Archive for August, 2008
15 items.
Listening to Sue Wilkinson’s new album as we drive. Beautiful! Marty and Sue have been working on it off and on for about a year and a half(?) and they’re close to finishing. “Sympatico” is perhaps my favorite thus far, atmospheric, Middle Eastern percussion. Riq and bendir and…washtub! Great big aluminum washtub. Courtesey of Raphael.
One of the new Tbirds is passing by. Nice car.
Passing some dude who is having a hard time controlling the boat hitched to the back of his monster truck. Fishtailing.
An insane motorcyclist in flipflops going about 110 mph passes.
”Comment
This five minute segment is of Leigh Bielenberg’s testimony before the Atlanta City Council. The full 45 minutes of the Atlanta City Council discussion on starting an independent audit on the Arborist Division on the Bureau of Buildings may be viewed here.
Below is an image from the Atlanta Cyclorama in which is believed to be observed the tree Leigh discusses in the video, which she and her husband, Tab Bottoms, have been battling to preserve, the roots of which were recently bulldozed. The tree is believed to be the largest and oldest Southern Red Oak in metro Atlanta and is some 170-180 years of age. The roots were bulldozed immediately subsequent Tom Coffin’s being fired from the Arborist Division of the Bureau of Buildings (he was the senior arborist). This is the image Leigh was submitting in the above video.
Leigh writes,
The scan of part of the Cylorama is facing Northwest from the corner of Moreland and Dekalb Avenue. Our tree would had a 20 inch diameter at that point (the artists sketches of the local were done in 1882, about 18 years after the actual battle.) And based on the maps and GPS, our tree is depicted in the clump of trees above the second American Flag about half way up the image (below the white house which is now the Carter Center). Tab met with the Director of Cylorama and had a private tour to figure some of this out.
Former news on the tree may be viewed here.
Below is an image Marty took before excavation. As Marty points out, the stake indicating the tree line, which the developer’s themselves put down, is not in line with the tree protection fence, the tree protection fence violating the boundary.
The tree protection fence, by law, must be, in this case, a permanent chain link fence. It is instead a plastic fence with a movable temporary chain link.
Below are two photos from Leigh.
The first image shows how the oak tree roots were indeed bulldozed rather than airspayed.
The second image shows the destruction of an elm tree during the same excavation. Leigh states she and Tab said the Elm tree, which is on their property, would be destroyed according to the building plan of the development next door, but they had resigned themselves to this if the large oak tree was preserved. The elm is now dangerous and the developer has no plans to pay for its removal.
Link to Memorial post for Leigh.
Atlanta City Council Discussion on Starting an Independent Audit on the Arborist Division of the Bureau of Buildings
August 29th, 2008 |Posted In: General
As the Creative Loafing article asks, Why Was Atlanta Arborist Tom Coffin Fired?
Tom Coffin has tirelessly fought to save Atlanta’s trees. Why was he fired? The Atlanta City Council meeting involves beginning an independent audit of the Arborist Division of the Bureau of Buildings.
Some friends of ours have been fighting to preserve an 170-180 year old oak, believed to be the largest and oldest Southern Red Oak in the metro area, for several years now. We and others had endeavored to provide some assistance by holding a couple benefits. Shortly after Tom Coffin was fired, the developer came in and illegally bulldozed the roots of the tree, going against a standing court order that the excavation must be done by air spade. Tom Coffin had placed a stop work order but Paul Lekowicz had lifted it in spite of the fact that none of the code violations that caused the stop work order had been addressed. Paul said, “It looks OK to me.” Leigh Bielenberg gives her testimony on this in this clip of the meeting.
I excerpted this video from a two and a half hour long Atlanta City Council Video. It runs about 45 minutes long. I tried a number of times to upload it in 10 minute segments on Youtube but Youtube would never finish uploading, so I dropped the quality even lower (it had already degraded some with conversion from a wmv file to avi to mov) and have placed the 45 minute segment here in Flash.
Update: I have since excerpted Leigh’s testimony before the Atlanta City Council. It may be viewed here.
Georgia Aquarium, Long Nosed Fish
Never published this over here on the blog. Aren’t fish wonderful?
The Bad Homeschooler is what we ought to call this blog except for the fact that I don’t write much about homeschooling here (relatively speaking) and it’s not like we want to draw attention to ourselves and have people gathering about going, “Look, they’re bad homeschoolers!”
It’s that time of year in which books I’ve ordered for H.o.p.’s studies begin pouring in via the mail. Such as today the doorbell rang and orders for the past two weeks were dropped in my arms in a heap. “For H.o.p.’s studies” I sometimes mean to aid me in deconstructing myths and highlighting cultural biases. The prize so far is “The Distorted Past, A Reinterpretation of Europe” by Josep Fontana, which came in last week and which I’ve just begun reading through. Fun! We already have Lowen’s “Lies My Teachers Told Me” and “Lies Across America”. I suppose we ought to pick up Howard Zinn’s, “A People’s History of the United States” as well.
We are eclectic and do a mishmash of approaches, so today found us sitting around the computers working on stuff we know that the going agenda for state and national schooling would like for us to be working on.
Such as Roman and Greek numerals.
“It’s not bad to know this, but I’ve gotta tell you that probably the only time you’ll use Roman numerals is checking out the dates older animations and movies were made,” I admitted to H.o.p. who has already No Use For Math Whatsoever, who responded Roman numerals are good for helping to construct film names that look “really Epic”. It wasn’t too long before we were arguing about doing math at all but we made it through the material for the day.
In the 5th grade learning folder for Social Studies at Time 4 Learning (one of the several things we sometimes use as a base, just because it’s there, but it tends to drive us nuts) the first file was on the Olmecs.
I’ve not a clue why Olmecs are decided by someone as the thing to learn at the age of 10. Last year it was Aztecs, Incas and Mayas. This year it’s the Olmec.
