Old Habits, New Projects

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. - Seneca

The moving finger writes, and having written moves on. Nor all thy piety nor all thy wit, can cancel half a line of it. - Omar Khayyam

New paths are born out of old roads.

I liked being a journalist. There's something in my nature, the desire to be the one who pokes the sleeping bear with a stick, that naturally lended itself to  professional muckraking*. My love of a good story and the firm belief that truth is always stranger than fiction** helped me to frame the facts and rumors people already knew*** into articles with larger contexts and larger meaning beyond the column inch/ page content filler that mainstream journalism has become in this age of content over substance.
Besides that, I was good at it. And I was getting better.

But I am coming to terms with the fact that my stint in journalism, like my stint in higher education, is probably finished.  This story, and my refusal to write something like this that lets the Metro government, Mayor Fischer, and the LMPD off the hook and avoids any real journalistic critique of Metro's absence of actual compassion -- beyond platitudes and photo ops -- pretty much saw to that. It probably didn't help that I accused the then Managing Editor, now Publisher, of wanting seasonal homeless porn. It also probably didn't help that I had the temerity to ask for something more regular than freelance grunt wages while she was working her way into a higher paying position.^

When I'm being honest, though, I know it's probably not a bad thing that I'm not a paid journalist anymore. It took energy away from my poetry. It made me grouchy, and brought out some of the more negative aspects of my personality. I don't mind being an asshole^^, but it's damn exhausting being one all the time. It's exhausting for me and for the people closest to me.

I've been channeling that through my podcast, The Kentucky Muck Podcast. And it's fun. But I'm also struck with how there is no art to any of it. All I've really been doing to chasing other news sources for content because I have neither the money nor the resources to muckrake the way I want to. Besides that, the stories just bore the hell out of me. How many instances of Matt Bevin being a power hungry zealot can I really talk about before it turns into more of the same white noise? How many critiques of Trump and the rise of Fascism in America can I post before it's ignored like street corner preaching?

My obsession with narratives -- and with words --  are really the only thing that journalism, teaching, and the Muck Podcast have in common.  But none of them feed my spirit in the way poetry does. None of them fill my heart the way a good narrative can. Where there is no food for the spirit or the heart, there is no Art. Where there is no Art, there is no Craft, no Style, and no Process. Where none of those things exist, there is no chance for Beauty or for Truth.

So I'm moving into other projects. I'm in pre-production on a new podcast that focuses on the stories of other people's lives.

Between this, my other writing, this blog, my various other interests and obligations, and the perpetual search for paying work, I'm going to be busy. But I'm also going to hitting the road soon to record for the new podcast and hopefully a gig or two. Sometimes new paths grow out of old roads. Maybe it was necessary for me to go back to teaching, go back to print journalism because I needed the leg to stand on moving into my new life. Maybe I needed to go back to things I knew in order to convince myself that I needed to push in a new direction. Maybe I'm just a slow learner.  Maybe I'm 43 and finally getting over the model of manhood/husbandry I was programmed to accept. Maybe I was so nervous about starting my new life on strong footing that I fell back into things I know in order to put my energy elsewhere.

Maybe I'm just making excuses.

But even if I am, excuses are done with. Teaching is done with. Journalism is done with.  Now is the time for Art. And Life. And Beauty. And Truth.

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* Think Upton Sinclair, Ida B. Wells, and Ambrose Bierce. Good muckrakers that terrified people in positions off power. That's what journalism should be. Anything else is Public Relations. (George Orwell, paraphrased.)
** Mark Twain, paraphrased.
*** People don't read, listen, or watch news sources for facts. People generally have a grip on facts as they see it. What people look for is context, and a proper narrative.
^There's no profit in journalism, you see. Advertising based publications only thrive when they expand their advertising, and LEO can't grow into a larger market share without ceasing to be a Louisville-centric publication. 
^^Again, I'm pretty good at it.

