did get married on this date in 1994. One of my favorite short-lived traditions was attending First Night, either in Rockford, Il, or elsewhere. One particularly cold New Year's countdown, we made the nightly news.

I remember being sick and not even being awake to see in Y2K. Other years was just a movie and a shared bottle of wine. I've never gotten drunk on New Year's. Been to a few parties, out to eat at fancy restaurants, but that's about it. So... sitting alone in my truck on the edge of a desert town seems okay with me.

It was a good day to end 2011. I drove to Colton, CA, in the early morning and saw the San Bernardino mountains in the pinkish light of early dawn. I passed by the Pacific Crest Trail and recognized the railroad tracks and Mormon Rocks, remembering the hot, windy conditions endured when hiking this section of trail. Later, passing it going the other way, I caught sight of actual trail and saw a backpacker. That brought a smile to my face.

2011 will be remembered as a good year. It is one of those rare years where I set specific resolutions and actually managed to keep them. I lost 20 pounds to reach my target weight of 200 pounds. And I got a job. Other resolutions met I'd rather keep private, but I know what has been achieved. My life improved for the better this year. I'm better off in many ways, than I was on this date a year ago. I'm worse off in one regard, but gave my all to try and make it work.

In 2012...

I'd like to finish the novel I've started and get it published.

Want to spend as much free time as possible with my son. He's old enough to be interesting, and I realize he's only a kid for a few years. This time is precious.

I'm going to continue to look for a teaching position. While long haul trucking has its allures, I want to be closer to home and closer to my son.

I want to run at least every other day and complete a 10k race in under 50 minutes. That's an unmet resolution from last year.

I don't want any big changes in 2012. In fact, I'm sick of change, shellshocked by surprise. I'm a restless soul, willing, even, to change jobs, but that's about it. May 2012 be a year ofl normalcy, family, and simplicity.

Earlier today, walking the perimeter of my trucking company's terminal, I saw a desert willow tree. It was a smaller tree, but its drooping canopy hid a flat, shady spot. It seemed such a peaceful place, Buddha and his Bodhisattva tree.

For just a few moments, lingering at this spot, I felt peace, transcending my petty concerns, in stark contrast to my previous dark mood. It inspired me to call an old friend and we had a fun, laughter-filled conversation. Later, still walking, I became acutely aware of my senses, the smell of creosote and desert flowers assailed my senses. I thought, how nice it is here in southern California. What a treat to enjoy the sun-baked scents of vegetation on the last day of the year.

But at that time, in those moments, my senses were keenly aware and those previous troubles completely forgotten. I wad living in the moment.

I wish I had the secret ability to conjure that peace and clarity, but unfortunately it is a rare treat. In 2012 I'd like to have more living unself-consciously in the moment moments like that and will work on making those moments happen rather than being a grateful recipient.

In any case, Happy New Year!

Springfield

2011-11-28T17:23:00.003-06:00

Tonight I write from the Springfield, Minnesota, public library. This is the first day of a two week tour. I'm very tired starting this trip because I hardly slept last night and started driving at 2 a.m.

When I got to Interstate 39 in Rochelle, IL, and weighed my load on the scale, I noticed one of the trailer tires was flat. This is not a good start to a trip. I guess I was due, enduring no mishaps on the 23-day tour I completed before Thanksgiving.

It was a good holiday spent with family. I wasn't scheduled to have home time over Thanksgiving. I'd asked for the days off, but was turned down, instead opting to take off November 20th and 21st. But a scheduling mix-up kept me on the road until the day before Thanksgiving, which worked out wonderfully for me. It takes patience to be a trucker. This time being patient paid off with a holiday meal and a couple extra days off.

Since I am only home about 4-5 days a month, time spent with family is of primary importance. It doesn't leave me much room for socializing with non-relative friends, most of whom I haven't seen since I started trucking. But I relish my duties as father and partner, and am so thankful to have support and daily encouragement from the people who matter to me most. Time spent with them is precious and golden. The toughest part of my job is being away. Knowing that loved ones are waiting, and the daily phone calls, texts, and photos, mitigates the loneliness.

Thanksgiving was spent at my cousin's house in Janesville. Although the gathering was small, the feast was large. I feel guilty for not socializing more, but the rich food and it being my first day off meant I spent most of the day in a recliner watching football. It was great to catch up with relatives and hear mostly good news about their lives.

Friday morning and early afternoon we were at my parent's house in Loves Park. I got to visit with my brother and helped prepare, with my son's assistance, a soup and sandwich lunch for the family. After that, we left and went on a hike at Rock Cut State Park, ending the day back home in Sycamore with homemade pizza and a truly awful kids movie involving a fugitive seal.

Saturday I had a dentist appointment - my first scheduled in over two years. I was not surprised to learn I need a lot of work done, including replacing a crown and a root canal. I spent over four hours at the dentist and left nauseated and in a great deal of pain from the root canal work. I had a hard time following the plot of HAPPY FEET TWO, a movie Jonny picked out to see at the theater. He earned the trip as a reward for continued good behavior marks at school. I enjoyed the 3-D effects.

Yesterday, we went to church and went out for brunch afterwards. Later, in the afternoon, I said goodbye to my family and was dropped off at my studio in DeKalb, where I tried to sleep, but couldn't. Hence, the uninspired chronology of events set forth here. I'm going to sleep well tonight and have the luxury of an easy deadline for tomorrow's load.

Show Me State fun

2011-11-16T17:10:00.003-06:00

I've just spent over an hour hiking around hilly Perryville, MO, to find the public library. My phone gave me the correct address, but the navigation took me to the wrong place. I called the library and was given directions, but took a wrong turn and ended up in the town square. An inquiry into a local business got me going in the right direction, and here I am.

I am on the 16th day of a 19 day tour, which means I'm literally in the home stretch. My company has me doing midwest runs to keep me close to home. I woke up in freezing Green Bay, WI, this morning and am headed to Indianapolis tomorrow. This has been the smoothest tour so far. I haven't gotten lost or had any mishaps of any sort. All my loads have been delivered on time. I feel like I'm getting the hang of this truck driving gig.

But two days ago, at maximum weight with a 22 ton load, I coasted through a light just as it turned red and breezed past an Indiana state trooper. He pulled me over. I explained my heavy load situation, that I was a new driver, but know I was in the wrong. He gave me a stern lecture about safety and preparation, and then let me off with a warning. Whew!

Last Saturday I delivered a load to Northampton, MA, and because I was early on my delivery, my dispatcher didn't have another load lined up for me yet. I parked the rig nearby, in a parking lot of a business closed for the weekend, and went for a walk. It was a beautiful fall day, sunny, mid-afternoon, mild temperatures. The industrial park was in a seedier part of town. I walked past a decrepit, run down millinery, rows of broken windows, exposed beams, a hole in the roof.

And then I found a rail trail. I love to find trails on my daily walks because they are safer and take me away from, or at least diminish, the sounds of traffic. They are also safer. I wear a reflective vest and, at night, my headlamp, and walk towards oncoming traffic, but I prefer sidewalks and, better yet, trails, so I was happy at this discovery. This trail took me behind a bunch of businesses and past an old neighborhood. And then I saw the taller brick structures of the downtown main street.

A stairway took me down to street level. Crowds of people ambled leisurely on the sidewalks, the usual array of galleries, restaurants, boutiques, and book stores, most with colorful display windows. But I enjoyed the people watching. There were college kids, homeless beggars, stylish yuppies, and long-haired hippies. The street vendors and musicians wore permits on lanyards. One man, vying for my dollar, complimented my hat and tried to sell me incense. One cool thing is when the street lights change to allow pedestrian crossing, both sides are open, so people cross diagonally in the middle of the intersection.

I was overcome with a feeling of serendipity and goodwill, and returned to my truck via the rail trail and a short bushwack through some birch barrens. My navigational skills were good enough that I emerged from the forest right at my truck. And to my great joy and surprise, my next load information was waiting for me. It took me to the only state I'd never been to east of the Mississippi River, Rhode Island, and eventually back to the midwest.

This visit to the east was pleasant and brief.

Rainy day in Romulus

2011-10-19T18:18:00.002-05:00

I gotta love my smart phone. I'm parked in an industrial park and it let me know about this library only .2 miles away. I am in Romulus, Michigan, a south suburb of Detroit. And it is a cold, rainy, miserable October day. Two days ago I was in North Carolina sunshine and 80 degrees, an entire season's remove from today.

I'm 24 days into a 30 day tour, and its been the roughest so far. I spent 5 days in the New York City area recently. A whole host of problems assailed me: awful traffic, shipping locations in difficult-to-get-to locales, tough, tight docking situations, the sewer stench of New Jersey, having to do a U-turn in Waterbury, CT, during Friday rush hour, because my computer navigation tried to lead me under a low bridge, and navigating through an India festival/market on a busy Saturday morning. Those five days left me feeling anxious and each day began with nervousness and a tight stomach. I felt so foolish, having faced so many other daunting challenges. Why does driving a semi truck through the largest metropolitan area in the country seem to be too much? One part of me hopes I never go back. Another wants to go back, to face and vanquish my fears. But if I never see New Jersey or New York City again, I won't mind.

Truck driving has a high turnover rate for a reason. It is tough, all-involving work. Every day I wake up to the job. I can only drive 11 hours a day, but am often on duty up to 14 hours. And I feel as if my true talents are being wasted. I'm a writer, a researcher, a learner. What am I doing hauling stuff around the country? Whatever happened to following my bliss?

Nearly two years of unemployment has crippled some of those dreams. I need to get back on my feet financially. And even though this job often sucks, and being away from my family wrenches at my heart each day, it is a necessity right now, and it is doing what it is intended to do -- pay the bills.

I have to find soul satisfaction elsewhere. I'm still playing my guitar and writing creatively a little bit each day. I have more time to read and am enjoying slowly reading the works of George Eliot (in preparation, perhaps, for PhD studies in Victorian literature?). I climbed an Appalachian mountain in Virginia the other day and took a run in a beautiful stretch of rural Indiana another day. Seeing different public libraries is nice.

This job has its perks. I'm just feeling a little burned out right now. My fantasy is to go home, pack a bedroll, some food, and a couple books, and go camp in the woods somewhere with my family. I've got five days off coming up soon. The only thing planned is a Halloween Party. The rest will be spent in total relaxation.

And no driving!!!

Home time

2011-09-26T12:06:00.002-05:00

Greetings from home base, the DeKalb Public Library. I keep meaning to get my laptop modem fixed so I can have full-sized keyboard Internet access on the road, but it slips my mind until it's too late.

I had a great time during this home visit. I attended my 20th high school reunion Saturday, a picnic in the afternoon and drinks, etc. at a bar in the evening. It feels strange for a guy who was such a dork in high school to enjoy lively and interesting conversations with many classmates at the reunion. Time has made us all more approachable, I guess. And more than one person told me they remembered me as being a quiet person. Really? That is so far removed from how people might describe me today, though I still have that fly on the wall mentality and am more comfortable observing than being right in the thick of things.

A loved one in my extended family is dying right now, and this knowledge hung over the weekend's activities, that and the reunion being fateful reminders of one's mortality. This after a summer where two classmates, a respected instructor (and former drum major) from drum and bugle corps died, and I found out about the death of a guy I hiked the Pacific Crest Trail with in 2004. He left behind a wife and young child. 2011 is the "Year of Mortality," where, in spite of having no personal death scares of my own, immediate family has, and more than ever I've been reminded of my short time here on this planet.

Which is why I felt it important to make the time to attend my high school reunion. The people I saw are mostly Facebook friends and not a part of my everyday existence. But... they are a part of my history, a reminder of who I was and who I am. I could never be one of those people who completely abandons his past. I'm too much of a sentimental spirit. Most of my good friends I've had for 10 years or more and they are friends for life. So, if we've ever been friends, sooner or later I'll be back in touch, just to catch up, see how you're doing. You're forever a part of me.

And speaking of time, it's about up here at the library. Gotta go. Keep on trucking'!

A study in contrasts: Revisiting Tucson

2011-09-10T15:16:00.001-05:00

Greetings from the downtown Tucson public library. This place reminds me of recent comments by Jimmy Kimmel about the Republican candidate presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA. Kimmel said, and I'm paraphrasing, that it was nice to see a library used for something other than homeless people on the Internet and using the bathroom sink to wash their feet.

This is the Tucson library, where there is a palpable funk in the air here at the Internet stations. It seems every grunged out meth head and desert rat has shown up to get online. I am not a germ freak, but am conscientiously refraining from touching my face while typing and am heading straight for the Purel station or washroom when this session is over with.

I am enjoying my time in Tucson. My truck broke down right outside of town Thursday afternoon. It wouldn't go faster than 45 MPH. I was at least able to drive it to a Freightliner mechanic about 10 miles away. I'm not making much money (about $50 a day breakdown pay), but my company is putting me up in a hotel and I should be rolling again Monday.

In the meantime, I get to poke around Tucson, a place I've visited twice before, in 2006 and 2007. I spent the morning walking the Presidio Trail, along the way stopping to see the opening of a rock photography exhibit at the Etherton Gallery and the Southern Arizona Transportation Museum. After de-grunging myself, I am heading to the University of Arizona to visit the Center for Creative Photography and the ars Bohemia of the 4th Avenue district. Around dusk I will hike out of downtown to the top of Sentinel Peak, the "A" mountain, just off of downtown.

Why this itinerary? Because everything is free. The only money I've spent today is on a $3.50 day pass for the bus system, which means I can ride any route anywhere in the city until midnight.

This visit to Tucson reminds of how different a state of mind I am in now than the first time I visited here. It makes me feel good to recognize all the positive improvements in my life from now to then, but also reminds me of what a low place I was when I first came here. The last time I was here, December 2006, I was hiking the Arizona Trail, on a winter break from graduate studies at Northern Illinois University. I was going through a divorce and feeling stressed out from the pressures of my studies. It was winter. And I was depressed. Very depressed. I came to the desert to try and escape this depression, but the black cloud followed me out here and only intensified in isolation.

Now there is still a loneliness. It would be nice to have someone to share the day with. But I'm not depressed. Tucson is a tough town. I've never seen so many derelicts. And it's a typical spread out strip mall megalopolis, made worse by the knowledge that this desert environment could never naturally support such a population. It's an unsustainable situation seemingly filled with lost souls unable to sustain themselves. It was a perfect place for me to come in my depression.

This visit I see it in a different light, focusing on the pinnacles of beauty it has to offer, its art and culture. I won't end up in a lesbian dive bar pouring my woes out to a kind couple who listened to me and gave me a hug when I needed it most. That's a story for another time. Heck, I may go back in there for nostalgia's sake when I'm back on 4th Ave. But there will be no tears this time.

Richness

2011-09-06T16:01:00.005-05:00

Greetings from the Rio Rico, AZ public library. This small town is just a few minutes north of Nogales, AZ, off of I-19. This is border country and most people speak Spanish or are bilingual.

Today is my day off from truck driving. I am only allowed, by federal law, to be on duty 70 hours in an eight day period. My onboard computer in the truck keeps track of all this, and when I near that 70-hour threshold, I need to take a 34-hour break where I don't drive the truck. Right now Mary (Short for Maraschino. Get it? My truck is red.) is parked at a Pilot truck stop about four miles from here.

It has been a good week for me. I went back on duty a week ago, Aug. 30, after a wonderful three day visit home, where I spent as much time with family as I could, renewed my teaching certificate, and saw other friends. The only thing I didn't do was see any live music at Cornfest. But I did run a 10K race, driving the truck to the race site near the old DeKalb High School, right when I got back into town.

During this past week on the road, I carried a load of auto parts to Chester, NY, and then got the longest trip so far, a wdelivery of 18,000 pounds of perfume from New Jersey all the way to Nogales, over 2,400 miles. This is the type of delivery truckers salivate over. The longer the trip, the more miles, the more money. This load is also the first hazardous materials load I've ever carried. And en route, I went through and passed my first Department of Transportation inspection. The inspector checked everything, including my logs, medical card, bill of lading, truck registration, lights, emergency air warning system, etc. It took about 45 minutes, but I wasn't too nervous. It helps that I did a pre-trip inspection, as I do every morning, to keep the inspection jitters at bay.

And it was a fun drive. Some highlights include driving down I-81 the length of Virginia and passing by Appalachian Trail towns and other landmarks along the way. It is fitting that it rained most of that day, as most of my memories hiking that trail involved rain. But it was strange to cover terrain in a day that it took over six weeks to hike. The previous day I crossed under the AT on I-87 in New York as it traversed the highway on Arden Valley Road. And the day before that, I passed by a segment of the North Country Trail on US20 in Ohio. I must have a real eye for trail signs because this section of trail passed through cornfields and I noticed the small NCT marker on a carsonite post as I drove by at 55 mph. I guess it is hard to travel too far in this country without passing some long-distance trail that I've either hiked or want to hike.

Other highlights of the Nogales trip include: discovering a bald cypress swamp on an after dinner hike near Little Rock, Arkansas; seeing multiple herds of wild pigs grazing on the roadside in Texas; walking around desolate, and seemingly abandoned Lordsburg, NM, at dusk, the only signs of life at a Dollar General and a liquor store across the street; seeing the sky island mountains of Arizona at dawn, while driving through the rain, seeing rainbows and spackles of sunlight on the mountains all around; and here, now, on my break here in Nogales, and the hike I'm technically still in the midst of (as I have 5K to go to get back to the truck stop).

I set out too late this morning, 9 a.m. on a hike towards some nearby mountains. After 2 1/2 hours, the heat was withering me, and when I noticed a rapid heart beat and started feeling dizzy sensations, I found the first shady spot, a tree at the end of someone's driveway, and took a break. In my fatigue I was overcome by reverie -- oh, the silence, no truck engines, no whizzing traffic; and the scenery, blessed desert mountains, huge vultures soaring overhead, riding the thermals, wishing for my demise. And the orange I brought with me was exquisite sustenance. The relish I felt for it reminded me of that scene in the movie, "Into The Wild," when Chris McCandless eats an apple and says, "You are the world's best apple!" I felt that joy, that similar feeling of near-euphoria over something so simple as a piece of fruit. And then a wave of nostalgia hit me. The silence, fatigue, the smell of salt and sweat mixed with sunscreen, little lizards running and chirping afoot -- this is just like a thru-hike experience. This is why I loved that life.

And this is why I love the trucking life so far. It has many of the same elements of thru-hiking, albeit with many marked differences, the least of which is constantly seeing the industrial underbelly of America as opposed to the scant few areas left relatively unmarred by the March of Progress. But the similarities include waking up in a new place every day, yet with the same immediate surroundings (hiking: a tent, trucking: sleeper berth), never really knowing where you'll end up, constantly seeing new and varied terrain, and having time each day to be in your own mind. Most people can't handle that. They need to clutter their existence with external stimuli. And I'm not too different. I read books and listen to music and watch videos on my phone. But I have the wonderful gift of having hours each day where, yes, my mind is engaged keeping safe while driving, but my imagination and thought life gets to wander to wherever it wants to go. This is a luxury so rarely afforded in the other distracted life.

And to top it off, I get paid to be a vagabond. There is no social stigma attached to what I do. I have wonderful support from home. Everybody is encouraging what I do. And it's a responsible activity. The lingering doubts I had while long-distance hiking about shirking necessary duties are absent here. I have a job. A J-O-B job. Unless you've been out of work at the edge of destitution for two years, as I have, then you have no idea the blessed relief I have at having a job. Who cares that it's not teaching? Heck, it pays more than teaching. I have no doubt I'll be instructing young minds again in the not-too-distant future. But right now I have a job, and it's kind of a cool job, the kind of job that lets me go on wandering hikes on off days and see parts of the country that I've never seen before.

It's almost as good as that orange. Almost.

40 minutes of flash fiction

2011-08-20T11:10:00.004-05:00

I've got 40 minutes left at the Shippensburg, PA public library. It's a Saturday. Shortly after noon. The day is nice and sunny, temps warm, but not hot, an idyllic summer day. I'm waiting for my truck to be repaired... still... and probably will be until Monday or Tuesday. In the meantime I'm taking long walks, reading, and fighting off a looming depression brought on by restlessness and being somewhere where no one knows my name. And since I have nothing else to write about, I will do a little extemporaneous fiction. We'll see where it goes...

They called him the Colonel, though during his 4 years in the Army back in the Vietnam era, he'd never risen above Sergeant. They called him the Colonel because he wore a Civil War era Cavalry style hat with a yellow bolo. He wore it low and hit its cap with the edge of his beer can when he took a deep swallow.

They, the other drunks and users at the Augusta Inn, called him the Colonel because he liked it, and he bought 30 packs of Busch, sometimes two or three times a day, and shared freely with everybody because he was lonely and needed company of and the numbness of beer and weed to fight off the wraith-like insistence of the sorry reality of his existence.

And he liked how the party ended when the beer ran out, dismissing the notion that anyone stayed just for the beer and not to be in his august presence. He bragged about confirmed kills in Vietnam and showed the photograph of his younger self to anyone who hadn't seen it, the photo so smudged and dirty from showing and his current appearance only bearing a passing resemblance to the young punk in the photo holding the skull. But the proud smirk was a tell. He hadn't lost that over the years. This illusion of greatness sustained him even then.

Tolly hung out with the Colonel in his room, but felt self conscious about all the pictures of the Colonel's son hanging on the wall, amidst cutouts of curvaceous women from magazines and flyers for shows the Colonel had seen at local bars. The photos of his sons were color on paper, printed off a friend's computer.

"Where's your son now?" Tolly asked.

"He's on a naval submarine keeping our country safe," the Colonel said. "I can't even write him, the stuff he does is so top secret."

"When was the last time you saw him?"

The Colonel puffed on his Meerschaum and looked thoughtfully, self-consciously wistful, away from Tolly, and said, "I can't fairly remember."

Tolly was going to ask why, but thought better of it. Although it was early in the day, the Colonel was known to go on an angry rant, usually by the third 30 pack. No one ever got hurt, but the cops had been called a few times. He'd done community service for drunk and disorderly. The cops knew him by name, George Broosten. They never called him The Colonel.

Tolly excused himself. The day was young, he'd a slight buzz, but there were some errands to be run before he could forget his name. The Colonel dismissed Tolly with an, "All right, young man. Don't let 'em bite you in the ass," and searched through a pile of video tapes for one he hadn't seen in awhile. The TV was always on, tuned to the lone crackly channel it received, and only showed clean when it played a tape.

And so it was how the Colonel passed his days, nodding, slowly slurring, sustained on beer, potato sticks, and cans of sardines. When the beer ran out he'd get on his bike and ride a few blocks to the liquor store, pick up a copy of the Argot Weekly on Wednesdays, do the crossword puzzle, smoke his Meerschaum.

In good weather, he'd hang out on the back porch, a coffee can tied to the railing to collect the cigarette butts of guests. He'd tap out his pipe with the coals still hot, and the can would smolder the sweet cherrywood scent of his tobacco. He always wore the cowboy hat, low, and often a short-sleeved flannel shirt, unbuttoned, showing off his still-lean old man belly with only the slightest paunch, a scar running a semi-circle across his abdomen. The Colonel explained the scar: "I got a viral infection once and they had to remove this much [arms spread wide] of my small intestine." And then adding, with an upraised brow, "I only shit pebbles to this day. Haven't had a good rope shit since that operation." He loved to tell that one when ladies were present.

The Colonel loved to gross out the ladies.

Lonely at the library

2011-08-19T11:15:00.004-05:00

I have been away from home since July 18 except for 8 hours with Esther and Jonny when I had a delivery in Hampshire, IL my first week of training. And today, waiting in Shippensburg, PA, for my truck to get fixed, I am feeling the pangs of homesickness. I saw a grandmother walking a little boy Jonny's age around, and he said, like Jonny says, that some cartoon character was "the best. Ever!" I don't know, it just hit me. I got a little misty missing my boy.

I have been a solo driver for a week, and it seems as if nothing is going my way. I've been sent to the wrong delivery location, waited for hours outside a pet food factory, enduring the stench of Yahweh-knows-what, only to be told the delivery wasn't until the next night. I've waited for hours at another delivery yard waiting for a new order, and when I finally got it, the trailer I needed to pick up was right there in the yard. My computer navigation went down (corrected, I later found out, by turning the computer off and back on again), but I had to back up and turn around on a single lane road at the top of a hill, not an easy feat with a 53-foot trailer, when I got lost.

And yesterday, as I was turning around to back an empty trailer into an open stall at a shipper, the trailer knocked off a metal rack attached to the back of my tractor. Luckily, I was only 20 miles away from a terminal and the shop is just going to remove the rack. I have not seen this rack on any other company truck, but when I talked to a mechanic, he told me the rack is used to hold a dolly for those who have routes where they unload the freight. They are just going to remove it permanently. And I, finally, after two months of truck driving, learned how to adjust the fifth wheel. I may be here a couple days waiting for the repair, and time is money in this business. But at least I'm not in any trouble for my rookie error. Damage was minimal to both tractor and trailer.

I can see why there is such a high turnover rate in the trucking industry. Shippers and receivers are surly and unkind to truckers, and even other drivers don't look out for each other. And it can be a very lonely life, never seeing familiar faces. Don't worry. I'm going to tough it out. I still like driving the big rig, enjoy seeing the country roll by, giddy at seeing the Rockies and Appalachia within a week, sunset thunderstorms rage over Kansas wheat fields, listening to Blind Melon's "No Rain" while driving by endless fields of sunflowers, the St. Louis Arch reflecting the sunset along I-70, taking a morning jog through the Ohio countryside, and writing a blog in a small Pennsylvania town at a library in a historic 1830mansion, the Stewart House (see photo above).

Yes, it's almost worth the ugliness of industrial parks, the constant motor whine and stench of diesel fumes, and being away from home for weeks at a time. It will get better. I'll stop making rookie mistakes, figure out all the computer glitches, get better at backing up, and not get so nervous about driving in towns. I'll rarely be away from home this long.

Yes, it will get better. It can only get better. A job is a job. I'm off unemployment. I've got my dignity and self-worth back. Every job has its issues. I'll take the good with the bad, count my blessings and take the bad moments in stride.