“You are 9, you will learn a bit about Aztecs, Incas and Mayas. Now you are 10 and will learn about Olmecs. Because it is, has been and always will be thus. First Aztecs, Incas and Mayas, then the Olmec, who we will tell you almost nothing about other than that they made big heads and provide one illustration of that so you may see that they did.”
The lesson was a very vague, not very good one on the three centers of Olmec civilization, those being La Venta, San Lorenzo and Laguna de los Cerros. One controlled rubber and cacao and salt and one had dibbs on the rivers and one made the big heads because they had the rock for it, and that’s all we need to know about the Olmec, apparently. And that they ate fish.
Mind you, I’ve just read to H.o.p., “The Olmec were the first civilization in North and Central America” (and I amended that by saying “known, apparently, I guess”). So after telling him that I then tell him that the three centers of Olmec civilization were La Venta, San Lorenzo and Laguna de los Cerros.
To which H.o.p. says (bless his little heart)…
“BUT THAT’S SPANISH!”
I don’t know if the rimshot belongs there or a beat after my reading the Spanish names.
“If they’re Olmec, why are they giving Spanish names to them?” he asked, his eyes narrow with frustration over “one of these things is not quite like the other, can you tell me which one it is”.
As in, “I care not too learn anything about the Olmec from those who would define them in Spanish terms.”
I took H.o.p.’s hand and shook it and told him he got an A for thinking over blind acceptance.
He has spent his evenings, for all of August, with his dad watching all the old “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”. It’s not part of the curriculum of the popular “Well Trained Mind”, I’m sure, but should be essential viewing.
Idyllopus Press: Have you ever seen a UFO?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: OK, 575. 575 Highway. Going to Blue Ridge. I was going to buy a farm. This woman I talk about, R_____, she sold property and this kind of stuff. She also wrote books and stuff, really deep person, and…
Artist Wife of Guitarist: But she did past life regression.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: She did past life regression…
Artist Wife of Guitarist: Therapies…
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Oh yeah…and she was 20 years older than me and she and I dated, which everyone thought was like the weirdest thing in the world. She was like 60 and I was like 40 something. Anyway, so, she took me up to see this farm in Blue Ridge, and I had an Oldsmobile, uh, Cutlass 88. And I filled up with gas when we left her house which was right over off Ashwood-Dunwoody Road. We got on the expressway and we drove up there. Full tank of gas, right? So we get to Blue Ridge and this farm is on a bed of crystal. Literally, quartz crystal. You could walk across the ground and it was like stories I’d heard about Africa and diamonds. You could walk across the ground and just kick the dirt and crystals would pop up. And I thought, well, this is just weird as shit. And it was phenomenally cheap! So, anyway, we hung out for a little while and that kind of stuff. We ate at this Greek restaurant, coming back down. There was just this incredible food, stuff like that.
So we were coming down 575, after we ate dinner and stuff, and it started getting dark. So all of a sudden I’m looking–we’re laughing, talking, this kind of shit–and I look down at the gas gauge and the gas gauge is dropping like somehow I’ve got a hole in my gas tank. And so we’re coming down 575 and I don’t want to frighten her so I said, “I think we’re getting ready to run out of gas.” And sure as guns, gun’s iron, I can take you exactly to the exit where this shit happened, we ran out of gas right before this exit. And this exit is black! I mean no street light’s up the exit. Nothing where you can tell where gas was. So I, that kind of weirded me out.
So, at the time, I look over to my right and there’s this gigantic field. And there’s this orange, huge globe that looks like the sun, in this field, and I turn around and I show it, I said, “Is that weird to you? The sun can’t be down there. And I know it’s not the moon. What is that?” And she goes, “That is weird.” And it was just very nonchalant to us. And so we start to get out of the car–and she and I both experienced this, but I was the one who voiced it–but when we started to get out of the car, it was almost like shoving your foot through a screen door. Through the screen, like the old style screen doors, you know, and it’s like literally it’s not easy to get out of the car. So I close the door, I close the door and lock it. And we start up this exit, and I said, “It’ll all work out. Don’t worry about it.” This was before cell phones. I said, “It’ll all work out, it’ll all work out. This is going to be a grand adventure for us.”
Halfway up the exit…
Artist Wife of Guitarist: Y’all were walking…
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: We were walking…we’re out of the car, the screen door experience, and we start walking. Neither one of us looked back at the orange thing…
Idyllopus Press: Never? It didn’t even occur to you to go to the orange thing?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: It was down, we would have had to go down an embankment and over this field. I mean, 575 is kind of a raised highway from all the farm lands below it, right? So, uh, and we never mentioned the orange thing again, which I always thought was just kind of fucking whacky as hell.
So we start up this exit, we’re about to the top of this exit and this guy pulls up in a car and goes, “Can I give y’all a ride to go get some gas…uh, can I give you a ride? What’s the matter?” And we said, “We just ran out of gas.” So he says, “Well, I know where this filling station is right over around the corner.” Uh, ok, this is weird. So I told R_____ to get in the back and we’d been talking about this UFO shit and all this kind of New Agey stuff and this guy looked military to me from the get go. So we get in the car and I told R_____ you get in the back seat and you shut the fuck up, don’t be bringing any of this shit up or we might not get any gas. So you just get in the back seat. So I get up front and the guy and I start talking and I noticed this tattoo on him is a Spook Squad, is a Spook group. Y’know, I mean. Like Black Op kind of thing in the military, this is not a normal guy. And I said, “Oh, you’re in the military,” and he said, “Yeah, I train pilots in survival techniques.” And I went well that’s the most, in the back of my mind, I think, well that’s the nichiest thing, how fucking nichey can you be in the military but to just train plain pilots and Special Op guys in survival techniques, I mean that’s some weird shit in and of itself. And I said, “Well, what are you doing here?” And he goes, well, I train them some place up north in North Carolina, one of the big military bases up there, my wife lives up there and my ex-wife lives in Tucker and I drive down every so often and visit her and my son.
