Holy, Schmoly, Poly

Another essential part of Christmastime, aside from sickness, is the obnoxious lighting arrangements people put up on and around their houses. Just about everybody loves Christmas lights in some form. Some go for the minimal approach. Some go for the maximal approach. And those who go for the maximal approach, do so in a delightful range of expense, effort and sheer tastelessness.


Since my childhood the tacky light tour has been a family ritual, where all (or most--in later years Mom bowed out) of us would pile into a car, pick a neighborhood or two, and go in search of shining tackiness. Some neighborhoods, like our own, for instance, were too restrained to be any fun. Almost all white lights--maybe the occasional few windows with yellow or orange candles--and multicolored trees gleaming through the windows. Some neighborhoods were quite elegant, with large, red-bowed wreathes hung on a gable or on the windows, cleverly placed floodlights, and a few accenting white lights in windows or trees.



Other neighborhoods veered toward tack, with the multicolored strings tracing the house outline or a door, and perhaps a lit Santa or manger scene, and the appearance of blue candles in the windows.

Blue candles. That's one thing I've never understood about some folks' decorations. Why did they want Bunsen burners in the windows? What was the blue supposed to signify? What does Christmas have to do with natural gas? Perhaps in Louisiana or Texas I could possibly understand such a thing, but not New England. Hell, as a kid, I loved blinking lights. I wanted a whole tree full of blinkers. I thought steadily shining lights were useless and boring. Whenever Mom and Dad went to a holiday party, it was a given that they'd come home to a house with newly-installed blinking colored lights in the windows (except in Lisa and Julie's rooms, who didn't let me change them).

As the years went on, I noticed that we seemed to have fewer and fewer blinkers, until they were all gone. At some point I asked Mom about it and she said, "Yes, your Dad and I never replaced them when they burnt out. We don't have any more."


I was too old to be very disappointed, but I do remember feeling somewhat violated.


So anyway, looking for the most ridiculous, disproportionate, mismatched, overcrowded, garish and even creepy Christmas light job was a family sport. We found trailer parks and crowded semi-urban neighborhoods (crowded suburb-style neighborhoods do occur in central New Hampshire, and did even in the 80's) the best hunting grounds. There were some real decorative heroes there, including one trailer outlined entirely in blue light strings. And the blue strings had darkened bulbs moving along their length with regular timing, so that the trailer, with the blue lights strung along top, bottom and both sides, resembled a kind of tractor tread. This accompanied, of course, plenty of reindeer, at least a few Santas, and a couple of lit-up trees in the yard. This was the kind of masterpiece we could look forward to in rural New Hampshire. (And of course, we wondered what it did to the people's electricity bill--but that was obviously their problem.)

So here in Rhode Island, there's plenty of Christmas spirit to go around too. There area few streets and neighborhoods which I've noticed over the years have great holiday displays, and so last year, when Katie and I were still just dating (haven't gotten that far with the Pup & Ben series yet, but I will eventually...) Katie and I started down here in North Kingstown and then worked our way up to East Greenwich, where I'd lived for several years before moving into the condo. And we were pretty disappointed. Even those neighborhoods I'd known to be spectacular, were kind of half-assed this time around. Why? The horrible economy? Possibly...we saw some very classy homes in East Greenwich, of course, but not the smorgasbord of multicolored tastelessness we'd been expecting.


And then, after Christmas, up in New Hampshire for New Year's....we visited the same neighborhoods my family had gone to in my childhood, and had an even bigger letdown. Just like North Kingstown and East Greenwich...a very weak display. Were fewer people able to afford lights, or electricity, or even in the homes at all? It was hard to know...but like the lessened snow of recent years, the scarcity of Christmas lights seemed like a dimming of the entire holiday.

So just tonight, Kate and I went on this year's tacky lights tour, and we decided to try an area we'd never seen before. So we headed up to Warwick and Cranston, cities we drive past and through regularly, but almost never explore. (We saw a bit of Warwick last summer when we visited the Gaspee Days festival--and it was a great little area--but that's almost it.)


We drove up to that general area--too dark, and we too unfamiliar, to find the same little neighborhood again--and started following side streets where promising light displays led us. And there were a few winners. Blow-up snowmen, Santas and reindeer, wire-framed lit reindeer, polar bears and trees, lit "Merry Christmas" signs, chicken wire-type grids studded with lights and hung from the shrubs, and of course, strings and strings of light along windows, doors, gables, gutters, and sometimes tossed pretty strangely on trees.


We only took a few photos, but over the course of an hour and a half (which left us both shamefully tired) we wandered through enough blocks and side streets that we saw some quality chintz. No one street filled with competitive neighbors trying to outdo the rest, and the most overdone home we did find, the owner came out and asked if we were going to post our photos.

On principle, I'd rather not, but the layout was pretty sweet. Besides, the guy who was looking for some sort of publicity has no idea who I am or where I'm actually posting these photographs--so I'll be content with anonymity.

So! Enjoy the images of our Christmas light gawking...

Holiday Ailments

We're approaching Christmas, and of course, there's plenty going on. Not least of which, we've been visited with the holiday illnesses while carrying on with everything else. Annoying, slightly-more-than-mild cold, holiday doldrums, and for me, just like last year, an episode of what Kate and I have come to refer to as "the crap".

"The crap" is basically ceullitis in my lower legs--a microbial infection causing painful swelling of my skin layers, leading to pink, tender raised patches. When in the ankle area, it feels exactly like a minor sprain, so when I'm not alert for it, I'm easily tricked into thinking that I have some minor orthopedic issue until I see the telltale red and pink splotches, and then I know the truth. I don't want to go into a full history of this somewhat loathsome condition, except to say that I first came down with it working on the foullest scow I've ever set foot on, a decrepit old 90-foot catamaran called the Atlantic Twin, that I worked on during the summer of 2007 doing offshore sediment coring. That sixties-era bathtub should've been left on the bottom of the harbor when it sank several years ago, but the owners are too cheap to replace it (they don't believe in reinvestment in their own business, apparently). One gross detail before I move on, even though a doctor said this probably wasn't the cause (wrong type of microorganism involved, E. coli versus Staph aureus): you don't put toilet paper in the toilets aboard the Twin. The septic system can't handle paper, so you put the toilet paper in...the waste baskets.

That's how business is done there. That's a big part of why I quit that job, and I don't mind posting it publicly.

Anyway, since that summer I've been blessed with the crap. Every so often it flares up, I get blotches and soreness in one ankle or another, I glob some antimicrobial cream on it, and it goes away. That's how it normally goes. Sometimes an outbreak is the result of an impact or some kind of trauma, like knocking my shin hard against an object or even wearing a very tightly laced pair of shoes (gave myself a case once by lacing my basketball shoes too hard). And my cowboy boots have led to an outbreak or two.

My cowboy boots. I love those boots. I have about five pairs: three dark brown, one light brown, one white. They're sharp, they make me look 6'2", when they have leather soles they make great dancing shoes and, the reason I got my first pair at all, they're fantastically comfortable. When I first moved out of my parents' house in 1993, I was living in South Boston with my cousin Drew. A good college friend of mine, Blaine Connor, came to visit one weekend. We went on the obligatory big bad bender, but he also showed me his cowboy boots. I was kind of incredulous at first that he even owned any. Blaine, my introverted, slightly awkward, intellectual college buddy, wearing one of the most visible symbols of Texas-style outsized ignorant ego.

"They're the most comfortable shoes you'll ever wear," he told me. "We have the same size feet. Try them on."

I did, and was immediately convinced I wanted a pair. I had little money, so I had to wait a few years, but I got 'em, at a little western apparel store on swanky Charles Street in Boston (same place where I got my first Snowy River hat--and I like Australian hats (Akubra brand in particular), because the cylinder on the Australian hats is lower, not as tall and ostentatious as the Stetsons or Resistols. But anyway). I learned quickly that flat leather-soled boots are a bad idea in a New England winter, especially when you're trying to walk up Beacon Hill. So soon I had to add a pair of lug-soled hiking boots to my wardrobe as well.

Anyhow, I've loved cowboy boots for almost twenty years now, and found them excellent footwear for walking, work and dance--all work, that is, except in a smooth-floored fluid dynamics laboratory with tanks of water around and occasional spills--worse than Beacon Hill in winter, you might say. So I reverted to sneakers as my default, and so it is to this day. The cowboy boots have been largely retired. They sit, piled up, neglected and increasingly dusty, in a few odd closet corners.

Except for when I roust a pair out now & then to wear for something somewhat dressy, like Friday's Christmas concert in Boston, at the Old South Church.

Another tangent here. In the mid-90's--actually, around the time I finally bought my first pair of cowboy boots--I worked as an administrative assistant--basically, a secretary--at Harvard University. Decent pay, okay benefits (but the real benefits to me were four things: unlimited access to Harvard's gyms, libraries, music practice rooms, and free tuition to one extension class per semester. It was a bastardized way of being enrolled, as far as I was concerned). One of my friends there was a woman named Manya, a librarian, and fellow lover of the arts. One of those years she introduced me to a holiday concert by the group Chorus Pro Musica, in which a friend of hers sang (and still sings). The show featured a mix of holiday music new and old and, my favorite part, a sing-along caroling part in the second half. I've loved singing for as long as I can remember, so this concert has remained a favorite of mine. I've been to almost every one since.