Oh, I forgot to mention. I'm only about 10 miles from the Appalachian Trail. Wish I had my bike with me. When I go home, I am taking my bike and guitar back out on the road with me. It will make this life all the easier.

The four pillars of my non-trucking existence -- EXERCISE, READING, WRITING, and MUSIC. Okay. Enough rambling. My time is up here. It's a sunny summer day. No driving for me. I'm off to explore on foot.

Of Cubs, Killers, and trucks

2011-07-28T17:05:00.007-05:00

I write this post from the Markham, IL public library, which is just up the street from the trucking terminal I'm at today, near 167th St. and Kedzie. Now I know what it feels like to be a minority, a momentary sense of self-consciousness, but that's about it.

WUZZAT SPEL?: I just finished writing a letter to my mother, and I wonder, "Who writes letters anymore?" I'm glad Mom and I have an exchange of letters. I like their permanence and that, while writing them, you can devote all of your attention to the task. Whereas online one is distracted by so many other things. Also, handwriting is tactile. I wrote three pages and my wrist hurt. Yes, typing is tactile too, but not nearly as labor-intensive. It makes me sad to think that cursive is on its way out and may no longer being taught in public schools. I noticed this trend when I taught in Elgin. When I wrote in cursive on the board, many students couldn't understand it, so I had to resort to printing everything.

DO RE ME: Speaking of Elgin High School, a right fielder for the woeful Chicago Cubs, Kosuke Fukudome, was dealt to the Cleveland Indians this morning for two minor league prospects. While I was a teacher at this equally woeful high school, it made national news when an uber-Nazi hall monitor made a student remove her Fukudome jersey. The incident made national news headlines and the back pages of Sports Illustrated. He sure "did" the Cubs. While he was not a horrible player, he never really earned the high salary he was paid. Good riddance.

GRISLY COLD CASE: My son's hometown has been in the national news lately. In 1957, a 7-year-old girl was abducted from Sycamore and her body found the next April in Jo Daviess County. A suspect in the case, John Tessier (now Jack Daniel McCullough), had an alibi, that he was on a train from Rockford to Chicago for an Army physical. But in 2008 one of his former girlfriends found an unused train ticket from the date Ridulph was abducted, and turned it over to authorities. In 1983, McCullough was fired from a police department for allegedly sexually assaulting a teenage girl. He was arrested a month ago and extradited this week back to Sycamore. Ridulph's body was exhumed from Elmwood Cemetery to gather DNA evidence. There are many odd and grisly twists in this story, and it hits so close to home. Ridulph was abducted just a couple blocks away from where my son and his mother used to live, and her body was exhumed from a cemetery where we have gone on countless walks.

TRUCKIN' UPDATE: I try to post daily updates from the road on Twitter, and use the hashtag #cdlnewbie to mark those posts.

So far, everything is going well. I feel confident about all aspects of the job, except for backing up. I've driven in Chicago rush hour traffic, had a crop duster fly low right over me, seen lightning hit a street sign, so close I saw sparks fly from the impact, and been as far east as Zanesville, Ohio.

My trainer, Tolly, is from Texas, and we're getting along great. He's very patient and easygoing, plus he's really good at what he does. He said he wonders why us northerners don't speak proper English. "None of y'all say 'y'all' or 'fixin'." I'm learning a wealth of trucking wisdom from this 18-year veteran of the industry. So far, I've driven 42 hours. When I reach 75 hours, we can drive as a team and hope to get a long haul or two out west so I can get some mountain experience before I go solo. Going downhill with 65,000-plus pounds pushing on you can be a little tricky. Book knowledge is one okay, but you've really got to experience to know what it's like and how to handle it.

State of transition

2011-07-20T18:34:00.003-05:00

Here I am, at another public library in a strange town, Tinley Park, IL, where folks don't seem to believe in sidewalks. The library is about a mile walk from the hotel I've been staying at the past three days. I sought out the library because I seek something familiar and rooted to the routine of the life I left behind.

I often seek out libraries when I travel, maybe for the familiar connection to a public institution I hold dear. This time of transition is tough enough. I'm tired of waiting and want to be doing, to be driving, putting miles under my wheels and getting to work.

I was officially hired yesterday and got my fuel card, employee handbook, training manual, and a slew of paperwork. Today I called a training coordinator, who is trying to find a driver to train me for the next 3-4 weeks. I called at 8 a.m., and again at 10:30 a.m., at my orientation coordinator's insistence. The training coordinator called me at 1:15 p.m. and asked whether I wanted to be with a smoker or non-smoker. She said smoking drivers tend to smoke two packs a day, but, yes, it would be more of a challenge to find a non-smoking trainer. Call me a wussy, but I don't want to train with a chain smoker. She told me to call back at 4 p.m. I did, but once again got an answering machine. At 5, I got another hotel voucher and took the shuttle back. The wheels of bureaucracy turn slow, especially when the extra challenge of finding a non-smoking trainer presents itself.

Hanging out at the terminal has given me the chance to observe truckers. I'm already sick of trucker talk: loads, routes, the weather, food, trucks, other drivers, dispatchers, field managers, etc. A simple pattern develops, which is not surprising amongst strangers. Safe topics are referred to often. Also, most of the drivers are smokers and overweight. The profession is unhealthy enough, with its inherent dangers and exposure to diesel fumes. I guess truck drivers get bored and need to do something to occupy themselves. So they eat and smoke. In the lack of other vices, this other gluttony holds sway. Sure, there are fit, non-smoking drivers, but they are the exception.

I'm sick of this state of transition, this limbo. I was elated at the surety of my hiring. It is the first well-paying job I've had in two years, and promises to be the highest paying job I've ever had. I've been able to occupy my time reading, watching TV, surfing the Internet on my phone (and getting eyestrain headaches as a result), and taking evening walks, but... LET'S GET THE SHOW ON THE ROAD. I know this job requires patience and an unhurried attitude will save my life, but, come on, I've been at this over a week now, not counting the weekend I went home.

I hope tomorrow is the day I get with a trainer and get on the road, but I must go into it with no expectation or else I will be sorely disappointed if it doesn't happen. This state of transition is fleeting, but I upended a good life, a life full and complete, with its own rhythms and habits, and shoot, I guess I'm showing my age in missing the regularity and patterns of that life and wishing to establish a pattern and regularity in this new life.

I remember once, younger, when I thought a life of habit was a rote existence, the life of a robot, and I shunned pattern and regularity. In some ways this viewpoint has guided my choices of professions. No two work days are the same for a journalist, teacher, or truck driver. I don't know how people do jobs that follow a regular pattern. The cubicle rat paper pushers of the world, the same bureaucrats slowing my progress, I just don't know how they do it. But I can now relate to the comfort and security they must feel going to their jobs knowing full well the duties before them. It's not too different, I guess, from the same sense of comfort I got in the daily routines of my old life.

The things I love and miss from the old life will be replaced by new familiarities, as the routes I travel leave signposts in my brain that conjur memories of other passings. So many places in this great country already do that. I will no doubt shed a tear of recognition when I see the Appalachians again or enjoy a sunset over pointy northwoods pines. These evoke other patterns, other lives, that I left behind at some point to embrace a new existence. Transitions don't erase the old life. It's kind of like an etch a sketch. You scratch a pattern and even though you shake it blank again, a ghost pattern remains of the past etching and all other etchings before that.

Truck driver orientation

2011-07-17T14:51:00.004-05:00

I made it through orientation with the trucking company that wants to hire me, but have not been officially hired because they still need some more paperwork, in particular my W-2s to confirm I worked for an employer they cannot get ahold of over the phone. I do not want to reveal my future employer's name on the Internet because I'm sure there's some kind of company policy against that, but it is one of the largest trucking companies in the United States.

So far, I am impressed with the company, it's policies, the trucks, the routes, and notice that most of the truckers who came into the terminal seemed happy. I hung out at the terminal most of the afternoon Friday after orientation ended. It is like any way station, a constant flow of human traffic, baggage left near the wall, conversations creating a din in the open atmosphere. A television blares rap videos from BET, two truckers laugh over some crazy warehouse guy at a shipping location, a skinny guy all covered in tattoos comes in and scans documents to finish off his trip. I read a Louis L'Amour book, waiting for a ride to a Metra station so I could ride two trains and get home to my family for the weekend.

The first day of orientation was the busiest. They shuttled us off to a clinic for a physical and drug test. Blood pressure, vision, hearing checked, ears, nose, throat, and testicles examined, and I had to crouch and then stand up. Later, back at the terminal, I had to carry a box weighing 70 pounds the length of a truck and back three times, each time having my heart rate checked. I had to do a tug and push test, step on and off a ladder, and walk like like a duck under a piece of string. These tests are to prove you can do everything necessary to get in and out of a truck, unload it, and be able to check underneath it.

After that was a road test. One challenge was hooking up to a trailer. It's not complicated, but I only did it three times in my training. And the trailer I hooked onto was recessed between two other trailers. But I did fine and had no problems. Another challenge was doing a 45-degree backup into a dock. I had to do a similar backup as part of my CDL yard test, and for this one I only needed three pullups to straighten out my angle. The company tester also walked me through a pre-trip to ensure I knew what to do. I passed with flying colors.

The next couple days of orientation were not nearly as active. The second day we watched videos about company policies and safety regulations, health insurance, lease options, pay scales, etc. And the third day we learned how to use the onboard computer on the truck and do electronic logging. Federal law requires all interstate truck drivers to keep a record of their activities behind the wheel. Drivers are only allowed 14 hours on duty each day and 11 hours behind the wheel, with a couple rare exceptions. The company I will work for does all of this logging electronically, which makes it really easy to do and also means the company won't ever ask me to break the law and fudge my log books, as some more unscrupulous employers will do to expedite a load.

The guy who trained us on e-logs moved quickly through the training and then chatted with us for about 90 minutes about trucking in general. Truckers sure love to tell stories. But I learned some valuable tips about eating on the road, not trusting GPS navigation systems, and keeping good records of your logs and paperwork. Truckers tend to seem like simpleton good ol' boys, and for the most part they are, but they also have to keep a lot of paperwork straight and make decisions that could cost thousands of dollars and save lives. It's not a job to be taken lightly. Every day truckers die out on the road.

Tomorrow I go back to the terminal. I most likely will wait around for a trainer to be available. If they don't find one tomorrow I'll probably get another night's stay at a La Quinta hotel, which is a lot nicer than my normal travel accomodations (a tent). Once with a trainer, I'll have 150 hours on the road experience, including 10 hours of backing up, before I'm given my own truck.

When I got home Friday night, my old drum corps buddy Andy called, happy he made it through training and he has his own truck. He said it's got half a million miles on it, but he's solo and that's all that matters. I won't be making any real money until I go solo, but the dream of full employment inches ever closer to reality.

Keep on truckin'.

On the Road Again

2011-07-11T14:45:00.004-05:00

I leave tomorrow for orientation with a major trucking company. Once I pass a series of tests (physical, driving test, background check, drug screen, etc.), I will go on the road for three weeks with a trainer. And once training is finished, I will be given my own company truck.

This entire process began months ago, as I faced the dreaded prospect of a very poor job market for public school teachers. I mulled getting a job as an adjunct professor at a community college, but that is often part-time work with no benefits. In January, I drove my parents to Houston to see my sister's family. I enjoyed driving so much that truck driving became a feasible idea to me. It took awhile, though, to give up on the dream of being a teacher. I sank $40K in student loans and three years of my life to earn my master's degree. And while my first teaching assignment was at times a horrible experience, I persevered and did a good enough job that I still wanted to do it. And still do.

But I have to face reality. Nearly two years of unemployment have sapped my finances to the breaking point. While I have not dug deeper in debt, I am constantly living paycheck to paycheck, frequently, in the past few months, down to my last dime. Call me crazy, but I've found it exhilarating at times to be so destitute. Because it is then that I am reminded of a lesson I've learned from years of backpacking: All this stuff, all this worry about money and prestige and place is for naught. I've been down to nothing, and been there with a smile on my face.

Why? Because I have a woman and son, parents and siblings, and friends who love and care for me. I am healthy, sane, intelligent and willful. I have never known hunger. I've never been desperate. Desperation is a state of mind. This is the United States of America, not Uganda. There is a safety net of social services available to the downtrodden. I laugh at those who fret over their stock portfolios or worry that they're IRA is not up to where it should be for their age. Financial security is false security. All the planning and forethought in the world isn't going to save the average middle class citizen in the face of a long-term disability or major catastrophe. Crickets and ants are all in the same boat.

But this doesn't mean I condone foolishness or dependence on the system. Rather, I believe in putting my best foot forward, planning for emergencies as best I can, and doing everything and anything I can to get by and provide for my family. But I'm not going to sacrifice 1/3 of my life in a career I hate just so I can collect enough tokens to be called a "winner" in the false game of acquisition. That's not how I'm wired. But I am gun shy after this most recent destitution. I will never quit a job without another one lined up. No thru hikes are planned for the near future.

Back in May I stayed at my brother's place in Chicago. He's done well for himself as an architect and owns three properties, including an apartment in Paris. But for all of his success and wealth, he has very few possessions to show for it. He shares an apartment with a roommate, drives a used car, owns very little furniture, has no stereo system or nice bicycle. But he's seen a lot more of the world than I have. We both have the same wanderlust. We don't shun possessions as an act of discipline. The American Dream is just not something we've pursued. We don't want things. Things get old quick. They break down. Memories last forever. Experience trumps acquisition every time.

So, yeah, I leave tomorrow for another adventure. And I hope this leads to steady employment, interesting experiences, financial stability, and a rebuilding of my portfolio. I still have dreams of being a teacher, writing a novel and screenplay, publishing a chapbook of poetry, hiking the Continental Divide Trail, going on tour and performing with a band. All in good time. Right now it's time to work.

Keep on Truckin'!

Health scare

2011-06-25T14:41:00.005-05:00

I'll never forget that moment a few weeks ago. The love of my life (at her request, she shall remain nameless) called and said she was at the emergency room with our son. She sounded drunk, her voice slurry and words coming slowly, but she explained that she was having vision problems and didn't quite feel right. And then, as I asked her more, she said, "uhh... uhh..." And then the line went dead.

I didn't know what had happened, but I feared the worst as I put on a pair of slippers and banged on my neighbor's door to ask for a ride to the hospital. It's funny, but my brain seems to function well in times of crisis. I remained calm through the whole time of transit, even though I went through every potential scenario, including the prospect of death and having to raise our son alone. I didn't know her condition.

When I arrived at the emergency room, I identified myself to the attendant and asked, "Is she conscious?" When he told me she was, a great wave of relief passed over me. After checking on our son, who was being watched by his neighbors in the waiting area, we both went back to visit his mother.

She was hooked up to an IV and a monitor displayed all of her vital signs. The first thing I noticed was her blood pressure, which was 168/90, and even I, with my scant medical knowledge, knew that was very high. She was still out of it, seemed half asleep, and her skin was pale, even by Scandinavian standards.

The first thing I thought was, "She had a stroke." So I asked her to smile. She did, and it was even. Another wave of relief. Turns out I was partly right.

She had stroke-like symptoms, but not a full-blown stroke. She had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TIA), also known as a mini-stroke. The good news is there is no lasting damage from a TIA. The bad news is she is 20 times more likely to have a stroke in the future.

Blood clots and high blood pressure run in her family, and a previous trip to the emergency room a couple years ago with chest pains, meant the TIA wasn't a major surprise. But it still scared us both. We're too young to be dealing with such serious health problems. We need to be strong to take care of our children and parents. These are the productive years, full-on adulthood. Not a time for convalescence.

She was admitted to the hospital overnight and even stayed the next night for further tests. The cause of the TIA was never determined. Recent appointments with a neurologist and cardiologist revealed nothing. She was not put on any medicine, but told to take an aspirin each day, give up caffeine, and begin a regular exercise regimen. I'd tell to worry less, but know that's impossible. Certain personality traits are ingrained.

It's been such a strange summer so far. Distant friends and associates the same age as me have died. I just found out a guy I hiked with on the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004 died in a tragic bike accident a year ago. He left behind a widow and four-year-old daughter. Even though I've had a few health scares of my own, I am still young and healthy and ostensibly have many more years ahead of me. But you never know when your time is due. That's why the Latin dictum Carpe Diem rings so true.

Live. LIVE! Each moment is precious. Far too soon all of it will be taken away. It eventually happens to us all. We hang on to this existence by the thinnest of threads.

Dr. Bronner's controversy

2011-06-22T17:45:00.005-05:00

I first discovered Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap over 10 years ago, when it was only available in health food stores and organic co-ops. It has since gone mainstream and I just bought a quart bottle of 18-in-1 Hemp Lavender Pure-Castile Soap at Walgreen's. In addition to being a great read (nearly every bit of space on bottle delineates in repetitive detail Dr. Bronner's All-One philosophy), the soap is one of the most ecological and dermatologically friendly products out there. While it is true the original Dr. Bronner escaped from a mental hospital and is a counterculture hero/nutball, he comes from a long family tradition of soapmakers. And since his death, the company he brought to America has kept its leftist edge and unique label.

As I showcased in a previous blog post , there is a documentary about the man, Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox, and apparently Dr. Bronner, who died in 1997, sounds as nutty as the text on his soap.

It is rare to see such wackiness attached to a popular consumer good. I can think of no other mainstream product that is as "out there" as Dr. Bronner's soap. It goes against everything that consumer culture says should work in advertising. Most products take a bland middle road and are not involved in politics or activism of any sort. Or, if they are, they do half-assed "fundraising" efforts for popular charities.

It gets even weirder. In 2007 a drummer in a punk rock band was arrested in California because his Dr. Bronner's soap tested positive for an illegal date rape drug, GHB, using a the NarcoPouch® 928 field drug tests. But as the following video shows, all natural soaps, as opposed to detergent-based soaps, will test positive using the Narcopouch kit.

Check out the Dr. Bronner web site . In addition to having all the products for sale, there are links and articles related to the lax rules about organic labeling in the cosmetics industry. It's nice to buy a product that is not only the best of its kind, has a bona-fide crazy behind its creation, but is also good for the environment and socially conscious as well.

Still, I wouldn't recommend brushing your teeth with the stuff.

Happy Naked Hiking Day!

2011-06-21T20:12:00.004-05:00

Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and the first day of summer. Right now it 8:13 p.m. and pretty dark, but only because a major thunderstorm is brewing outdoors. In long-distance hiking circles, the first day of summer is also Naked Hiking Day. And as the drops fall and the sky turns a sickly yellow, punctuated by bolts of lightning and thunder roar, I can't help getting nostalgic about my past participation in Naked Hiking Day.

I wrote about Naked Hiking Day exactly five years ago, so instead of regurgitating my own two experiences as a participant, here are the links to my trail journals for those days.

Appalachian Trail
Pacific Crest Trail

There is also a discussion thread about naked hiking, although a cursory examination shows it caters to the nudist crowd. I've got nothing against nudists and may embrace their minimalist philosophies, but am not a nudist myself. There's a seedy underbelly to the movement that's a bit too kinky for my tastes. But all the power to them. Let it all hang out!

Here's a short, funny video. Don't worry, it only shows some middle-aged dude's hairy butt!

RIP Dusty

2011-06-20T19:51:00.005-05:00

Ever done something long, long, ago that still makes you flush crimson with embarrassment when you think of it?

Unfortunately, I've got a few of those memories. I guess it means I've lived an unabashed, unafraid existence, and that most of my youth and young adulthood I acted frequently on impulse. But I've been lucky. There's no arrest record to answer to and nobody has a bounty on my head. At least as far as I know. And as age 40 creeps closer on the near horizon, the number of embarrassing mistakes has diminished significantly.

But news of the death of someone I marched in drum and bugle corps and attended junior high and high school with reminded me of an embarrassment that later helped change my views about homosexuals and homosexuality. Dusty was gay and when I was in high school I called him a "faggot." As far as gay-bashing goes, that's quite tame, especially in light of the treatment that many small-town gays suffer. But taken in the context of who Dusty was and what he did for me, my calling him a "faggot" was one of the worst things I've ever done.

Many people know that I was never really that popular in high school. I didn't feel any sense of belonging until my senior year. Once, in junior high, a group of bigger kids were picking on me, shoving me around in a circle. Dusty stood up for me. He broke up the group and interrupted them long enough to let me escape. Time has erased most of the details from my memory, but I do remember him standing up for me. He probably knew what it felt like to be picked on, though I remember him being popular and well-liked in high school. He certainly must have known what it was like to be misunderstood. I don't know what his motivation was for standing up for me, but he did, and I never forgot, even though I never became his friend.

Nor do I remember much about the actual incident of the slur I said against him. I just remember hearing a rumor that he was involved in a relationship with another man, a drum corps instructor. And at the time I attended church regularly and was caught up in the silly Old Testament doctrines against homosexuality. I just remember that when I said it, I instantly regretted it because I knew he had stood up for me once, and that I'd repaid his kindness with scorn.

But as the years have gone on, and I've grown tolerant and accepting of gays and support gay rights, I am less embarrassed about what I said. After all, teenagers are malleable creatures and can adhere to some silly viewpoints that are only seen as such in retrospect.

No. What hurts most is that I never said, "I'm sorry." I've gone to drum corps shows over the years and have looked for Dusty, just so I could say that. No doubt he doesn't remember the incident. I needed to say it, not for his sake, but mine. But now I'll never get the chance.

And what's even stranger is I know no details of his life since high school, or his death. All I know is he had no Internet presence to speak of. No Facebook or Twitter, no photos, nothing but generic people search web sites. The guy had a non-existent web presence. I found out about his death from a mutual classmate and Facebook friend.

The mystery of his life and death is almost as galling as knowing that I'll never be able to apologize for a 21-year-old slur.

Running narrative, Unlimited Performance 5K

2011-06-15T19:57:00.002-05:00

On June 4, after spending the previous night at Kishwaukee Community Hospital, with my significant other's permission to leave her side, I wearily made my way down the road from the hospital to the starting line for the Unlimited Performance 5K race. Obviously, with a loved one in the hospital, my mind was elsewhere, and I didn't have the best night's sleep on a cot in a hospital room, with nurses coming in every couple hours to take blood or other bodily fluids.

Plus, the morning was hot and steamy. Daytime temps would eventually get up in the mid 90s F. But this was only a 5K race. I could run 3.11 miles at the drop of a hat. But with all that was on my mind, I went into the race with no clear strategy. I just wanted to finish, get a shower, and get back to my honey in the hospital.

The first mile went by fast, as I clocked in at 7:34, but then the heat started to get to me and I faded the rest of the race. The finish line was exciting, as three of us raced in a dead heat down the final stretch. Unfortunately, I came in last out of us three. Still, it was neat to hear the cheers of those standing by at the finish line. My goal was to finish in under 25 minutes. Even though I didn't achieve it at 26:12.5, I certainly didn't do too bad, finishing in the top third of all finishers (56th out of 184) and in the top half of my age group (7th out of 20).

Overall and age group results are below. My next race is June 25, a 10K starting at Sycamore Speedway and with a route along the Great Western Trail. It should be fun!

Here are the overall results: http://www.unlimitedperformance.org/5K/2011/UP5K11overall.html

Here are the results by age group: http://www.unlimitedperformance.org/5K/2011/UP5K11age.html# 5

Nature is everywhere

2011-06-15T19:44:00.003-05:00

I haven't had the chance to go on a backpacking trip yet in 2011, and if I don't get one in before I get a job, this year may be the first in a very long time that I don't get back to nature for at least a week-long outing. No worries, though, because my finely-honed senses find the beauty of nature everywhere. Even though no advertising campaigns herald its wonders, and it goes unnoticed by the vast and ignorant population unconsciously bent on destroying it, nature is manifest and wonderful.

Here are a couple videos I took in the city of DeKalb, Illinois, about 60 miles west of Chicago. One is of barn swallows diving into a chimney, just outside the back door fire escape of my room above the defunct Fargo Theatre. The swallows are a common scene at dusk in the city. I love to listen to their chittering, and their flight rivals the most daring feats of aviation man has ever achieved. They are fast, precise, and social creatures.

The second video was taken during a lunch break at the truck yard for Kishwaukee Community College, which is surrounded by an industrial park. Hundreds of thousands of tadpoles give life and vibrancy to a wasteland. I hope the frogs they become are not deformed. They're destined to make a lovely chorus in late summer.

Why get fit?

2011-06-02T17:28:00.004-05:00

I read an article in yesterday's Chicago Tribune about the unrealistic portrayal of manly fitness in summer blockbuster movies. It featured various actors, including Eric Bana and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, detailing some of the workout and diet regimens they went through to get ready for a particularly beefy role.

But what stood out from this article was a quote by author and Harvard University instructor Emily Fox-Kales, who wrote Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders.

"As men have lost more economic power, more social power, they've wanted to look more pumped up," Fox-Kales said. "Muscles have become an accessory, like pickup trucks."

The article says that the latest trend in the summer Hollywood blockbuster season is beefy men, such as the movie depictions of comic book heroes like Thor and Captain America. This is a change from an interest in smaller heroes, such as those portrayed by slight actors like Tobey Maguire and Orlando Bloom.

As an unemployed ex-English teacher transitioning from an emasculated profession to the more manly job of truck driver, I didn't realize my recent weightlifting was part of a Hollywood trend, or that maybe my decision to beef up could be due to my economic condition. But when I think more deeply into the thought processes that went into my decision to lift weights again, a desire to go from helpless to empowered is a huge factor behind it.

I left teaching feeling like a pawn thrust about by a great machine, unappreciated, undesirable, and left to a cruel and indifferent marketplace. I also came to realize that, hey, I'm not getting any younger, and I've never seen myself really fit before. Sure, I've been thin and maintained a healthy body weight most of my adult life, but I'd never incorporated a regular exercise routine into my daily habits. I knew I needed to start now before I got any fatter than the alarming 240 pounds I reached, or I wouldn't be able to do the same activities, such as tennis, disc golf, and backpacking, that I've enjoyed throughout my 20s and 30s.

Plus, unlike the cruel machinations of the employment market, my body is something I have control over. Working out gives me discipline and a sense of accomplishment. Achieving fitness goals gives me the self confidence to ace that next interview and the energy to be a better partner, dad, and, yeah, employee.