And I’m thinking, “OK,” and I just store that in the back of my mind. So all of a sudden he drives down and takes us right to this filling station. And I’m thinking in the back of my mind how in the fuck does this son of a bitch know where this filling station is when there’s no…there’s not even a sign that says gas at this exit. And I’m thinking how in the fuck does this bastard know…and I just store this information. So, he gets back and he goes, “Well, I’ll take you to the car,” and I say, “No, that’s fine, we’ll just walk right down here.”
So, anyway, we get the gas and put it in the car. And I told R_____, trust me darlin’, that was something weird about this and this is not normal that this guy would know where this exit is. This is just too abstract of an exit for someone to know where gas is. Y’know, the fillin’ station was a mile or a mile and a half away from the exit. So that just…I’m somebody who looks at things and that’s what kept me alive over the years, being involved in some of the things I’ve been involved in…so that’s just one of those weird things.
So we get the gas and we start off down the road. So, all of a sudden, we get about four or five miles down the road. By this time we’re looking at 11 o’clock at night. And all of the sudden the car…
The dog starts barking, drowning out several words.
…just spikes. Literally, as if someone had pulled the plug…
Idyllopus Press: It just stopped.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Pulled the plug on the car. It was like it was an electric car and someone had just pulled the plug out of the wall. And so, uh, I told R_____, I don’t know how to break this to you but, uh, I don’t think we’re going to make it home tonight. I think something is going on and we’re just not going to make it home tonight, darlin’. So we pull over and, lucky for us, there’s this filling station and…(laughs)…right off to the side, all we have to do is walk up this other exit going the opposite direction, back up this way, and over to the filling station, and I call Triple A.
So we go back to the car. So we sit there talking and we’re just talking and stuff and we can’t listen to the radio, you know, and you know it’s pretty dark up there so a lot of stars and we’re just having a lot of fun talking trash and stuff. So, I’m sitting there watching traffic coming by and so now we’re easily into the 1 o’clock hour, and I’m wondering why hasn’t Triple A showed up? And so all of a sudden I see this car come by and it’s like a hot rod, you can actually hear it coming around the bend, there’s a bend and you can hear this thing late at night. And so all of a sudden this guy passes us and I’m lookin’ in my rear view mirror and the guy pulls around and cuts across the freaking median, through the grass, and pulls up behind us. And I told R_____, I said, get down and lay down, I don’t want this guy…I don’t want anything happening, you lay down. So I get out of the car real quick and I walk to the back and the guy says, “You need some help?” and I said, “No.” And he has his shirt open and he’s got a 9 millimeter in his pants. And it’s a government issue 9 millimeter. It was right when we started issuing 9 millimeters in the United States military. And he had a military tattoo on his arm.
And I said, “No, man, I just called the Triple A, but I really appreciate the thought.”
So he for some reason went ahead and pulled this gun out, I reckon to get a reaction to it or something. And he goes, “Well it’s late at night and I always carry this thing”, or something, and I said, “I’m the same way, I’ve got a 44 magnum under the seat,” y’know, this kind of stuff. Didn’t have a gun…
Idyllopus Press: I was going to ask…
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: No, I just thought I’d talk trash with him in case he wanted to try to see if…because I didn’t give him a response at all. I didn’t, nothing…
Artist Wife of Guitarist: You didnt’ act afraid or…
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Hell, no, you know me, I’m not ever going to show anybody, I’m not going to show…the old adage, never allow anyone to see you sweat, you just don’t do that. So the guy’s talking to me and I said what’s going on? And he said, “I’m just heading up to Dallas, I’ve got to finish work,” and, well, you don’t go to Dallas on 575, the first thing, right off the bat. And, uh, so anyway, I talked to him for a little while and he says, “Well, I just thought I’d stop and try to help you, man.” And I said, “Fine.” He goes in the opposite direction, back the way he came. He doesn’t even turn around to go north like he’s going to Dallas. He heads right back down and, trust me, we sit there until three or four o’clock in the morning and I say Triple A isn’t coming. So I went and called them again. And Triple A said, “We never got a phone call from y’all.” And I said, “Trust me, you got a phone call from me ’cause here’s the person’s name I talked to.” No record of any phone call ever being made to this person. The guy in the hot rod never came back up the highway.
Take my car to my mechanic the next day, or this guy tows it to my mechanic, and the guy said, well, that’s the strangest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Your whole electrical system is like burnt out, just literally like it got hit with some electrical charge or something and died. He had to replace a huge quantity…had to replace the alternator, the battery, everything that ran with the electrical system that was a part, other than the wiring, was cooked.
So I get home the next day and I’m thinking, when I wake up, we didn’t get home until like six o’clock in the morning, and so I crash out and I get up and I’m thinking to myself, “That was such a military freaking experience.” The whole experience was just military from the get go. Y’know, here are the military guys showing up, asking us a bunch of questions, knows where this filling station is, and this shit. So I break out a map and I see that if you literally start out on a straight line and gone about five or six miles you would have ended up over at the military base over in Marietta.
Artist Wife of Guitarist: Lockheed?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Well, no, the military base. Lockheed’s at the military base. The military base is, you know what I’m talking about, the Air Force, Naval…
Idyllopus Press: Yes, I know.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Up there. So it is. That’s the whole story. Y’know. And I didn’t have a watch on so I never checked to see if there was ever any missing time.
Idyllopus Press: Ok.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: So, but, the whole experience was way…and I’ve had some weird experiences but this rates right up there with like, for me, well this could have been an acid trip, y’know? It was that whack. So that was that.
I’ve had other things where I’ve been driving along and, uh, this one happened right before I decided I had to have a tattoo. I was driving back from Lawrenceville one night…driving along, and you know how sometimes you space out and then you come to and you go well where in the hell am I? That happened to me. And when I finally came to, or whatever happened, instead of heading to Tucker, I was headed to Athens. I was almost out of gas again. This gas thing plays a real odd part in all of this in my life. Woke up the next morning and had to have a tattoo.