If you like what you're reading here, I have work for sale on my amazon author page:
www.amazon.com/author/mickparsons
You can also leave a tip if you'd like. Thanks for reading!

The cold settles in: more on activism, Quixotism, and the drive for a better life

and I ran back to that hollow again
the moon was just a sliver back then
and I ached for my heart like some tin man
when it came oh it beat and it boiled and it rang..it’s ringing

ring like crazy, ring like hell
turn me back into that wild haired gale
ring like silver, ring like gold
turn these diamonds straight back into coal. 

- Gregory Alan Iskov, "The Stable Song"

Every place I've lived, regardless of the general climate, is home to the same joke:

"If you want the weather to change, wait five minutes."

Given that River City was enjoying some comfortable daytime temperatures last week, the re-emergence of winter-like weather this week is yet another reminder that Ohio River Valley Weather will find a way to refuse a more optimistic seasonal categorization.  

Now, before you think I'm complaining, Dear Friends and Readers, please know that my memories of #ZOMBIESNOWPOCALYPSE2015 are still fresh.The truth is this winter has been, so far, a fairly typical winter. It would be easy to call it too cold (because right now, it sure as hell feels like it), but given Metro Louisville's inability to handle any kind of inclement weather with any aplomb it is difficult to see the winter as anything but a catastrophe waiting to happen.

I love it for all it's follies and foibles, though. Louisville has embraced me as much as any place can embrace an itchy-footed, semi-domesticated, rarely-do-well with a better than average vocabulary.

Wherever home happens to be, it's perfectly normal to find attributes about the place that make it special to you. For example, I call Louisville home. It helps that my wife lives here, and that I'm close to family. The thing I love about Louisville besides that is that it's still basically a small town... or, at least, it behaves like one. For the most part, people here do too, though anyone who hasn't been to a city that knows its a city and behaves like one would maintain that a large population and a few tall buildings are all that is required to make a city.

This is untrue.

A city has a different heart and a different soul. Not better. Different. Cities move fast and leave the past buried in dust -- at least, until it can be resurrected to turn a greasy buck for some carpetbagging capitalist. *

Louisville still has that small town heart. It's true that the carpetbaggers are at the door -- Omni Hotel, Google Fiber -- but it's difficult to not let them in after you've already invited them in and allowed them to shit all over the furniture.** I love it hear because in spite of the efforts of people to polish it, the underbelly of the city is still -- well, a turd. River towns are always a little grimy, and they need to be. All manner of things come up and down river and are deposited here. People. Goods. Art. Pollution. A sacred connection to something older, deeper, more meaningful, and fundamentally human*** that you simply don't find in other places. Yes, there is humanity in other places. Yes, there is a way to the sacred and the divine in other places.

But a river is an ancient artery that records every age. As a matter of fact, where I sit right now is nothing more than a long dry riverbed. Waters move and cut and focus the geography, leave behind something for people to use and live and take care of. The riverbed is a living thing, recording and remembering the history we don't take time to notice.

It will be this history that sits in judgement over us long after we have become the very fossils we ignore in the name of profit.

Lately I've been trying to figure out ways to leave a positive mark on the rocks instead of a negative one. Some plans have fallen through -- working to organize local adjuncts to demand better from their masters has lost serious momentum^. Working to maintain a radical labor union has also proven nearly impossible, as I am apparently too caustic and hurt people's feels^^. This has caused me to have rethink my relationships with people and remember that most relationships are transitory. But as long  as my marriage is good and my close family still embraces me, life is good.


If you like what you read, please consider helping support the author. Thanks for reading!