I may never be as ripped as Sylvester Stallone or Ah-nold, but I feel good about exercising and gain confidence each time I step out of the weight room feeling twitchy and tired. And, hey, it's trendy. I'm growing my hair out too. Maybe I am destined to be the next Thor! By Mjölnir!

Time changes everything

2011-06-01T15:09:00.005-05:00

Yesterday I watched a half hour long documentary about DeKalb, "Our Town," filmed by Clark C. Cryor. It was filmed in 1967, or a little more than 44 years ago. Many of the places shown in building, including parts of the Northern Illinois University campus and downtown, look the same now as they did in 1967. This is limited to the buildings, because trees, cars, street lights, and signs all look different now.

In addition to the obvious differences in fashion and social standards (for example, the mayor and the city council were showcased and all referred to as "men of vision," a statement that would be politically incorrect today), I was surprised to see how many wires cluttered the skyline. One shot in a neighborhood in the north side of town looked to be a sea of wires and poles. Added to the mix were the television antennas. I'd forgotten how much of our utilities have moved underground since then.

Other places, even though they were identified in the documentary, looked completely unfamiliar. One shot on North First Street showed two lanes of traffic and children walking on a dirt path along the road. I must have watched this scene five or six times to try and place its location, and couldn't. The narrator said the city was looking into putting sidewalks in, which they eventually did.

And even though downtown DeKalb looked familiar, especially the buildings and train tracks, none of the business names remained. I looked up one prominent restaurant name, the Sea Breeze, and learned that the owner of this restaurant eventually moved to Galena, IL, and bought another restaurant, The Log Cabin, in the 1970s, which is still open to this day. But every other downtown business that existed in 1967 is gone today.

The documentary also showed footage of a group of men from DeKalb visiting Kalamazoo, Michigan, and seeing how this city closed down its main downtown street and opened a pedestrian mall. I guess DeKalb considered doing the same thing, possibly re-routing Lincoln Highway traffic south of the main drag. But this never happened.

As I walked around town today, I wondered what the city will look like 40 years in the future, and even how much it has changed in the 15 years that I've been associated with DeKalb. And as I looked at the footage of skinny ties, crew cuts, men wearing suits to casual functions, and smoking indoors, I wonder what contemporary habits will make people of the future shake their in wonder at the naivete and stupidity of those people of 2011.

Here are a few predictions. In light of recent findings, people of the future will marvel that the people of 2011 used cell phones that caused brain cancer, and that such clunky devices only transmitted sound and images. In the future, telecommunications will be more like telepathy. There will be no visible interface devices. Implants or the tiniest of microchips will fulfill all of our communication needs.

Also, people of the future will laugh at our dietary habits. They will not believe that we allowed corporations to dupe us into eating such unhealthy, processed, and chemically-laden food. They will note how inefficient our agricultural practices were and how out-of-tune we were with our environment. They will also not believe how much we were duped by the pharmaceutical industry into spending so many billions of dollars on medicines that only masked major problems and caused awful side effects.

Of course, people of the future will scoff at our use of fossil fuels to power our automobiles and provide electricity. Forty years from now they may still be used, but not by industrialized Western nations. Our energy usage will need to become more environmentally sustainable to avoid economic collapse and further ecological degradation. Our current practices are cannot continue for 40 more years.

NOTE: Click on the link above for a list of films created by Clark C. Cryor from the 1950s to the 70s. He died in 1977. Most of these films are available on DVD at the DeKalb Public Library.

Missing kitty

2011-05-31T14:23:00.004-05:00

I was gone all afternoon on Tuesday, May 24, but before I left I was sure my cat, Springer, was in my room. When I returned later, after a thunderstorm, she was gone. I was baffled as to how she disappeared, but when I talked to a neighbor, he said she was scratching at the screen when he was out on the back deck with friends. A check of the screen showed that it was loose and could be pushed out far enough to free Springer.

She is an outdoor cat and often meows at the door to be let out. Because I live in an urban environment, I was concerned for her safety, but she continually demonstrated a healthy fear of cars and never wandered away from the back lot. Whenever she wanted back in she would come to the window and meow. It was a nice arrangement, and I hadn't the heart to keep her indoors permanently, even though it was safer.

I also chose to not get her spayed. When the previous cat I had, Gato, was fixed, her personality changed and her belly got soft and flabby and swayed when she walked. Although I did no clinical research, anecdotal evidence from talking with others suggested that this was a common phenomena. Female cats get fat and lazy when they're fixed. I didn't want that to happen to Springer. I also didn't mind if she gave birth to a litter. Yes, cat overpopulation is a problem, but I thought it would be neat for my son to see the birthing process and help find new homes for the kittens.

Its been a week and Springer has not returned. Maybe she is on an adventure. Maybe she got picked up by a stranger. I have alerted the local Humane Society (TAILS), Animal Control, and the DeKalb County Animal Shelter. I didn't know there were so many places to take strays. Jonny and I also posted flyers around the neighborhood with contact information.

Springer is a very resourceful cat. I'm not surprised she escaped. She is a real gamer. I don't worry about her ability to survive in the world. I just miss her and her absence makes my studio a lot less homey. I feel silly for being so sentimental about a cat, but I am. The only upside is I don't have to deal with logistics for her care when I am on the road truck driving. But I would gladly deal with them for the safe return of my cat.

The trucking life

2011-05-23T16:59:00.006-05:00

Last week I officially registered for a CDL training class through Kishwaukee Community College. Class starts June 6. I've thought about trucking since finishing the Pacific Crest Trail in 2004. One of my best friends from childhood went through truck driver training and drove a rig for awhile. Also, while on that hike, I rode in a the cab of a 18-wheeler to Ashland, Ore. (click here to link to the journal entry from that day)

I have grown continually disheartened at the grim prospects for public school teaching. And when I learned that truck drivers earn an average wage commensurate with what I would earn as a teacher, I jumped at the idea. I've got a good driving record and a long time ago had a CDL to drive a school bus. Strange thing: In 1997 I got three traffic violations within months of beginning work as a school bus driver, and I lost my job. I haven't had so much as a parking ticket since then. I also do not have any felonies and am not addicted to drugs or alcohol. Hey, that makes me a good candidate for being a truck driver.

I hope long haul trucking is a good source of income until the economy improves and public school teaching jobs become more widely available to one with limited experience (one year) like me. I still dream of teaching a middle school language arts program, and think I have a lot to offer students. In the meantime, I am pursuing many writing goals and thankful, at least, that teaching isn't diverting my creative energies elsewhere. I thought about teaching community college part-time, but the travel involved and lack of benefits negates that option. Plus, even after I get back into teaching, having a CDL could provide me with a source of income during summer breaks and holidays. I am determined to make good on this training investment.

I love to travel and see the country. The only downside is being away from friends and family for extended periods of time. Being a good truck driver involves not only good driving skills, but time management, navigational skills, the ability to manage and organize paperwork, and a temperament suited to long days. The only thing I'm worried about is staying in shape. I've made so many improvements to my diet and overall health, and I don't want to backslide into eating junk food and not exercising. It will take discipline to avoid the fattening temptation of truck stop fare.

I love the nomadic aspects of truck driving, the idea of waking up each day in a different place. While seeing the USA from the interstate is a lot less interesting than seeing it from a trail, I am resourceful with pack and map, and will no doubt figure out some way to integrate adventure into my travels.

But first things first. I've got four weeks of training ahead, then the homework of finding a good company to work for that will hire a newbie driver.

I've already done a fair amount of Internet research, but as any prospective driver knows, there is a glut of information out there. The only thing I'm sure of is that there are many, many jobs available for qualified drivers. This seems to be a recession-proof occupation.

One of my favorite sites so far is: www.lifeasatrucker.com While the multiple typographical errors are annoying, this site, created by a long-haul trucker, has a wealth of information and gives a realistic portrayal of the trucking life.

The best video series I've found so far on YouTube is Trucker's Life. Driver Vince puts the viewer in the cab, on the loading dock, and at the truck stop, and along the way touches on every aspect of the truck driving life. Here's the first of about 20 videos he created. I've watched them all, and while some of my romantic notions of the trucking life have been dispelled (it seems as if truckers have no free time), I also came away from viewing them confident that I can do and enjoy this job.

Another running narrative

2011-05-23T16:47:00.003-05:00

For the second time in six days, I ran a competitive race. After running a the Magellan Development 10K race in Chicago on a cold, rainy, blustery May 15, I ran the Sunrise Rotary 8K race, starting at Potawatomi Woods Forest Preserve near Kirkland, IL, on a warm, rainy, blustery May 21.

In the Chicago race, I had more "in the tank" at the end, and chided myself for holding back too long. Although running is a simple sport, a race can involve a lot of strategy, most of it personal to the runner. I went into the Magellan Development race with the game plan of taking it easy the first three miles and then building up speed all the way to the end. In retrospect, given how good I felt at the end, I should have started my big push sooner. So, the strategy for the Sunrise Rotary 8K was to start out strong and then try to hold on until the end.

This strategy improved my average pace per mile by almost a minute, from a 9:09 average to 8:14. My goal was to finish in under 40 minutes. I fell just short, finishing in 40:57. Considering that I felt under the weather, fighting mild flu symptoms, I am very happy with the results of Saturday's race. The only downside is I did not get the psychological pleasure of passing scores of runners like I did in the Chicago race.

In addition to being shorter, the Sunrise Rotary race had a much smaller field, 82 runners, compared to the 700 runners in Chicago. This meant that registering was a lot easier and I didn't need to adjust my pace at all to avoid running into other runners. I also didn't have a chip on my bib and there were no digital timers every mile. Instead, volunteers called out the time as runners passed. The Sunrise Rotary race took place on country roads and passed through the town of Kirkland, passing by a disc golf course I've frequented countless times with my friend Todd.

I finished the first mile in 7:45 and eventually slowed from that best time. I didn't pass anybody after the second mile and nobody passed me after mile 3. I put on the afterburners at the 4-mile mark, but was not fast enough to catch the next runner in front of me. I closed the gap, but she finished 10 seconds ahead of me. I could hear the labored breathing and footsteps of the runner behind me as we approached mile 4, but then he faded out of earshot.

My next race is a 10K at Sycamore Speedway June 25. I may race a 5K in DeKalb June 4. It's only $20 and would help me reach my goal of running at least 12 races in 2011. It's also a different distance, involving a different strategy. My goal is to improve on my average per mile. The bar is set at 8:14. Not bad, considering that when I resumed running last November and 25 pounds ago, my initial goal was to run a mile on a treadmill in less than 11 minutes.

I talked with my mom Sunday and she asked me if running these races is my latest "thing." I guess it is, though I can't say I'm obsessive about running yet. I just like to do it and the races give me mini-goals to shoot for and keep me on task.

Click HERE for the overall results of the 2011 Sunrise Rotary 8K. I finished 27th out of 82 runners and 6th out of 12 in my age group (35-44). It is humbling to note that the top three finishers in the men's 55-64 age group all finished ahead of me. Of course, they've probably been running a lot longer than I have.

Homeless Mustard

2011-05-21T16:35:00.005-05:00

I've found a new hero and his name is Homeless Mustard.

Few who know me know that I've been homeless a couple times, both on purpose and not due to usual ills of destitution or drug abuse. The last time was in August 2009 when I moved back to DeKalb. I roamed the streets and slept in city parks for 22 days because I didn't want to commit to a lease unless I got a job or the prospect of another teaching job dried up. I put all of my stuff in storage, took showers Anderson Hall on the campus of Northern Illinois University, hung out at the library a lot, and partied with a lot of townies. During that time, I did a lot of reading about the vagabond life, Hobos, and the homeless. This was the time I also began dumpster diving, a practice I engage in to this day. (albeit only at Aldi's, where I never fail to get all the fruits and vegetables I need).

Also, since then, I have read a lot about stealth camping and homelessness. After my son becomes an adult I plan to roam this land again and live the vagabond life. The wandering is in my blood and I will answer it again someday.

Somebody on Facebook posted a link to a video by Daniel "Homeless" Mustard, a street performer discovered by a Sirius satellite radio show, the Andy and Opie show. I've never heard the show, but the YouTube videos of "Homeless" are amazing. He's got a great, gravelly voice, and does some soulful covers and original music. He gives hope to all of musicians striving to be heard or just singing out our hearts to anyone who will listen.

Here's Homeless Mustard's most famous video. His web site is: www.thehomelessmustard.comThis is the true essence of music. No glamour or record sales. Just heart and soul, bar chords and worn out guitar. Homeless Mustard shows how it's done. I hope he finds a roof over his head someday, but continues to perform. Go to his web site and give the guy a few bucks.

WARNING: HE SWEARS IN THIS VIDEO. VIRGIN EARS BEWARE!!!

Some new music

2011-05-20T15:51:00.004-05:00

My friend Jim Nerstheimer and I got together Wednesday night and played at the church where he is employed as a pipe organist, Bethlehem Evangelical Lutheran in DeKalb, IL.

The acoustics are great. I brought my electric guitar, as past performances with my acoustic were drowned out by the mighty pipe organ. The balance between the instruments tilted too far in my favor this time. We'll get it right soon. We recorded 80 minutes of our jam session. We used no sheet music or had ever played any of the riffs before. It was pure improvisation. I sat near Jim's console. I've learned visual cues are important in improvisation. Seeing his fingers move gives me a sense of rhythm and where they are located on the keyboard lets me know the notes. His console has three ranks of keys, so it was an interesting lesson in following along.

I culled the best moments from our jam session. While no great virtuosity is on display, there are some nice little moments. And this music is different from the stuff I usually record. Symphonic instead of poppy, with a very open structure. I may take some of these ideas and flesh songs out of them, but they are fairly enjoyable as they are. Below are the Soundcloud files of the songs. As you will see, I had fun making up titles.

Pointillism by stoom

Apologies to Andrew Lloyd Webber by stoom

Say what? by stoom

Bertha's Sandwich by stoom

Shamwow by stoom

My Italian heritage

2011-05-20T15:19:00.004-05:00

Tonight is pizza night. At least once a week for the past year I've made homemade pizza from scratch. At first I followed a recipe, but like anything done repeatedly, the process has gotten more byzantine over time. My sister gave me a pizza stone in January, which dramatically improved the quality of the crust and made preparation all the easier. Now I don't have to cook the crust separately before putting on the toppings.

In addition to making pizza, I also make really good meatballs. For these, I follow my mother's recipe. She's not Italian. These feats of culinary greatness are about as Italian as I get. Unlike my father, who grew up with Italian-speaking parents in a largely Italian neighborhood, as a third-generation American, most of my Italian heritage and folkways have been lost. Sure, my father has done extensive geneaology work. I know where I come from, Piana Degli Albanese, a village in the mountains above Palermo, Sicily, but I cannot point to any specific family tradition that hails from the old country. My mother's side of the family has been in the United States since the 1850s, so any trace of ethnicity is lost there as well.

Italian-Americans get a bad rap. The first three entries in a Google search of my last name reveals a pizza joint and two New York area mobsters. My father, Frank, shares the same name as the Gambino Family consigliere, Frank "Franky Loc" Locascio. Most other Locascio surnames are spelled LoCascio or Lo Cascio. The name has many meanings. It could mean "Of the Cascio." Cascio is a type of cheese. In southern Italy, Locascio is a derivation of Lo Castro, which means of the walled city. A Castro is a Roman walled fortification.

Apparently, the village in Sicily, Piana Degli Albanese, where my great-grandparents emigrated to the United States from in the early 1900s is largely populated by the Arbëreshë, an Albanian minority community living in southern Italy since as early as the 15th century. I guess I am more Albanian than Italian. I like to embrace this idea because being Albanian would explain my love of mountains. Italy is mountainous too, but more in the north. My roots are far more southern.

I'd like to embrace my ethnic roots a little more closely, but since I wasn't raised within any specific traditions, it would be affected, an approximation, with no legitimate family claims. Or, I could seek out extended family on my father's side -- most of whom I haven't seen in years, and appropriate their uniquely Italian traditions. That's an idea. I'd better do it soon, as my father's generation is passing away and so few of them, my father included, have maintained many of the old ways.

At least I've learned to make a really good pizza from scratch. It's a start.

Flash fiction: The Spinner (part 1)

2011-05-20T15:10:00.002-05:00

Ever had a recurring dream that came true? I have, a few times. One was mundane, involving a unique kind of light, but when it came true it was a profound moment of recognition, and I never had the dream again. The other recurring dream that came true changed the very nature of reality, not just for me, but for everybody. It is a challenge to the laws of physics. This is super hero stuff we're talking about here, the stuff of fantasy, and like anything crazy that happens to a normal guy like myself, my puny mind is still grasping at the implications, even though, as super powers go, it is fairly useless.

But before I get into all that... here's the other dream that came true and never came back. Somehow, it connects to my unique power, but I'm still trying to figure all that out.

Ever since I was a child, I had this dream of an aquarium with white rocks, crushed limestone, I believe, and potted plants inside it. In my dream I walk up to this aquarium and just look inside. Nothing else happens. It is lit from within by a fluorescent light, or so I thought, and surrounding me is the gray glow of pre-dawn, but just a little brighter, unlike any kind of natural light I've known. For some reason, I can't figure out, light is important to all this.

I had this dream from age 7 or 8 until I was 19, about 11 years. And each time I remembered it I was filled with peace and thought it was a memory of my grandparent's basement. Grandma raised orchids and kept them in aquariums, lit up with a fluorescent light. I don't remember any white rocks. Close enough. But I was wrong.

It was the first time I'd drank Carlsburg beer. I was in Denmark in June of 1992. I was visiting Braun-wen, an exchange student from high school who I'd been pen pals with ever since. I had a Eurail pass and had been bumming around Europe for most of a month. I'd looked forward to seeing Braun-Wen. I admit to romantic desires, but I never pursued them. Maybe it was a language barrier, or that I was too regular of a guy (she criticized my brown leather jacket right when I got off the train). Although we connected in letters, in person we got along awkwardly. I was left to the company of her two older brothers and extended family of cousins. Danes are easygoing.

They let me stay in the attic, which was my home for five nights. It had a skylight and, I noted almost immediately, an aquarium with a potted hosta plant and white rocks. It looked immediately familiar. My last night there, Braun-Wen once again abandoned me to party with her friends. I could hear a cheesy live band playing out of tune and out of time renditions of Nirvana songs. Feeling sad, rejected, and missing family back in the states, I went for a long walk and stumbled upon a hedgehog. It curled up into a ball. I moved it with my foot. It left quills in my shoe. I went to sleep around 11, but it was still light out, the sun hanging like a gray ball on the edge of the horizon.

I woke a few hours later, maybe at 3, and looked over from my bed to the aquarium. It was then that the overwhelming sense of deja vu hit me. This was the recurring dream. I looked up out of the skylight and saw the strange permanent dusk of sunlight, a light I'd never seen before because I'd never been this far north on the summer solstice. While profound, I noted the connection to the dream and went back to sleep. I wonder even now if that wasn't a dream. But I never had the dream again. The aquarium with the white rocks lives on only in living memory.

Years later, I began having this dream of spinning. In the dream, I am startled by something, and it's always something different, a barking dog, a car suddenly appearing from around a corner, or a piano falling from an upper story window. And like dreams, other fantastical elements come into play. There's a return of that alpen glow light, except I only see it when I jump away. It is as if a filter is suddenly put over my vision and everything pales in this other light. And as I leap away, I spin, and keep on spinning, suspended in the air, more revolutions than I can count, and it feels like I'm on a merry-go-round, except I look down and I'm off the ground. Sometimes I stay in one place. Other times I move back and forth in a low, swooping sway, all the while spinning, spinning. Also, I never feel dizzy. And when I wake up I'm perfectly fine, lying in the same place as I went to sleep. No external motion causes me to feel this spinning sensation in my dream. I've had this dream at least 10 times.

Now here's where it gets weird, and I hesitate to even mention it because I don't want to be found out and probed and explored by scientists, or put in prison as a dangerous element. Yeah, I've read too many comic books and listened to too much alarmist AM radio, but I wouldn't put it past the federal government to take away my freedoms and lock me up for good. Never forget that the purpose of our government is to maintain the common good. Anything odd or unexplainable has a way of disappearing.

About two months ago, I was stepping out of the shower and the towel I stepped on slipped out from under me. I spun to regain my balance, but as soon as I did the strange light came over me, again, as if someone slipped special glasses over me, and I turned, suspended in mid-air at a 45-degree angle. I panicked and reached out for the shower curtain. It tore off the bar, violently, the hooks snapping as the curtain ripped away from them. And there I was, enshrouded in my own shower curtain, spinning.

How did I stop myself? At first, I stuck my hands out, but I just banged my knuckles on the edge of the tub. This changed the angle of my body a little, but did nothing to slow the rate of spinning. It's a little hard to explain, but as I spun, I became aware of a lack of vertigo, and I didn't need to focus on one spot to avoid motion sickness. Something inside of me, I realized, and I imagined it in my upper gut, just below the solar plexus, the very center of my body, seemed to be the source of motion. And, although I didn't know what I was doing, I just thought, and told myself, concentrating on that spot, "Stop spinning." As I kept thinking this, the alpen glow faded, fading in waves in tune with my heartbeat, and the spinning slowed, then stopped, and, as normal light returned, I fell with a thud, bruising my ribs on the side of the tub.

Did this really happen? I wondered this all day at work. And when I got home I took my shirt off, pinched myself to make sure I wasn't dreaming, though I'm not sure why this classic test of dream versus reality is very effective. This entire experience has me questioning all reality, not just my own. The metaphysical questions this raises, even to an average, boring admissions officer like myself who took only one philosophy course in community college, are many and profound. I took off my shirt and looked in the mirror. There it was, the dark bruise on my ribs. But that could have happened any way. Not just from spinning. I could have dreamed I was in the shower, was spinning, and fell out of bed instead. There was only one way to test whether or not the spinning was real. I had to try and do it again... (To be continued)

Cloud busting

2011-05-18T18:33:00.005-05:00

My hippie freak pseudo-mystic neighbor Daryl told me about cloud busting, the ability to make clouds disappear by looking at them and concentrating. He said he's seen somebody do this and, "Hey, man. It makes sense. What are we made out of? Dust and water. What are clouds made out of? Bingo."

This from the same guy who claims he can heal me by waving his hands around in my aura.

Daryl says cloud busting is a fairly easy trick. There's even a book about it, Cloud Busting Secrets: Make Clouds Vanish, Appear and More by Devin Knight and Jerome Finley, and it is featured in a movie, The Men Who Stare at Goats. Here's a pseudo-scientific explanation and video demonstration of the phenomena. I am skeptical of it, but it would be a fun thing to try on a lazy summer afternoon.

Just think if most people caught on to this phenomena. No more floods or rain delays at baseball games. Everybody just needs to focus their energies!

The quickening

2011-05-18T18:04:00.004-05:00

Ever since I got my 3G phone a month ago, I have not read a book cover to cover. I usually read at least a book a week, but with easy access to Facebook and my Twitter feed, with a constant barrage of articles and videos directly related to my interests, the time I usually set aside for reading is devoted to these other things. I have also been spending an inordinate amount of time looking for work and focusing more on my music. It's funny how busy I've been, considering my unemployed state. Who has time for work?!

It is fitting, then, that the first book to engage me is a critique of the fast-paced culture we live in, Ad Nauseum: A Survivor's Guide to American Consumer Culture, edited by Carrie McLaren and Jason Torchinsky. Last night, while playing with my son, listening to the Cubs-Reds game/debacle, and compulsively checking Facebook, I read the following, in an article entitled "A Slow Creeping Brain Death:"

"... [P]eople are more likely to be mindless when constantly barraged with meaningless messages designed to exploit their attention. In other words, they are more likely to be mindless in a media-and-marketing-saturated culture."

The article says that the more experiences one has, the more likely one is to classify and stereotype. For example, a person is more likely to daydream and take shortcuts to complete a task at work because the familiar environment encourages this type of act-first, think-later-if-at-all mentality. But your mind works more acutely on a vacation, hence this feeling of being more alive and in the moment, because the unfamiliarity of the environment prevents your brain from taking mental shortcuts.

Like a workplace environment, being constantly barraged by media forces the brain to filter out the meaningful from the meaningless. It's a survival mechanism. There's no way to absorb all the information that is coming in.

"As soon as humans are able to grasp the concept of advertising, they learn to discount certain messages and, eventually, to ignore them. In children this starts around second or third grade. By the time kids reach adulthood, they've mastered the art of tuning out."

This necessity to filter out a constant stream of information is changing the way we think and speak. It is dumbing us down. The article says that MTV cannot show a three and a half minute long video. It's too long. Television and newspaper news stories are getting shorter and shorter. And never being away from a media outlet makes most people feel naked and alone when they are absent.

I love music and sports as much as the next guy, but I make a daily, conscientious effort to break away from the slipstream. It's a little easier for me. I don't have cable television and only have Internet access through my phone. When I am walking outside, I never listen to headphones. I have an MP3 player that I haven't used in years. I would rather listen to bird song and other environmental sounds (like oncoming traffic).

I feel the tug of opposite urges. One side of me, the journalist/academic/consumer, craves information. My mind moves quickly and I love to take it all in and mull over facts and data. When I go to baseball games, I keep score and now, when listening to the Cubs, I follow the statistics on an espn.com gamecast. I'm a Twitter and Facebook addict fan. I love keeping up with my friends through their photos and updates, and the Twitter users I follow are aligned with topics I like, so I get lots of links to stories, web sites, apps, and, yes, advertising, that I'm interested in.

But unlike, say, the average high school student, I have a ceiling. When I've had enough, my body tells me. I get a headache. I feel a quickening of my thoughts, akin to the physical feeling I get when I fly. I don't know if anybody else ever feels this, but every time I fly, for a few moments, sometimes minutes, I get a feeling of how fast I am going, as if my body is telling me, "Hey! You're hurtling through the air at incredible speeds right now!!!"