Same thing happened to me about maybe a year later. Same exact thing. I was going one direction, then another direction, out of gas again. The next day I woke up and I had to be in Texas in seven days or I felt like I was going to die. Moved to Houston, Texas. Then I had a weird experience on the roadway to Houston, out in Texas, between Austin and San Marcos, where me and this girl that I was staying with, that was a friend of mine, we had our dogs in this truck of mine and we pulled over to the side of the road because the car started acting weird and the dogs jump out and one of the dogs got hit by a car. And so this guy stops by, out of the blue, in a truck, uhm, a, tow truck. This is right when they’ve got these…ones and you pull the truck over and put the car up on it? And he pulls over to the side and he says, “I’ll take your dog to the hospital.” And I went, “Wait a minute, what’s this…” So he literally loads the dog onto the back of his truck and takes off. And it was my dog. And he takes off. And suddenly I snap to and I just start running after the guy and I chase the guy like four or five miles down the expressway full blast, which trust me, I don’t know how that can happen, I’m not someone who can run four or five miles. And suddenly I came to and I went, “What am I doing? I’m running down the edge of the expressway chasing a truck” with my quote unquote dead dog lying in the back of it.
Idyllopus Press: So what tattoo did you get?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: A dragon, of all things.
Idyllopus Press: Was it a place you had already known about? Or how did you find the place to get your tattoo?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: I’d heard there was a tattoo shop in Decatur. Another strange thing. The guy that owned the tattoo shop…this tattoo shop was right across the street from this black high school. This was before…
Idyllopus Press: Yeah, I know.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Right before you cross the railroad tracks.
Idyllopus Press: We used to live across the railroad tracks.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: So, yeah, I just knew I had to have a tattoo. I felt if I didn’t get this tattoo I was going to die.
Idyllopus Press: Had you already decided it had to be a dragon tattoo or was that a decision you made when you got there?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Saw a dragon. I saw this dragon and I went Whoa! I had no idea what I was going to get or anything. So anyway, the guy’s name was Rain Goon Ricky.
Idyllopus Press: What?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: The tattoo artist’s name was Rain Goon Ricky. That was the name he went by. Real cool dude. So he knew I was young so I was like 18.
Idyllopus Press: Ok, so this was when you were 18. For some reason I was assuming this happened after…
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: No, this was…
Idyllopus Press: I was thinking sequentially…
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: No this was back when tattoos was not favorable. If you had a tattoo you were criminal.
Idyllopus Press: So what year would this have been?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: 69 maybe?
Idyllopus Press: And then your Houston move.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: About 72. So, ah, he starts giving me this tattoo and he does the outline. You know when you’re giving a tattoo you have to do all the outline first, the black line, before you start adding color.
Idyllopus Press: Is that it?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Yeah. And he always signed them with this little tattoo mark down there. So anyway he does this, we’re laughing, I really lock into the guy because he’s into motorcycles and all that shit, so anyway he takes a picture and goes, “You need to help me out here.” I said, “Oh, what you need me to do?” He goes, “I’m color blind and you need to tell me what…
Laughter all around.
Artist Wife of Guitarist: He was a tattoo artist and he was color blind?
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: That’s what he told me. And I just all of a sudden went, “Oh, shit!” Because the black line was so good, the outline was just phenomenal, and I just went…
And he started laughing and said, “I’m not color blind, I just thought I’d get ya.”
There followed more stories and talk about synchronicity.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Oh, here’s a synchronicity story.
Idyllopus Press: OK.
Artist Wife of Guitarist: Got your tape going?
Idyllopus Press: Yes.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: G_____ is in this story. Remember when ______ Music was right there where the train station is now?
Marty: Yeah.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: I was hanging out with G_____ and the woman that became my second wife…G______ and I were sitting in the store, it was after hours…and, uhm, this girl walked in the door. The minute she walked in the door I knew I was going to marry her. I knew that she was going to be my wife. She comes in the door and she’s good friends with G_____’s wife, C______, the girl that is the face on the Tropicana thing. Did y’all know that?
Idyllopus Press: No.
Guitarist with Gold Ceiling: Yeah, her mom and dad were the family. She was the little girl on the thing. So, anyway, M______ comes in, she comes in and goes, “Where’s C______?” And, uh, G______ says, “I haven’t seen her. Why?” And she goes, “I was following her here and I swear to God she turned in here and that’s why I’m here.” And I went, “Whoa, too weird.”
I didn’t ask the third question, which is usually what story the person would like to tell. There were stories enough already.
Have you ever seen a UFO? Interview #11
August 19th, 2008 |Posted In: Art, Have you ever seen a UFO?
Idyllopus Press: OK, we’re recording now. Have you ever seen a UFO?
Software Developer: I have.
Idyllopus Press: You have? Really? Tell me about it.
Software Developer: I don’t remember too much other than it was at high school, during the day time, over the high school…
Idyllopus Press: This was in Augusta, Georgia.
Software Developer: Yes. I saw a sort of a silver elongated thing, sort of in the distance, flying not over the school but past the school. It didn’t look like a plane but it may have been.
Idyllopus Press: OK.
Software Developer: I couldn’t identify it.
Idyllopus Press: OK. So this was in the afternoon?
Software Developer: Yes, in the afternoon.
Idyllopus Press: Did it just track out of sight, you watched it slowly going out of sight?
Software Developer: I followed it for about a minute or so and then lost interest.
Idyllopus Press (laughing): Ok. That was some spectacular UFO sighting, hmmm? Very. It really held your attention there. The aliens weren’t too exciting.
(Laughter.)
Software Developer: Or I wasn’t too exciting to them.
Idyllopus Press: They weren’t too worried about you, were they?
Software Developer: They weren’t in the mood for an abudction that day.
Idyllopus Press: And they didn’t feel like they had to run off quickly when you saw them. What year was this?
Software Developer: 1976 to 1978, somewhere in there.