This year was no different, particularly since Kate and I weren't going to be blowing the dough on high-priced Nutcracker tix or anything. So we teamed up with Gordon, a family friend who lives in the area, had dinner (at his place, and he's an effortlessly graceful host), met Manya at the church, and settled in for the concert. (And my music-snob comment on the show: very good as usual, but I was disappointed in this year's sing-along portion. The new music director of the Chorus Pro Musica plainly doesn't believe in sing-alongs, as this year it was reduced to an "echo-the-refrain" bit for one tune, and only one other sing-along carol. We didn't even get to join in on Silent Night.

I mean, come on!

Even so, the musicianship was sound and even though Kate found the Old South Church to be somewhat plainly and tastelessly painted inside, I adore high-thrown church spaces, even when they're a bit cavelike. The whole imitation-of-heaven concept definitely works a little magic on my brain.

The best thing about the evening, aside from meeting up with our friends: bringing Eva along. Both Kate and I want to expose her to a lot of music, and raise a music lover in her. We've learned of a school for babies and young children run by the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra, and one way or another, we want to save up for Eva to take classes there. Aside from raising a child who's confident, honest and alert, I have a few goals for Eva's education (aside from things she'll do in school, which will be mostly up to her): she's going to learn how to dance. By the time she's twelve, she'll be able to waltz, swing and salsa, at the very least. (And that means, salsa with hip motion. My mother once caught me as a kid, and being a kid I had no idea what I was doing, waggling my hips while I was doing a little dance at home, and she practically spat at me to stop immediately. "Don't move your hips like that," she hissed, "it's immoral.")

Not in my book it ain't. If you got it, use it. Learn how to handle it. Don't live in willful ignorance of it.

Anyhow, Eva will know how to dance. She'll know how to throw. None of this girly, throw-half-your-body-while-awkwardly-shotputting-the-ball-five-feet nonsense. She'll learn to step, snap the hips and let the arm follow through, keeping her eye on the target all the while. My mother was an athlete. She struck out half the Moultonboro fire department in the softball game at one of their annual picnics. From that year on, they never let her pitch again. So Eva will learn some athletic skills.

And she'll know some things about music. Maybe Kate and I will have her learn an instrument. Maybe we'll institute family music hour (or two or three hours) on Sundays. In addition to whatever other little devices we find...but this girl will grow up with an appreciation for rhythm, melody and harmony.

She already seems to be receptive. My fail-safe method to settle her down, unless she's just starving, is to hold her in my arms, and sing or hum (usually hum, since I've forgotten many of the words) old Christmas carols to her (I love the old English carols...especially the Coventry carol). Eva's eyes widen, her mouth drops a little open, she falls into silence and she just stares at me while I make a tune for her. (Sometimes she starts to cry again after I switch songs, and I start to wonder if she's developing favorites, but it's probably more that I stop for a few seconds before making up my mind what to start up with next.)

Besides, there's the whole we-named-her-for-an-impeccably-beautiful-singer thing, and all. We'd kind of like her to be into music.

Beyond that, Eva does seem to quiet down when I put something soothing on the stereo (my old carols do the trick), and she genuinely seems to enjoy this cute little Baby Mozart DVD Kate picked up a week or two ago, mixing some of Mozart's lighter and shorter pieces with simple, colorful images. Though Eva only likes it once a day. I'd go as far as to guess she either loses the ability to concentrate after a while, or else she even gets bored. But when limited to every few days, she's absorbed.

So we brought her to the concert. Eva's shown the ability to focus for up to an hour at a time without getting squidgy, so we guessed we could get two separate stretches out of her that Friday night: first half, then a quick feeding and change, and then (hopefully) second half.

We were half right.

She was almost perfect during the first half, and was even looking forward and up when Kate held her (she likes to sit up, even though she needs help right now). The clapping alarmed the little baby just a bit--and I was careful to show her my hands clapping, but also to keep them very quiet--but she seemed to be hearing the music.

The second half was a bit different. The brass quintet starting off the set seemed to scare her quite a bit, and she never quite recovered. Kate and I took turns walking her back and forth in the lobby to keep her quiet, but she never quite settled down.

And that was just the baby. See, I'd made the mistake of wearing my cowboy boots. I'd forgotten about the crap.

Not long after we'd arrived at Gordon's for dinner, my right Achilles started feeling sore, so that I couldn't walk quite normally. I began limping a bit, and assumed I'd gone too hard at the calf raises at the Y the night before. (Just like, the first time I ever got it, while working on Chincoteague Island off the Virginia coast in 2007, I assumed I'd wracked my ankle up jogging for the first time in two months.) The tendon grew progressively more sore through dinner, so that I was having trouble walking when we set out for the church (fortunately only five blocks away). I was stumping along like a brave old invalid by the time we reached Old South Church, and it was a relief to sit down. Once we did I began stretching the tendon, thinking that, being an orthopedic thing, I could relax it and reduce the pain. So I stretched that damn ankle for the whole first half of the concert, and nothing. It hurt more than ever after intermission.

Then Eva got squidgy, and I took her out for a few lobby laps, and then Kate came out to take over. By then I was in even more pain and I thought that she might have been right at dinner, when she suggested right away that the crap was back. I pulled off (with some difficulty) my right boot, pulled down the sock, and whaddayaknow. This bright pink swollen patch covering my entire Achilles tendon area, both sides.

I was kind of up the creek now. No med cream, wearing the worst possible shoes, and probably three hours from being able to put my feet up and medicate them. So one thing to do: bear with it and enjoy the concert as well as I could, and hope that Eva would settle down enough that we could bring her back into the sanctuary (which Kate did once the "sing-along" portion began.

The sing-along came and went, we wished Gordon and Manya goodbye and merry Christmas, and I hobbled off in pursuit of Kate and Eva as they headed back to the car. I drove home, since Kate doesn't like driving in cities, and I found that it didn't really hurt to drive--only to get in and out of the car, and walk.

So we made it home, I staggered inside (while Kate hauled the baby), and after a horrible ten-minute struggle to pull off my boots (since my ankle really didn't want to bend at all at this point), saw the full extent of the damage. Both feet and lower legs, covered in splotches. By far the worst outbreak I'd ever had.

Not trying to gross everyone out with too much information here, but it went from annoying to somewhat alarming to see that. Of course I used my drugs, and went straight to bed, but just rolling over, to say nothing of walking (more crawling) to the bathroom was excruciating. Suffice it to say, it was a lousy night.

The next day we had to prepare for the Bash--a small turnout this year, on account of the blizzard and all (and probably not nearly enough effort on my part to rally friends). We had about 8 people, which was good for Eva, since she wasn't overwhelmed by noise and faces, and we had about four hours with neighbors and a few singing friends. But we had about five times as much food as we needed (still working on it, and we will all week).

But getting ready wasn't easy. I slathered more anti-crap cream on my legs, and given that I think I might be allergic to Advil (not a tangent worth going on), I asked for one of the Aleve pills Kate swears by. And about an hour later, hey, I could almost walk!

So we got our chores done, got the condo ready, and had our party--though by the end, around 11, I was hobbling again. And I limped to bed in, not quite as bad shape as the night before, but not tons better.

Sunday I moped all day. Nearly dragged Kate down to my level too, until she rather forcefully (though in a nice way) suggested we get out. She was hoping to score some free Dave's coffee (another mommy run), but both nearby Dave's were closed due to the storm. So we decided to--gasp--pay for our coffee, and go to Starbucks. And so we did.

It was an impromptu date, and we sat in the cafe, with little Eva quiet in her carseat looking at us as we chatted. For three bucks and three cents (not counting gasoline) Kate and I restored the better part of our peace of mind that evening.

And today I woke up, with the crap receding quickly. I can walk more or less normally again. Tomorrow we may even go to the gym!...

It being Christmas, the next illness can't be far away, though.

It's Eva, not Ava!

If I hear ONE more person tell me their child, grandchild, niece or whatever's name is Ava I just might have a conniption! Good Lord, I mean just how many unoriginal people are there in this world?!

Every time someone asks what my little girl's name is I brace myself for the, "ooooh funny, my ______ name is Ava, that's a pretty popular name right now huh?!" I struggle to contort my grimace into a smile, and explain following the trend was far from our intent in choosing the name Eva for our daughter.

If any of you don't know why Michael and I chose that name let me fill you in. While living in Boston 12 years ago, Michael was first enchanted by the angelic voice of Eva Marie Cassidy singing, "Married Girl Blues" on the local folk radio station. Although the rough lyrics of this particular tune didn't set well with him on the first listen, Eva's voice struck a chord in him unlike any other vocalist. Over the years Mike built up a collection of her brilliant interpretations and was quick to share them with me not long after we met!

In her sort career Eva never recorded any of her original songs, but rather tackled

 the challenge of taking already popular songs and making them her own. She brought a certain passion, depth, and beauty to these often over played songs that made you feel as if they had been her own creations all along and the others were the copy cats, that could never compare to her version. She truly FELT the music and the lyrics and in doing so provided a much more personal insight to her listeners!