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*Read: locally, the "Democratic" mayor and metro council's clear disregard for working people by allowing Omni Hotel developers to not hire union carpenters. Read also the vote in metro council tonight that, if it goes through will go against a standing union contract to bring Google Fiber to town. Yes, this town still has a small town heart and a small town soul... but Mayor Fischer and his "economic development team" are trying really hard to murder it.
**Read: 4th Street Live
*** To be human is to be of the dirt. We are a grimy bunch. And there's something sacred in that, too.
^Everyone agrees that change is necessary, but they're waiting for someone else to do the lifting... which never works. It's all of us or none of us.
^^It's true. As eloquent as I can be, I'm also an asshole sometimes. But don't mistake that admission for an apology. Having a difficult personality and being wrong are two different things. And I'm not wrong.

Dirty River Media: An Argument For Muckraking

You can't buy a bag of peanuts in this town without someone writing a song about you. -- Charles Foster Kane (Citizen Kane, 1941)

There are a lot of ways to practice the art of journalism, and one of them is to use your art like a hammer to destroy the right people — who are almost always your enemies, for one reason or another, and who usually deserve to be crippled, because they are wrong." - Hunter S. Thompson


 

Julius Chambers, maybe the first muckraker

The first reported use of the term "muckraker"* was by no less than President Teddy Roosevelt in 1906. During a speech, he used it in reference to William Randolph Hearst and Hearst's brand of yellow journalism**. Usage of the term grew and came into include Julius Chambers -- maybe the first real muckraker -- Nelly Bly, Upton Sinclair, and Ambrose Bierce, among others.***

Muckraking is part of the grand tradition in journalism that's dying at the hands of corporate owned media. Keep in mind, Dear Friends and Readers, that no less than 6 corporations own most of the large market media in this country... and that's just TV and radio. Newspapers are corporate owned as well, split between Gannett, The McClatchy Co., Hearst, Cox Media, Media News Co., and Village Voice Media (which has eaten up most of what used to be the alternative weeklies.

Part of the problem is people sometimes confuse muckraking -- which sometimes rears its head under the more polite hat of "investigative journalism" -- with yellow journalism^ -- which is alive and well, as well as well funded.

Another problem is people -- including some who claim to be journalists -- buy into the idea, often espoused by anyone who doesn't agree with the particular brand of facts^^ posited by a reporter or talking head^^^, that journalism ought to strive to be "objective."

That, Dear Friends and Readers, is complete rhetorical bollix.

Journalism can't be objective because its first allegiance ought to be to the truth. The role of the 4th Estate is to drag stories out into the light and hold our elected officials' feet to the proverbial fire. It should not ever be Public Relations for any political party or politician, and should look at everything through a critical lens. And regardless of what anyone tells you, being critical means having an agenda. 

My recent split with LEO Weekly (one of the few alt weeklies not owned by Village Voice Media) occurred over a disagreement on how a particular story ought to have been portrayed.  Another aspect -- which I will call coincidental because it's more of a feeling than something I can document -- is that from their perspective, I got greedy. My work was considered exemplary by the managing editor until I had the temerity to ask if I could be more than a freelancer. After that, all of a sudden, I was breaching journalistic standards.

I'm a contrarian. I'll admit that. But having a natural tendency to disagree is not the same thing as a breach of "the basic tenets of journalism"+ On the contrary, it makes me a good muckraker. You have to have a contrary personality and a solid sense of self to be willing to rub academic department chairs, deans, editors, and politicians the wrong way. A good friend of mine once called this my tendency to "poke the bear." 

And that, Dear Friends and Readers, is what I intend to continue doing.

That's why I'm going to be finding my own press credentials and starting my own endeavor, called Dirty River Media. This will include a few projects, including publishing and podcasting, and other enterprises will hopefully add to the already existing push back against monopolized media and milquetoast reporting.  One project, The Kentucky Muck Podcast, will be a weekly show about local, regional, and state issues, as well as arts and culture, that need to see some light. That's what muckraking is, and that's what I do better than most anyone around. 

I promise my reporting will be honest, authentic, and researched; and I hope it will be entertaining. Stay tuned.

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*Defined as - raking through the muck and finding the real story.