When this non-flight quickening feeling comes on, I turn off the radio, close the laptop, shut off the phone, and close the magazine. I've been known to sit in the dark and just stare out into space, doing nothing. In these moments, I think of my childhood neighbor's dad, a Vietnam War battle-scarred veteran, who would sit almost nightly, for hours at a time, in the dark, quietly, on his front porch drinking beer.

There's an easy correlation to make with war and the modern information age. While it is not fair to compare the horror and trauma of war with advertising, the body's response to both is similar. In war, soldier's learn to shut out the horror as a coping mechanism. We do the same with advertising.

Balance is key to keeping your wits and being informed, aware, and alive in these times. I have a love of nature and exercise, and time spent running, hiking, or even just playing with my son, frees my mind to think critically and to stretch my imagination. And these media free times are an everyday component of my life. I spend at least two hours a day completely unplugged, unlike most people, who are plugged in ALL THE TIME! They are doing damage to their brains and, in my opinion, missing out on all that life has to offer. Woe to those who walk around staring at their cell phones all the time. Put your phone away and look at the world, the REAL WORLD (not the fake MTV show). Nothing is so important that it can't wait.

I need to take my own advice. That shiny new toy -- my 3G phone -- a devil-in-disguise --has contributed to my month-long absence from the involving, mind-expanding, archaic practice of reading literature. And now I'm blogging about it, the ultimate hypocrisy, throwing another pebble in the slipstream. But if you're reading this sentence, you're attention span is doing just fine. The ones who need to heed my advice, even if they started reading this, have most likely moved on to something else.

Nathan K.: Northern lyricism

2011-05-17T14:17:00.005-05:00

I felt a bit nauseous last night and didn't feel like going to The House Cafe for the open mic, which is a Monday night tradition for me. But after awhile the nausea passed, in spite of listening to the Cubs lose a heartbreaker to the Reds, 7-4. Around 11:30 I checked Facebook on my phone. Jolly Baba, a.k.a. Matt Clark, the emcee at The House Cafe, posted a link to http://www.blogger.com/www.fanstaging.com, which is a live Internet feed. I clicked on it and, kismet of kismets, heard him introduce my ukelele-player friend Jim Magnuson, a.k.a. Stan Stills.

As Stan Stills began his set with a uke-version of "Pomp and Circumstance," dedicated to recent NIU graduates, I rushed to put on my shoes and walk the couple blocks to The House, I kept the live feed on my phone as I walked down Lincoln Highway as Stan Stills worked through a blistering solo on Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb," and arrived in time to hear his encore song, "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."

It was a good thing I came, because one of my favorite headline acts from last fall, Nathan K., had performed earlier in the evening. And after midnight, when a comedian, Diesel, ran out of steam, Nathan K. did a 4-song encore. I bought his CD, Newspapers and Prayers, after the show.

Nathan K.'s style is alternative folk. I like it because the lyrics and music put me in a certain melancholy state of mind. As I told his girlfriend/manager after the show, I think Nathan K. has a northern sound. I imagine a misunderstood misanthrope in a small northern town writing about the heartache and loneliness of the life up there. Here's a snippet of lyrics from track 3, "The Leper and the Saint,": "The leper and the saint met on the corner of State and Liberty / when the leper stretched his hands out full of hope / The saint replied / I'm sorry sir, I cannot heal just anyone / you must have me confused with someone else."

These lyrics suggest a geographical specificity, "State and Liberty," with two title characters that are icons of loneliness and isolation. A saint stands out alone, sought company, to be sure, but isolated in his or her unique vision. And a leper is symbolic of someone shunned. Two other characters mentioned later in the song, a poet and a widow, are also symbolic of isolation, loneliness, and the distinction of being an "other," overlooked by the mainstream.

Most of the original music I've seen at The House Cafe since regularly attending the open mic sessions last September displays musicianship, or at least passes tuneful muster. Rare is the artist who writes meaningful lyrics to go along with the music. In all vanity, I think of my own songs as more lyrically strong than musically. This is because, in my self image as an artist, I am a writer first and musician second. I suspect most musicians see it the other way around. Lyrics are an afterthought to the music, and it shows in the often poor quality and mundane subject matter of most song lyrics.

But Nathan K. is different. His lyrics are poetry. And his songs take me places. He's also an independent musician and I'm learning a little about marketing and songcraft from watching his example. In this regard, I owe him a creative debt.

Check out his stuff all over the World Wide Webbies:

facebook.com/nathankmusic
twitter.com/nathankmusic
myspace.com/nathankmusic
youtube.com/nathankofficial
nathankmusic.tumblr.com
nathank.bandcamp.com

E-mail: dearnathank@gmail.com

A running narrative

2011-05-17T14:05:00.004-05:00

I had a good time last weekend in Chicago, despite the bad weather. On Sunday morning I ran in the Magellan Development 10K race along the shores of Lake Michigan. My goal was to finish in under an hour, which I did, timing in at 56:45. I placed 176th out of 700 runners, 122nd out of 284 men, and 20th out of 46 in my age group. (click here for results) While I set no speed records, or even a personal best, it was a solid re-introduction to racing. The last race I ran was the Chicago Marathon on Oct. 10, 2005. Since then, I stopped running for a few years, gained 50 pounds, went through some difficult life trials and made some bad choices.

Reality gave me a hard check last November as I looked in the mirror at my bulging belly (replete with stretch marks) and realized, knowing my body type and comparing it to family and extended family with the same body type, that if I didn't make a conscious effort to maintain my health, obesity and all its attendant ills would be my fate. I was also tired of being tired, and sick of waking up with lower back pain every day. My body and spirit were crying out for change.

When I joined a local gym and stepped on the scale in the locker room, I weighed 240 pounds, the heaviest I have ever weighed. I remember that first day so vividly, the self-consciousness of being flabby and overweight in a fitness club full of fit people. Getting back in shape requires such willpower to change one's self-image, then habits, and to overcome nagging doubts. Seeing that number, 240, made me sigh in resignation. But then a familiar feeling, one that has carried me through mountain ranges and thousands of miles, overcame my being - DETERMINATION. Unlike previous attempts to establish a fitness and diet regimen in daily life, I had to make this latest effort stick. To fail would be to fall into a pit of self-loathing and ill health. I'd been wallowing in that place for most of 2010 and desperately wanted out. That old stubborn feeling came back into my life, revived me, even as the harsh assessment of the scale tried to drive me back down.

Six months later and 26 pounds lighter (I weighed myself on the same scale at the gym yesterday and am 214 pounds), I stood in the lobby of an upscale apartment building near the starting line of Sunday's race, self-conscious not due to weight, but because I was the only runner in the room with socks that went up to my mid-calf. My significant other chided me for lowering my socks.

"I've never known you to care about conforming," she said. "It's kind of cute seeing you try to fit in."

Indeed, I don't fit in. My shorts are a little long, more basketball than Bill Clinton. I don't listen to music on headphones or wear a watch that monitors my heart rate and blood/oxygen levels. Although my shoes are New Balance, I wear them all the time instead of just for running. I don't do interval training and until recently thought fartleks referred to a strange fetish involving flatulence. I don't have an elaborate stretching routine. I wear cotton t-shirts. None of my clothing has bright colors or is reflective. I don't wear a waistbelt with water bottles or eat shots of Gu. I like running because it's simple, and am dismissive of all the foofaraw other runners bring to the sport. And there was a lot of foofaraw to scoff at Sunday.

Many of the runners are high strung, impatient sorts. That makes sense, given the kinetic nature of the sport. They seem so wide-eyed and urgent. I had to walk through a narrow opening in steel fencing to get to the apartment lobby. A man and woman wearing matching outfits nearly shoved me out of the way to get in front of me. I yelled after them, "Hurry! Hurry! Go! Go! Go!"

As 7:30 a.m. neared, I stepped from the lobby and followed the herd to the starting line, getting there just in time to hear an unseen announcer say there was a minute left until the race starts. "For those of you who registered for the half-marathon and chose to run the 10K instead," he said. "Smart move!" And then we were off. Although it was crowded, no one jostled me, and I settled into a good pace right away, only having to alter it a few times to pass other runners.

My plan of action was to run at a conversational pace. As the trail curved to go around Shedd's Aquarium, I turned to look at the famous Chicago skyline. Most of the skyscrapers were enveloped in clouds. A stiff wind blew in from the lake, the water an ominous, white-capped verdancy. One wave shot over the breaker wall so hard a group of runners in front of me were soaked.

At the 3-mile turnaround, I upped my pace, still feeling good and strong. But now the wind was in my face. Many runners had their caps blown off their heads. Every once in a while a bicyclist would come through, yelling "runners to the right" as they helped a faster half-marathoner get through the crush of 10Kers. At the 5-mile mark I put on the afterburners, breathing heavily, conscientiously maintaining form (shoulders back, lengthening stride), but surprisingly feeling strong. In hindsight, I could have kicked in this pace at mile 3 and maintained it the rest of the way. As I approached the steel fencing before the turn under Lakeshore Drive, I went into a sprint all the way to the finish line, my face no doubt red and huffing.

I love the photo my significant other took as I approached the finish line. My hair is back and stride long. I felt a slight wave of nausea as I crossed the finish line and huffed to catch my breath. The announcer, to my astonishment, pronounced my last name correctly. I grabbed my finisher medal, shouldered my luggage, and after a bathroom stop, began the mile and a half walk back to the Ogilvie Transportation Center.

Thanks again to my significant other (at her request, she shall ever remain nameless) for her companionship and support. We enjoyed a romantic dinner at Oodles of Noodles near Clark and Fullerton the night before. Thanks also to my brother Ken for letting us stay at his place. He's somewhere in Europe or Thailand as of this writing, so he wasn't around.

Despite the bad weather, I felt great the entire run and, in retrospect, could have pushed a bit harder for a better time. But it was a lot of fun and I can't wait to race again. I've already signed up for a 10K run June 25 that starts at Sycamore Speedway and goes along the Great Western Trail. I may also, funds willing, run an 8K race in Kirkland on Saturday. My t-shirt wardrobe expands as my waistline shrinks. It's been a long, arduous trek from last November to Sunday's finish line, but a triumphant one. Further successes and many finish lines await.

Snarky twee wonk post

2011-05-17T13:54:00.006-05:00

I came across "twee" the other day in the back pages of a Reader's Digest, a magazine that tries to be hip and current, yet still appeal to its geriatric subscribers. My maternal grandparents were regular subscribers and they bought subscriptions for their children. After they passed on, for many years my mother bought a subscription for my family. But its been a few years since I've owned a copy. I still read them at the public library, and last week checked out a few copies for nostalgia's sake.

On the back pages of one recent issue is a photo essay highlighting whimsical elements in interior design photographs. Such details as putting two soda bottles on a settee, as if lounging in bliss, or a Buddha statue reaching for a bowl of apples, are called "twee." I imagine some editor at Reader's Digest thought they were clever and hip using "twee" because of its morphological connection to "Tweet" and that most modern web phenomenon, Twitter. (http://twitter.com/greglocascio, or see sidebar right). "Twee" is a fairly modern word, but is older than my grandparents and fell out of popular usage long ago. Reader's Digest is going through a mid-life crisis, trying to be hip and relevant, but never quite able to shed its fuddy duddy conservative milquetoast populism. I kind of like that the world's most popular magazine is a dorky kid trying to be cool.

Twee means "tiny, dainty, miniature" according to dictionary.com. It's origin is British, from 1905, and is derived from a childish pronunciation of "sweet." (I taut I taw a putty tat!) It's initial meaning was more cutesy, but as its swirled forward through the cotton candy machine of time, the word's become sweeter and sweeter. According to Webster's, "twee" means "affectedly or excessively dainty, delicate, cute or quaint." It is now cloyingly sweet, enough to make your teeth hurt after one bite.

Some Twee examples: Cabbage Patch Kids, any photos of baby animals or cats and dogs getting along with each other, The Osmonds (and most other Mormons), and Justin Bieber. Oops, Bieber's a 'Tween.

Another word with 20th century origins that has only come into popular usage in the last 20 years and now suffers from overuse is "wonk." According to etymonline.com, "wonk" is an American slang word coined at Harvard University and was first written in a Time magazine article in 1954. There are three classifications of students, jocks, preppies, and wonks. "Wonk" is synonymous with "nerd," but with more expert connotations than the latter. It came into cultural zeitgeist in the Clinton administration, which had many "policy wonks." Anyone who is obsessive about a particular subject, often to the exclusion of polity, would be considered a "wonk." Presentation of an arcane detail or niggling over fine points in a conversation would be considered "wonky."

When I think about it, Willy Wonka is wonky about confections, most of which is twee.

Another word with origins in the early 20th century (1906) is "snarky." (Microsoft Works doesn't recognize this word. It keeps changing it to "snaky"). Its original meaning is "irritable, short-tempered" and is derived from "snark," which mean to snort. Don't be piggish and act snarky.

But like "twee," as "snarky" has come into modern usage, its meaning has evolved. It now means, according to Merriam-Webster, "sarcastic, impertinent, or irreverent in tone or manner." Anything that's "in your face" or even ironic is called "snarky" these days. I would argue that the latest generation of teenagers would all bear the "snarky" label. Maybe not. To sneer or snort or have attitude takes too much effort. Aloofness is the defining mood of today's kids. "Whatevs, old man."

When I first read "snarky," in the context of a movie review, I thought it meant "with attitude," which is close to the actual definition. "Snarky" is just a little more snide than attitude, but retains a similar confrontational puffery. I also think something or someone that is "snarky" is affected, tongue-in-cheek, and overly self-conscious. Snarkiness is almost always intentional, a ploy.

There is a chronology to the three words I've focused on today. "Twee" could describe a cute child, "snarky" a sneering teen, and "wonk" a careerist adult.

Flash fiction

2011-05-14T10:15:00.002-05:00

Thanks to Twitter for exposing me to a new writing genre, Flash fiction. Otherwise known as a short, short story, Flash fiction is usually less than a page long. Web sites and other publications devoted to the genre even place word restrictions on their stories.

I am going to try my hand at flash fiction today. I haven't been writing much fiction lately, but have posted many poem tweets online, which in the brevity of its medium forces concision and multiple layers of meaning that good poetry contains.

I've got 35 minutes left at the library and don't know what I'm going to write about. Here goes...

It was hot and humid that May morning. And when Valdus and his son, Ragnar, took off for the disc golf course near their middle-class Midwest home, puffy anvil head clouds were billowing in on the southern horizon.

Ragnar was five and he couldn't throw the heavy discs nearly as far as his father, who, a technical writer and pseudo-Zen mysticist, exemplified the antipodal urges of concentration and impatience raging through his fragile psyche through his style of play on the disc golf course. He breathed deep, unconsciously twirled the disc in hand, took a grip and stepped into his throw. He had an unorthodox sidewinder windup that seemed hurky jerky until the whiplash release. He finished his motion and watched in awe as the disc sailed through the air. A moment of grace. But then, obvlious to Ragnar's turn and his short legs, Valdus walked in a fast pace towards his disc.

"Wait for me, Daddy." Ragnar said. Ragnar wanted to follow the rules and throw from the spot where the disc dropped, but since he could only throw the disc about 20 feet, he knew this was impossible because no way would Valdus wait for the five or six throws Ragnar would need to take to catch up to Valdus' initial throw. So he threw just once, ran to get his disc and caught up to Valdus just in time to watch his father make another throw. This throw sailed between the limbs of two trees and landed three feet outside the basket.

"Good throw, Dad." Ragnar said.

"Thanks. At least I'll make par."

And so it went for two more "holes."

Ragnar, breathless trying to keep up, asked questions to his father, who muttered to himself about his shots.

"That wasn't nearly as close to the pin as I wanted," Valdus said.

"What's the pin?"

"The basket."

"Is the basket the same as the hole?"

"Yes."

"Why do they call it a hole?"

"Because disc golf is derived from regular golf, and some of terms, even though they don't make sense, have transferred over."

Ragnar didn't understand "derived" or "transferred," and didn't know anything about regular golf, and so, confused on a multitude of fronts, he just nodded his head and looked at his father slack-jawed. Valdus interpreted this look as a sign his son wasn't listening, and in the back of his mind worried the boy may have some type of popularly diagnosed neurological condition, Attention Deficit Disorder or something like it. "Nature and exercise can only do him good," he thought, oblivious to the notion that Ragnar, like his father, had an eye for detail and a dogged persistence to figure things out. Ragnar had no idea he looked like a drooling idiot when he was concentrating.

By the fifth tee, the one where the basket was right next to the river, Ragnar noticed an ominous darkness as the sun quickly turned to shade and a breeze kicked in towards the impending storm.

"Is it going to rain, Daddy?"

Valdus just then noticed the impending storm. "It looks like it might."

"We're not going to get struck by lightning, are we?"

"I doubt it. But let's not walk in the middle of the field. We don't want to tempt fate."

"Why not?"

"Trust me on this one, okay son?" Valdus debated whether to end the game now or continue through past the 9th tee. They were almost half a mile away from home and had no umbrella. But he was feeling "on" today and had already made a birdie. He wanted to see if he could get enough on his throw to make it to the dogleg turn on the ninth.

But by the time they got there, the wind was whipping fast, the newly-budded maple leaves showing their silvery undersides, and fear edged Ragnar's voice.

"Let's go, Daddy." He said.

"After this hole."

Valdus let loose his throw from the 9th tee. Wind-aided, the disc landed clear of the tree line. He had a direct line on the tee/pin/hole.

Ragnar felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. He looked up to see his father, standing in the middle of an open field, get surrounded by a blue light, a funny smelling haze filled the air. Then Valdus collapsed, his disc still in hand, melted and warped.

He's so "trail"

2011-05-13T14:45:00.004-05:00

There's this term for someone who seems laid back, able to go with flow, and has a connection with nature. I call it "trail." Being "trail" is the opposite of most of the people in America, who bear no connection to the natural world and dismiss those who move to Mother Nature's rhythms as pie-in-the-sky hippie dips. Not seeking out wealth or fame, material goods, or pre-packaged experiences is a rather un-American way to live.

A few weekends ago, I was watching through some YouTube videos and came across a viral video from last July. It features an unseen narrator, Paul "Bear" Vasquez, marvelling, awestruck at the sight of a double rainbow outside his trailer. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel tweeted this video and helped spread its popularity. Vasquez even appeared on Kimmel's show. Here's the video:

Vasquez owns land outside of Yosemite National Park. After watching a few more videos, I discovered he breeds dogs and grows his own fruits and vegetables on the farm.

The popularity of the "double rainbow" video is due to Paul's over the top awe at the sight of the rainbow. To the majority of viewers who do not live as connected to nature as Vasquez, this near-orgasmic awe is derided. I agree that it is a bit much, but I respect and instantly connect to his reaction. It truly is a beautiful sight.

As I learned more about Vasquez, the more I liked him. His children are healthy and happy, and enjoy a close relationship with him. He hosts visitors to his farm year round, was once a cage fighter, a long haul truck driver, and when he was young worked as a firefighter in Los Angeles County. He's lived a full life and is surrounded by loving friends and family.

Vasquez also chose not to make any profits from the popularity of his video. He has figured out how to live, simply and happily, in tune with nature and in loving harmony with those around him. He is the embodiment of "trail," and I've seen many enlightened souls like him in my travels and can only aspire to attain the peace and joy he exhibits in his double rainbow and other videos.

He also has an awesome view from his backyard, even without a double rainbow.

No hype

2011-05-12T10:01:00.000-05:00

When I read about the free dental care offered by the DeKalb Dental Group, I had my doubts about what they meant by "free" and thought they might just do a free check up and try to get me to sign on for dental work -- the old bait and switch tactic.

The announcement in the paper said free dental care would be offered to the first 100 people who showed up. I didn't get there until 9 a.m., and there was a long line out the door, but I didn't have to worry. I was asked if I wanted to see the dentist or the dental hygienist, given a ticket, and waited some more. Staff offered bottles of water out of a cooler. A pleasant breeze and partly cloudy skies kept everybody in a good mood. I met a woman who I'd attended graduate school with at NIU, and I caught up a little bit on what's been going on in hallowed Reavis Hall.

After I made it inside, I had to fill out a couple forms and sign a waiver. They asked for my social security number, but when I politely declined, they said it wasn't a big deal. While waiting inside, I read a Rolling Stone magazine interview with Howard Stern. By the time I was done reading it, my number was called and I was led to a dentist's chair.

The kind staff at DeKalb Dental Group made me feel welcome, and while busy, none of the staff seemed frazzled or bothered by it all. They took x-rays, shot my cheek with novocaine, and after a while the dentist came in, did his drilling, filling the air with that acrid, though pleasant to me (weird, I know) spray of water and ground up tooth. I felt no pain and the entire procedure lasted all of 15 minutes. A missing filling was replaced.

Not once during the entire process was I given a sales pitch or asked to sign up for more dental work. Sure, there was advertising for all sorts of teeth whitening procedures, but no one said anything to me about them. I left in disbelief, thinking how rare it is for a private business to offer a free service without any hype, sales pitch, or any kind of catch. The DeKalb Dental Group performed a selfless act of community service, and did it with style and efficiency.

They will no doubt benefit from word of mouth (I couldn't help myself) endorsements. And if I get dental insurance or enough discretionary income to afford more work, I will seek out their services in the future. Community service acts like this do more to bring in new business than any of the usual sales techniques. If you live in the DeKalb/Sycamore area, I would recommend you bring your dental needs to this group.

Here's their web site: http://www.dekalbdentalgroup.com/
Here's where I found out about the free service: http://www.midweeknews.com/articles/2011/05/10/12670083/index.xml

Modern immortality

2011-05-12T09:59:00.001-05:00

Someone I didn't know well, but Facebook keeps suggesting as a friend because we went to high school together and have 46 mutual friends, was stabbed to death last weekend in Rockford, in an apparent robbery attempt. I Googled his name (but won't use it in this blog) and discovered he was wanted by Rockford Crime Stoppers back in January for drug violations.

After reading other Facebook friends' messages about the guy, I returned home from the library to look him up in my yearbooks. I started with senior year and worked backwards. There's only one photo of the guy, from the 1986-87 Harlem Junior High Yearbook. He had the look of a mid-80s stoner, feathered hair, dazed look in the eye, and black t-shirt. As I looked at this photo of someone I didn't know, but a web site sidebar on a social networking site insisted I did know, I wondered about this stranger's path, and how the glowing details in his obituary differ from the less-flattering details given by the Crime Stoppers report.

About 1/3 of my current Facebook friends are people I went to high school with and haven't seen since. For me, the secondary school years are ones best forgotten. I was an outsider. I ate lunch alone everyday. What few friends I did have didn't attend my high school. I never attended a prom or homecoming. I never dated a girl at my high school or walked the halls holding hands. After I graduated, I went back a couple times to see an English teacher who had a positive influence on me, but didn't maintain contact with any of my classmates.

Over the years, I've maintained friendships with a few people I went to high school with, but none of them are in my current circle of regular friends. I have had the pleasure of getting to know and really liking a couple of them through their Facebook posts, and I would like to reunite with them again, but I haven't pursued it because I fear a face to face encounter would just be awkward and strange.

I find when I make a new Facebook friend from high school days, I go home to look at those yearbooks to try and remember who they were. More often than not, no specific memories can be attached to these "friends."

Indeed, Facebook "friends" are different from real "friends."

5 tips for prospective thru-hikers

2011-05-11T09:26:00.003-05:00

I am an avid reader and poster on Trailjournals, and look on with a bit of wistfulness each spring as the next crop of thru-hikers begin their adventures on the Appalachian, Pacific Crest, Continental Divide and other trails. As a successful thru-hiker who has never sustained a serious injury in over 7,000 miles of backpacking and two traverses of the length of the United States, I think I have a few nuggets of sage advice to pass along to the current crop of thru-hikers or those considering taking a long-distance backpacking trip themselves.

1. Walk light. I'm not going to invite debate about go-lite philosophy, as I am somewhere in the middle. My pack, with food and water, usually weighs between 30 and 50 pounds, depending on the season. But what I mean by "walk light" is to take steps that put minimum impact on your feet and joints. I do this by stepping on the balls of my feet and walking with my knees slightly bent. On downhills, I put my hiking stick down before me to absorb some of the impact of the descent. Also, if your muscles and joints get sore, simply walk in a different way to take stress off those sore areas. I have seen countless hikers have their thru-hikes derailed by feet and muscle problems. Some of these problems could have been avoided by simply varying their hiking style. It's counter-intuitive. Who is conscientious about the way they walk? Thru-hikers should be. Pretend you are sneaking down the trail. This will instantly make you aware of your gait.

2. Your most important piece of gear is between your ears. I've seen this before at trail crossings. A hiker sitting next to their pack, head between their knees, utterly beat and ready to quit. Don't be fooled. Injury is not the number one reason for failure to complete a thru-hike: mental and emotional reasons are. IF you just broke up with a girlfriend, got a divorce, or lost a spouse, maybe a thru-hike isn't the best idea right now. If you don't love the outdoors and embrace the lifestyle and sacrifices in comfort that come with a thru-hike, you will not make it. If you came to the trail to escape your problems, guess what? They are still with you. One of the best and worst things about a thru-hike is that you get a lot of time to think about things. If you have a good imagination and internal voice, this can be a joy. Most of the songs I've recorded come from riffs I sang in the backcountry. But if you have lingering, unresolved issues, those worries will eat away at your mind like a cancer. Before you begin, you must make your peace with the people in your life and have your finances in order. You do not want to bring money and relationship problems to the trail. They will only curtail your efforts and make you lose focus.

3. Embrace the brutality. You have to be a little bit of a masochist to enjoy thru-hiking. Aches and pains are a daily reality for even the most seasoned backpacker. If you are a wuss about blisters and sprains, you will not succeed. The best way, I've discovered, to deal with it is to be prepared, don't over-medicate, and don't overdo it. If blisters or a nagging injury are slowing you down, then SLOW DOWN! Listen to what your body is telling you. Don't be a silly fool slave to an itinerary or try to keep up with the pack of hikers you've been with for the past couple weeks. Recognize that discomfort comes with the territory and be especially attuned to what your body is telling you. But don't overthink it or dwell on your woes. Don't make an abcess out of a blister or a fracture out of a sprain. Do what you can to tend to yourself and move on.