My personal favorite of hers is Sting's, "Fields of Gold". I'll never forget the first time I heard Sting's version, it was played at my brother Scott's wedding for the bride and groom's first dance as a couple. I was only 9 at best and the lyrics of this tune already brought to tears to my eyes. I always dreamed that this would also be the song played at my wedding, but at the same time did not want the SAME song as my brother. I wanted, as in everything I do, to be unique, original ... Now in hearing Miss Cassidy's rendition, not only did the tears begin to flow as they had so many years before, but my heart melted and images of a life with Michael began forming in my mind as Eva's tender voice drew out the sweet notes even more softly than a mother kisses her child. Suddenly this song was no longer just a love song, it was OUR song. Our story of love and companionship woven together by the delicate, power of a single woman's voice.

In discovering that I was pregnant Michael and I quickly started discussing names for the child to be. We settled within minutes on a boys name, but continued to throw ideas around for a girls name for the next day or so ... nothing seem to be quite right. Then it hit me, why not Eva?! It just made perfect sense, that we name our daughter after the singer that we both adore! The middle names then were easy ... we wanted family names, and it just so happened both our mother's middle names were Jean. And in honor of Michael's mother Laurie, we added that in to make the forth name ... also important since we both have four names and neither of us had ever met anyone else with such!

Result ... Eva Jean Laurie Sutherland! Flowing, beautiful, and unique ... or so we thought. Then comes along all these baby girl Ava's and everyone we meet thinks we've named our daughter Eva to tag along with the trend. *BARF!* No waaay would I ever intentionally follow a tend. Having something in common with 90% of people you meet is boring ... and the things you have "in common" are so common then they become not so exciting to find that someone else has the same. 

So even though Mike still has to calm me down after every time we meet someone with an Ava, I've decided NOT to go to the court house and change her name, but encourage our daughter to also find ways to be unique, and that if anyone ever mistakes her name, to proudly correct them with the knowledge that she was named after an extraordinary woman, unlike all the rest!

To find out more on Eva Cassidy visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Cassidy

http://www.evacassidy.com/main.htm

Disgust

This post will be about one thing: my ambivalent but mostly negative reaction to the film based on the favorite book of my childhood: Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox. After all these years, with screen adaptations of various quality from various books coming out, one of the best children's fantasy stories ever penned made it to theaters.

(Pardon me if this sounds like a review column...in some ways it is, but it'll be getting down to some pretty basic principles of mine too.)

The reviews I saw over the past several weeks made me even more enthusiastic about it: universal raves for the quality of the animation (with more than a few up-yours-Pixar! thrusts, which struck me as odd), the quality of the voicing (particularly George Clooney as Mr. Fox), and the clever adaptation of the plot.

I'll say that the first two counts are right as rain. The animation--stop-motion dolls, and even the individual strands of fur are manipulated expressively--is impeccably good. One of the tenets of animation is that everything is slightly ridiculous. There can be beauty and majesty in a scene, but there needs to be corresponding awkwardness and sloppiness and missing detail--deliberately.

Any Calvin & Hobbes fans will be with me on this, though you might not realize it. Go through one of Watterson's old books, and find one of those really impressive tableaus he was so well known for, like a Jurassic jungle, or a desert landscape, or simply some trees. The landscape is gorgeous, drawn and colored with precision. But then look carefully at Calvin and his tiger within the scene: the colors cross the lines, Hobbes' stripes don't stay within the boundaries of his own body, and Calvin has three fingers on each hand. Even within the characters, the mouth and eyes are drawn with superb expressiveness, sometimes in huge contrast with the sloppiness of the clothes, hands or tail. Obviously it's not because Watterson can't draw well enough, that the characters are so sloppy. It's to keep them as cartoons, intentionally silly and unrealistic. Too much accurate detail in his comic protagonists would diminish their comic value.

So in Fantastic Mr. Fox, when Mrs. Fox comes walking in an abnormally fast, strangely upright, and pretty unnatural posture across the hills to her husband in the opening scene, it helps establish the unreality of it all, and confirms that these are really cartoons we're looking at, and are supposed to be strange and funny. And every scene thereafter, where the animation looks blocky and awkward, confirms and deepens the comic cartoonish unreality. On top of that, the level of detail is captivating, where even the air swishing Kristofferson's fur as he dives from the tree branch into the water, is funny and unreal. I was amazed at how many facial close-ups there were of various characters, but especially the Foxes. And they worked. Especially the foxes--whose fur appeared wind-tossed, and expressively so, even inside small closed caverns--were both touching and funny. I can't praise the animation highly enough. Every different animation style, whether styles of drawing, or computer animation, or models, like these--represents, you might say, a different theory on how to portray figures and the world.

Going a bit farther afield here, but in the (now old, I guess) Cartoon Network show Ed, Edd & Eddie (which annoyed me but I still watched occasionally), every single line, every object including the sun, the ground and the houses, seemed to have nervous, shifting, jittery outlines which were never entirely steady. And these jiggling outlines fit the nervous, indecisive, hesitant nature of the comic trio at the heart of the show. There are tons more examples, but that's as far as I need to take that tangent. But when the animation suits the characters and the story, then so much more artful is it. (And that's one legitimate criticism of computer animation: it's often so precise, and motions are so discrete and perfectly defined, that much warmth and comic value is irretrievably lost...but I'm still digressing.)

And I'll add a bit more praise for the animation: some of the sequences are captivating and just plain hilarious, especially along with the music. The face-on shot of Fox and Hedgehog setting out on their first burglary of the Master Plan is as perfect as animation can get. And the side-on shot of all the animals digging as they escape the steam shovels and then tunnel to food are just as good--unreal, but just cartoonishly real enough to be funny. (I mean, does the dirt just disappear when they set paw to it? No...though you might think that in this film. But that little suspension-of-disbelief works.)

Next up for Mr. Fox, the voicing. I'm not really a big Clooney fan: no lingering jealousy issues here, no sour-grapes-I'm-salt-n-pepper-too fear of my own mortality, no snarky he-can't-act nonsense. I just haven't been a huge fan of his stuff. I avoided ER with as wide a berth as possible--55 minutes of doctors screwing in closets, and 3 minutes of preposterous untrue medicine crammed in at the end--and he's seemed sort of like a male Sandra Bullock. (Even Brother Where Art Thou struck me as pretty flaky.) If Brad Pitt has been a tabloid hound for over a decade, at least he has real charisma and range--though I think he's better at comedy than drama. But Clooney's voice for this film is dripping gold. It's marvelous. He strikes a perfect blend of conversational tone and high tension for pretty much the entire film. Clooney's voice and the animation are reasons enough to watch.

Dahl's underlying story is excellent too--of course, you know very well by now that I think that.

But what those producers did to the story makes my stomach turn--and the more I think about it, the more my stomach turns. Somehow they drained the original story of its entire intent, of all its warmth and joy. Sure, ostensibly it's still there, with the animals celebrating a seemingly inexhaustible food supply along with their unassailable underground position, at the end of the story: but the food supply is a megastore-type supermarket, and their home is the sewer.

I understand stories need to be updated. Fantastic Mr. Fox was published in 1970 (the year I was born, yeah!), so in order to bring this one into the world of 21st-century kids, things like cell phones and TV and omnipresent media can be brought in. I don't object to that. And short children's books, in order to be made into feature-length movies, need major plot additions, just to make then long and complex enough to be worth an hour or more. I understand that too. But so many of the movie's warmest, most intimate moments come when things are folksiest, that when things veer completely away from that, the movie loses much of its dramatic muscle, and bleeds away. At the beginning, scenes are introduced with silent chapter-head style lettering, such as "GRAND PLAN PART A", and, of course, later on, "THE SHOOTING". Since most adults will, like me, know the book almost by heart, these are quaint and reassuring devices. But after the dynamite blast (the first major departure from the book), no more. The second half of the movie is decidedly gray, dreary, and industrial in look and tone.

Where such a significant portion of the plot--really, the character crisis for Mr. Fox--centers on the animals' characters as wild animals, following their instincts like we humans follow ours, then what to make of the end? The animals aren't living in holes of their own digging, in the woods. The animals are in an urban setting, shopping at a supermarket. And that's an improvement over the beginning of the movie, how exactly? By following their wild instincts, the animals become sewer pests? We're supposed to admire Mr. Fox for bringing this about?

As for their big escape plan...so the badgers are demolition experts. Okay...I guess I can accept that. Seems they have enough TNT to blow up most of a city block. Why not...use it to blow out one of the sewer walls and just get away some other route? Why go public in such a destructive manner, setting an entire city block aflame? (And this is too big a circumstance, unlike the unreal digging, to let go of. Dahl was a writer, a really good writer, and good writers know that a plot has to withstand some pretty severe logical questioning, so that said plot doesn't have holes as big as a sewer main running through it. I'm pretty sure he wouldn't've signed off on the idiotically violent urban-escape plot. Wild forest animals. Tend to do things on the sly. Massed frontal assault isn't really their style, as Foxy himself attests. So why base the plot on it?

Then the farmers. They're appropriately mean and comical, much of the time--until the movie reaches the end of the book. See, the book's plot is followed more or less faithfully, but there's an extra wrinkle: after the foxes and badgers and moles dig their beautiful holes and raid the farmers' warehouses from below...the animals take absolutely everything. Not enough to survive, not enough to be comfortable...they utterly clean the farmers out. So of course, there must be a reprisal, as becomes quickly evident, because the movie's tone becomes even darker, more vicious, and more baleful.