Idyllopus Press: Do you know anybody who’s seen a UFO?
Software Developer: Yes.
Idyllopus Press: Who?
Software Developer: My mother and my sister saw one in Chattanooga. Which….they didn’t know what it was…now, they didn’t say it was from outer space…
Idyllopus Press: OK.
Software Developer: The thought was it was some sort of military aircraft but it sure had a lot of flashing lights if it was.
Idyllopus Press: Have you ever dreamt about UFOs?
Software Developer: No, I’ve never dreamt about UFOs.
Idyllopus Press: Now, the second question is what is the most interesting synchronicity you’ve ever experienced?
Software Developer: Most interesting. I mean I have synchronicities but none of them really are interesting.
Idyllopus Press: OK.
Software Developer: Where I’d think of a song I hadn’t heard in years and later on in the morning I would hear it.
Idyllopus Press: I know that happens a lot to some people. I’ve had that happen.
Software Developer: I’ve had that happen on quite a few occasions.
Idyllopus Press: Can you think of a specific song?
Software Developer: No.
Idyllopus Press: I can’t either.
Software Developer: And there was an odd synchronicity the other day. Let me think. You might want to turn that off while I think. (Indicates the recorder.)
Idyllopus Press: No that’s all right, I’ve got plenty of battery and memory here.
Software Developer: It might run out. Oh, OK. I’ve been thinking about doing a website.
Idyllopus Press: OK.
Software Developer: And the theme of the website would be green living.
Idyllopus Press: Oh, green living? All right.
Software Developer: Yeah. That sort of thing. Ever since I started riding the bus to work, I would, I’ve been thinking more of, you know, being departed from the use of fossil fuels…
Idyllopus Press: All right.
Software Developer: So I’ve been thinking about what website. So I thought of a website name the other day and, oddly enough, that evening, my wife came up with the same name for the website.
Idyllopus Press: That’s cool, I like that. That’s a good synchronicity.
Software Developer: I’m trying to think of what the name was. It’s…maybe by the end of…
Idyllopus Press: Well, you don’t have to give it. You don’t want anyone to steal it in the first place, you want to keep it a secret…
Software Developer: Well, I found out that someone had already taken it.
Idyllopus Press: Oh. OK.
Software Developer: Probably in India or something like that.
Idyllopus Press: You can’t remember what it was?
Software Developer: I’ll probably remember it by the end of the interview.
Idyllopus Press: That was a good synchronicity. We do a lot of that kind of thing around our household.
Software Developer: That was just the other day though and I thought it was so weird we both independently came up with the same name.
Idyllopus Press: The third question is if you have a story to tell, your story, unlikely that anyone else would have that story to tell, what would it be?
Software Developer: I wouldn’t say unlikely.
H.o.p.: The third question!
H.o.p. sings the first few notes of Beethoven’s Fifth.
Software Developer: Uhm. This was an interesting thing that happened to my wife and I when we were living up in Woodstock, Georgia. We were driving…we were on our way home one night from Alpharetta, and we saw a falling star but it was actually a meteorite that hit a field probably…probably 200 feet away. I mean it was just spectacular. If we could do it all over again I wish we had stopped the car and I’d just scoured the field but it was at night. But I thought that was an interesting moment. I don’t think too many people would have encountered that…
Idyllopus Press: So close…
Software Developer: When they were with someone.
Idyllopus Press: Interesting as long as it doesn’t plunge through your car.
Software Developer: No.
Idyllopus Press: Ok, well thank you.
Have you ever seen a UFO? Interview #10
August 18th, 2008 |Posted In: Art, Have you ever seen a UFO?
Interview with a nurse and mother of three children. We did the interview surrounded by swirling, twirling children. Imagine sounds of rambunctious play (i.e. constant screaming, mostly joyful) in the background.
Idyllopus Press: I think we’re recording now. OK, I ask three questions. And the first question is, have you ever seen a UFO?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Yes, I have.
Idyllopus Press: You have seen a UFO? Tell me about it.
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Well, when I was about ten years old I was with some friends and we were walking down the street and I looked up in the sky and there was…these lights that were like flickering and none of us could determine what it was and it lasted probably for about a couple of minutes then they just, it just went off. And we always wondered what it was because it didn’t make any sound, we couldn’t hear anything. There is an airport kind of nearby but there weren’t any plane sounds, no engine sounds to it at all, all we saw were flickering lights and they kind of zipped out of the sky.
Idyllopus Press: So it didn’t disappear, it just zipped out of the sky.
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Yeah.
Idyllopus Press: In what direction?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: I don’t know. I mean…
Idyllopus Press: To the side? Up?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Up. It was…
Idyllopus Press: Was it really fast?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: It went really fast. It went really fast. And that’s the last I saw of it. Y’know, I told my parents about it and I don’t know I don’t remember if there was anything in the paper about it, if anyone else noticed it, but my friends noticed it. We were together.
Idyllopus Press: This was in Florida?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Yes, this was in Florida, in the Tampa Bay area.
Idyllopus Press: Tampa Bay area. And anything else after that?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: No. Nothing else after that.
Idyllopus Press: Do you know anyone who’s seen a UFO?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Yes, I do. There was a man that lived in our town in Florida…
Idyllopus Press: So, same place in Florida?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Same place in Florida, but he was with the military and I don’t remember what his role was but he did something like he knew about the people that flew the jets and they would see things and he saw some things too, but this was all out west like the Salt Flats where they were doing testing of planes and testing of stuff but he said he definitely believed in them because he had seen things that he couldn’t…there’s no way you could say well that’s another plane or that’s a weather balloon or whatever, and he really believed. He was a really intelligent man that was in the military and…he talked about some of his experiences to my parents, not really to me, but I knew that…it was kind of an unusual thing to meet somebody who was older that was older who actually believed there were such things as that.
Idyllopus Press: Second question. What is the most unusual synchronicity you’ve ever experienced?