4. Stay curious. In addition to good genetics (I was born with super tough feet and strong legs), I also have an insatiable curiosity and love of travel. I can honestly say not once, ever, did I contemplate ending a thru-hike early. Why? Because I wanted to know what was around the next bend and looked in awestruck wonder at new flora and fauna. In short, I retained a childlike curiosity for the world around me, and each day in Mother Nature's kingdom was a new adventure. I also did a lot of research before each hike and pored over maps and guidebooks. I couldn't wait to see these places I'd read about.

5. Find comfort in your gear. As I wrote earlier, pain and discomfort are inevitable in a thru-hike. One way I deal with this is to give some totemic power to a piece of gear. For me, it was my bandanna and camp clothes. During a two-week stretch of rain on the PCT, I found comfort in knowing that at the end of the day I had dry clothes in a ziploc bag in the bottom of my pack. Even though my tent was still sopping wet (and about two pounds heavier) from the night before, at day's end, I could sop up the floor with my bandanna, change into those dry clothes and get into a warm, albeit clammy sleeping bag. Other times, a special treat, like a King Size Snickers bar, gave me a little lift. Build these "treat" times into your daily routine. Another thing I would do is pick beauty spots to take breaks at. There's nothing like laying on the ground, feet up on the pack, and looking out across a wonderful vista. This is what all the hard work is for. Relish the moments. Recognize how different this life is from the life you've led before. Know that this time in your life is fleeting. Recognize all the hard work and sacrifice it took to even get here. And, most important, keep on hiking!

Toiling in anonymity

2011-05-10T10:53:00.003-05:00

This past weekend I was at my parent's house. On Sunday morning, my Dad played his harmonica and sang a hymn he will be performing in an upcoming church service. I listened intently and gave positive feedback, surprised at the improvement in tone and the rich baritone of my father's voice.

Later on in the afternoon, my brother, Mom and Dad, were all sitting in the kitchen and I got out my phone to show them the new song, "Technorati," I wrote and recorded last week. I am still getting a kick out of being able to play original home studio recordings on my phone. And I'm quite proud of "Technorati." I believe it is a well-written, tuneful, a new kind of sound for me, stretching the bounds of musical possibility. But instead of listening intently, as I'd hoped, after about 5 seconds they resumed their conversation and gave no feedback.

I understand the song does not fit the musical tastes of my parents or brother, but neither did my father's hymn that morning. I still felt compelled, out of respect, and as a fellow musician, to give a thoughtful listen. Performers put their heart and soul into their work, and when they're ignored, especially by family, it hurts.

Well, being Sicilian, and a verbose, overly-dramatic one at that, I went on an angry rant expressing my disappointment over their non-interest. Everyone in my family knows I play open mic performances regularly, yet no one living near has ever inquired about coming down to see me. Again, I know it is on Monday nights, an inconvenient time, but would it hurt to ask about recent performances, watch the YouTube videos, or listen to my original recordings on Soundcloud and give me feedback?

I've been in counseling for about six months now, and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Its been EXTREMELY beneficial to work through issues that have plagued my conscious and subconscious life for most of my life. I feel like working through these issues has helped make me a better father, son, and partner. I like to think of it as "soul maintenance," and it's been worth the small economic sacrifices to make it happen.

One thing I've realized is that I don't write or create music for my family or the adulation of the audience. I do it simply because it's fun and the creative process gives me purpose. I don't expect family or friends to like what I do or give me feedback. If I were seeking that out, I'd push my stuff on them even more.

But it stiil hurts to have something I've put so much work into be mildly dismissed by loved ones. They have no idea what my art is about. And its to their own detriment that they don't.

Teachable moments

2011-05-09T14:37:00.005-05:00

My son is going through this wonderful phase where he asks lots of questions, mostly about things I take for granted. A few examples: "Why do you like to play music? Where do cats come from? How did you get to be so big?"

He also asks me to tell stories. "Tell me a funny story about when you were a kid?" Or, "Tell me a scary story?" I usually mix facts with fiction, and he's old enough to be skeptical of the more fantastic elements of my tales. For example, he loves these plastic little action figures, Gogo's Crazy Bones, and each one has a round disc on the back. He asked me what that was and I told him the disc is a microchip the makers put into them, so that when you're not looking they will run away and hide. He replied with a long, drawn out, "Really? Are you telling the truth, Daddy?"

I answer back, because I haven't the heart to support the lie, "What do you think?"

He said, "No. That can't be true."

Later, when he couldn't find a couple of them (they are pretty small), I raised my eyebrows and said, "See? Why do you think they're called Gogo's? The company that makes them hopes they get lost so kids like you will make their parents buy more. It's simple economics."

"What's economics?" ...

The stories I tell him about my childhood made me realize that I did not have very good experiences with authority figures and I there were multiple instances where I was falsely accused of things I did not do or say. This imbued in me a healthy distrust of authority and authority figures in general. No wonder I did not connect with the principal at my last teaching job and sometimes thought of myself as an imposter in the profession. I had become that which I dreaded most.

Here are a few examples, some of them so egregious the adults involved should have faced discipline or charged with a crime. But I grew up, thank goodness, in a less litigious age.

Fifth grade, during a rainy recess stuck indoors, I was minding my own business reading a book when my teacher appeared before me, a wild, angry look on her face.

"What did you say?" She asked.

"I didn't say anything. I was just reading."

"No you weren't. Get down to the principal's office this instant!"

"What do you think I said?"

"You know what you said."

And here's where the proceedings get criminal. She left the entire class and alternately shoved me down the hall and grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt so hard I choked. Shove, then grab. Shove again, and so forth. Of course, the principal didn't believe my claims of innocence and I received three paddles on the butt with a paddle that had holes drilled in it so it made a whooshing noise every time it was swung.

Whoosh whoosh smack.
Whoosh whoosh smack.
Whoosh whoosh smack.

I never did figure out what I said that was so bad. The same teacher, Mrs. Phillips, kept me from getting a perfect attendance certificate that year by giving me one tardy. She really had it in for me. I can take solace that she was probably a miserable, spiteful soul, which is its own punishment.

There are at least four more instances I can remember of being accused of something I didn't do, and this was just in elementary school. I was a bit of a handful, seeking out attention, and moving about in a whirl of restless energy. I can see why I got blamed for so much. But it doesn't make it right. And corporal punishment is unconscionable.

This is why, as a teacher, I am very slow and deliberate in handing out blame. Unless I see the wrongdoing, I don't mete out judgment. And I have a soft spot for the misunderstood and delinquent. Public education needs more people like me, curious seekers more interested in sharing a love of learning than maintaining ego and control. The control freak personality is so dominant in education. Yes, being a good teacher requires organization and attention to detail. But so many teachers lack creativity and joy in their work. It makes me mad to be unemployed, knowing I have the ability to be one of those teachers who can make a positive difference, when so many mediocre, bitter, and just plain bad teachers stay on the public dole.

I have never struck my child in anger. I will never falsely accuse him or others of wrongdoing. That is a positive outcome of some very negative experiences.

Instant coffee review

2011-05-09T06:30:00.004-05:00

A couple weeks ago, on a rainy day with my son, we were at the evil clown palace, a.k.a. McDonald's, so Jonny could enjoy the playland. While I was sitting there messing around on my phone, a guy at a nearby table with an Ipad asked me if I drank coffee. Of course, I said yes, which started him on his spiel.

Fred is a sales Rep for Organo Gold coffee, an instant. I am skeptical of instants, being a French press user who uses a grinder and unchlorinated water. I would call myself a coffee aficionado, but won't go that far. Let's just say I know how to make a good cup of Joe and recognize most people make or settle for swill.

But as an avid backpacker, I do like the ease and portability of instant coffee. I have tried the Starbucks Vie and find the Organo Gold to be comparable. Both are weak approximations of real coffee. Not as good, but good on the trail. The Organo Gold latte I tried stirred to a nice, creamy head. And its got ganoderma extract, a fungus purported to have healing/detoxification properties. I notice a warm flush, akin to the increase in metabolism I feel after a run. Organo Gold doesn't give me an "edgy" feeling.

But I will still go with the Vie on my next backpacking trip. Why? It's lighter. I need the "edge" out there. It gives me more whoop whoop (how's that for thoughtful analysis?). And it's available at the supermarket.

Good luck to Fred. I imagine Organo Gold is marketed in the pseudo-pyramid scheme that Amway is, because he said I could be an associate if I like. That's tough work and takes a lot of hustle. At least he's marketing a fairly decent product, as far as instant coffees go.

Help Fred out. Give him a call at 815-786-7243 or email Fred@healthycoffeebus.com

I googled the coffee, and there are a lot of sites calling its marketing a "scam." I don't care, as I do not intend to sell it and was not paid for this review. Fred just gave me some free samples to try and I promised I would give my honest opinion in a blog post.

A musical interlude

2011-05-06T21:22:00.006-05:00

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I like to make music. Last Monday I spent the entire afternoon and evening composing a new song. I have a 24-track digital recording and mixing studio on my laptop, and while the quality is demo at best, it allows me the freedom to flesh out musical ideas.

I went into Monday's songwriting with a specific goal: To create a song that included influences of Kraftwerk and Rage Against the Machine. The result is "Technorati," which also is my first foray into the rap genre.

Here's a link to the song: http://soundcloud.com/stoom/technorati
I could probably find some nifty widget to display the song, but I'm on my phone and don't want to mess around with it. The song was a lot of fun to compose and perform. I have a newfound respect for rappers and the difficult performances they do. I found that I had to adapt my lyrics to the tempo because some words could not be sung or spoken that fast.

I am most proud of the bridge because it incorporates a three part guitar harmony and was composed and recorded in less than an hour. There are some really subtle rhythmic interplays and I am still hearing new textures upon re-listening.

Music is so ephemeral, and I expect this song will only be enjoyed by a select few. For me, the moment has passed. Or as the great Thelonious Monk said, (of course, I'm paraphrasing) "The first take is where the magic is. Every one after is chasing after a dream."

dang.. it's been awhile

2011-05-01T14:47:00.003-05:00

I haven't done a blog post in awhile. It's not for lack of activity or writing. I have just been focusing my energies on Twitter and Facebook. My original love, this blog, which is in its 9th year, has been neglected. No more! Every day this month I will post at least a blog a day...

Now what to write about... On the way to the library, I found a robins egg on the ground, still warm, and I could see the doomed struggling little bird inside the egg. I looked up in the tree for a nest, but could not find it. DeKalb is such a windy place. Not the best place to build a nest, but robins are creatures of nature, as we all are, I guess. I looked at this doomed bird, a little wistful about the fragility of life, a little there-but-for-the-grace-of-God-go-I, and continued on my way. I probably would forget about this small moment, but now that little bird is immortalized in the backwoods bayou of the "Intranets" that is this blog.

I've got 10 minutes left here at the library and am listening to Pandora, "Cemetery Row," by the Minus 5. It features Colin Meloy, the lead singer of The Decemberists, the ultimate English major nerd college rock band I fell in love with a few years ago. They are a good band to glom onto. Their indie prolificity knows no bounds. After my ten minutes are up, I will check out a couple Men's Health magazines, take them home, then head over to DeGroovia Guitars on N. 3rd St., in DeKalb, for some live music by my fellow local musicians, many of whom I've jammed with. Tonight's plans include composing and recording an electronic song on my laptop. It's a windy, tempestuous day. I'll have to kick the cat out when I do the vocal parts. She loves to meow along.

Life has been good lately, full of growth, self-improvement, positivity and goodwill towards all. As much as I want to be a moody artist, my default mode is sunny, anything-is-possibly-nay-probable optimism. Life has tried to beat this out of me, but only in the depths of winter does it ever go away.

Yesterday morning I took a series of self portraits, including some with my shirt off. Why? Because, to put it simply, I'm more ripped than I've ever been. And with only four minutes left, I'm going to find one of those photos, post it here, write some tags, and be on my way. Thanks for reading.

Jonny passes another test!

2011-03-17T18:14:00.002-05:00

My son Jon passed his second karate test Tuesday night at Haish Gym in DeKalb. He has been going to hour-long classes weekly since last fall and is in his fourth six-week session. He loves the class and has not missed a session yet. It has been neat to see him emerge as a leader among his peers. The instructors often ask him to demonstrate a move for his classmates.

I'm so proud of Jonny for passing his second belt test. I'm most impressed by the maturity and poise he showed when Sibak Austin was trying to teach him his test manuevers. It took three or four tries for Jonny to get it right, and I know even six months ago he might have broken down crying out of frustration. I could see that impulse welling up, but then watched as he quelled it and found his focus.

Yeah, he'll eventually learn to kick butt, but he's already learning discipline, how to follow directions, and that "practice makes perfect and perfect practice makes." From my third grade teacher Mrs. Bolin, to me, and now said by my son.

Jam session Monday

2011-03-17T17:58:00.002-05:00

The stars were aligned Monday night. I went to The House Cafe hoping to get enough players together to jam a few riffs I've been working on and hope to develop into full-fledged songs. Right when I got there, I met Dan, the lead guitarist of Isle of Vinyl, a local jam band. I asked him if he would join me in the jam and he readily agreed. We continued talking through the sign up, and got adjacent slots toward the end of the evening. All of the pieces were in place. I then asked Ron Kollman, who I've played with many times before, to join in. After sign up, I went back home and saw my neighbor David Jonsson, also a local musician, if he would join in.

We didn't practice what you hear. In fact, I learned a valuable lesson about jamming. In the first song, I just started playing, with my guitar capoed to the sixth fret, and assumed my fellow players would pick it up by ear. They did, but it took a few bars to get it together. For the second song, I gave them the chords for the chorus and verse before we played, and it went a lot more smoothly.

My favorite moment is the last two minutes of the video. There's some serious soloing going on, and the band is tight and creating new sounds. In spite of my own technical problems (the pickup kept falling out), the rest of the band is cooking. If you like Isle of Vinyl, check out their stuff on Facebook.

A little misunderstanding

2011-03-08T14:16:00.003-06:00

Last Saturday I attended the Indy Horror Film Festival at the Egyptian Theatre in DeKalb. It was a great way to spend a cold, gray, dreary Saturday afternoon in March, indoors, reveling in the imagined sufferings of others. I saw three features and three shorts, staying at the theatre from about 4:30 to 10:30.

I found out about the festival from the Midweek, a free weekly serving DeKalb County. I faithfully read the Town Crier and do the crossword puzzle. I use it and The Daily Chronicle to find out what is going on in the area and to help plan weekend activities.

Here's a quote from the event description: "The sister festival of the Chicago Horror Film Festival screens independent horror films from all over the world. Tickets include an entire day of films and activities, including a scream contest, guest performances and a late-night paranormal investigation of the theatre."

I was especially excited about the paranormal investigation. A past Midweek article showcased this unique tour of the Egyptian Theatre, and I remember that past tours cost $50 a head, a price too steep for me, and a bit much for what it is. After the last feature, I saw George, a middle-aged man with long straight white hair. I told him I was looking forward to the tour. He asked me, "Do you have a ticket?" I thought that question odd. I'd just come out of the theatre. Then I said I was looking forward to the tour and "I'm glad this one is more reasonably priced. The last one cost $50 or something like that." This time it was George's turn to give me a quizzical look, but nothing more was said.

I asked him why he stopped writing the column. Mind you, I really liked his sense of humor, a mix of self deprecation liberally dosed with obvious and obscure pop culture references. He told me stopped writing the column because the paper changed owners and the new owners didn't want to pay him enough for the column. I thought, "He got paid do write those columns?" It wasn't like he did any research or interviewed anyone for them, and they were buried in the back of the paper, just before the classified section. I liked them. They were well-written. Just off the cuff. George also spoke very eloquently about the paranormal energies in the theatre and claimed to have been pushed once by an invisible hand.

But he told me to come back at 11 p.m. and bring my flashlight and a camera, which I did. When I arrived at 11, George wasn't in the lobby, but a stern looking man wearing a suit was collecting tickets and handing out waiver forms. When he asked me for my ticket I showed him my ticket stub from the film festival. He said, "But this is a separate admission."

"That's not what the Midweek said," I replied. "I also talked to George earlier about this." The theatre manager's eyes bugged out and he gave me a disgusted look and said, "I'll go get him." In the meantime, I stood there and looked around at the fellow tour participants. One older woman had three young sons or grandsons with her, and a huge, dark green crystal in her hand. If I were Superman, I'd back away slowly.

The theatre manager, still looking like someone who's sacred space was about to be overrun by strangers, appeared with George, who apologized for the misunderstanding and then told me with a straight face that the tour price was $50 and they just happened to have one ticket left...

I felt so embarrassed, I could feel the blood rushing through my ears. I stammered out, "I must have misunderstood the Midweek article," apologized, and walked out of there as fast as I could. But as I was walking home, I thought, "Wait a minute. You worked in the newspaper business for a few years and have a degree in English." I raced home to verify that the Midweek article indeed said price of admission to the film fest included the paranormal investigation.

Lessons learned: (1) Yes, lowly typesetters and copy editors at weekly newspapers, words do mean things and people act on information they read in the paper.

(2) Spiritualism is fodder for crackpots and charlatans, even in the 21st century.

At long last, Stoom! in 2011

2011-03-02T17:08:00.003-06:00

I finally ended my long hiatus and played the open mic at the House Cafe in DeKalb Monday night. The music was well-received, and except for a few missed notes, I was pleased with the performance.

The first song is an original, "All The Same," that I've performed a couple times before. I recorded the backing track and vocals. No samples. It's a good song to open with because it's easy to perform. The next two songs are "chick rock" covers, "Who Knew," by Pink, and "Stuck Like Glue," by Sugarland. I learned those songs during a recent stay in Texas. My niece Mallory asked me to play the Sugarland song. She goes to school in Sugar Land, Texas.

I got the Guitar Tab White Pages (vol. 2) by Hal Leonard publishing. I put a list of songs I want to learn on my Twitter page. I hope to get a full band together for a few shows. Just doing this for fun. It's nice to play to an audience, but at age 38 have no dreams of rock and roll stardom.

Whew... it's been awhile

2011-02-28T11:30:00.004-06:00

Yes, it's been awhile since I blogged. I figured, since it's the last day of February, I'd get a post in before the month is out.

An update on my life...

I'm still unemployed, but have until September before my unemployment runs out. I'm still looking for a middle or high school English teacher position, but am not putting much hope into getting one. I am also going to write a curriculum vitae so I can apply for teaching positions at community colleges. Also, considering my good driving record, I'm contemplating truck driver training. Even if I get a teaching job, driving a rig sounds cool and is something I could do on a seasonal basis.

Still working out and exercising regularly. I post brief workout summaries at www.dailymile.com and on Twitter. I lift weights 3x a week and run 3-4 days. I average about 4.5 miles in 40 minutes. The love handles are almost gone, but, more importantly, I feel great physically and emotionally.

People ask me, "What are you doing these days?" The following occupies my time: family, playing music, movies, reading, library (for Internet, more reading, and to get movies), writing, job search, friends, and exercise.

After almost 10 years "in the wilderness," I have been regularly attending church since the beginning of the year. Why? Church is a good outlet for community service, and I want to be more involved in my community. It is also a good influence on my son.

I'm broke. My truck doesn't run and I'm without a vehicle. But I've got good health. I'm in love again. Spring is coming. Life is good. And I'm out of time here at the library.

Jonny breaking stuff

2011-01-18T11:42:00.002-06:00

My son Jon is taking karate classes through the local park district. He really loves it and I hope the experience will help him develop self-confidence and discipline. The following video is from his first test, for his white belt with orange stripe. Breaking a board with a kick was the final part of this test. He was so proud of this achievement that he took the broken board pieces to school and family gatherings.

He is now in his third six-week session with the "Lil' Dragons." He is learning Kajukenbo, a hybrid of many different martial arts disciplines, and says he wants to be "the best ninja ever!" Harding's Family Martial Arts runs the courses through the park district. They do a decent job and come highly recommended.

Fitness update

2011-01-16T22:54:00.004-06:00

Okay. I admit it. I've been lax about reporting on my Body For Life program progress. I've even been lazy about tweeting my food diary and workout summaries. This does not mean I have stopped working out. It only means that I've grown tired of the record keeping associated with the Body For Life program.

My 12-week challenge ends in a couple weeks. Next week is the beginning of week 11, and right now I'm visiting my sister and family in the Houston suburbs. I may not be able to find a gym that will give me a daily pass that's affordable, but I can at least keep up with the running and today used the Nintendo Wii Fit program, which I loved. I even gave my avatar in the game a mole on its forehead in the same spot as mine.

But while I feel full of energy and optimism at the positive changes I've made in my life, according to the Wii Fit, I need to lose another 50 pounds. After it did a body mass index assessment, it even added love handles to my avatar. Which brings me to a problem I have with the body mass index, which only takes weight and height into account. According to the height weight chart, the ideal weight for someone who is my height (6' 2") is 175 pounds. The upper limit of a healthy weight for that height is 197 pounds.

The last time I weighed in the 170-pound range was in 2000, after I had finished backpacking the Appalachian Trail. I left that trail looking like a refugee camp survivor. My arms were thin and had lost a lot of muscle tone, I felt weak and in a mental fog from malnutrition. And all my ribs showed. No one would be able to convince me that 175 pounds is my ideal weight. The inherent flaw with the BMI is that it only takes into consideration height and weight, not body type. I have a large head and am broad-shouldered and very big-boned. No doubt these factors add some pounds, but also mean that for my build and body type, the BMI numbers are not realistic.

So while it was disheartening to be chastised by a video game, I know reality. The mushroom cap is gone. I've never felt better. And my Body For Life experience, while driven by some very concrete end-goals, has always been about developing healthy exercise and eating habits that prove beneficial beyond BMI charts, food diaries, and workout summaries. It feels good to eat well and break a sweat every day. I won't let the Wii fit drag me down.

Body For Life, day 30

2010-12-07T13:30:00.003-06:00

Working out is going great. I'm increasing my stamina, mood is great, and notice toning and form in places that never had it before, such as my triceps. On Saturday, I ran my first 10K in 5 years, even though it was run on a treadmill.

But I also didn't lose any weight last week. I ate out too much and made too many bad eating decisions. Some habits die hard, and even though keeping a food diary makes me more conscientious about what I eat, it still doesn't make it easy to change well-established eating routines.

This difficulty caught me by surprise because I've been so pleased with the exercise aspects of the Body For Life program. I think I let myself cheat because I am doing so well with the exercise. But the twin pillars of my physical transformation are exercise AND diet.

On a related note, I find that as the program becomes more embedded into my daily life, as the weeks roll on and the newness wears off, that I want to focus on other things. Sure, I'm tired of talking about it and don't get excited about taking the videos, but I'm going to stick with the program because I like what's happening and want to make these recent changes lifelong habits. Naturally, as this does become habit, I don't have to think about it as much.

I promise to stop writing about it when the 12 weeks are up. Enjoy the videos in the meantime.

Body For Life, day 23 video blog

2010-11-30T19:30:00.002-06:00

I'm still doing the Body For Life. Entering my 4th week, I am noticing the weight loss and increase in energy. This video explains how the Body For Life program works.

Lap Steel Rules

2010-11-30T19:22:00.003-06:00

For this week's open mic video, I had the honor of playing with local music legend, D.K. Kolar, who brought a lap steel guitar to the House Cafe last night. After a brief run-through two of the songs and a couple questions about chord progressions, Kolar was ready to cook, and indeed he does.

My original 12-bar blues number, "When You Comin' Home?" never sounded better thanks to the sinuous, sonorous stylings of Kolar's lap steel guitar. Ron Kollman did an excellent solo accompaniment on our cover of America's "Sister Golden Hair," and Tim, the youngun' of the group at 20-years-old, kept our choo-choo a chugging along on "Mystery Train."

This is my eighth open mic appearance at The House Cafe this fall. To see videos of seven of those performances, type "Stoom dekalb" into the YouTube search box, or just go to my channel at www.youtube.com/greglocascio

Body For Life week 3 video blog

2010-11-23T13:46:00.002-06:00

Today is day 16 of my Body For Life program. It is designed to last 84 days, but I hope to keep the same habits after my transformation is complete.

So far, I am gaining momentum and encouragement every day from sticking to this program. I have not missed a workout yet. Last Friday I didn't go to the gym for my lower body workout. Instead, I went on a four-mile hike. But on Saturday I did the lower body workout AND my cardio workout, which is a 3-mile run. My legs felt like lead weights at the beginning of the run, but loosened up as it progressed.

There are a couple aspects of the program I am choosing not to follow. One thing the program suggests doing during the cardio workout is to increase the difficulty/pace of the workout in 3-4 waves, making it more difficult, then stepping down, and repeating. I don't like this because it interrupts the groove I like to get into while running. To honor at least the spirit of Body For Life, I do increase the pace to my uppermost limit the last quarter mile or so of the run.

I also do not plan my meals. I find that my food preferences change too quickly to plan a meal in advance. While I employ portion control and try to keep my diet low fat and low sugar, I would rather keep a food diary of what I eat. I discovered the first week that I was never sticking to my food plan, but that I was eating right anyways. So now I just keep a diary of what I do actually eat. The simple act of keeping a food diary has limited my caloric consumption immensely.

I keep the food diary and workout summaries as Tweets. These can be seen at www.twitter.com/greglocascio.

Here is my video blog. While physical changes are hardly noticeable now, stay tuned. The next 2-3 weeks will bring visible changes to my physique. I can already feel them happening.

NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH

2010-11-17T10:46:00.003-06:00

Yes, the video contained herein shows a shirtless, soon-to-be middle-aged man who is out of shape. It is my "before" video as I begin the Body For Life program. This is the simple plan: Exercise six days a week and keep a record of the foods I eat. Every other day I run or do some aerobic exercise, and every other day I lift weights.

Today is day 10 of the program, which is designed to go 12 weeks. But I hope to make this a permanent lifestyle change. Also, one part of the program is to list 3-5 goals you hope to get out of the program. Here are mine.