Bean, the cider maker who's the cleverest of the three, throws an ugly tantrum and trashes their trailer headquarters--nothing remotely funny about the scene. Just moments before that, in one of the most gratuitously cruel and inane moments of the film, Bean has cursed out one of his employees. They're on stakeout duty, trying to starve out the foxes, and it has just become clear that the foxes outsmarted them. Pete, the worker, is playing a banjo along with a pick-up band of other employees around a fire, and they're rattling out some fine backwoods-style folksy music, with Pete himself jibber-jabbering nonsense lyrics, like "Bee-bop-a-dohh-a-mee-lee-loo..." Bean stalks over, asks what he's singing, and when Pete answers, "Nothing...I'm just making it up as I go along, I guess," Bean hits him hard and yells, "Thats a bad song! You wrote a bad song, Pete!" and marches off. And Pete just sits there stunned, doesn't resume playing, but the whole scene is still for several seconds before we move to some other action.

Now...what is the point of that? We already knew Bean is mean. That music was one of the most fun parts of the film, echoes of the folksy stuff at the beginning...it's as if the producers wanted to intentionally kill the folksy aspect of the story, and signal in a very graphic way that the plot was assuming a new, crueler, emptier character.

Mrs. Fox gets in on the action. The farmers' response to the animals' underground city is to flood it with cider--a plot development not unworthy of Dahl. The animals are washed into the sewer, and then trapped there when Bean covers up every manhole with a vehicle. The animals, first trapped, then saved, now trapped even more miserably, turn on Mr. Fox a second time. And so does his wife.

They have another quiet conversation in a side chamber, away from the others, where Fox does a bit of psychoanalysis on himself (another 21st-century update: characters dejectedly deconstructing themselves and others) and admits that he's craved adulation--wanted to be known as Fantastic--his whole life. And it seems that's enough for reconciliation. He and Mrs. Fox approach each other. "I love you," he says.

"I love you too," she says, "but I shouldn't've married you."

What?

I mean, seriously...what? What on earth was that about?

That moment passes even Bean's tirade at the musician and subsequent savaging of his office, for sheer viciousness. It's hard to imagine anything crueler she could possibly have told her husband. It's almost unforgivably cruel.

Why this cruelty and meanness? It becomes the overriding theme of the film. Forget supposed wild instincts and individual skills each of the species possesses. This film is about individuals hurting one another. The animals aren't out to survive. They decide to insult and humiliate their opponents. That's a more human than animal instinct, and it's the opposite of Dahl's story.

The destruction of Dahl's book, the replacement of a kind and loving spirit with its opposite, was intnentional. There are too many horrible things in this film to overlook. Even the apparently innocent use of the word "cuss", which never feels graceful or adequate...it starts out as a "you cussin' me!?" kind of challenge, but quickly becomes a thin-as-paper veil for an F-bomb. I just don't care that kids are growing up much more quickly now than they did decades ago--that kids under 10 are subjected to highly sexualized imagery (ubiquitous in advertising). Do kids in a film really need to hear that things are becoming a "cluster-cuss"? That's not even funny. Fox says it to his wife as they lie in their underground chamber, having escaped the dynamite but before they've cleaned out the farmers.

Oh, and the farmers again. Or, rather, their farms: less like farms and more like concentration camps, with high masonry walls, razor wire, searchlights, moats, patrol vehicles and elaborate security systems. Bean even carries a Glock. You might almost expect to see a gas chamber somewhere.

Again--what does this add to a children's movie? Do the producers think they're talking so effectively over the kids' heads to the adults, that they can sacrifice almost everything childish about the movie except for the animation?

Let's talk about some cruelty again--this time, on Fox's part toward his own child, Ash. One of the new movie wrinkles was that the Foxes have only one pup, and the other pup arrives as a loaner from Fox's brother, who's very sick. So there's Ash, Fox's son, and the other, highly accomplished and athletic youngster, Kristofferson. Fox has already somewhat marginalized Ash within his three-fox family for being runty and uncoordinated--unlike his dashing and splendidly talented self--but the graceful and stylish Kristofferson completes the job quickly.

That wrinkle, by itself, I'm not upset at. But there are some chilling aspects to it. First, even though Kate didn't hear it, and it doesn't show up in the movie's summaries, I could've sworn I heard Fox call his son "Ashley" at least once--and Ashley is a name that can be used more easily for a girl than a boy. If you look carefully at Ash's eyes, they're ringed with black, like thick, Amy Winehouse-type eyeliner, making Ash look even more feminine. And in the final scene--that odious dance in the supermarket--Ash has been drinking punch from a straw, and has what can only be described as pink lipstick. The lips look like a woman's full set, with the double bulge and middle seam on top, and the single bulge on the bottom: they're female lips.

Again, the same question: what is the point of an adult theme like this in a children's movie? Why emphasize Ash's inadequacy issues by making him androgynous, or even feminine? It's not that I fear it: I don't intend to shield Eva from things like that, though it doesn't mean I'll be shoving gay, lesbian and transgendered living in front of her every day. That's not my life, so I don't feel the need. But what she sees for herself, when she asks, I'll give honest answers about what people do, and I won't hide from it. But, this film...what is the objective? Simply to blur gender roles in a way that kids couldn't miss, at least on some level? And since the androgynous signs were things that the little fox had no control over (his native fur coloring) or likely awareness of (every kid stains his face with punch)...the message seems to be that Ash is more feminine than masculine, without his even knowing it. Now that qualifies as subversion.

I'm not trying to play Chicken Little here. After all, it's just a movie, and what comes between breaks in most children's shows can be far worse, in aggregate. So what if all these touches of heartlessness, viciousness and cruelty, not to mention transgendering a young boy, are merely jokes on the part of the producers, something we're meant to see as dark humor? I say this: humor contains empathy. Between the warriors in Kill Bill, there is some acknowledgement of each other's worth. And even when Beatrix kills Bill at the end, the second-to-last shot is of her curled up in her hotel bathroom, laughing and crying by turns, whispering "Thank you...thank you...thank you..."

Whom, do you think, she is thanking? And why?

That is why great films are so great: things come full circle, find a resolution. There is some connection possible to every character. Everyone has some loveable trait or foible. Even in Dahl's book, the farmers are just bumbling enough that you kind of smile at their idiotic vindictiveness. But Bean in the film runs an army by walkie-talkie, struts around like an icy general, and is without a sympathetic quality.

Like the rat. Ohhh, I almost forgot about the rat. He's voiced by Willem Dafoe, one of my favorite actors (along with Benicio Del Toro). In the book, the rat is a mean-spirited but oafish drunk, who tries to stop Fox but has no real chance of doing so.

In the movie...he's kind of terrifying. He's as big as Fox, wiry, black, and Dafoe uses a voice that has perhaps a southern twinge, but to me vaugely suggests something hispanic. The rat moves around with a sidelong, Vinnie-and-the-Jets swagger, sports a switchblade, and is even more evil than Bean. He goes so far as to suggest that Mrs. Fox slept around, and was the forest skank, before meeting Mr. Fox.

Again, more resoundingly than ever...why in a children's film?

Besides, that's a pernicious little element, aside from sexualizing her and putting in an entire subtext that just doesn't belong in the film--the rat is coming on to her later on as she tries to defend her child from him, and she comes off looking like some two-bit dominatrix--Mrs. Fox' supposed former nature.

See, the whole film's premise is how Mr. Fox can't deny his former, real nature, as a wild animal who steals and kills things to live. So, in that light...what to make of the insinuations that Mrs. Fox got around in days past? Is that something she, likewise, can't be expected to control?

So awkward and marginally athletic boys are secretly effeminate, and women are nothing more than their libidos. That's the subtext I pick up from this "joke", if it's really supposed to be that.

And what kind of resolution is there for our heros, for Mr. Fox and his family? After his wife directly, in the meanest way possible, rejects him, she sheepishly raises her hand and says she'll go along with his plan to escape the sewer. That's their reconciliation. And Ash saves the day by dashing through machine-gun fire to release a rabid dog on the farmers and their gangs. Fox admits his son has some talent after all, and rewards him with a bona-fide black bandit's mask. And that's all Ash gets for reconciliation too.

Not so much as a hug, or a kiss, or any real warmth at all.

Wrap it all up with a line dance in a supermarket aisle and you've got Fantastic Mr. Fox, the movie. I'm glad I saw it, but there's not much chance I'll be watching it again. And I think I want to re-read the book to drive the film from my mind.

Like last night...I forced Kate to watch the end of Con Air (we had no idea what was happening), just so I could cleanse my mind, so to speak, like having cheese after a particularly bad wine. At least a ridiculously bad movie, strictly on its own merits, is better than one that perverts, shreds and torches one of my favorite books.

Lectra-Shave for the Soul

Normally, in these posts I'm accounting for some span of time, either in a coherent story like about Kate giving birth to Eva (which beats even getting married as the best moment of my year...sorry, bengal), or in the last post, with unrelated observations and reflections about where I am, without reference to time. I love telling a good story, and those need beginnings, middles and ends (no matter what is untold before or after). And I also like setting down small impressions too, things big or small which color my thoughts at any given moment during a day, or at several moments across a longer time. Since Alaska is still pretty new to me--I have a few habits now, so I've become very familiar with the road to Wasilla, the gym and the bookstore there, but outside of the general darkness and cold every Alaskan deals with--though it gets colder and a little darker as you go north, obviously--I've seen only a tiny bit of this huge state. But right now, that doesn't really concern me at all.