**Hearst more or less invented large scale yellow journalism, the tradition of which is carried on by Fox News, HLN, and MSNBC most effectively.

***People like this are my heroes. So are Ida B Wells, Walt Whitman, Utah Phillips, Hunter S. Thompson, and Pete Rose. Not necessarily in that order. Look 'em up.

^ I just felt like using a bold yellow font. That's one kind of editorial decision that even schooled journalists are comfortable making.

^^ Facts are difficult to find and almost always difficult to use in any critical sense... and generally get confused with "opinion" which everyone has according to one smelly metaphor.

^^^ Talking head -- no, not the band. talking heads read you a news script that they may or may not have had any part of putting together. Probably not, more than likely.

 + The same editor who accused me of breaking faith with "the basic tenets of journalism" is the very same one who quoted HST to me by saying "objective journalism is bullshit."  You can't have it both ways. Either you write something honest and authentic and true, or you write shit. 

Currents Along the Dirty, Sacred River: Solidarity Updates, Of Flags and Phalluses, and Papa's Brand New (Old) Bag

 "We gave him a platform." -Toni Whalen, JCTC Head of Human Resources (via email from ORR)

My daughter, who also maintains a blog, gave me a hard time recently because I haven't been updating enough... which is a fair critique. It's not for the lack of things happening. You'd think I'd have more time to sit here, safe in the bunker, and spout off. Mostly I've been waiting for some of the smoke to clear. I've also been trying to drum up some work and have been moderately successful. Also, with all the internet either covered in stars and bars or rainbows and the passage of the the TPP  -- which will do to the globe what NAFTA did to North America -- and the fact that I am awaiting for yet another laughter filled response to my second Open Records Request.

The nature of my second request is such that I will hopefully be able to name the cabal otherwise known as #respondent53, after which I will be able to unleash the whole sorry and torrid tale of how corporate lackeys in higher education work to undermine activists and destroy the heart of what higher education used to mean... before the bean counters* and the lackeys* and the weasels* got in.

This has story Oscar movie material stamped all over, Dear Friends and Readers. As a matter of fact, I'm thinking they can get Joaquin Phoenix to play me:

Damn. Even I'm not sure that isn't me.

I kid, I kid. My nose looks nothing like that.

I'm working on an article for another blog, placing my unjust and illegal termination/banishment in the context of the national trend. And while there is plenty of good news out there, the fact is that adjunct labor activists -- particularly in the south are being targeted and removed from institutions that have no interest in higher education, in students, or in teachers.

Of Flags and Phalluses

Unless you live under a rock, you've probably heard that #SCOTUS finally agreed that the 14th Amendment applies to everyone. There is no marriage and "gay marriage." It's all just marriage, and I'm damn happy to see it. Of course, never let it be said that one idjit* or a flock of them can't ruin a good thing. County Clerks in the Kentucky counties of Boone (near Cincinnati) and Rowan (that's out in Morehead, a place near and dear to my heart.) have decided to stop giving out marriage licenses entirely because of what they believe is a divinely inspired moral objection.

The truth is, though, Dear Friends and Readers, that they are terrified at that thought of two men being intimate. I'd say they were upset about two women being intimate, but let's be honest -- that's had the wink wink naughty main stream porn nod of approval for years. Tightly crushed tits in an embrace  -- well, that and a bottle of moisturizer and you have a normal Friday night every lonely trailer park, highrise, and tenement across this country.  This obsessive objection to marriage equality is about people's personal inferiority complexes about their judas root.

I made it my business a long time ago to only worry about mine. This cut out a lot of puerile entertainment for me... most straight porn is about the penis (so that the "viewer" can imagine himself there as he "views".). But I am a happier guy for it. If you are one who spends too much time worrying about someone else's junk, try focusing on your own. Granted, you'll probably stay home more... but you'll be happier.