1. Lose 30 pounds and get down to 200 pounds. Maintain a weight between 190-200 pounds the rest of my life.

2. Get six-pack abs. I've always wanted those.

3. Get a full-time job or part-time equivalents during the 12 weeks I am on the program. I know this has nothing to do with physical fitness, but I hope the extra energy, motivation, and confidence I gain from this program will lead to gainful employment.

Why am I doing this program now? First, I know myself and I tend to sink into an isolated depressive funk in the winter time. My brain doesn't forget to tell me that half of my genetic make-up, the fiery Sicilian half, is not used to winter, cold temperatures, and shortened days. I also know from past experience that regular exercise helps me stay emotionally even-keeled.

Another reason is I let myself get heavier than I've ever been, 240 pounds and wearing size 38 pants. I know from the experiences of immediate and extended family, that if I let this trend continue, I could get very big. I want to have the energy and stamina to keep up with my young son. I'm also motivated by the positive examples of my mother, who lost 35 pounds in the last year, and my brother Ken, who is in great shape and ran the Boston Marathon this year. If he can stay in shape, so can I.

I like Body for Life because it is a common sense approach to weight loss. All it requires is for me to exercise regularly and watch what I eat. Luckily, I do not obsess about food and I like exercise and hard work. I did not have to spend any money on the program. Print out eating and exercise logs are available for free at www.bodyforlife.com. I checked out the book from the library. It cost me exactly $100 for a 3-month membership at a local gym.

How is it going so far in week 2? I am sore as hell. My first upper body workout had me hurting for days. And my lower body exercises have my quadriceps on fire. I know it will get easier with time, but these first workouts have been painful. My approach to weightlifting is to move slow, concentrate on correct form, and don't overdo it with the weights. It's humbling to work out amidst body builders in much greater shape than myself. I don't want to look like a body builder except for the six pack abs.

The following video shows me with my shirt off explaining what I want to do. Posting it to my blog and making weekly updates is part of the accountability process to myself and others. Keeping track of the changes will provide positive reinforcement as well.

Two live shows

2010-11-03T14:27:00.002-05:00

Here's a bunch of videos from the last two weeks performances at The House Cafe, DeKalb, IL. I've got three more shows to reach my goal of 10 open mic performances. Six of the seven shows can be found here, on my Facebook profile, and YouTube.

This first video is from Oct. 25. I include text boxes, like in VH1's Pop Up videos, about a variety of topics, including the origin of "Stoom," what the fog in smoke machines is made of, and the literary inspirations behind the Beatles song "Golden Slumbers," which is covered by Stoom.

The next two videos are keyboardist Jim Nerstheimer's stage camera view of our Nov. 1 performance. We played four songs and were a full band for the first time. Veteran open mic performer Tim lent his drumming talents. Songs played: "Country Death Song," by The Violent Femmes, "Coconut Skins," by Damian Rice, "Enkidu," a live debut of a Stoom original, and "Whiter Shade of Pale," by Procol Harum.

The last video is from my camera in front of the stage, and includes the first three songs. I also had some fun with the special effects on Windows MovieMaker.

Live at The House Cafe

2010-10-19T15:38:00.004-05:00

Here's another video. I did a cover of "Under the Milky Way" by The Church and an original, "So Damn Tired." Enjoy!

Live! At the House Cafe, Sept. 27, 2010

2010-09-28T12:54:00.003-05:00

Last night marked the fourth Monday in a row I have played open stage at The House cafe. I felt most comfortable, and as a result had better chops. I only missed a few notes, an accomplishment hard-won through many hours of practice. I am admittedly a little fumble-fingered, but can keep a steady rhythm and know how to read music and listen well.

"Walk, Don't Run," like "Etude No. 7" and "Rustic Song," are songs that I've been dinking around with for years. The sheet music for "Walk" is from a pep band score, and was given as an assigment when I took guitar lessons for 6-7 months in 1991. I wonder of my former instructor, Gary Williams, is still around. If so, I'll send him a link to the video with my thanks. He also gave me the music for "Rustic Song," which means, yes, if you do the math, that I've been dinking around with those two songs for almost 20 years. I can finally say I got 'em down cold. The Matteo Carcassi etude is from 39 Progressive Solos for Classical Guitar, arranged by Ben Bolt. I've had that book since 1992 or 3.

I played "Space Oddity" back in 1997 at Clyde's Open Stage, which was hosted at the now-closed, but still iconic McCabe's, just across 3rd St. from The House. But I just learned the bridge and outro solo on Sunday. I'd never played it with accompaniment. It sounds so much better with Jim's assistance. "Inflatable Barbie Chair" was written during the famed Tallheaded Woody Wilcox sessions in 2003, but this performance is the first time I extended the intro and also ended it with some nice feedback. This is the best live performance I've given of the song.

Here are the videos. There are three. My video shows all three songs, but cuts off ...Barbie Chair. My camera battery died. But Jim took video too, and placed the camera on stage beside his keyboard. His has better sound quality (I can hear the vocals better on all the songs and the overall balance is good). I am also including a short clip done by my former employer, The Northern Star, the student newspaper for Northern Illinois University. It shows a short clip of me solo from Sept. 20 at the 1:39 mark.

Enjoy.

Live at The House, DeKalb, 9/20/10

2010-09-21T20:30:00.003-05:00

Although I screwed up the Matteo Carcassi song, I've included it so that when I improve and play that song again I can look back on this performance and laugh at the iniquities I've overcome. My goal is plain and simple. For the past three Mondays I have performed at The House. I want to continue this streak for at least the next seven weeks, never repeating a song. This means I will have 30 songs in my repertoire, enough music to get a band together and go play some gigs.

I will try and video tape every performance, and will even include the not-so-occasional flubs.

Enjoy! And if anyone reads this, please leave me some feedback. I will return the favor on your blog.

New song, "Enkidu"

2010-09-10T15:52:00.003-05:00

Go To FileFactory.com

Whew! Seven songs recorded since April. I have three older songs in my repertoire I have yet to record, "So Damn Tired," "When You Coming Home?" and "Eph." Those will be finished by the end of the month. Which means with the seven recorded I have 10 original songs in my repertoire. Three more to go before I have a decent album's worth of material. Of course, the goal is to have 20 recorded by year's end. No time to rest easy. Good thing I enjoy the creative process.

A few notes about the latest song: The song is based around the A-flat-seventh chord, which I'd never played before; that's why I chose it; all of the other chords (B, B7, D-flat, D-flat7, and F#) are in the same key as the A-flat-seventh; the lyrics are inspired by The Epic of Gilgamesh, with a few lines paraphrased from some poetry by Pablo Neruda (beery belly laughs, etc.); disparaging civilization for the nobility of nature; and in this way, it touches on a similar theme expressed in "All the Same"; this is the first track where I used the drum machine on the keyboard; it can keep a must faster beat than I can; through this I discovered the verse is 170 beats per minute and the chorus 147 beats; Jim Nerstheimer once again does an excellent job on organ for this track; and his playing also appears on "Bomb Shelter."

Also, on this version of the player is a re-edited version of my first song. Its original title was "Progress?", but Jim informed me the song is done in the style of a ritornello, a recurrent musical section that alternates with different episodes of contrasting material. So the song's new name is... "Ritornello."

I hope to put a string of weeks together and play one original and two covers every Monday night at The House in DeKalb and videotape the performances. Last week was so much fun! My band's name is Stoom, or Stu(umlauten)m. My stage name is Allan Ru. Sorry, Mom and Dad, but Locascio is too hard to spell or pronounce. I also like to take on a different persona when I perform, so a name change is appropriate.

Check out the House's live feed Monday night after 8 p.m. to enjoy local talent at the best, and one of the only, open stages in DeKalb:
http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-now-at-the-house-cafe

Monday's song list: "All the Same," "About a Girl," by Nirvana, and "Summer's Almost Gone," by The Doors.

More Live! At the House

2010-09-07T10:03:00.002-05:00

The House Cafe broadcasts their open stage performances at the following web site:

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/live-now-at-the-house-cafe

Check it out on a Monday night if you want to check out some of the local amateur talent in DeKalb.

Live! At the House

2010-09-07T09:33:00.003-05:00

Its been a while since I played at The House, but Esther, Jim, and I practiced a few hours over the long weekend and performed an original, "Bomb Shelter," and two tracks from Picaresque, an album by The Decemberists, "Eli, the Barrow Boy," and "The Engine Driver."

I hope to do this every week, or at least put together a long string of weeks. I'm also looking for more band mates. I need a bassist, lead guitarist, and drummer. Listen to the MP3s of my original songs on this site. If you like them and think you can play them, get in touch with me as a comment to this post or e-mail glocascio@hotmail.com.

New song, "Bomb Shelter"

2010-08-17T16:24:00.003-05:00

Go To FileFactory.com

Most of the new songs I've recorded this year are songs I've had in my repertoire for years. One new song -- "All the Same" -- was just a riff that a song got built around. Another, "Tucson," was based entirely on a riff using the modDelay function on my Cubase music editing software. But this latest song, "Bomb Shelter," has a very novel beginning. I was jamming out with my church organist friend Jim N. a few weeks ago and we each wrote down five chords on slips of paper and put them in a bowl. We drew the first three and developed melodies around them. The next two or three chords were drawn and melodies built around them. By the time we were done, all 10 chords had been jammed around. As I was composing the song, I had to throw out the G-seventh and E-augmented fourth chords. Even though I love that E chord, I couldn't find a place for it.

For the next couple days I worked out verse, chorus, and bridge parts for Jim, recorded the guitar, and gave Jim a copy of it to work out his own accompaniment. By the time we got together again the following Monday, I had added drums and a bass line. For the first time, on this song I recorded live drums, using a tom drum and snare Todd gave me when he visited in May. Not having a snare stand, I suspended it between two chairs. Totally ghetto, but it worked. Cymbal and bass drum sounds were recorded using a Yahama keyboard.

This is my favorite song so far because its creation happened so fluidly. Not to say it was easy. I practiced until I almost "got blisters on my fingers." After the initial tracks were laid out, much decision-making about the song ensued. It originally was a single verse and then a chorus, but late in the process, as I was writing lyrics, the song almost demanded two verses, so I added them. This involved hours of cutting and pasting, re-recording, etc. Much more busy work than musical expression.

I asked Esther, who has a lovely alto voice and a good sense of pitch and rhythm, to provide backing vocals in the bridge and one part of verse one. This is the first time we've recorded together, and the first time we've sang together on a song since participating in community choir in 2003. I hope to use her voice on future songs.

The lyrics are based on a poem I wrote a few years ago about what it would like to live in a post-apocalyptic world. I've also had a lifelong fascination with basements and the underground in general. So it fits. Here are those lyrics.

"Bomb Shelter"

VERSE 1:

There is a storm upon the horizon

Leaving chaos in its path

Nothing we can do to stop it

To flee is certain death

Is it a bomb out on the horizon?

Or a thought that eats into our souls?

Underground huddled together

We'll never know

CHORUS: I will take you there

To a place and time that now seems far away

Anything to take my mind from the bunker

Where we're trapped and all is gray

There was a blue sky once

By god, I hope we see the sky again

It's always the simple things

we long for in the end

VERSE 2:

Rationing portions of food and water

A candle flickers on the wall

flitting shadows in the darkness

And a rumble from below

There is too much time now to wonder

The radio plays a static song

Listening to voices in the clatter

From a world that's gone

CHORUS

I have also re-mixed the first song I recorded, "Progress," so it's a little louder and friendlier to the ear. I know all of my songs are demo quality, but it's still a lot of fun and I enjoy having the tools now to allow my musical visions to see fruition.

Shameless self-promotion

2010-08-08T07:27:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning musings.

Don't try to open the picture. I can go up to 1,000 characters if I send a photo from my phone. For some reason, Blogger receives the message, but messes up the picture. To see photos from my phone, go to my Twitter account. Just search for my name there or see the right sidebar here, er, I mean over there ----+.

Facebook, Twitter, & Blogspot are all tied together, an incestuous mesh of minutia.

And don't forget Trailjournals, also linked to the right. There you will find journals and photos for Esther's & my 2000 thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail (Georgia to Maine) & 2004 Pacific Crest Trail (Mexico to Canada), & my 2002 Superior Hiking Trail (Two Harbors to Grand Portage, MN), 2006 & 2007 Arizona Trail (Arizona/Mexico border to Reddington Road in '06 & Reddington Road to Freeman Road in '07), 2009 AT (Amicalola Falls, GA to Franklin, NC), & 2010 North Country Trail (MN/WI border to Drummond, WI). That's about 430 journal entries & hundreds of pictures!

2010-07-25T15:20:00.000-05:00

There's this nondescript office building in my old neighborhood. It's across the street from a church property field that has a baseball backstop made of planks, telephone poles & chain link fence. Real old school & bulky. I also played tag & tackle football there. Jeremy's yard was beyond the backstop, so whenever i remember it I think of Jeremy's murdered father.

I meant to tell a story about a walk with my son almost a couple years ago, when we ventured into that office building on his lead, & I realized I'd never been in this building before, in spite of the familiarity of its surroundings, but now am wrapped up in memories of those surroundings.

I used to fly kites there. Once I used 1,000 yards of fishing line to send an old fashioned paper bow kite (w/ a cloth tail) speck high into the stratosphere.

I once encountered a group of friendly hippies tossing around a ball w/ a parachute. I joined them & they eventually tossed me into the air. Blue sky whee. I was light & I flew.

Walking the old neighborhood

2010-07-24T22:37:00.002-05:00

Took a walk after dinner in my old neighborhood. The eerie pale light in the overcast sky drew me out. Jonny came with me. I was just going to hang out in the yard, but the restless 4-year-old first had me race him around the house and when that got boring he wanted to walk around the neighborhood. "But we're barefoot," I said. "Can you do a good job watching where you're going?"

He didn't listen too well, preoccupied with punching me in the butt and defeating the evil super foes that dominate his imagination, as I talked about how walking barefoot is different than walking in shoes. You've got to look where you're going, at your feet and always a few steps ahead. Even a small pebble, stepped on at the wrong angle, can bring much pain and despair. Little children know these things instinctively. Walking barefoot is natural. Shoes are a rather recent innovation.

Walking barefoot in the old neighborhood did make me feel a little self-conscious. If we encountered neighbors, they'd see our bare feet and the coffee stain on my shirt, and draw their own conclusions. But the ones we'd meet knew me when I was a kid. I couldn't fool them anyways. Plus, I have no control over what my parents would tell them, and they're prone to say anything. Sometimes they even tell the truth.

I divided my attentions between the boy and a pleasant nostalgic reverie with my own boyhood on these same streets. The sounds I heard of a summer evening 30 years ago are little different today. There was the whine of race cars miles away at the Rockford Speedway, the lights and din of beery cheers at the Forest Hill diamonds, and the laughter of children playing in their quilt patch yards.

Most of the houses we passed were aglow with the shifting reflections of televisions. That hasn't changed either. The TV's have gotten brighter, bigger, louder and flatter, a reflection and scribe of the society they serve.

The boy found a stick and turned it into a ray gun, speaking of a doom and death that are mere pleasant abstractions to him, part of his own hero's journey. Eventually, he had me tugging him by the stick, forcing him to trip and run to keep up. Who knows what those who raise eyebrows at a father and son's dusky barefootedness would think of this scene. The boy's actions did resemble those of a prisoner forced to keep up with the march. But he likes doing this. It's one of his rituals.

We made it back to my parent's in time to chase some fireflies around the yard. We only caught a couple. They're crafty little buggers, nearly impossible to see when they're not aglow, and their season is almost past. The last thing I saw before going inside was a golden swath of light high in the boughs of a maple tree a couple yards over.

Wisconsin Death Trip, epilogue

2010-07-23T16:43:00.004-05:00

This past May I went up to Wisconsin with Esther and Jonny to speak at an Ice Age Trail event near New Auburn. The two nights we were up there we camped at a campground near Black River Falls in the Pigeon Creek State Forest. The evening after the event, we drove into Black River Falls hoping to find a place to eat downtown.

Before coming here, I had read Wisconsin Death Trip, which gave me a strange sense of foreboding about this town. Getting off the exit of I-94, I saw a chain restaurant and a huge hotel and campground complex. There were the obligatory fiberglass wildlife replicas, including a huge fluorescent orange moose. Just down the road is a casino. If a gambling joint didn't suck the lifeblood out of the community, maybe it was the decision by some town leaders to make their city identifiable by such an eyesore of a monument. "Yeah, just get off the highway when you see the big orange moose. You'll know you're almost there." Classy.

Two things happened in our short stint in downtown Black River Falls that reinforce the creepy image I've gotten from books and videos. We parked and looked for a place to eat. Down one side street is what looks like an Italian restaurant and bar. We walked through the front door and about 10 old men, all sitting at the bar, stopped their conversation and in unison turned to look at us. Not knowing who we were, they turned back around, again, in unison, without so much as a hello. Feeling very self-conscious, and not seeing any other diners, we backed out the door.

Up the street there is a mural telling the story about a local taxi service and auto garage that used to do business here. As I was reading this, Esther and Jonny stood nearby at the corner, looking at something else. I turned around in time to see a man who looked like a religious fanatic. He had a short-sleeved button down shirt and short hair, with a couple cowlicks sticking up off the back of his head. He also had a look of religious fervor on his face. He walked up to Esther, who had her back turned to him, lifted a hand to tap her on the shoulder, but when he saw me his eyes widened in fright, he pulled back his hand, turned around and went walking back the way he came without saying a word.

And to top it all off, except for a ratty-looking pizza place, there was no place else to eat downtown.

The final bit of weirdness was a religious center that a strange, rambling message of salvation, damnation, and redemption written in soap on the storefront window. There was also a strange, very secret society looking design on the facade on that side of the street.

We ended up eating at the Perkins out by the interstate, right across the parking lot from the orange moose.

Doodle art

2010-07-22T18:09:00.005-05:00

I finally completed a 3-subject notebook started in January 2008, my last semester of graduate school. I've doodled in all my notebooks, but for this one decided to take pictures of some of my best doodles. These were spontaneously drawn. I don't know or care if they qualify as "art." Any comments would be greatly appreciated, even critical ones.

I drew this while waiting for a perky REI sales representative to find replacement shoulder straps for my 12-year-old Wonderland Trekker external frame pack. It was a long wait. I wasn't surprised to learn they no longer have the strap in stock.

Musical notation?

The credit card monster.

This one kind of gives me an "Ent" vibe.

Maw!

Gothic wheat.

Arachnid air attack.

The spitting fish is a recurring character in my doodles.

The Dragon. My favorite.

Triangle plant.

Nice framing.
Bigfoot spares the geometric flower.

A long-distance trail in Illinois?

2010-07-21T18:25:00.004-05:00

According to the trail association's web site, the River to River Trail is between 160 and 176 miles long as it winds from the Ohio River to the Mississippi River across the Shawnee National Forest in southern Illinois.

I hiked a short, but iconic section of this trail in the Garden of the Gods in December 2004. This was part of a winter car camping / hiking trip through the Shawnee. i saw a side of my home state few people even know exist. Ravines, limestone bluffs, high overlooks and wilderness areas. The last time I was down there we even took a trail to the remnants of an ancient native American settlement, complete with petroglyph. Ever since then, I've longed to go back, ideally in the fall, and spend a week or two living out of my backpack. It's definitely on the life list.

ABOUT THE TRAIL:

From Wikipedia: Its eastern end is on Battery Rock, overlooking the Ohio River, and its western end is at Grand Tower, Illinois, at the Mississippi River. It forms part of the Southern Section of the American Discovery Trail.[1] [2]

From east to west, the trail serves the following settlements and resources: Garden of the Gods Wilderness, Lusk Creek Wilderness, Eddyville, Illinois, Ferne Clyffe State Park, Panther Den Wilderness, Crab Orchard Wilderness, Giant City State Park,
Makanda, Illinois, Bald Knob Wilderness, Clear Springs Wilderness, Grand Tower, Illinois.

From what little Internet research I've done, I realize there are two guidebooks associated with the trail. The one available through the "official" web site and endorsed by the River to River Trail Society is River to River Trail Guide Across Southern Illinois (3rd edition) by John O'Dell. It is available on Amazon. The other is The River to River Pocket Guide by John Voigts (not Angelina Jolie's dad!). It advertises that it is a detailed guide, at 52 pages, and provides such needed info as mileage between points, water sources, trailheads, and GPS waypoints. It is neither available on Amazon or the trail Society site. It's only available here.

The pocket guide may be a needed addition to the official trail guide, which may give a detailed trail description, but be light on nuts and bolts info. This is how the AT guides are/were (I haven't checked lately). An entire cottage industry of companions and data books has sprung up around that trail and the PCT. Or... this Voigts character is a fellow trail nut publishing a wild, rambling manifesto about nature and society under the mere rubric of being a helpful and sensible trail guide. His nefarious goal may to not only to get the hiker physically lost, but to also lose all metaphysical bearings as well!

If anybody knows anything about this Voigts character's screed, give a comment below.

OTHER LINKS:

A short survey article about the trail.

The American Discovery Trail in Illinois

Finally, something said about Voigts's book

Voigt's blog about the trail It's got a lot of neat pictures, many taken on horseback! Okay, so after checking out his site, he seems pretty credible and not the least bit ill of intent. Darn! Those are always the interesting ones.

This site's got a Google thumbnail map of the trail and links to official sites for places the trail goes to or near.

A cool article from WGN TV about the Shawnee tribe

Here's the only video I could find, a musical slide show:

Summer school memories

2010-07-20T15:08:00.002-05:00

Eight days ago I interviewed for a teaching position at a local middle school. While I haven’t heard back either way from them, I assume I didn’t get the job. This is a disappointment, but I didn’t stay down long. Taking stock, although employment is a missing and necessary equation to my existence, I am not mired in stagnancy and enjoy a full and enriching life. I have a loving family, good health, good friends and neighbors, keep active and am proactive about improving my situation. I’ve learned that failure is only a temporary obstacle, and just as fleeting as success.

I also have faith that I will teach again and enjoy a long and successful career as an educator. Times are tough for prospective teachers, especially in Illinois. I know I could go to Texas, North Carolina, Arizona, or Colorado and have an easier time finding a teaching job. But for once I am determined to stay rooted. Spending time with Jonny and being there for him is more important than any wage. This is why I’ve limited my job search to within a 75-mile radius of DeKalb. This is where I’m wanted and needed. This is home.

As I was looking for samples of student work to show at the interview, I came across the following exit statements from my 2008 summer school students at South Elgin High School. I’ve left the students words intact. Last names are omitted to protect privacy. Their words were very encouraging, and in a couple cases, prophetic of what the rest of my experience was like teaching in District U-46. They also demonstrate the writing abilities of the students I worked with and, through the lens of their experiences, what lessons stood out for them.

ENRIQUE

“My favorite writing assignment is was the sceneniro one where you had to have to my a dream like scenerro. The thing I dislike about this class was the long essay assignment. Also I liked going to the computer lab every time.”

MARIA

“I liked the picture drawing because I like being creative.

I don’t like writing!

But then again that’s why I’m here.

You shouldn’t get mad so easily. Don’t take it personal! Your going to be a freshman teacher. I go to Elgin so im warning you be prepared!

They are immature.

But if your cool then they will participate but if you blow up then to them “you trippin” (big smiley face)

LUIS

“My favorite assignment was the Monster book we got to read. I really liked it and I wouldn’t have read it otherwise. It was pretty interesting and since he’s our age it makes the book that much interesting. What I didn’t really like was the Narrative Essay Assignment. I really don’t like writing and telling stories so, it was sort of hard for me to complete the assignment.”

BONNIE

“I liked this class because we did a lot of exciting assignments such as reading “Monster” and making an ad council. Also, learning how to blog and watching School Rock, or something like that.”

MARCUS

“I a good time I learn how to use my pronouns. My favorite thing was the PSA [public service announcement] because we got to get out of class.”

JOSE

"My favorite writing assignment is the one where we got the sentences from Monster and had to translate from slang to proper english. Then we had to write what we thought what a taste was. We also had to come up with three slang words and translate them to proper English. I thought that this class was pretty good.”

LAUREN

"* I enjoyed writting the blogs online. There were more opinion-based assignments involved and it was more personal. It's more fun to write about things that you actually care about. and you can get more easily involved. And teenagers are very computer savvy, so as long as they stay on task, it's a good assignment to give.

* What I would change: The PSA thing. I personally hate being in front of the camera and I feel like this assignment has taught me nothing about English. I really wish you would've offered an alternate assignment or at least given credit for all the work put into it, save for the actual video part."

RYAN

"Some things I learned in this class was that I got to use the blogger web site that I've never used before. Another thing I got out of this class was that I learned how to use my parts of speech better. Some things I didn't like about this class was all the writting that we did. Some other things I liked was going to the computer lab and using the internet."

RAFAEL

"The best assignment I have is the nightmare scene. It my best because I got a 30 out of 30. Also I gave a lot of imagination. Also it gave me a chance to write about something I want to. It let me express things I usally don't write. I liked that you were open minded. You agreed to things other teachers won't do in classes. Also you were a little funny. I would change the lame movies get something with color."

MIKE

"You did a god job! Keep up the good work!"

AUSTIN

"I thought that summer school sucked! Only because I couldn't go out at night with my friends, or stay up till four playing xbox. In class, what I liked about it was going to the computer lab. It made the day go by faster, and we could listen to music. The thing I didn't like was all the writing. I never wrote that much in my life."

BRIDGET

"This class was, in general, a pretty good class. I thought that the blogs were a pretty good idea because most students already knew a lot about technology. The art projects were also good assignments because they appealed to kinesthetic learners. Something I didn't like was the "School House Rock" songs. I really didn't enjoy coming home with the words "Lollo lolli lolli get your adverbs here" playing over and over and over again in my head. It wasn't even the educational part that got stuck in my head. Another thing I liked was the fact that we didn't have to write down all the answers to the questions and just said them all out loud. Overall, the class had more good points than bad."

ANTHONY

"In this class I liked doing the blog because it's fun going to the computer lab. Mr. Lacascio did a good job teaching us. I learned a lot about the different parts of speech and the writing process. Another thing that I liked was doing the posters. I liked the posters because I like to color and we didn't have to do a whole lot of writting. And when we did write it was mostly free writing, which was easy. We had a lot of freedom to do things in this class, like talk and listen to music. This class was a lot better than I thought it would be."