Kate's and my current circumstances are demanding enough that I'm not at liberty to be a tourist, and hit Anchorage once or twice a week, or browse bookstores or map stores and come away with a bag full of goodies to spend several hours with. We're in a fight for our financial survival. My sister Julie has expressed dismay at how much detail I put in my posts, especially about our economic situation. But I've always thought of myself as a performer and a storyteller, and I'm unashamed of my own story. I won't tell a thing if someone else was involved who might be embarrassed--I try to be very careful about that--but my life is my story, which is now bound up with Kate's and Eva's.

Kate and I talk about our situation every day, and about the decisions we need to make in order to maintain ourselves and our daughter. Little oblivious Eva is a special blessing at times like these. Her needs are simple, and she understands nothing else. Eva's already soaking in from Kate what it means to be alive and feel love: her dawning awareness is feeling and observing her mother's every act and gesture. But she's just a baby, doesn't know there's anything beyond her, and for Kate or me to look at her, is to make us briefly forget everything else and just enjoy her. I don't pretend that even infancy is some uniformly blissful state. She cries and shows plenty of looks of dismay and consternation on her face--even if it's just from the labor of filling her diaper again--that it's plain to see even being a baby is hard enough. But she's small, delicate, helpless and endearing, and that's more than enough to wipe away the challenges her mother and I are facing.

It's possible I shouldn't've bought a home while still in graduate school, and now that somewhat impetuous decision is coming back at me in a vicious way. Declaring bankruptcy has been an occasional topic as we've tried to navigate these partially-employed straits. Perhaps Chapter 13, a managed bankruptcy where we could perhaps keep our home, would be possible. At this point, it's become more likely. It would mean admitting that my word has gone bad in several different circumstances. But if that's to be a certainty regardless, then we might as well pursue a plan to save what we can.

Besides, down the road, even having to admit to future creditors that we went through bankruptcy might help cultivate in me that cheerful kind of directness that can be so persuasive, admitting a failure while stating my accomplishments. An echo from Kipling's lines,

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same,

stirs in me at the thought. Much like my impression of Bob Ballard, having worked with him for a few years at school. He once spoke almost exactly that thought, and it's the cheerful approach he takes to any meeting or expedition: maybe something wonderful will happen, maybe some ridiculous misfortune will happen, maybe nothing will happen. But here I go, along with anyone who's coming with me. Life is the series of adventures you set for yourself.

So we're coming to terms with some very humiliating and enraging things. I for one, after we talked one night about abandoning the condo, felt a hole in the bottom of my stomach for several days that kept me from feeling very good at all. It coincided with another bad allergic reaction and day-long bout of fatigue I had at the end of my Homer job--my last post came a few hours before I got sick--and was with me the rest of the week. I missed Kate and little Eva, having only a photo of her in her righty layup pose (righty! jeez, girl, we're all lefties in this family, get with it), more intensely than ever. I felt less fellowship than ever with my housemates, decent folks but generally younger than I am, unmarried and of course childless, and without the financial concerns. And I could see that even a local gym membership might be more than our budget can justify right now, to say nothing of nights out. So...I felt on a bit of an island.

(Now, to wrap up an earlier point I introduced...why write about things so embarrassing, so close to the bone? Because I want to. Because I want this blog to be read by friends, family, anyone interested who comes across it, and sees a genuine account of a man and a woman coping with life, each other, raising a family, setting our hopes and working toward them. If my daughter Eva, and any children we might have later, should read this blog in later years, I want it to show her an accurate picture of what her parents' lives were genuinely like when she was young, or not even born yet. Good stories include the difficulties and defeats, so I won't be sparing them here. In later years, I'll want to read how I coped with these things too. Anyhow, back to my other point.)

Slowly coming to terms with the possibility of bankruptcy has calmed my nerves quite a bit. Seeing Alaska grow somewhat snowy, and decidedly chillier, has me thinking just enough of Christmas--at least we already have the tree and decorations, so that won't cost us any extra this year!--and Kate herself getting through a recent difficult family stretch has me feeling, now, better about things.

Most readers of this blog need not be told the news, but I will say it: Duggin died last Sunday. Kate, of course, came to Rhode Island because of her, and we wouldn't have met otherwise. I wasn't at the funeral, but heard about how the family was in the days leading up to her passing, and then after. It was no surprise, much like my own mother's, but made no less of an impact in her daughters' and grandkids' lives. She died as day was breaking, on All Saints' Day, her favorite of the entire year, Kate told me. The stress and anticipation had been rubbing away on everyone's nerves, including Kate's normally imperturbably cheerful mother. (When Kate's mother is stressed out, I know things are rough.)

Kate had been grieving for quite some time now, as her mother and aunts had too, but Kate especially, having lived there until March and done more than anyone in the last year for her grandmother. She felt an especially close bond to this woman whom she loved deeply, and whom she admired for her imperturbable strength (yes, imperturbability seems to run in the family--and I suspect somday Kate will draw similar admiration). But at times like this, Kate's extreme impatience is an amazing restorative. She doesn't like to dwell on things. She doesn't loiter in one emotional place for long. The grief and despondence she felt earlier yielded to the Kate I've known since I met, easy with a smile and able to enjoy the things around her.

Grief is a lifelong condition, of course, but its strength and immediacy diminish with time. And you can grieve before the person is actually dead, missing perhaps the strength of a relationship you shared earlier. This softens but doesn't take away the force of someone dying. So I think part of my better feelings now come from knowing that Kate and Eva are with her mother and her husband Dave...even though Dave insists on watching Fox News with Eva on his chest, and making her listen to it. Because Katie and her mother can help each other, and they can both take solace in Eva. It's a comfort I can't quite describe, knowing that Dave and ma (I call her ma too) have opened their home to Kate while I'm gone...hell, they've even invited her to bring Jasper up too! (And I'd say, absolutely, just remember that if you bring him loose in the car the way he likes to travel, leave him a little litter box somewhere. He'll be sure to use it. He'll likely spend half the trip curled up in your lap...) But I take immense relief from knowing that she's surrounded by family, and they all enjoy each other. There's no better way for her to pass the time while we're apart, in my mind.

So for a number of reasons, I'm feeling much better than I was on Wednesday (when I slept for six hours in a pickup truck riding from Homer to Palmer). And last night MTV showed Kill Bill. Now, it was MTV. So they'd sanitized some parts of the movie almost beyond recognition (her escape from the hospital, for example...and they renamed the truck...Party Wagon?!!? "I'm Buck, and I'm here to...party.") And there were commercials. Ridiculous commercials. Endless commercials, nearly as bad as on AMC (where it took me 3 and a half hours to watch Tora! Tora! Tora! one night in Lafayette. It was worth it, but still...a slightly-over-2-hour movie, stretched to nearly three and a half. Geez). And of course, if I needed reminding that MTV is marketed toward girls between the ages of 12 and 16. Or thereabouts. I don't know how many times I watched that dumb commercial for liquid face soap with "freshness bursts", or whatever the hell they're called. And doesn't everyone want to get paid in layered flavor bubble gum? But not even those commercial breaks could entirely defeat the dramatic movement of one of my very favorite films...if I had to list my top five, they'd be, in no particular order, Citizen Kane, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Kill Bill Vols 1 & 2, and...I'll have to get back to you on the fifth. Blues Brothers is an honorable mention, Elephant (a grotesque but compelling indie film about a Columbine-like incident...well worth watching)...Friends In Good Company, another indie flick about a bunch of old women, would be amongst the contenders. But those are the top four, certainly.

So I forced the house to watch Kill Bill with me, when I realized that the movie had just begun. Nobody else had ever seen it, and nobody even seemed to like Tarantino flicks. Eh, their loss. If you can't deal with graphic violence raised to the level of farce, filled with the foibles of both assailants and victims, scored with a thrilling, far-reaching soundtrack and shot with impeccable artistry, then, your sense of humor needs some improvement, in my opinion. Reservoir Dogs is probably the most brutal of all his films (though I've yet to see Inglourious Basterds), and Kill Bill 1/2 are far sleeker, with Pulp Fiction somewhere in between (though probably closer to Reservoir Dogs).

I drove my housemates away. All except Jason, whom I'd told this was one of the best films ever made. He later went to bed unimpressed, and I think upset with himself that he'd paid attention to me and watched it at all. As I implied earlier...I don't think these people know how to laugh. And none of that mattered anyway. I was having a soul moment.

Kate silently ridicules me for having private grudges against men my age who've been fabulously successful, especially actors. For a long time I've had trouble watching the Olympics, because I'd be consumed with self-loathing that I'd never become an Olympic athlete myself. But specifically, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ben Affleck, and Matt Damon, have always been difficult for me to watch. (Though I'm warming to Damon. I do like those Bourne flicks. And Catch Me If You Can was very clever...I enjoyed the relationship of fugitive and law agent.) I sat, drunk, in a Philadelphia bar in 1998 and watched Damon and Affleck stammer and struggle through their Academy Award acceptance speech for Best Picture for Good Will Hunting, and draw a heartwarming round of applause from the crowd when Affleck bellowed out at the cameraman signaling to them: "Buddy, there is NO WAY we're finishing in one minute."