In the category of Red Herrings, you'll find the perpetually disturbing rukus over the confederate flag.  This should not be an argument, as far as I'm concerned. The stars and bars, like the Nazi Swastika, belongs in history books, not flying over government buildings. The fact that both Google and Amazon saw fit to block the southern cross was just one more piece of corporate opportunism.  And while the nation's Facebook users argued over flags and rainbows, Obama signed into law the most damaging and damning economic policy since NAFTA.

Racism and bigotry are not things to be tolerated or accepted, and must be fought where ever they rear their ugly, misshapen heads. But never forget that the powermongers have long used existing racism to slow solidarity and union movements and to ensure that their profit coffers are fat. Know who your enemy is.

Papa's Brand New (Old) Bag

That's right. I have managed to find work at Louisville's alternative weekly paper, The LEO. I'm back in the muckraking freelance journalist saddle again. Good Lord, I've missed it. 

Solidarity!

I want to thank everyone again who signed the petition to have me reinstated without prejudice. If you'd still like to, or if you want to pass it around, here it is.

A friend and Fellow Worker, J.P. Wright, has started a small support fund. If you'd like to contribute, go here.

Some have expressed an interest in writing letters of support of my reinstatement. Here are some addresses:

• Insider Louisville: Sarah Kelley, VP of Content and Editorial Director: sarah@insiderlouisville.com.
• Louisville Courier Journal: http://archive.courier-journal.com/interactive/article/99999999/CUST/80212021/Letters-Editor
  JCTC Human Resources: Toni Whalen, Head of Human Resources at JCTC: toni.whalen@kctcs.edu
• KCTCS Head of Human Resources: Jackie Cecil: jackie.cecil@kctcs.edu

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*Please see The Parsons Dictionary of Often Used Words and Phrases, Desk Ed. for proper definitions if their meaning is unclear. 

Southern Jaunt : Paint City Politics / Muckraker Goulash

Only the few know the sweetness of the twisted apple. - Sherwood Anderson


Journalism without a moral position is impossible. -Marguerite Duras

Every journalist is a muckraker. - Note From Travel Journal

Life long resident and year 'round haunted house proprietor Jim Warfield recently told me that there was a time when people referred to Mount Carroll as Paint City. "Because," he went on, "people would paint the buildings downtown." Jim is an endless repository of stories about this place, and his knowledge at times seems preternatural because a good number of his stories pre-date his existence.

This, of course, is how it ought to be. But The Long Memory is suffering from serious ill repair, and there's few people left with any interest... and even fewer with any interest in listening.

In a place like Mount Carroll, true prominence tends to be counted by the number of generations deep your family can be found in the cemetery on the hill overlooking town from the western horizon. It also helps to marry into the right family. (As opposed to the wrong one, which depends on which way the gossip is blowing.)

Since I have to cool my heels here in Paint City whilst waiting for the divorce to be finalized, I had to find something to occupy my time besides keeping regular hours at both the coffee shop and the bars. As I mentioned previously, I wandered back into freelance muckraking for the area paper that I used to rake muck for when I lived here before.

A note on muckraking. The term is one that tends to be used in a negative context; it's one that is used to describe bad journalism.... i.e., "biased" or "sensational" or "whatever doesn't match my worldview." There is this notion, often spouted by journalism professors, newbies to the job, and a public that hasn't bothered to to look into the actual history of journalism, that "true" journalism is "objective."

Dear Readers, let me assure you... there is no such thing as "objective" journalism. Our whole existence is subjective. We relate to the world from behind our own eyes, from the "I" position. The most we can hope for is distance... to be able to look at a situation with as few preconceived notions as possible. This is difficult, and requires effort. It also requires an honest appraisal of your ego -- which is challenging. Especially when you have one.