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Kind of describe what…
Idyllopus Press: A coincidence.
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: I’m trying to think of something. I remember…I mean…I remember coming back from being in Eastern Europe and at the airport in Germany and I ran into a girl I went to college with, we were getting on the same plane to come back to Atlanta and I hadn’t seen her in like ten years. So that was kind of neat, you know. I’d always kind of wondered what had ever happened to her. And, actually, she had a big job in the former Soviet Georgia, now the independent country of Georgia, and she worked under the Secretary of Health for the entire country and was a consultant to them through the Carter Center. But, uhm, that’s one of the things you never expect to have happen, to meet someone you know from Atlanta in Germany.
Idyllopus Press: You know, that’s the most common reply so far on coincidences.
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Really?
Idyllopus Press: Yeah, meeting someone again in an unexpected place, years distant.
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: Yeah, that’s the one thing I can really think of like that.
Idyllopus Press: And the third question is a totally wide open one. Usually I ask if you have a story to tell, that nobody else could tell, what would be that story? Or a story you’d like to tell.
Blue Jean Skirt Woman: I think it would be about our youngest girl. My husband and I knew we were going to adopt again, and we thought we’d adopt another baby, we knew we’d adopt from China again, and then, uhm, this woman comes onto the list, a normal member of the list I’m on for the orphanage, and she describes this little girl that’s like three years old that had been on a waiting child list for a really long time, talking about how beautiful she was and…I thought…because those situations come up often on the site where they talk about a child from the same orphanage or something, and so I heard it and everything and I thought I’ll pray for this little girl, that she finds a family.
And like two months go by and it’s like every morning and every night when I go to bed, God was telling me to inquire more about her, and so I went to my husband and asked if I could request her file and so we did and once I read it I felt like we were supposed to adopt her but I was questioning because I was wondering, being older and having the problems she had would there be other problems as well? And I said, Lord, I just don’t know that I have what it takes to be a parent to her. And he said to me, she’s my daughter first, you just go the direction I’m sending you and I will give you whatever you need to be the mother of this child. And my husband was hesitant, worrying about what other medical problems there might be, complications, because of her age too, being so close in age to our oldest daughter. But it was like the Lord just kept telling me. And my husband said, “But he hasn’t told me anything,” and I said, “I know and we aren’t going to do anything unless both of us agree on it.” So he made a list of questions that he wanted the Chinese government to answer through their central adoption area. And they gave us an update and answered his questions and it wasn’t five hours after that report came through that he’s like, “Where do we sign up.”
So it was like all through that God was just confirming in me, you know, even with my husband having not been on the same page with me at that time, it was like God saying you move forward, you just keep going forward, and I will make things happen. And I think that’s the one thing that it’s taught me thought that situation because she’s just the most amazing child…it just taught me that when God provides an opportunity for you you have the choice of accepting that opportunity or rejecting that opportunity, but if you accept, it doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy but he’s going to give you the strength and everything you need to do the job that he’s placed before you to do, and you get that blessing of knowing that, the blessing that God has given you by giving you a child that…she’s such an incredible blessing, just like our other children are to us, but to think what if we had said no, I can’t even imagine what her life would be like or what our lives would be like today if we had decided it was a leap of faith we weren’t willing to take.
Idyllopus Press: She’s beautiful. Thank you.
The Boy Who Loved Jawbreakers
August 13th, 2008 |Posted In: General, Scenic Views from the 20th Century
I’ve been going through my files today looking for several pages of writing that I now fear are lost, probably dumped in one of my purges. But I found this, which I’d forgotten about, which I wrote a few years ago.
* * * * * *
Mom. I always find it refreshing when somebody can talk about how great and wonderful their mother is or was, without their demeanor causing me to sit up a little straighter, adrenalin-ready and alert for whatever the poor, sick bastard might happen to do next.
The last time I was around such an individual, I happened to be stuck on a band tour bus with him for four weeks. The first two days, we had the coach all to ourselves (and the driver) hauling across country to rendez-vous with the band in Minnesota. The bus was a steal of a cheap rental for the singer’s management (one of those singer, back-up band kind of things) because it was part of a fleet the interiors of which were scheduled to be redone. Dubbed the “disco” bus, the decoration recalled (or maybe it didn’t recall at all, maybe it was just that old) an era that’s about as horrific as all that plutonium in Washington State dribbling out of its containment area, threatening the Columbia River. Disco is the someone you throw a really good wake for because you’re glad they’re gone, but they mistake it as a loving tribute and several years down the road you feel a tap on your shoulder, turn around, and there’s Burt Reynolds dressed up in his ice cream man suit asking you to dance. “Go away,” you say, “go away.” He laughs and trundles out the disco bus. “Come ride with me in my traveling, nuclear-powered Serendipity carriage! Step with me, Alice, through the wall-to-wall vanity mirrors carved with flamingos–or that mirror on the ceiling ringed with tracer lights that actually conceals a Star Trekian cosmic generator–into the eternal never-never, the angelic trills of BeeGees escorting us on shimmering comet hair to Heaven’s Gate.” The walls, counters, cupboards, blinds, carpet and sleeping area were all varying shades of dark gray and the seating upholstered in blue-violet-black velveteen. What I didn’t get was why both pillars that framed the entrance behind the driver’s seat were black; had one been white we could have held Thelemic rituals.
All I had to do was step on the bus and I’d be ready to fall asleep; it wasn’t a place for living.
So when I roused from road stupor it would often be when the bus was bouncing into another 24 hour truck stop. Tug on boots and a jacket, run a brush through my hair, grab a few dollars for something to eat and find a real toilet instead of the bus’ pee-only chemical toilet. Living on a bus, you always look like you’re just crawling out of bed. And live on it we did thanks to a few greedy someones who said one couldn’t believe how much money was saved not getting hotel rooms for the band. If anyone wanted to shower they were told they could do it at the gig.