You couldn't watch that and not feel like you shared just a little bit of their triumph.

And then I reminded myself that I was drunk, alone at a bar, with nothing particular going on in my life. And so the grudge began.

But Tarantino's a little older than I am, enough so that I don't quite feel his age-mate rival. And, more importantly, I didn't really discover him until I was already underway with my own progress toward (yeah, right) looking for shipwrecks in the Mediterranean and Red Sea. (Yes, that's why I'm in Alaska...at least, it's a small part of the explanation.) So I don't feel nearly so threatened by his success. And that's good, because unlike Affleck, Tarantino puts out really good films.

Ridiculously violent films, yes. Violent to the point of obscenity, perhaps. Involving characters none of us would ever, under any circumstances unless we had something hideous to avenge, and maybe not even then, want in our lives. I concede that. But really, really, REALLY good films.

And my favorites are Bill 1 & 2. They're different films, composed as a unit but stylistically separate. As usual Tarantino includes many homages to various cinematic and television styles and themes, by means of scriptwriting, shooting, backlighting, music, and blocking. It's like James Joyce leading his readers through a history of English writing style within a single book, varying his diction systematically as he goes. Tarantino varies his cinematic style as the movie goes. I find the Bride's fight against the Crazy 88 simply spellbinding. Campy and nakedly choreographed at moments, but always self-consciously so; swift and powerful at others. It's a tour de force.

The end credits state that the character of the Blood-Spattered Bride was created by Q&U. Of course that's got to be Quentin (Tarantino) and Uma (Thurman). It leads me to wonder about the genesis of this film...perhaps over martinis at a Hollywood party, as the two shared some of the sillier ideas for characters they'd like to place or act in a film...and after just few minutes, realized they were really on to something, and began working on it. Kate is very impressed, as I am, at how completely Uma fills out that role, in both films. I wholly agree. And I think, vaguely like in Friends In Good Company, it's because, that character, at least her dominant traits, are Uma's. The circumstances are far more extreme, of course (after all, Uma went to college here in the States just like most of us did), but Uma really built that character around things she saw in herself. And Quentin helped build the film around the character...at least, that's how I imagine it. I've heard bits of interviews where Quentin describes the input David Carradine had into the character of Bill, adding the pan pipe, for example, a brilliant touch. With that simple instrument Bill becomes even more mythical, and takes on a shamanistic aura he otherwise wouldn't've had.

And Uma, when she wakes up from her coma, feels her belly and realizes the child is gone, and then cries crazily for several minutes, the green lighting, deep shadows and her moans make her more deathlike than anyone else in the film. (And true to her character as Black Mamba, she quickly realizes where she is, intuits her vulnerability, and acts out a plan. A grisly and effective plan--this is Tarantino, after all.)

I'm not trying to summarize the film here. My point is, Kate and I both are fascinated by the whimiscal horror of it, the style, the drama that the characters sustain even throughout such comic-book circumstances. A very real drama of betrayal, vengeance and retribution plays itself out between Bill and Beatrix Kiddo, eventually involving their daughter BB, and is never lost throughout the campiness and virtual fantasy of the rest of the film. And it fascinates and enchants both my bride and me. (And yes, we're going to do that Kill Bill dance someday...maybe using wooden samurai swords, what do you think, babe? You might have to go a bit blonde to complete the image...guess I'll have to grow my hair a little longer, and put in more of a dash of gray, to pull off Carradine...)

I needed it, frankly. I needed a dose of stylish, well-executed fantasy to bring me out of my brief depression and give me something to be happy about. And later, as I continued to think about the film, to look on Tarantino not as any kind of rival, but as an inspiration...there's no reason I shouldn't be doing work as well-composed and memorable as his. (I'm a geologist and an historian, and he's a filmmaker, but still.) Basically, enjoying that film was my sign to get off my duff.

Thanks, Q&U. I needed that.

Frozen Alaska

I may not be with my wife or daughter, and I may not be earning enough to support us right now, but hey! I can still blog, so let's get to it.

I didn't bring my camera this time around, because I thought it would be too snowy and dark to be useful, and besides, I took like 1500 photos this summer. How many photos of the Chugach and Talkeetna can a guy take?

Well, I forgot about the snow, and the increasing presence of the moon as night itself lengthens, and about the long orange dawns and purple evenings in this slightly moist air. Suffice it to say, I've seen enough full-moon-rising-over-the-snowy-mountains-made-pink-by-sunset scenes to recognize my failure. Alas...of course, the moon and the mountains aren't going anywhere soon, so it's just a matter of whether I'm on had at some later point with a camera to show an image or to the rest of you. But suffice it to say, even in the mid-to-low 30s, or cooler, Alaska's beauty is undiminished.

The survey season in Alaska is, for all intents and purposes, over. As I write this, I'm in an 85-foot boat, the Dream Catcher, steaming back southwest through the Inlet coming from an ADCP (acoustic doppler current profiler) survey near Nikiski, for another tidal energy project--this one potentially to power one of the oil platforms. We dashed out between spates of bad weather, surveyed as long as we could, and are now heading back to dock, as the winds rise and hopefully before they reach gale force. But little jobs like this are very much the exception, and will soon cease altogether in the inlet, as ice will become a much bigger problem than it is now (and the Nikiski area can be entirely iced over during an especially cold winter).

So far, the weather in Palmer and elsewhere has surprised me for its mildness. I'm hearing that, like the summer, this winter onset season has been very warm. Many days it was over 40 when we in the TerraSond house would go to work at 8 AM. Only on three or perhaps four days was there any frost. My insulated bomber jacket and sometimes a wool cap are all I've needed to stay comfortable.

And the shortness of the days is pretty amazing to me. I haven't found myself thirsting for sunlight--though, of course, daylight will keep shrinking until late December, down to about 3 hours--so much as enjoying the dark mornings, and the closeness and solitude they bring to starting the day. (It's also a nice feeling, getting up even at 7:30 and still having the impression that I'm up extremely early and being highly productive.) Darkness is like a soft snowfall or a steady rain outside, a kind of comforter wrapped around the building and covering the windows, cutting off me and the others inside from everything beyond our view. And I love that feeling.

A few weekend mornings, when I go to the gym at 8 instead of to work, when I head to the coffee shop at 9:30 or so, the sun's just starting to rise over the Chugach to the southeast, and the stillness is like pre-dawn of a Sunday morning in the country. I'm awed by the stillness. It brings stillness to me, and at times like now, that's a great thing.

But a few things have really surprised me. First, the dust. I'd heard that Palmer especially, in a flat river valley between the Chugach mountains to the southeast and the the Talkeetna to the north, is subject to very high winds through the pass, coming from the Alaskan interior to the northeast. One day last week, before motoring down to Homer, I was treated to my first glimpse of Palmer in winter's grip. It was below freezing, and the wind was strong enough to push me as I walked. I went to the post office and the sky looked slightly brown, and smelled dry, almost as if something were burning. I turned around to the south and saw this slight orange-brown haze, everywhere. Smoke, I wondered, or dust?

It's dust. I've studied glaciers, and I know that they generate, among other things, a fine powder called rock flour, by abrading bedrock as they travel. Alaska has many glaciers, and has had many more in colder times past, and when the wind grows intense, it picks the dust up and blows it around. When the dust hits the the ground again we call it loess, and in some parts of the state it's 60m thick (it's almost that thick in parts of New England too, though we don't have glaciers any more--the loess is several thousand years old). I'd never seen this aspect of a glacial, or periglacial (to be picky) environment before.

It's like I was in Egypt! The brown dust rises above the height of the mountains, fills the entire valley, and hangs in the air for days. It colors the sun ever so slightly, and you can practically feel it on your eyeballs and face. I've always wanted to go to Egypt, and I hope to work there someday, but for now, this is a decent pre-taste of what it's like with billions of tiny pieces of sediment in the air.

We're heading back to Homer now, a small fishing city on the southwestern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, which is southwest of Anchorage and one of Alaska's most popular hunting and fishing areas. As we drove down Route 1 toward the city, the area's similarity to rural populated Maine was overpowering. A narrow paved road curved through the hills and valleys. Spruce, often showing the effects of high wind, surrounded us, and we passed the occasional town center but more often, isolated homes, usually looking somewhat ramshackle. One or two newer vehicles might be in the driveway, three or four more dead ones might be scattered around the yard, and nearly every house sported a satellite dish.

Homer itself lies at the base of a gigantic bluff, built by hundreds of thousands of years of glacial activity, at the mouth of Kachemak Bay. Most of the city is on the bluff or at its base, but the marina and restaurants are at the end of a 4-mile-long spit of gravel, sand and mud, which sticks straight out from the coastline into the middle of the Bay. I haven't been able to find any specific writing about it, but that spit just has to be a glacial deposit, whether a lateral or and end moraine, or possibly something else.