I'd also like to point out that any journalist who's really doing the job -- especially in the arena of politics -- is a muckraker. And any journalist worth his or her salt KNOWS this. You can't deal in the muck that is politics ... small town or otherwise... and expect to keep your hands and shoes clean. It doesn't work. The best you can hope for, if you care at all about the job, is find the narrative that needs to be told. That autobot Tom Brokaw said once -- and it might be one of the few things I agree with him on -- that journalism is all about finding the narrative. When people quibble over journalists covering "the facts" what they're really pissed off about it that the muckraker isn't telling the narrative THEY WANT TOLD.

A good journalist, like any good writer, will let the story unfold for itself. And just because all journalists are muckrakers, that doesn't mean they're devoid of a moral or ethical stance. To the contrary, a moral and ethical compass becomes that much more necessary to the larger purpose: not only to let people know what's happening, but also to keep (at least) an eye and an ear on The Long Memory.

Paint City Politics

Since walking back into small town journalism, my return as been heralded and maligned, applauded and booed. This, as far as I can tell, means I'm doing something right.

Most recently... last night... I was called out during an open meeting of the Town Council by a former alderman -- now a disgraced, maligned, and ostracized ex-alderman -- Nina Cooper, economic astrologist to anonymous fortune 500 companies everywhere that clearly don't pay her that often. I can only gather she's no Edgar Cayce, since she recently had to pick a job at a local embroidery shop that was able to secure her job through the purchase of a machine, part of that money coming from a local fund called The Revolving Loan Fund -- a fund whose existence she questioned as an alderman.

The father of the guy who covered my old Paint City beat after I quit in January of this year showed up to the meeting. Everyone knows him because he used to teach in the high school; he actually had a few of the current alderman and the mayor as students. His son was fired, it seems, because a particularly angry, bitter, and bitchy alderman, Doris Bork -- who is staying alive simply to see the mayor ruined -- called the publisher, a guy who I generally count as pretty smart, and cried. The general consensus as been that he did nothing wrong, this other reporter. And while I need the gig... the travel fund is hungry... I do feel like he got a raw deal. (I should point out that she had tried to get me fired too, when I was writing for the paper before. The hubris of small town autocrats never ceases to amaze me.)

The meeting was smooth until the General Audience section, at which point the retired teacher stood up and asked Doris if she had actual proof of the mayor's misconduct -- misconduct that she has been spreading like gossip while working the check out line at the grocery store -- or if it was merely "another figment of [her] imagination."

She was, understandably, defensive. She insisted that she had never accused the mayor of anything and demanded a retraction.

And, after some hemming and hawing, some attempt at recriminations, slander, and criminalization, Nina stood up and asked me directly what the "source" of my article was.

The source. I was floored, really. That was the one I didn't see coming.

You see, the article was actually a commentary after the regular article and was formatted as such.  So, by definition, it wasn't presented as straight news. I've been accused of editorializing in the past; I do, I admit, write with a certain flair and an eye towards the underlying narrative of events. But I do my homework, and I'm a pretty decent writer.

I can also only assume that Nina never watched All The President's Men.  And while I don't know for sure, I'm sure she voted for Nixon. Twice. It wouldn't surprise me to hear she had a little groupie crush on the paranoid oligarch, either.

Come to think of it, that was a movie, too, wasn't it?

Naturally, there is nothing going on in Paint City that rivals the impeachment of Nixon. That there are folks here who are determined to make it that important -- even at the cost of taking the town down with them -- borders on absurd.

That's the problem with Scorched Earth strategies. Not only is your target annihilated, but so is everything else.

And I'm beginning to think that might be the ultimate point. If they can't have Paint City the way they want it, then no one will get it at all. It will fall into the dirt with them, rot in a shallow grave and become one more small town in America that disappears into the cracks of an abandoned state highway.

Come to think of it, I've seen that movie before, too.

Or maybe it's more like this:

Southern Jaunt: More of the Name Game / Of Anachronistic Cartography

We make trials of ourselves and invite men and women to hear - Walt Whitman

It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to. - W.C. Fields

hic sunt dracones. - Old Cartographer Shorthand for "We Have No Fucking Clue What's Here."