The particular night I’m thinking about, we have pulled into a small globe of white light hollowed out of the Minnesota wilderness. Nothing wants to linger on those plains to stop the Canadian wind and it is freezing. Beyond the feeble arc of incandescence there is blank black. I’m in Roman Polanski’s mind. And a truck stop is no place to regather any sense of reality. They’re a fluorescent shock fibrillating raw echoing noises off all that tile that must be really easy to hose down. I habitually donned my sunglasses as a defense against the nasty light and the leers, and always wondered why in the world anyone would ogle a forty-one year old woman carrying a baby on her hip, especially one who looked like she’d been shaken about in the mouth of a mad dog for the past 48 hours.
I’m a night person, have always been. I find night hours comforting; they’re a good time for thinking and writing. But at 3 AM in a truck stop everyone, without exception, is a roach escaping from the kitchen light.
The driver, this man who loves momma and I step inside. All heads turn. The eyes of a very hairy, burly guy rest with intent interest on this man who loves momma, and he makes a motion and steps into the bathroom. This man who loves momma is now about to bond with my back like I’m his opossum mother. “Did you see that?” he asks, voice wavering. “What was that about?” I think he’s got to be kidding but instead mumble, “Dunno,” because I’m so freaked-out by all the tile and the light and the people after being so long ensconced in the disco coffin. The man who loves momma, his voice high and thin, whispers, “This is creepy. Stay close to me.”
Real substance inside a truck stop has a slogan on it or a lewd joke; food is the after-thought and damned if you’ll find any, so grab a package of cellophane-something which doesn’t look like it’ll kill you outright, pay for your cup of scorched coffee and get out of there, back on the dark refuge of Dante’s bus. Limbo-land, as it may be, it is home.
I’m sitting there and here climbs back on the man who loves his momma. Sits down next to me. He’s got a clear Mason jar full of big cherry-red jawbreakers. What’s up with those?
The previous tour, all day and all night he watched Andy Griffith tapes, and has been holed up in the rear lounge doing so again, because that’s what he does. One of the major pieces of furniture in his life. The bus is so loud you can’t hear the tape, but it doesn’t matter because he knows every line of dialogue. Old Andy, he can tell you all about old Andy, and Floyd, oh yes that Floyd gets him every time and he’ll start to tell you a story but always break it off to slap the bunk, hoop and hollar at an upcoming line of dialogue, and exclaim, “Isn’t that just like old Floyd? Now, isn’t that just like old Floyd?!”
But now we are alone, the driver is still inside the truck stop, I can hear the Andy Griffith tape running in the back lounge of the bus, and the man who loves momma has it in for me for some reason, and he’s going to sit next to me and stare me in the eyes in a peculiarly fixed but distant manner so that when I refuse to look away what I see is like looking down a dark tunnel in that 50′s movie about the giant ants. It’s not a matter of you going in to meet them, because you’re both on the same bus; in the same sewer system, you can hear the giant ants chirruping. But you don’t want to be seen by the ants which means you stay hidden around the corner from them, and watch their movements by way of the shadows of their antennae on the wall.
The man who loves his momma stares me in the eyes, pops a big cherry-red jawbreaker in his mouth and starts going on, out of the blue, in his sooooo looooong Southern drawl with its endless vowels about how much he loves his momma, and how much he loves his jawbreakers.
You know, he tells me, staring me in the eyes, most men are ashamed to call their momma momma, but not him. And he’s not ashamed to sit on her lap either. He’ll just plop right down in her lap, ’cause she’s his momma. His Momma! Who’s closer to you in your life than your momma? Your momma is the one who looks after you, at least his momma looked after him. And he loves his jawbreakers too. Do I want one? No, he knows they’re not good for you–and he holds the Mason jar up in front of my face. Do I see all those jawbreakers? See all those jawbreakers? He’ll have eaten every single one of them by morning, yes he will. It’s terrible for him, isn’t it, he says. Horrible. Bad as can be, but he’s got to do it. Gotta do it. Horrible for his teeth, but he has to eat all those jawbreakers until there’s not a single one left. It’s always like that; always has been. And he has always loved his momma, and she’s always loved him. He’s the youngest and his daddy’s jealous of him and doesn’t understand the relationship he has with his momma, and his brothers are jealous of him, but she’s his momma and he’s her baby boy. “Can’t stop eating these jawbreakers.”
“Mmmm,” I smile vaguely and nod. “Mmmm.”
“I’m my momma’s baby boy. Have I told you that?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think that’s strange?”
“Noooo.”
“I watch Andy Griffith all the time, have you noticed that?”
“Yeah, I know you watch Andy Griffith all the time.”
“Oh, I do. Every year I make a pilgrimage to the town that’s supposed to be Mayberry. Its not. It’s not Mayberry, you know. Not really. They didn’t film there. But I go every year. They know me there.”
“Mmmm, they do.”
“I thought I was doing real good with this woman last night, she was really into me, but then she made a joke about my leather biker’s jacket. I’ve been devastated. This is a real biker’s jacket, you know. You know? The real thing. Expensive. Real expensive. Look at the tag, see? Real.”
“Yeah, I see.”
“Not just some punk fake. What she did had me so upset I was shaking. Literally shaking. Because if I know how to do anything, I’ve always known how to dress cool, you know how important clothes are to me. And what she said, it like to totally destroyed my confidence. I thought I looked so cool, man. I knew I looked cool, and here she was coming down on me. I don’t look like a fag, do I? Not that I care who thinks I’m queer. I have a lot of gay friends, but I’m not. I love women. I’m a dog around women. D-o-g, dawg. Can’t get enough. My father and my brothers think it’s queer I’m so particular about how I look, and how I love my momma. But you gotta love your momma, you just gotta love your momma, and I like to wear nice things. Yes, ma’am, you know I like to dress impeccable, what’s wrong with that. But people think there’s something odd about it when a man pays that much attention to how he looks, when it’s that important to him. I’m always thinking about what I”m going to wear.”
“Mmmmmmm.”