But the bay location of Homer itself is stupendous. Pacific ocean to the west, into which the sun sinks at night. Kenai Mountains, now mostly covered with snow, to the south, glowing either white, or pale blue, or pink in the dawn and sunset. Massive bluff, mostly sand and gravel, to the north, dotted with houses and buildings all the way up to its top, many hundreds of feet above the water. The flat water and bordering lowlands, hemmed in by such steep verticals to north and south, is not the kind of place we'd find in New England, or many other places at all. The mountain ridge and bluff give the flat water and adjacent lowland a feeling of security and shelter that it wouldn't have if more exposed on a totally flat coast.

And the eagles! They're all over the place here. Bald eagle here, bald eagle there, bald eagles all over the freaking place. I joked on the drive down that eagles are Alaska's version of seagulls, but that's no joke. They kind of are. They're still beautiful and all, but when there are so many, and you see them picking along the shoreline for things to eat, well, it kind of diminishes their grandeur a bit. They're not as common as seagulls elsewhere, of course, as they're not gregarious birds, but they're also not at all the oh-honey-stop-the-car-there's-an-eagle kind of event, either. They're just around. I've heard the story about how Ben Franklin wanted the US official bird to be the turkey, because it's smart, tough and a survivor (why not the crow? They're all that, and even smarter), and disdained the bald eagle because it's a scavenger. Well, we wound up with the bald eagle, and on the temperate coast of Alaska, they might be considered borderline pests.

Alaska is a great place to be an earth scientist. Geology, biology, ocean and weather are inescapable. Their presence is powerful and immediate (anyone who's greeted a moose while walking outside at night--as I have--can attest to the biology part). I might still be heartsick, but Alaska itself can at least partly assuage the regret.

Pup & Ben, Part 5

Rewinding the clock over a year now, back to the immediate aftermath of our first date...from Wednesday, September 24, 2008, onward. (I need to tell myself the date just so I'm clear on what I'm writing about. It's been a pretty eventful 12+ months since then, and things don't show any sign of slowing down!)

So...let's see if I can recall. (Now don't get too upset, darling little bengal...I have a better memory for the peaks than for the valleys in between, so if I'm forgetting some details that meant much more to you, well...that's just the way it goes. You'll have to correct me some more...)

I have no idea what I did that Wednesday. I'm not sure if I was surveying, or went to campus, or even if I worked that night at Starbucks again. By that time I was satisfied with my Starbucks career: I'd made a little money, gotten plenty of free coffee, and most importantly, nabbed a good-looking woman who'd wandered through. Mission accomplished! Two weeks later I was gone.

But Kate was very much present.

Thursday we planned to meet for lunch. I felt the connection on our first date, and was as certain of it two days later as on the first night. But things were young, of course, so I was still really eager to impress her, and show her only the best things I could find. So my choice for lunch was this little cafe not too far away from Duggin's house, a place called Cafe Luna. Since I was first introduced to it several years ago, I thought of it as the perfect lunch cafe, and even though it was raining lightly and we wouldn't be able to eat outdoors, the food was sure to be just as good as usual.

Only...duty called Kate. Duggin was the reason she was in Rhode Island, after all. And this afternoon, Kate was a little worried about spending a long time away from her home. We met at the library (I think...I know I was at the library before we met...hmm. If our accounts won't have diverged already, they'll start now.) What I do remember is that I met Kate, and she explained why she didn't feel comfortable leaving East Greenwich, and I felt perhaps a touch of anger, but mostly disappointment and resignation. After all, I wanted to treat her to a special place...what to do in EG?

We meandered down to Main Street, and among the other tiny eateries was Ed's Roost, this small storefront with the dark sign, dark paint, and dark interior. Not particularly inviting, it would seem, but I'd been there once and hadn't been disappointed. Besides, the dark interior has the feel of a venerable old cabin, with bare wood stained dark with age. The ceiling is surprisingly high, and for the brown-to-black surroundings, the room feels surprisingly large.

So it was with a lightened heart that I sat down with her, and we kept on chatting as we got ready to order. Don't ask me to recall what we were talking about. Between bits of life story, present-day facts of life, and our peerless banter, we kept on jawing as we got our food. Every now & then I order a Reuben, and I can only recall having one bad one in my life. But usually I default to a burger. I think she got a BLT--Kate likes BLTs--but we were late, just at the end of their day, so we kind of slid in for a last-minute bit of work on the part of the chef before he closed the kitchen. So the place was quiet as we ate and kept on talking, and then on out back into the rain.

I didn't want to let her go, though, so I was casting about for excuses to spend more time with her. I asked where she was headed next, and she answered the supermarket, and invited me along. So we went, and she saw another expression of my coffee addiction: Dave's Market coffee. See, there's this small chain of supermarkets in the East Greenwich-North Kingstown area of Rhode Island, Dave's: reasonably upscale, with the usual supermarket stuff, a smattering of organics and gourmet things to go with (Katie's favorite) the hot food bar (a frequent dinner choice while I'm away, she tells me). And free coffee.

Free coffee! No better or worse than any drip you'd pay $1.99 for, and all you have to do is make a pretense of buying something. My version of the honor system for the free coffee is, of course, buy something, however trivial. As long as I've lived in North Kingstown, a little over four years now, I'd make a point of stopping every day there, just to get something to go with the free coffee. So what if I might wind up with three tubes of toothpaste at home, or two economy packs of toilet paper, or enough cat litter to last six months. The money would be put to some constructive use while I maintained my caffeine fix.

So Kate went to Dave's, and I hit the coffee, conveniently placed right in front of the entrance. (Never mind I'd just had some over lunch, too...it was free, after all!) Content and coming into my caffeine-and-sugar buzz, I strolled along behind Katie as she walked down the aisle, and my eyes slid slowly downward from her head...then I heard her voice.

"Enjoying the view?"

Um.

When a man's busted, there's really nothing for him to say. Some guys might stammer an excuse, a rare few perhaps might actually have a smooth reply, but I for one could only lamely admit guilt.

"Uh, yeah." She turned her amused eyes on mine, and probably made some remark to the effect of, "You're walking two paces behind me, and you don't think I'm perfectly aware of what you're focused on?"

Somewhat chastened (but not much), I came up alongside her and we walked on as she picked up the things she wanted and we left. I felt slightly disappointed, that even though we'd spent some good time together, it still felt cut short, and it'd just been a walk through the rain, a sandwich, and a visit to the supermarket. Big fat huge deal that.

Moderately desperate, I angled to see her Friday as well. We were planning to see each other Saturday, but I didn't want to skip another day too, especially since this afternoon had, at least compared to what I wanted, kind of tanked.

At this point, having seen her again, I was starting to feel a slightly different sort of desperation. I didn't want to let her go (sounds ridiculous since we'd just met, but be honest: the world's a little different when you're falling for someone), and I wanted her to feel the urgency I felt. So I basically begged to meet her after I got off work Friday night, and she not-so-reluctantly agreed.

Around 9 or so I got off work and she was there, so we walked across the parking lot to a little sushi place (as it turns out, a favorite cuisine of both of us), and though she'd already eaten, I prevailed on her to join me for dinner (since I was starving).

This wasn't my first exposure to hot saki--and trust me, it's much better hot--but I gave myself a royal little buzz, as she refused to drink much of anything beyond a polite toast. So I did one foolish thing, knocked the envelope into the little fish pool beside our table. Because, you might recall, I'd forgotten to give her the birthday card to go along with the rose, teddy bear and shells on our first date, her birthday. And I also had those lame little gifts I'd picked up Sunday, the cheap candleholder and whatever else it was I bought, later replaced by the bear. So I gave everything else to her Friday, like a second little birthday.

I don't think she had much sushi, but I was famished so that was fine. But after the meal, she made like she was ready to go back home, and I begged her to take at least a small walk. It was a dark, close night, mist hung in the air. She didn't need much encouragement so we strolled toward the baseball diamond nearby, and up the road that ran along the right-field side. We weren't saying much, and I decided the moment was right to tell her about my premonition on Tuesday night, when we'd both worn black.

I told her the omen, that our both choosing black meant that we'd be together as long as we lived. She didn't react with the alarm or revulsion I'd feared. Rather the opposite, she came closer and we kissed. That was when faith became knowledge, and I knew I'd found the real thing.

Life, motherhood, etc ...

Per nagging from my husband, and begging from other family members for more new posts, here I am! Believe it or not I finally have 2, count them, one, two free hands at the moment, so I'm seizing the rare opportunity to share a piece of my mind as well!

The last 5 weeks have been ... different. That's the best word that comes to mind. Bringing little Eva into the world was an intense, irreplaceable, miraculous process which I must say, Michael summarized beautifully! The only bit I might add, from my prospective, was the actual act of giving birth is humbling and empowering all at the same time! The fact that life can be created by two people coming together, and carried for months while it grows from a few simple cells into a complex human all on its own I find incredibly humbling. And when its you who physically brings that life from the inside out, an overwhelming sense of accomplishment permanently instills itself in you! Its a damn good thing that empowering effect takes place though, otherwise I think all mothers would be lost in the first few weeks of learning to deal with their infant!

Ahh, but truly, motherhood is a wonderful experience and I wouldn't trade a second of it (well ... besides the week Eva and I had thrush, that wasn't so peachy). Now that nursing is a non issue though, Eva has become my little buddy and I even look forward to when she wakes up at night and I get to see her pretty little eyes look up at me and cradle her soft head in my hand as she finds comfort and nourishment in me!