North Country Trail Journal -- June 21, 2010

2010-07-19T16:29:00.003-05:00

N

June 21, 2010 Monday

I am actually writing the account of my last day on another Monday, July 19, 2010. I have spent the morning reading other Trailjournals entries and remembered I’m remiss on a bookend to my North Country Trail.

It ended badly. I suffered for a long time afterwards before getting an anti-biotic, flagyl, that treats giardia symptoms. I went to a clinic run by students at NIU, but buried in the back lot at Kishwaukee CC. The young, rude receptionist said, “Oh, he’s just here for diarrhea.” “Just?” I said. “How about just 10 days of it?!” The rest of my dealings with the queen of understatement were silent exchanges of forms and money.

It took another four days to get better. The little flagellates are but a memory.

That’s not where the story of my North Country Trail hike left off. I was taking a long, easy break at Tower Lake in the Rainbow Lake Wilderness, a place and a moment that in retrospect remains one of the fondest. It was my introduction to the lake country; boggy, buggy, rooty trail. Let’s not paint this idyll in the rosiest of tones. But that break spot was as much a state of mind recalled, a sense of peace and being in the moment, as it was the visual scenery, the shimmering lake, moss and roots, needle duff and fiddleheads (edible and quite good fried with butter), and a break from the bugs, which were not a big hassle after sitting still awhile. It was simply one of those moments that makes the effort worthwhile.

I left that spot recharged, even though my left foot still hurt something fierce. My New Balance 83’s have an inch and a half thick sole. Unfortunately, the instep collapsed and the shoe tilts inwards about 30 degrees. It is awkward walking and I walking at such a tilt that sometimes the inside of my foot comes down on the webbing rather than the sole. The arch and outside of my foot felt a constant muscle strain and bone ache. And the foot had seven blisters.

Sisu, who saw me (and my foot) when I got back, said I was a wuss for letting the condition of my left foot play into my decision to leave at Drummond. I agree. Her feet have looked much worse, and she’s continued on with regular dosages of ibuprofen and Finnish determination, once walking for two 20+ mileage days on the PCT in a flip flop. I’m blessed with super thick-skinned feet, especially the heels. Blisters callus up quickly. I usually do nothing with them except peel away dead skin when necessary. No mole skin. No lancing. I almost never need to use band aids or anti-biotics. But not on this hike, thanks to the fallen arch and tilted sole of my left shoe. When one blister callused, another formed. At least getting giardia saved me from using a sore foot as an excuse for leaving the trail, which would be a first for me.

This last day was also the buggiest. The trail took me by one scenic, remote, boat-free, seemingly people free lake after another. The downside of all this scenery is traversing the glacial terrain means constant up and down trail. Every little valley a bug haven of either long sedges or wet swamp and muck, to be traversed by treading on laid down branches and rocks. And the mozzies were horror show. I put the radio on for awhile, but any station came in all wavy because of the frequent rises and descents. At least a staticky classic rock song is better than the maddening buzz of insect wings.

Adversity always seems to be a motivation. The bugs made for shorter breaks, even through the heat of midday. Hot up here means in the high 70s/low 80s, which it was. Heat was not a major factor, though I did drink four liters of water, which is a lot for me. The trail was mostly shaded forest.

The last few miles to the road to Drummond seemed to drag on forever. I slowed my death march a little to enjoy the old-growth forest remnant just before the road to town. The tall conifers remind me of Cathedral of Pines, in the Nicolet National Forest to the west of here. These pines have no loud, cackling heron rookery in its upper limbs, like at Cathedral. Go there if you really want a “Jurassic Park” vibe.

I hobbled the last mile on the road into Drummond, ice cream fantasies and possibly a restaurant meal prodding me onward. The predictable sounds of civilization, internal combustion engine whines of various vehicles and appliances, were equaled by the birdsong and buggy buzz. Drummond is a sleepy community of vacation homes spread out across large, wooded lots. It is an island of private property surrounded by national forest. Actually, a closer examination of a Chequamegon National Forest map, say, the USGS 1:24,000 quads, reveals that the national forest withholdings are more a swiss cheese pattern of land than the solid green blotches a Rand McNally road atlas suggests. Each block of privately-held land suggests some sort of compromise, a protected piece of our national heritage lost. Or it could be the squares and rectangles of private lands are stalwart holdouts from before the establishment of the national forest 77 years ago, 1933. I doubt it.

Alas, my hopes of enjoying ice cream and/or a meal were dashed. The restaurant is not open on Sundays. And the gas station closed at 7 p.m., 20 minutes before I got there. This was not a major disappointment. There were some weird gurglings and shifts going on in my stomach all day. I’d eaten crackers to try and quell the rumblings.

There was a pay phone on the edge of the gas station parking lot. I called my dad and asked if he could come pick me up. I had had enough of the bugs, and my messed up left foot, and now nausea and an upset stomach. I also wished him a happy Father’s Day. Luckily, Esther and Jonny were visiting my folks, and Jonny came on the phone to wish me one as well. Our discussion was brief. He was in high goof mode, a common state of being in the 8 o’ clock hour for a 4-year-old, and we exchanged a series of made up words and farty lip flaps. It was great to hear his voice.

My dad said he would head out at 8 a.m. tomorrow and get to me between 2 and 3, and to call him before then if I changed my mind.

After I got off the phone, I headed south into the dusk, crossed Hwy 63, walked down a two-lane road, took a right on a gravel road, across a boulder-strewn glen and then uphill to a flat spot on a rise. I just set up the tent, dabbed some tannic-colored water onto my bandanna and wiped the day’s salt and DEET accumulation off my face, arms and legs. I massaged my feet, sitting up, and was serenaded by the call of loons in a lake down the hill from me. A dog barked in the distance. The hiss of vehicles down Hwy. 63 just as far away. In spite of the disappointment and discomfort, at least finding a good stealth spot was easy. I ate some more crackers and called it a night.

The next morning I was up early and left the tent and pack behind while I took a dawn stroll around Drummond. I saw the post office, which is a house, noticed the sculpture in front of the restaurant celebrating the Barstool ski races held each winter. Later, hanging out inside the gas station during a rain storm, I saw pictures of participants from the past couple years. I also stopped by the library, and was disappointed to discover it is closed on Mondays. My early-morning sight-seeing was hastened by a search for a toilet. The full-blown symptoms of giardia had arrived. I walked on my toes, as lightly as I could, to avoid jarring anything toxic loose.

The city park just up a trail from the library has an outhouse. I went through the door labeled “Buck’s.” Sorry to use your toilet, Buck, but it was an emergency. For the non-English nerd, that is a joke pointing out an unnecessary possessive apostrophe. A few days ago, in Solon Springs, I saw a banner for a charity softball game urging participants to “play until your out.” This error involves a missing apostrophe. Welcome to the north woods, home of serial killers, cheesy fiberglass sculptures, and bad grammar.

As I was hanging out on a boulder in front of the gas station, waiting for 7 a.m. and my first coffee in four days (a bad idea, in retrospect), this large-bellied guy with a scruffy beard, greasy comb over, overalls, and carrying a transistor radio, came over and started a conversation with me. He told me about a movie that was filmed nearby in Ashland, A Simple Plan, with Billy Bob Thornton, (I’ve seen it, a good flick, a creepy slice of rural relationships), and some obscure movie he was an extra in that filmed in his hometown of Mellen. This guy was a harmless oddball, known by all, making his morning rounds. He said he lost 83 lbs. walking every morning. As we talked, men pulled up and parked their pickups nearby. They stayed in their cabs and didn’t come out until the store manager came out from behind the store with two dogs in tow. I stayed and talked with the local yokel to let the initial rush get settled. When I went in, six men, most of them bearded, sat around a table drinking coffee, speaking in low tones while I crept the aisles looking for goodies, self-conscious of my outside status as I grunted a good morning when I passed the group. I bought some snacks and two newspapers, the Ashland Daily Press and USA Today.

I spent the rest of the morning laying in my tent and came back to the general store around noon. I was going to go back in the woods, but a thunderstorm rolled in. I read a Poe short story, Ligeia, the shimmering, phantasmagoric curtains in the story echoed by the wind whipped sheets of rain racketing outside.

My dad arrived at 2:30 in a lull in the storm. I took over the driving duties. We stopped by the post office, where I picked up our mail drop, then drove to Mellen, with its picturesque downtown of old buildings, and picked up the other mail drop. It was a pretty drive through the rollicking terrain of the Penokee range. I can’t wait to come back and hike through here.

Heading home, I had to take multiple bathroom breaks. The increasing symptoms of giardia reinforced my decision to leave, which was in doubt after seeing the beautiful terrain around Mellen. We drove south through a wall of storms. The lightning displays were impressive, as were the cloud formations, pink anvil heads lit up by lightning and dusk. Stopping at one gas station, I saw a Doppler radar image of Wisconsin. This system we were traversing the oncoming edge of was huge, spanning the entire length of the state. There were a few white knuckle moments during some of the fiercer moments of the storms - Dad even thought he saw a funnel cloud - but we just drove slower when the rain fell heaviest.

All told, I hiked about 100 miles, or half the planned journey. I’d like to go back up again ASAP and do the rest of the trip. Time and money willing, I’d like to use my bike to shuttle back and forth to a vehicle. And if Steve Jr. isn’t totally turned off of backpacking, he’d be more than welcome to join me for a 3-4 day jaunt on the North Country Trail.

North Country Trail journal -- June 20, 2010

2010-07-05T11:13:00.002-05:00

Sunday, June 20, 2010

I am leaning against my pack near the shores of Tower Lake in the Rainbow Lake Wilderness. I hear flies buzzing, bird call, bullfrog hiccup, the low drone of dragon flies, and the wind sigh through the trees. Conspicuously absent is the sound of any internal combustion engines, not even aircraft.

Today is Father’s Day and my thoughts go out to my dad and son. I wish I could be with them today, but here’s a pretty good place too. I’m feeling a little run down. Can’t seem to find the ol’ get-up-and-go. But it’s a beautiful day. I’ll get there.

I haven’t seen anyone on the trail in over 48 hours. I look forward to Drummond tomorrow, if only to interact with others. I love this solitude, but am at heart a social creature. [Later, as I took a break at a dirt roadside, a truck pulled up and a fisherman got out. He wished me a good day, breaking my on-trail drought of human contact. I never saw another backpacker.]

I overshot Lake Ruth by a couple miles last night. I realized this when I got to Muskie Lake Road and checked the maps. The map makes it appear as if the trail goes right by the lake, but it’s really a short hike down a forest road. Just as I realized this overshot on the map, I look up and see the trail sign “Lake Ruth 1.6 m.”

I never thought I would face a water shortage on this trip. But the last few miles have taken me across sandy soil, a glacial outwash, no doubt, and any standing water is soaked up out of sight. After overshooting Lake Ruth, exhausted and stumble footed, I stow my pack just off the trail in the woods a bit and, with water bottles in hand, hoofed it up the road towards Muskie Lake. I held up my empty water bottles to two trucks that passed. One slowed down and this beady-eyed inbred ingrate with a furious look stared at me as they passed slowly. His was the only face I saw yesterday. The truck stopped, and as I walked to it, they sped up and drove away, spitting gravel and leaving a trail of dust. Hee haw!

When I saw a lake, I ignored a private property sign and bushwacked to the lake. Unfortunately, the shore was all mud and standing water too shallow to dip into. I saw a dock nearby, worked my way towards it, and quickly, stealthily staying low, I filled up my two liters. But as I was walking back up the road, I saw an empty vacation home just off the road with a spigot on the side of the building. I did my best sneak walk, dumped my lake water, and filled up on well water. As I walked back into the national forest at dusk, a train of ATV riders passed along with a few trucks towing boats. This is what most people consider getting away from it all. I’ve lived in a different world the past few days. This brief respite back into civilization has been rude, loud, and dusty.

I made it back to the trail after dark, walked about 100 yards up the trail, and set up my tent right on the trail. I know this is a no-no, but was too tired to care. The trail is on an old forest road. There’s room for critters or, miracle of miracles, hikers, to pass. I tried to boil water, but my stove, which has been sputtering the past few days, now refused to fire up. I sent the alcohol stove back-up home with Steve. I tried to eat cold stuffing, but found it unpalatable. I didn’t have much of an appetite anyways. As I lay in my bag, nodding off to blissful, exhausted sleep, I heard a fireworks show nearby. That explains all the traffic. No matter. I’m in my world. They’re in theirs.

North Country Trail journal -- June 19, 2010

2010-07-05T11:06:00.004-05:00

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Its been almost 24 hours since I’ve seen anybody, and as I sit to start writing, I feel a few sprinkles on my leg. It is overcast and cool today, a striking contrast to yesterday’s warmth, sunshine and humidity. Yesterday, I drank four liters of water and picked 40 dead ticks off my socks. Today, I’m not drinking as much and the ticks are less active.

Had a restless night, my first alone. I was awakened once by the territorial snorting of a deer or elk. It stopped after about 20 minutes.

There was only supposed to be a 10 percent chance of rain, but here it is… [a few drops smudge the page] But just as quickly it stops. Right after I put on my rain jacket and pack cover. The weather doesn’t know what to do. Dark clouds are rimmed by blue sky. The ferns, ticks, and I don’t mind.

Speaking of those bloodsuckers, I have declared some rules. Any tick found attached to me is sentenced to death. They don’t go easy, but die with a satisfying crunch. Any tick crawling on me outdoors is flicked away. But any tick attached or crawling on me in the tent is sentenced to death by nail clipper. The other morning I had a tidy little pile of tick halves to sweep out of the tent.

I camped last night at the Paul Schoch camp site. It’s nicely arranged on a wide mound. Down the hill is a piped water source. Another trail leads to an open air privy. I think it’s new. I made the inaugural dump. This is a trip for first be-soilings. A few days ago I broke in a port-a-pottie on some private property off Hwy. M [yes, I trespassed. Nobody was around.] There was nothing but blue water in the thing before I arrived.

I tried to eat an entire can of Spam with dinner last night, but had to sacrifice about 1/3 of it to the fire. It smelled like a really good barbecue before it charred out. I half expected a bear to show up with a paper plate in its paw.

Two foods I always take backpacking, but never eat at home are Spam and Snickers bars. Another trail food tradition is to eat a big steak dinner at the end of a trip.

“Here comes the rain again / raining on my head like a memory / raining in my heart like a new emotion.” -- the Eurhythmics

I am now at Erick Lake airing out my feet and summoning the willpower to make it another five miles to Lake Ruth, in the Chequamegon National Forest. I don’t know what time it is and it is cloudy. I guess if I don’t make it by nightfall I will get some water and find a flat spot. The last few miles have been up and down through rolling, glaciated terrain. I walked through an ugly clearcut after reading a note on a tree from the Bayfield County forestry department explaining the value of a timber harvest. Another timber harvest occurred here at Erick Lake, and there are many critical and defensive comments in the register book. One of the designated camp sites here is ruined, and the privy is totally out in the open. Whoops!

My take on timber harvesting: Fine. Cut away your little patches of land to make money. The north woods, but for a few ancient remnants, was deforested over 100 years ago. Every town up here has a history connected with logging. There’s the obligatory pictures of log-jammed rivers and proud Scandinavians wearing long-sleeved wool shirts standing around huge saws. And logging is still a big business and necessary to the economy up here. But is it too much to ask for a 100-foot buffer zone around a National Scenic Trail? I wonder what the woods around Erick Lake looked like before they were denuded.

I give credit to the Brule-St. Croix chapter of the North Country Trail. The trail is well-maintained and marked. After a rude introduction a few days ago, the NCT is easy to follow. I will miss the trail registers and established trailside camp sites after I enter the national forest. The registers are in metal boxes on a post near trail heads and camp sites. I signed every one I came across.

The last people I saw on the trail was a young couple from Duluth who were leaving the Highland Hall camp site yesterday afternoon. I’m surprised. It’s a Saturday. This is a beautiful trail. Where is everybody? Anybody? I guess they’re scared away by the bugs.

North Country Trail journal -- June 18, 2010

2010-07-04T16:50:00.004-05:00

Friday, June 18, 2010
I just finished hiking the Brule-St. Croix portage trail and am now sitting in a patch of shade on a mowed section of North Country Trail. The wind is really blowing today, but it is sunny with hazy cotton candy clouds drifting overhead. I am impressed with the boardwalk through Brule Bog. I met my first day hiker. He said he was glad to see a long-distance hiker. He told me he’s hiked the Penokee mountains east of Mellen, more than 100 miles away, and says I’m in for a treat. For the first time, I’ve hiked nothing but trail today.
I saw a big limb fall off a dead tree. There’s a Zen koan.
Doug sent me off with coffee, eggs and toast. Thank you so much for your hospitality and good company.
I am taking a shoes-off pack break at the Highland Town Hall campsite. This last stretch of trail is beautiful, on a piney ridge above the Bois Brule river. White blazes off the trail led to the old town hall. It’s an old log building with a weathered, plexiglass-enclosed signboard. The only poster is one of a huge marijuana leaf with a message urging anyone who stumbles across an illegal patch of herb to report it to the proper authorities. The rest of the signboard is plastered with handwritten notes from JFK the dump man. They all essentially say the same thing. JFK is the world-famous dump man and was born on Groundhog Day, and that he is the best dump man ever.
I tried the faucet in front of the old building, it was dry, but I looked around and across a road there is a newer building that looks more like a fire station. As I headed for that, a man appeared from behind a green gate -- the infamous JFK -- and told me in a lispy drawl where the faucet was. He just as promptly disappeared behind the gate. As I walked past, I noticed a tool shed. Its door and inside wall are papered with notes. A green truck was parked nearby. It had to be JFK’s. All the topper’s windows were festooned with handwritten notes. This guy’s got a Dr. Bronner kind of prolificacy, a simple message phrased in nearly every way imaginable. As I hiked back to my pack, I thought of others who share a similar eccentric singularity of purpose -- the guy who built Coral Castle in Florida (Edward Leedskalnin), or the Watts Towers in LA (Sabato ("Sam" or "Simon") Rodia), or even that janitor who drew and wrote another world in his spare time (Henry Darger) (Check out the documentary film In the Realms of the Unreal).

[JFK the dump man is world-famous, but not for being the best dump man. I discovered he supposedly has created the world's largest ball of twine and has it on display under a shed in his yard. Here's a few interesting links about the man. He is indeed world famous.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/10970

I’ve hiked 9.2 miles so far and want to go another 7 before I call it a day. I don’t have a watch, but judging by the sun, I have plenty of daylight to make trail miles. I’m going to lay down now and doze to the sound of creaking limbs and the rush of wind through the boughs.

North Country Trail Journal -- June 17, 2010

2010-07-04T16:44:00.003-05:00

Thursday, June 17, 2010
I woke up in my tent just before sunrise and saw streaks of purple and red just above the conifers. Since I camped on a lawn, condensation was heavy in my dratted single wall Tarptent. I don’t mean to put down this tent. It is super light and roomy. After careful seam sealing and proper staking, the TT kept me dry during the last t-storm. When its beaks/vestibule is deployed, getting in and out is difficult. This can be obviated by separating the beaks. They are joined by a foot-long Velcro tab. But putting this back into place is a pain and I don’t want to wear out the Velcro. So I do the TT vesty belly crawl.
In these moments, and when I’m wiping up condensation, or accidentally knocked over the hiking pole keeping the front end up, or have bounce-in rain on the sides or front, I long for a three to four season two wall, free-standing tent. Steve used the double-wall Kelty Zen. Its seen its better days. Its been through an AT thru-hike and another 10 years of sporadic use. It weighs about 5 pounds. For the PCT thru-hike, we took an 8x10 sil-nylon tarp sewed by my mother and an OR double bug bivy. This combination weighs about two pounds and worked well. I still like the versatility of the tarp. Although the bug bivy is also nearing the end of its life (the floor is wearing through, and many small runs in the netting are nail-polished), it is still serviceable.
When times are less tight, I will replace the Zen with another 1-2 person, two-wall non-freestanding tent, get a 3-4 season two-person, freestanding, two-wall tent, and someday a 4-season bomb-proof freestanding tent. More often than not, I like to use a tarp. This is because my preferred method of camping is cowboy style. It’s great to wake up in the middle of the night and look up at the stars for a few moments. Also, if anything is stalking about, I can see it. A ground cloth and maybe some bug netting over my face. What I often do is before bed scout out a nearby tree conducive to tying the tarp to. I have a way of setting the tarp up, taught to me by PCT hiker Wicked, so I call it the “Wicked” method, where you tie the front end of the tarp to the trunk of a tree and just stake out from there. I tried this in the pine grove a couple nights ago, but wasn’t very successful. I’m out of practice.
Yesterday afternoon I sprayed the tents, packs, and hiking clothes with permethrin. This morning I noticed how well it works. For the first time in memory, no bugs crawled on the tent or mosquitoes hovered outside. A slug worked its slimy way along one tent wall. The sun illuminated it in such a way I could see the browner blob of its inner organs. I hate handling chemicals, but they’re a necessity up here.
Doug’s shooting buddy Jay joined us for breakfast at a restaurant in Hawthorne (Doug’s treat). Doug flirted with the waitress, who knows him by name. He said he can get away with a lot more at his age. I listened to the voices of the people around us, hushed grunts, a throaty guffaw. This is right off Hwy. 53. The diners are all men, working men on their way to work, contractors, loggers, energy and utility guys, truckers, lonely men who respect the silence of their trade by not being loud over breakfast. They wear their camouflage caps low and drive diesel pick-ups with heavy deer grills.
After breakfast, Doug took us down to the pond to feed his fish. I saw some huge bluegills. When I asked Doug if he caught any, he said he didn’t because it wouldn’t be fair. The fish gather at the sight of him. Steve made a pass around the pond on Doug’s ATV. I tried it and was too quick on the throttle, spilling Abby, Doug’s dog. I then drove fast around the pond, too fast according to Doug. He ribbed me about it, but wasn’t mean. No man likes to see his dog get thrown off an ATV.
Steve has decided to go home. This is a good decision. I’d rather he go home than see him hobbling along in pain. He’s gotten a taste of the adventure and enjoyed a little trail magic to boot. I hope this experience whets his appetite for more.
We spent the rest of the day resting and watching TV -- a couple episodes of The Twilight Zone, some NFL highlights, District 9, a couple hours of UFC, and then game seven of the Lakers-Celtics NBA finals. The Lakers came back from 13-points down in the third quarter to win their second championship in a row.
Steve’s dad and grandma showed up around 11:30 p.m. When I greeted Steve Sr. at the car, he was worried about a pair of eyes he saw in the headlights on the way in. I didn’t help his worries when I told him Doug has seen bears and wolves cross his land. Doug brewed a pot of coffee. Steve Jr. said a groggy goodbye, and I stood in the dark and frog peeps and watched the headlights retreat up the long drive. Abby the dog sulked for awhile after Stevie left.

North Country Trail journal -- June 16, 2010

2010-07-02T14:06:00.004-05:00

We finally made it to Solon Springs! What a turn of events. Trail angels even exist on the North Country Trail. Right when we got into town we stopped at a Dairy Queen across the street from the county park we planned to camp in. While we were sitting at a red picnic table enjoying our first non-trail food in four days, an older gentleman walked over and asked about our trip.

He said he’d seen us walking into town and saw Steve limping. When he heard we were camping at Lucius Woods County Park across the street, he offered to let us camp in his yard. “The trail goes right by my place and I have a hot tub you can use too,” he said. “At least we’re not hitchhiking,” I told Steve, remembering my promise to his dad. Steve whispered back, joking, “If he gives us any trouble, I think we can take him.”

Doug told us he’s almost 80 and was taking care of a 7-year-old boy, Jake, who I thought was his grandson. He took us up the street to the post office, where I picked up our food drop, and sent Steve across the street to the grocery store (Note: We’d just met Doug, and although he seemed safe, I didn’t want to leave Steve alone in the vehicle). As I was picking up my mail, a guy in line asked me about the hike. Our exchange was brief, but he was very encouraging. The postal worker who gave me my package said, “Hey! I remember talking to you on the phone.” I’d called the post offices in Solon Springs, Drummond, and Mellen to get their hours and let them know what I was sending. I also called for a silly reason. I wanted to hear people talk in a northern Wisconsin accent. It’s just a slightly more tamed clipped sound than that heard in Fargo.

Doug’s place is a beautiful 35-acre spread. The yard is bordered by forest and a pond he dug that has an island on it. He told us he wants his ashes scattered on the island. We set up our tents just beyond the unmowed wildflower patch next to the pond. We took showers, hung up wet gear to dry, and even did laundry.

Steve has been deliberating going home. His big toe has an ingrown toenail that has slowed and hobbled him. It is leaking green pus. I said, of all the various foot injuries, rashes, and sores I’ve seen hiking the long trails, his was somewhere between mild bother and disfigurement. Hikable, but painful, I bet. I told him I wouldn’t be disappointed if he went home. He hiked almost 50 miles. Pretty darn good for his first time. He was beating himself up over the decision.

I remember when a hike was a quest. I treated my first thru-hike 10 years ago like that, and sometimes acted like a drill sergeant to myself and my hiking partner. If Steve had joined me then, I would have thrown a fit and tried to shame him into staying on the trail. But all the miles since and a whole host of other factors, such as being a father and teacher, have softened me. This ain’t no big deal.

I plan to continue, even though my left shoe is giving me problems, two heel blisters, two toe blisters, and a huge popped-turning-to-callus one on the center sole just below the toes. My right foot is blister and pain free. My parents or Esther can pick me up in Hurley.

Doug prepared a pot roast dinner while Steve and I sat around his living room socializing. Scott, Jake’s dad, came to pick Jake up and take him to a baseball game. The two of them and their friend Pete joined us later for dinner.