“Did I tell you I’m a momma’s boy and I’m not ashamed of it?”
“Yes.”
“I bet you think I’m strange, don’t you? I am strange, you know. Really. Really, strange. Do you think I’m strange?”
Because things had gotten very weird, I said, “I don’t think anything about it.”
“I am strange. I’ll prove to you how strange I am. Do you know anyone else who would eat a whole jar of jawbreakers? I’m a compulsive, compulsive about everything. Can’t stop. Look at me, I’ve finished with a jawbreaker and now I’m going to pop another one in my mouth. Isn’t that awful? Don’t you think that’s awful? But you wait and see, by daylight there won’t be a single one of these jawbreakers left. Do you believe me? I bet you don’t believe me, do you?”
“No, I believe you.”
It was around then that one of his teeth broke in two.
When you’re on tour, and in Minnesota one night and in Chicago the next, and in Maine the next, you don’t have much time to find a dentist.
I’m not sure what was up with him, but we didn’t speak much the rest of the tour.
* * * * * *
By the way, Marty tells me Jawbreaker Guy is, these many years later, doing just fine. And I’m glad to hear it. He was actually quite a lot of fun to be around before everyone on the bus started going crazy.
My thanks to Ed Wiancko for letting me use a great family photo of his for my new header image.
This site has nothing to do with rowboats but of course the majority of Google searches I get have to do with rowboats…and banana popsicles. I wrote about banana popsicles once or twice and now I’m the top search result for them. Go figure. I’ve written about thousands of other things and written about hundreds of things multiple times, but no one ever gets here looking for anything but banana popsicles and sometimes a rowboat query. I’m the top search result for rowboat and valiant but no one’s ever reached here using that query, but still they manage to get here on other rowboat queries that are totally irrelevant to this site as this site has nothing to do with literal rowboats and how to build them or what nude women may be riding around in them.
Google hates me. Kind of. It’s just that people don’t go looking for what I’ve got here (though I’ve written about all kinds of things).
I’m the top Google search result for subatomic penguins but no one gets here looking for information on that.
I’m the top Google search result for subatomic wonders but no one has ever gotten here looking for subatomic wonders.
I’m the top Google search result for Hanford declassified but no one has gotten here looking for information on that. But my Remixing the Hanford Declassified Project was once featured by Counterpunch on their website of the day.
I’m the third Google result for “Have you ever seen a UFO?” but I’ve yet to get anyone here using that query.
No, instead when I look at my Google search queries they are all about banana popsicles and rowboats, for which reason I may go for weeks without looking at the handful of Google search queries Google throws my way, mostly to do with banana popsicles and rowboats, which means I can’t say absolutely that no one has ever gotten here looking for Hanford declassified or subatomic penguins but if they’ve done so it’s been when I wasn’t looking.
Oh, I do get a lot of queries for my analysis of Antonioni’s “Blow Up” and occasionally for my analysis of Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut”. Oddly enough, I will get universities like Berkeley that repeatedly visit the “Blow Up” review. I will see what appear to be the same people returning to look at these reviews several times, usually for the space of a week or two. Oddly, I used to get a number of hits from Beijing for my analysis of “Eyes Wide Shut”. I occasionally had people (never Americans) write me asking if they could use me as a resource in a thesis they were doing on film, but I haven’t had that happen in a while. Considering these university hits, I do wonder sometimes just what I’ve written that may have been paraphrased and used in a paper. And what kind of grade they got. Or maybe they’re just laughing behind my internet back.
It is funny to me that these people who will spend days reading posts like the Antonioni “Blow Up” analysis never write me.
No one ever writes me even to tell me what a jerk I am or how stupid I am. I read all the time about bloggers who have people write them telling them they are jerks. Or that they’ve enjoyed them. That doesn’t happen to me. People who drop by via Google never comment and never write me off line.
Someone did once comment, at Youtube, on a home video I’d done making a pair of Howard Hughes kleenex box shoes, so I could demonstrate how impossible small Howard Hughes feet must have been. For reasons only known to a certain sort of Youtube sensibility, they said they wished I would die. H.o.p. read it and got upset.
At least I don’t get a lot of people dropping by here using queries that make you want to gag.
I am also an odd kind of blogger. Occasionally something is in the news that I have written about (at least marginally) and suddenly I’ll get a throng of visitors on that subject. And what do I do when that happens? I usually, immediately take down that post for months. It weirds me out. For instance, I went through a spell of getting hundreds of queries going to a Rapiscan post I wrote, and so I took down that post because that weirded me out. And when there was news of Japanese committing suicide with hydrogen sulfide, I suddenly got hundreds visiting my innocuous post on how H.o.p. and I had done an innocuous little everyday electrolysis experiment, a side result of which had been the minor production of stinky hydrogen sulfide–and I immediately took down that post. I always plead it’s because I don’t have perhaps the bandwidth to support that number of visitors, when instead I just get weirded out.
Anyway, one day a couple of weeks ago I became curious about what it would be like if I did a row boat query myself. Wasting time is what you might call it. People got to me doing irrelevant row boat queries so I might as well do an irrelevant row boat query myself.
And then, because of this, I got to thinking that I should possibly redo my website and go ahead and look for a mundane non-copyright image of a rowboat in just the right position (straight shot from above) that I might be able to take and Photoshop this way and that and make it a part of a new header, because suddenly I was very bored with my blog appearance and wanted a new one.
The most marvelous image came up when I did a Google search for rowboat pictures. That of a man doing a handstand in a rowboat. It was an old family photo of Ed Wiancko’s.
A man doing a handstand in a rowboat seemed just the right image for a valiant little rowboat. I loved the audacity of that handstand.
So I wrote Ed Wiancko and asked if I could use that photo.
He said yes.
So there is the story of my new header image. A relative of Ed Wiancko’s could do handstands and loved doing them. He did a handstand in a rowboat and the rowboat didn’t tip over either.
Even better, he did that handstand in his hat!