Eva has made it apparent too in the last few weeks, that she enjoys her sleep, much like her mother and we've fallen into a routine now after she nurses around 8am she gets some belly (sleep) time next to me in the big bed! After that we make our way down stairs and doodle around for a couple more hours and then get ourselves together for a stroll around the neighborhood. This past week we've also had a doctor's appointment to go to nearly everyday, but the most exciting outing to date, was meeting Rajon Rondo this afternoon! He even autographed her green baby blanket!!! It's pretty much no contest now, I have the coolest baby in all of Rhode Island! :-P

Most importantly though, Eva and I have made two new friends with mommy Lara and baby Eve who live across the courtyard! Eve is 3 months and cute as a button, having recently discovered her hands, and how to smile! Lara is a bit older than myself but we share a similar personality and seem to see eye to on on a lot of issues! The 4 of us went on our first walk together yesterday which turned into a 3 hour long visit! Now it's a bit more difficult to get out the door these days, but we're definitely making the effort to be out and about ... and succeeding most days ... even if it is just to the see the doctor and to the grocery store!

Although life without Mike is far from ideal, we're managing somehow. Life is only perfect though, when morning means coffee grinds fill my nose before I open my eyes, and guitar music ping-pangs its way up the stairs and tickles my ears ... when afternoons are filled with a comforting silence while contemplating over form of literature ... and when evenings are filled with laughter and senseless banter. His presence brings a brilliance to life that cannot be matched or substituted, and despite keeping busy, I miss him dearly every moment of the day!

And yeah sure, so I've got Greg, and Caine, and Pickles ... and soon enough, Rondo, Ray, and Pierce again ... but simply put, ain't no man compares to you Pup! ;-)

Choices

Back in Alaska now, nearing the end of my second week back. I developed a routine duing the summer, and with winter closing in, it's easy to hold to: work 8-5, roll on down to Wasilla, chat with Kate via webcam, hit the gym (getting back into swimming, and it feels goooooood), drive back to the house, have dinner, read for a few hours, and go to sleep. It's a simple routine, and with winter coming on quickly here, easy to keep. Daylight's down to slightly less than eight hours, and though dawn and dusk are lengthy and there's light enough to see by for a while on either side, the sun's not in the sky for long. Today it rose sometime around 10 AM, and set rather before 6. Despite the unseasonably hot weather--41 F this morning!--the shortening days and stiff winds, carrying clouds of dust from the mountains, give the land a stark cast. Lowering gray clouds swathed the mountaintops this morning and dusted them with snow.

Katie and Eva are still in Rhode Island, of course, and Eva is growing like we hoped she would, gaining weight and length and awareness of the people and things around her. Katie gets to see her dawning intelligence and expressiveness, though most often those still amount to burps and spit-ups. I saw one facial fit I might call a smile before I left, though it was unclear what she might be smiling at, and it was gone as quickly as it came. That's one of the many amazing things about newborns: all their muscles, including their mouth and face, are in nearly constant motion. Their legs and arms pump, they arch and twist their back, the face assumes one strange mask after another as the muscles move with apparent randomness. A look of concentrated misery might melt into a lax, open-mouthed doze. Eva might furrow her brows, and assume a look something like her mother's intense anxiety, but then her face relaxes and her tongue slips out. When the kid is yours, this kaleidoscope of motion is an endless fascination.

Newborns are really quite serious creatures. They don't joke around. They're tiny, get cold easily, they have small reserves of food, water and oxygen, and their needs are immediate. Their eyes are almost always closed for the first few weeks. An infant's means of communicating are crying and thrashing. It takes a little time to build up to it--she'll start out with a splutter and a murmur, followed by a brief cry or two, before working up to full volume. The whole process takes a minute or two, and unless she were warming some milk from the fridge, Katie would never let Eva get that far.

Katie's care of Eva has been both loving and hard work. The feeding alone is a tough learning process. Like pregnancy and birth itself, breastfeeding, for being natural, can be difficult, painful, and full of unexpected problems. A mammary gland duct might become plugged. The teat might begin to leak at surprising times (the things have Pavlovian ways). The mother and baby might pass an infection back and forth to each other, which makes the breastfeeding even more painful. The baby's latching on is often awkward and startling. And this is just what I've seen, or been told about!

But I've left that world behind for the time being, and I've come to the frozen coast (or near it, anyway). And a frightening reality has become obvious: with the reduced (i.e. no survey season overtime) hours, and my two-months-on, one-month-off pattern, Katie and I are making a little less than half of what we need to survive. We're out of backup resources and now, failing some kind of silver bullet, will need to make some very harrowing choices. Such as, do we default on a credit card and the car loan? We'll do without cable TV, but the phone is important for work, and the internet is our major means of communication...and despite all this, we're still running behind on the mortgage. Extended stretches of unemployment over the last two years have brought me, and now us, to this point.

She and I discussed it this afternoon, as I sat at the cafe. I didn't care who else might have been listening in--I'm not ashamed of our life. I'm proud of it. I don't pretend not to have difficulties when I really do. Kate and I thrashed through some of the immediate problems we face and, without making any immediate choices, prepared ourselves for a seige of sorts as we try to navigate financial trouble and at least keep our home. We discussed the possibility of bankruptcy, but the laws have been so rewritten to favor the creditors in recent years that I don't think it will help much--a few isolated defaults would be better than a permanent mark. And yes, I write this partly as a way of steeling myself for the coming decisions, and their aftermath.

It's a comfort just to be able to see her face even as we discuss things like that, which have no immediate solution. And of course there are good things in each of our days, and some banter. And toward the end of our talk, we'll exchange "I love you" once or twice, without other things to say. And though it's a comfort to say and hear it, the ice-cold, unsentimental part of me is impassive as those words whistle by like a chill breeze. They're a thin reminder of, a plea for, the rest of the relationship.

A friend of mine once told me a very interesting idea: love consists only of your actions toward another person. There is nothing else. I do think there's a lot of truth in that, but the desire, the will, the genuine pleasure in performing those actions, is no less a part. The emotion without action would be like the holy spirit without a vessel, or scripture without a reader. On the other hand, there's the thought of Paul: actions without love are themselves empty. A vessel with no liquid, an idle mind learning nothing. Both are indispensible. The vessel and the spirit need each other.

But so far apart, we have almost no means of doing anything. Katie's cleverness at throwing me a small birthday party, while she was in Rhode Island and I in Alaska, nearly made me cry. I went to my favorite cafe--Pandemonium, of course--and idly called her as I arrived. She then telephoned the cafe before I ordered my coffee, told them it was my birthday, and presto, I had a song and free dessert to go along with the gifts she'd mailed.

Something extraordinary like that doesn't happen every day, and usually, she and I have nothing but words to share. I won't say that damages, or drains our relationship. It's testing our endurance, right now, but how relationships grow and change, some parts withering and other parts taking fresh flower, is far deeper and more complex. I'm not worried about us, at all, with respect to being apart, or facing severe financial hardship. We'll live, and we'll have fun. But the words "I love you", repeated somberly or anxiously, are more like the cut than the bandage.

One of my favorite bands is Dire Straits, and one of my favorite lyrics comes from their song "Why Worry":

But baby
Just when this world seems mean and cold
Our love comes shining red and gold
And all the rest is by the way.

The plinkety-plink of the guitar--any Mark Knopfler fans out there know what I mean--is itself kind of plaintive. But like the intro to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah, through the minor chords and dangling notes, strong, vibrant emotion animates the whole. More delicately in the Dire Straits tune, but very much like.

I think of when I saw Katie, desperate with pain and frustration, sobbing and sometimes snarling as she tried to feed Eva. Or I think of the nursery, with its colorful marine theme, mostly her work, and all the thought and hope she put into completing it. And after we finished, she spent every evening for nearly a week sitting in the rocking chair, participating in the atmosphere. As I think of how she'll put similar thought and and hope into the Christmas decorations before long. It's these unselfconscious moments, some loud, some quiet--some in pain, some peaceful--that make me feel the amazement and gratitude for her presence.

Next to recollections like that, hearing a saddened "I love you" almost like a toll paid for the conversation. Those three words aren't needed, and repeated too often, can obscure what we mean. Better even to joke, such as to imitate our favorite cartoon Metalocalypse (about a world-famous numbnut death metal band, Dethklok). Something along the lines of, "Ugh, I hope you fall off the balcony and break your neck, whatever." We've done that on a number of occasions, and when it came to a contest of each of us trying to gross the other out more, I can say that my wife has quite an, um, sanguine imagination. Yup, safe to say that.

Of course, there's a new show, and new games to play...our new favorite show, Kung Fu. Yes, a nearly 40-year-old show, that we've just discovered (thanks to Quentin Tarantino, Kill Bill and David Carradine). And though Kate might chafe at my posting this, I do believe that Dr. Gregory House has been replaced in her heart by one Kwang Chai Caine...though I'm not so sure about Pickles the drummer. So now we've got an array of grasshopper jokes.

And the jokes can be better at recalling the unselfconscious ease of a loving relationship, and the nourishing warmth it provides.

For, as the blind monk would say, the same ray of sunlight both strikes the eye of the fish, and is also scattered off the water in a thousand gleams...