Like many trail angels, Doug has enjoyed the vagabond lifestyle. A licensed pilot, he flew to Alaska in 1995 and spent a year there. He told us about flying to tiny fishing villages on Kodiak Island. He’s also roamed around Arizona, living out of his RV. It’s nice how long-distance hiking connects you to kindred spirits. A backpack says a lot about a person, or can lead an observant person to make certain conclusions. Nature lover? Healthy? Leg strong, lungs strong? Driven? Free? Easygoing? Tired? Hungry? Such conjecture only applies to long-distance hikers. Weekenders never end up in town with their backpacks on. They’re never seen to be considered.

It seems so long ago, but this day started in the pines and fog near Harter Road and county hwy. M. I felt sore and unmotivated after yesterday’s ordeal. For the first time, Steve was ready to go before I was. We finally joined the NCT as it crosses M and was happy to see easy-to-follow trail for the second time on this trip. We were also almost to the nice NCTA maps, and after Solon Springs continuous trail for a nice long stretch. [post-script: I had continuous trail right after leaving Doug’s place. We actually yellow-blazed the trail through the streets of Solon Springs as Doug drove us to his place.]
We’ll be using NCTA map WI-02 for the next 80 or so miles. Goodbye photocopied DeLorme pages. On-trail distances can now be determined to the 10th of a mile.
[P.S. - The latest DeLorme atlas shows the North Country Trail route.]

North Country Trail Journal - June 15, 2010

2010-07-02T14:04:00.002-05:00

Today was one big adventure, but one not to be repeated. I’ve learned that some of the worst trail experiences make the best stories, but before I get to that, let me get up to speed…

After we left our cool break spot on the driveway of someone’s weekend retreat, we continued south down desolate county highway A. Time passed as we talked and I sang songs. Steve said one of his teachers loves The Proclaimers, the Scottish artists who sang “I Would Walk 5,000 miles. Steve brightened when I told him I saw these guys being interviewed once and, in addition to looking like twin Buddy Hollys, their brogues were nearly indecipherable. Steve said his teacher brought that up as well.

Just before we turned onto Jackson Box Trail, a car pulled alongside and the passenger, a young man with rotten teeth and the word “Peace” tattooed on his neck, offered to feed us. Although a woman drove and a young child was in the backseat, I got a bad vibe from the guy, which is probably not fair on my part. I told him we had too much food, which is the truth. He said he’d done the Bear Grease and other long-distance dog sled races, and knows what we are going through.

Jackson Box Trail is a desolate dirt road, used mainly by hunters and ATV enthusiasts. We stopped after a couple miles on a grassy spot right next to the road. Steve said he’s got shin splints on his left foot and is favoring it a bit. Road walking can be hard on the dogs.

A thunderstorm rolled in early this morning. I woke as it began and listened to it build and recede. The seam seal job I did on the Tarptent worked wonderfully. I felt nary a drop. There’s nothing I can do about condensation inside the tent except stop breathing. This same technique repels mosquitoes as well.

We packed up in a break in the rain and resumed walking. The woods around us are thick with young trees, virtually impenetrable. A person could easily get lost in these thickets. Mosquitoes were horrible. The map shows us going right through the middle of Empire Swamp. DEET needed to be applied frequently as it was washed away by the rain.

We finally reached County Highway M and rejoiced! This is the last leg of the road walk. Soon we will be following the blue blazes of the North Country Trail. My plan was to join the trail at Stuckey Road, but as we passed by Harter Road, I saw blue blazes on the trees and vaguely remembered reading about this road on the North Country Trail Alliance web site. We followed the blue blazes until we came to a carsonite post -- the NCT! It said “temporary connector,” and here’s where we made our big mistake.

I don’t have a map for this section. The NCTA doesn’t publish one. We relied on the blue blazes to steer us in the right direction. We took “thumbs up” pictures at the sign and resumed hiking. The trail started out very nicely, with a boardwalk over a bog and newly-constructed bridge over a creek. But then the blue blazes are replaced by yellow tape and we walked through knee-deep muck and water. I know from trail work on the Ice Age Trail and hiking the Arizona Trail, that tape signifies the trail is under construction, I just hoped it would lead us somewhere. And it did.

When we weren’t trudging through a swamp, in the muck and up and over exposed roots, the trail took us to dry islands where ancient pines and junipers soared majestically skyward. They were spared the sawyer’s axe, no doubt, by the difficulty of the surrounding terrain. We took a long oatmeal break in an old stand. The moss, huge trunks, and ever-present ferns gave a very pre-historic feeling to the place.

And as we continued, the trail became harder to follow and more overgrown. Flat shale rocks tipped over with every step, some crashing onto my toes. Exposed roots tried to trip me up, and branches grabbed and prodded at my now-bulky external-frame pack. But I still held hope that this soon-to-be trail would lead to a road or established trail.

Alas, it was not to be. The pink tape turned to orange tape and then disappeared altogether. I had Steve wait at the last marker while I walked in a circle looking for the next one. I found one and called out to Steve. He said, “That’s the way we came.” Doh! After a couple passes, no new marker could be found. We had two choices -- continue to bushwack until we came to a road or backtrack. As we stood there deciding what to do, another thunderstorm rolled in and skies opened up with the mother of all deluges. I got out the compass and consulted the map. It looks like we hiked south until we met the St. Croix flowage. It looked like a wide, powerful river from the “trail.” But shortly before the tape ended, thank goodness, the “trail” was going southwest. We decided to backtrack. We could have bushwacked east to make progress, but would have had to deal with at least two creek crossings.

Once, the flags we were following led to a deer stand and stopped. We had to backtrack again until we found a familiar landmark. Because of the cloudburst, all the water we walked through was a little higher on the return trip. Steve was worried, but he never lost his cool. I reassured him we had plenty of food and water, and shelter if we needed it. He kept a quick pace, though, on the backtrack, and I grew winded trying to keep up with him. We made it back to Harter Road and took “thumbs down” pictures at the same sign we’d been so happy to see hours earlier.

We backtracked to a pine grove just off Hwy. M and, loopy and exhausted, set up our tents, ate dinner, and called it a night.

Photo link

2010-06-29T16:11:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to the Facebook page containing all the photos I posted from the recent North Country Trail hike. Enjoy!

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2360469&id=30820390&l=89241eabf7

North Country Trail journal - June 14, 2010

2010-06-29T16:07:00.003-05:00

Monday, June 14 Somewhere on Cty. Hwy. A
We’re still on our roadwalk, but should see our first blue blazes of the NCT some time tomorrow. I can’t wait. The asphalt is wreaking havoc on my feet and leg muscles. I also feel a pull in my right quadriceps from walking at a slant so long. Ah, hell. I guess I’m just getting older too.

Last night we camped on the west bank of the Black River, but not the same Black River that flows through Black River Falls. This Black River flows into Lake Superior. Our spot is a narrow flat ridge amongst the pines and popples. We had a fire, but retired before darkness. It took no time for me to fall asleep. Our first day of hiking totaled about 14 miles. The sun came out in the evening after a day of gray skies. Steve said he was homesick. He looked a little down, but I tried to cheer him up. I told him backpacking is tough, especially the first few days of a trip, but it has its rewards. If he can make it through the blisters and muscle aches, the buggy assault and bad weather, he will feel a sense of accomplishment and have the courage and conviction to deal with other life challenges. A little Ra Ra from the Raru. Steve’s a brave young man to even attempt this trip. I wish him continued strength to see it through.

I awoke at 3 a.m. to total darkness and silence. Nice! The first thing my eyes saw was the tannic waters of the Black River flowing by, bits of foam showing the speed of the current. The sun shone and bird song filled the air. I felt a little sore while packing, but the pack felt lighter when I put it on.

Bugs have not been a major issue. Mosquitoes and ticks are present in abundance, but deer flies are notably absent. Steve showed me a spider yesterday carrying an egg sac that looked like a pearl. Steve seems interested in the tiny details he encounters along the way. This is good backpacker aesthetics. I enjoy the pine barren swamp we’re passing through on Hwy. A, the floppy grasses that grow in the shallow swamps, the ferns, the sphagnum moss blanketing trunks and branches, and the many flowers, globe mallow, sasifrage, purple lilies, lily pads, and the endless layers of the lotus blossoms.

We should reach our first blue blazes of the NCT tomorrow and make it to Solon Springs some time tomorrow or early Wednesday. I don’t have the heart to tell Steve we could have taken a shorter hike from the border down County Hwy. M, but that would not have followed the “official” route. We also would not have seen the highest waterfall in Wisconsin. “Big deal?!” my feet cry. “You put us through all this suffering so you can be ‘official’ and see a stinking waterfall?”

We are taking this break on a grassy driveway off the road, right under the NO TRESPASSING sign, There’s a good sitting log too irresistible to pass. It’s cold enough I’ve got my sleeping bag draped over my legs and am wearing my jacket. It’s cloudy and gray and a cool wind rattles the aspen leaves. I’m not looking forward to the protests of my leg muscles when I get up. Steve just pointed out a spider he watched attach webbing to his knee and work its way toward a blade of grass. That’s the beauty of this life. Unshackled from the common, obvious, and predictable distractions of civilization, the intrepid hiker enjoys the simple, yet awe-inspiring distractions nature provides. Speaking of… It looks like rain. Time to strap up and go.

North Country Trail journal - June 13, 2010

2010-06-29T16:02:00.002-05:00

I am at Pattison State Park fighting off lethargy after eating a big bowl of oatmeal. Steve and I are sitting at a picnic table. I’m barefoot. Pack explosion. This trip we are hiking the North Country Trail the width of Wisconsin, from a county highway on the Minnesota/Wisconsin border to Hurley on the other side of the state, about 200 miles.

This is our first full day, and the usual soreness has come, but I’ve done this enough times I welcome it with a sense of nostalgia.

Notes so far:

-- Everything went smoothly on the car ride up here except for a crying baby, C.J., the Hardt’s 1 ½ year old son, who didn’t like the ride and pooped three times. This slowed us down and his crying frayed my nerves. I hope he was happier on the ride home. It’s funny that I can face the rigors of a backpacking trip, but a crying baby nearly drives me insane.

-- We are dropped off at county highway C near the Burlington Northern Santa Fe tracks. After saying goodbye and taking pictures, we start hiking around 8 p.m. We walked an hour and camped amongst some pine trees about 100 feet from the road. The ground was really soggy underfoot. I wanted to camp further in the forest away from the road, but once I entered the trees my feet started sinking.

-- I slept well despite being awakened a few times by train horns. Considering that I live next to a busy Union Pacific track, you’d think I’d be used to the sound by now. My old, patched up Thermarest (LE Luxury long, bought in Hot Springs, NC in 2000) leaked slow enough to keep me cushioned comfortably all night.

-- The first four days of this trip involve road walking. I don’t like asphalt. It’s really tough on the body. But I liked traveling down the dirt/gravel Dedham Road. We crossed an old iron one-lane bridge, which got me singing Rush’s “Red Barchetta.” Steve has never heard of the song. It’s still in my head.

-- We saw a black bear on the ride up here, running to the woods from Hwy. 53. That’s the first time I’ve seen a bear from a car.

-- I brought along The Great Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe. It should make for some good campfire tales.

-- So far, the weather has been cool and cloudy, with no breeze and only slight precipitation at the beginning. We started last night with our pack covers on, but haven’t needed them today.

-- The white noise from Big Manitou Falls, the highest waterfall in Wisconsin, is lulling me to sleep. After we leave the state park, we will walk south on Hwy. 35 and then head east on Milchesky Road to County Highway A. We probably won’t see our first blue blazes of North Country Trail for a couple days. I saw a diamond NCT sign at the park pavilion when I went there to get water. Soon enough we’ll be on 100+ miles of unbroken trail.

-- I realized late last night that I’d lost the DeLorme map pages for the road walk to near Solon Springs. I looked all around camp, but could not find it. “I’ve got good news and bad news,” I told Steve. “I lost the maps, but I think I have the route memorized.” We found the map pages at the road. Lesson learned. Nothing can be carried in the shallow pockets of my swim trunk shorts!

Back from another hike

2010-06-22T16:10:00.003-05:00

The great trek across the width of Wisconsin with my godson Steve was cut short for him at Solon Springs, and for me at Drummond, another 40+ miles along the trail. It was a good hike. We met interesting people, enjoyed the beauty and solitude of the north woods, and had our patience and endurance tested by a few adventurous mishaps. The North Country Trail has got a hold on me and I plan to finish the section I missed on this trip and even continue through Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

I will post journals from each day both here and at Trailjournals. I will also post links to pictures.

Latest adventures

2010-06-07T17:14:00.007-05:00

I, my godson, Steve, and his dad, Steve, Sr., are leaving Saturday for the north woods of Wisconsin, where Steve Jr. and I will backpack the North Country National Scenic Trail from the Minnesota border to the Michigan border. I don't have exact mileage, but the trip should be between 175-200 miles long. I estimate 9-11 days for completion.

Our trip will expose us to all the beautiful terrain that the northwoods have to offer, from sphagnum covered bogs to tannic, foamy waterfalls, glacial kettles and moraines, a pine barrens, an ancient portage trail linking Lake Superior to the Mississippi River, an even older mountain range, the Penokees, and countless lakes and forest lands. From everything I've read, this section of the North Country Trail has some of the best signage and scenery of any section on the entire 4,200-mile route. As I've learned from previous trips, the people of the north country love their trails and take a keen pride in providing excellent signage and trail maintenance.

I've hiked sections of the NCT in Minnesota and Michigan. In 2002, I hiked the entire Superior Hiking Trail from Two Harbors to Grand Portage, and a short section of the Border Route Trail. In 2003, Sisu (Esther) and I did a section of the Kekakabic and Border Route Trails. I forget the year, but on a trip to the Porcupine Mountains State Park in Michigan, I did a waterfall hike that was signed as NCT Trail. Before then, back in 2001, I received a NCT sign in the mail from my Uncle Jack, who was working out at Fort Union in North Dakota doing research for a book he wrote about the place. Before I received this sign, I'd never heard of the trail, nor did I know that any long-distance trail existed in North Dakota.

The major concern I have are bugs. A couple weeks ago when I camped a couple nights in the Black River Falls State Forest, ticks were everywhere. Jonny got one on his scalp that was not discovered until a week later, a grayish, blood-filled blob. And I remember May and June hikes from the couple years I lived in Antigo, WI. The ticks and deer flies are a force to be reckoned with. I will use both permethrin (on clothes) and DEET (on skin) liberally. Also taking a bug head net to save mental sanity from the constant buzzing and a couple bulbs of garlic to make my smell repulsive (to them and all others).

There is an extra responsibility I bear on this journey. The safety and welfare of my godson is in my hands. He's 17, practically an adult, much more mature than his father or I were at his age, so I know that he will be able to take care of himself. But this is his first backpacking trip and I want him to enjoy it and want to do it again in the future. He requested I take him on a trip and I want to inculcate him with a love of this activity.

Here's a few cool links related to the trail:

http://www.northcountrytrail.org/

The official trail web site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xp4irdX_HM

Part VI of Nimblewill Nomad's 2009 thru-hike of the entire NCT, which showcases many of the landmarks we will pass through in Wisconsin.

http://watch.thirteen.org/video/1470710107/

A Wisconsin PBS short video about the trail. I exchanged e-mails with Bill Menke, interviewed in this segment. This gives the best history of the trail.

Our route on the NCT will involve some road walking, mostly at the beginning and end of the trip, but the majority of the route will be on signed, unbroken trail through the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest. I've ordered maps from the trail association web site, printed out other maps from the same site, exchanged e-mails with a chapter coordinator regarding the best route from the Minnesota border to Solon Springs, and will make copies of the DeLorme Atlas pages that include the trail route. I will also bring a GPS unit, but only as an emergency backup. I still cling to the map and compass.

Trilliums to Tweets

2010-05-27T20:06:00.004-05:00

Here is the write-up of the outdoors seminar I participated in last weekend at the Chippewa Moraine Visitor Center last weekend. It went really well, considering I was the first presenter. A large group of young adult workers for Americorps earned an education hour (required for the program) under my tutelage, and were pretty cheerful participants too.

I will post my journal from that weekend tomorrow or Saturday!

Ice Age Trail Fair at Visitor Center May 22

Hikes, talks and demonstrations on ways to enjoy the Ice Age Trail will make up an all-day fair at the Chippewa Moraine Visitor Center near New Auburn on Saturday. Rebecca Hildebrandt, Ice Age Trail Alliance Development Director says the program named “Trilliums to Tweets” will show how the trail can be a canvas on which to paint many outdoor activities. Hot dogs grilled on a fire will be available free of charge for fair-goers around noon.
Family-friendly activities geared to youth are slated including a “rolling hike” led by Visitor Center staff member Rod Gont. Roy Gromme, son of Owen Gromme, often referred to as the “Dean of American Wildlife Artists”, will display some of his father’s most famous works and tell the story behind the paintings. Harvey Halversen, WDNR Wildlife Biologist and a member of the Blue Bird Society, will describe the interesting antics of owls and cavity nesting birds.
Greg Locascio, will give tips on journaling that he learned while thru- hiking the Applachian and Pacific Crest Trails. Nancy Frank, a certified Nordic Walking instructor, will tell about the unique benefits of Nordic Walking and show participants how to get started on this enjoyable form of exercise. Laura Sandstrom and Harold Lindemann, both from the Superior Lobe Chapter of the Ice Age Trail will respectively lead a bird walk and a flower stroll.
Event Schedule:
7:30 am “Early Bird” Bird Walk – Laura Sandstrom
9:00 am Journaling – Long Trail Memories –Greg Locascio
10:00 am Bluebirds and Other Cavity Birds – Harvey Halvorson
11:00 am Nordic Walking on the Ice Age Trail – Nancy Frank
12:00 pm Kids Rolling Hike and Youth Program – Rod Gont
1:00 pm Owen Gromme’s Birds of Wisconsin – Roy Gromme
2:00 pm Wild Flower and Interesting Plants – Harold Lindemann
3:00 pm A Picture Story of the Ice Age Trail
The Chippewa Moraine Visitor Center is 7 miles east of New Auburn and 1.9 miles east of State Highway 40 on County Highway “M”. For more information, contact Rebecca Hildebrandt, IATA Director of Development at 608-963-3896 or by e-mail at rebecca@iceagetrail.org

New Song, "All the Same"

2010-05-26T13:23:00.007-05:00

This is an old, old, old riff given new life and lyrics within the confines of my Fargo home studio. "All The Same" is all about the bass line, which has been a warm-up riff on the lower strings of the guitar since maybe the mid-90's. I came up with some cheesy ant-corporate lyrics, something about Mickey D and Wally M, but decided, in the interests of not being sued, to take a more literary bent with the lyrics.

A booby prize to whomever can name the poet and poems I have adapted for the lyrics of this song.

Also, my friend Todd Stanley lends a vocal assist on the chorus with what I call underwater antiphonal vocal. Gum Mwum mabaho, Todd.

"All The Same"

Paramours of courtesans
are well and satisfied, content

Afternoons forevermore
miracle fruits your heart adores

Chorus:

And it's all the same
wherever you turn
Feel the pain
and let it all burn

Owing to the peerless stars
All the suns I knew before

Honeysuckle, tiger lily, garlic mustard
growing by the side of the road

CHORUS

Go To FileFactory.com

Wisconsin Death Trip

2010-05-26T13:05:00.009-05:00

I recently saw the Bob Dylan biopic, I'm Not There, and watched the director's commentary by Todd Haynes. He says he based the Town of Riddle, as experienced by the Billy the Kidd character played by Richard Gere, and all its odd characters and dress, from the book, Wisconsin Death Trip, by Michael Lesy. What especially stood out in the "Goin' To Acapulco" song in the movie was the midget wearing a top hat and the dead girl propped up in a coffin. Both of these images are direct from Lesy's book.

Gere's role was intended to exemplify the late 60's basement tapes Dylan era, when the artist celebrated "weird, old America." Lesy's book, published in 1973, is as weird as it gets.

From a New York Times article by Greil Marcus, reviewing a DVD based on the book: "It is a progressively horrifying portrait of one small town, Black River Falls, Wis., crumbling --socially, morally, psychologically, physically --under the impact of the great depression of the 1890’s. The words “great depression” do not take capitals here, as with the Great Depression of the 1930’s; unlike that calamity, the depression of a century ago did not enter American folklore.

This collapse of the American economy was denied even as it happened: the 1893 Columbian Exposition, in Chicago, which introduced the Ferris wheel to the United States, was the denial as theme park. The depression hit farm states the hardest. There, where the weather had been understood as the greatest threat to an orderly life, all other foundations of predictability--the assumption that in domestic and working life one day would be much like the one before it--were destroyed."

Lesy used, and often altered for artistic purposes, the photographs of Black River Falls resident Charles Van Schaick. The photos include stoic farmers and their wives, along with those of funeral wreaths and dead babies and children in coffins. Lesy quotes from a handful of primary sources, including the Badger State Banner, records of the Mendota state insane asylum, local gossip and literary quotations, including Edgar Lee Masters's Spoon River Anthology. Although the focus is on the weird and macabre, Lesy's gleaning gives an interesting insight into our nation's transfer from a frontier to an industrial mindset (the book chronicles excerpts by year, from 1885-1900). Wisconsin Death Trip gives glimpses of out of work mobs of men taking over a business in Beloit, lumberjacks without any trees to fell, land speculators selling sandy pine barrens as agricultural land, and oh-so-many people who, when faced with economic hardship, could not depend on their neighbors for help or support. In light of the hardship, disease, and isolation faced by rural and semi-rural people back then, it's a wonder more people didn't flip their lids.

For more about Wisconsin Death Trip, check out the following links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voKdxD07PgE

This audio slide show includes an interview with Lesy and images from the book, in addition to other images of Victorian post-mortem photography.

http://www.wisconsindeathtrip.com/reviews.html

Greil's complete article, one of the best I've found about the book, even though it was written about the 1999 documentary based on the book, which I can't wait to see.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/whsimages/sets/72157602476458793/

This Flickr site contains most of Van Schaick's images that are in the book. There's also a link to the Wisconsin Historical Society that has even more Schaick images.

"I Don't Mind" New song, old song

2010-05-04T19:18:00.003-05:00

This is an oft-played song in my repertoire because it's so darn-tootin' easy to play. I like the new bass part and vibes the most. Next up will be something a little grungier and punky. We'll see what the muse inspires.

Go To FileFactory.com

"I Don't Mind"

There's a star
outside my window
it's been there
a long, long while
but it'll burn
a supernova

And I don't mind
No, I don't mind

Water seeps
in secret canyons
sinking deep
beneath the soil
on a path
of least resistance

And I don't mind
No, I don't mind
I don't mind
No, I don't mind

If there's a god
up in the heavens
saving souls
to serve her will
She must wear
a dayglo jumpsuit

and I don't mind
No, I don't mind
It's out of mind
And I don't mind

Lyrics for "Inflatable Barbie Chair," "Progress," and "Tucson"

2010-04-23T14:41:00.004-05:00

"Inflatable Barbie Chair"

And you say that you want to be in pictures
and you say that you want to be a star
With good ideas and a bright imagination
the best intentions won't get you very far

As you sit there, in your inflatable Barbie Chair

Another loser, dreaming in your basement
Alien creature, in orbit from afar
Stare in the mirror and pout at your reflection
Stream to the future, you don't know where you are

So you sit there, in your inflatable Barbie Chair

Is it in you? blood and sinew?
Is it in you? Is it in you?

And you're so real, so hip, and so together
Cool and sincere, with all the latest style
You quickly cheer what catches to your fancy
Taste touch and feel the sensomatic world

As you sit there in your Inflatable Barbie chair

It doesn't matter, these endless aspirations
Faded and tattered, a billboard in the sky
Forget your baggage, just leave it at the station
Purge all your sadness and move on with a smile

As you sit there in your inflatable Barbie chair

Is it in you? Blood and sinew?
Is it in you? Is it in you?

"Progress?"

Creosote, tar and cinder
I'm walkin' down the line
Looking for an empty boxcar
to while away my time

Never have known the comforts
and pleasures of the easy life
No hand to grab ahold of
all is struggle, all is strife

Left in pain and derision
I made a snap decision
To the east
To make my name, my fame, my claim

Can you feel the city?
Concrete under your feet
Gets you feelin' giddy
Take up to the
street (13x)

Now you're really movin'
groovin' into the flow
keep it coming going
never be
slow (13x)

Taking up our place in the sun
Is it over, victory won?
Dust and memories
Are all that remain
at the terminus

Lean and old
This story's told a thousand times
It all comes down to nothing in the end

"Tucson"

Jet trail scream
smoggy sunset pink
washboard dust
Rabbits scurry
from the headlight's glare

Pinion pines
crackling power lines
when you bloom so brief
it's easy to miss
that moment of color

No decay
faded to a pale
she's so clear
a winding arroyo
bending with the stream

Shimmering
devil spinning wind
shooting stars
scuttle and haste
of hard-shelled creatures

She's still there
eyes burned in my soul
Free, untamed
hostile and harsh
but touched with beauty

Rocky ledge
cool and clay beneath
Ancient fire
swirling embers
fly out to the night

New song and new player

2010-04-23T14:16:00.004-05:00

I meant to record an existing song in my acoustic repertoire, "I Don't Mind," and will get to that eventually, but as I was exploring the various effects I can generate using the Cubase LE software, I went with a echoey guitar riff and built a song around it.

In this latest song, "Tucson," I use about 8 different guitar voices, including a flanger, phaser, overdrive, and distortion.

I've also found a new MP3 player. Enjoy the songs and please leave feedback in the comments box. It'd be nice to know someone was listening to this stuff. More to come soon.

Go To FileFactory.com

Inflatable Barbie Chair song

2010-04-16T12:07:00.001-05:00

Download Greg Locascio - Inflatable Barbie Chair

I tried using Podbean, but the uploader complained that the bitrate on my MP3 was too fast, so I converted it down to the proper bitrate and it's still not accepting it. Although supload.com doesn't have the nifty embeddable player, this is just as effective.

I enjoyed re-working "Inflatable Barbie Chair," the first song I recorded using the Cubase LE software, because this re-recording shows me how much I've learned in the past couple weeks. In particular, with this song I learned how to apply effects to individual voices. I didn't use any effects with "Progress?" because I only knew how to apply them to the whole song.

I'm still working on a funny YouTube video featuring this song, so stay tuned!