A redemptive rain fell over the weekend, potentially wiping out several weddings -- but to anyone paying attention, the Earth moaned like a woman in the throes of an long delayed orgasm. A friend here in town, whose garden was struggling so much she and her husband were debating whether to quit watering it or not has reported that the garden has exploded since the rain. I was sitting out on the Front porch at Dave and Julie's yesterday, smoking my pipe, and heard one of the neighbors actually mowing his lawn. I was pretty sure there still wasn't anything to mow, but gawd love him, he felt the urge anyway.

Growing up, I had a neighbor like that, Mr. Foster. He would mow his lawn every few days, manicuring down to the dust during the driest years. I understand from my brother that one of  the Foster daughters -- WHO I DID NOT, I repeat, DID NOT peep on while she was sunbathing in a bikini --  has bought the ranch style house we grew up in. And though Mr. Foster has been dead for a while, his widow continues on in the house, probably not mowing nearly as much or messing up neighbor kid's attempts to sing along with Molly Hatchet or Waylon Jennings by getting on the H.A.M. Radio. 

Today marks a full week since I arrived here from Chicago, thanks to the kind assistance of my old friend Paul H., the Medinah Train, and my new friend John Briscoe, no longer of Stone House Fudge, but still playing the blues guitar like a fiend. And while I was hoping my long lost birth certificate would be waiting for me in the 40 pounds of mail waiting for me at the Post Office, I am (not all that) sorry to report it was not.

I did wander back into something resembling a jobby job, though, in the form (once again) as an itinerant local newsraker for The Prairie Advocate News. And while the news of my return as undoubtedly rippled through the ranks of those who were more than happy with my departure in January, I am sure that none of the town or county officials -- I will refrain from naming names herein, but find me at the bar later, if you really want to know them; I'll talk for shots of bourbon -- who had, in the past, tried to get me fired because they didn't like my "editorializing" (replace with the appropriate term "style") -- would stoop to anything so coarse and vulgar as trying to beat me to the punch and get me fired before I even get started gain.

Naturally not.

I expect much more from current and former elected officials like Doris Bork and Nina Cooper.

Oops.

Ah, well. I need to keep a lid on my bar tab anyway. Moving on...

More Of The Name Game

If you're a regular reader, you may recall this post wherein I question, again, what it is a person has tied up in a name. Not long after it posted, I received a text from a friend of mine here who informed me that her name directly impacted who she became and that she couldn't imagine being named anything else. She also pointed out the difference between how she felt when she was married and took his name (which was Smith) versus how she felt about retaking the last name she was born with. Now, I will admit -- as someone who grew up with essentially two names -- one of them being associated with a nauseating little cartoon mouse that had his own club for years, and which has given us such cultural icons as Annette Funicello, Britney Spears, and Justin Timberlake (one of which was known for her swim suit, the other known for free-twatting*, and the other for being smart enough to ditch the free-twatter before she went crazy and for being completely overlooked in the Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction debacle that turned the Super Bowl Half Time Show into a geriatric sock hop), not to mention the most evil pop song ever written, I have to agree. To a point.

My friend was, of course, named after a race horse, and her middle name is Twilight. I have ample sympathy, given that she now feels chained at the ankles to that annoying series of badly written books that have spawned terrible movies. Growing up with a name outside of the norm, and putting up with the usual verbal (and sometimes physical) jabs from other kids with names as unique as John (Sorry JB! I don't mean you!), Terry, Mark or [insert name of average named bully here] does impact the sort of person you become.

And that, actually, was sort of the point.

Part of the that culturally constructed applique personality I was talking about comes, in part, from how we're socialized as kids. Some people get past all the juvenile shit. Some people, well into adulthood, allow themselves to be defined by whether they were picked last ... or not picked at all ... in high school gym class.  Some kids grew up enduring far worse, and somehow managed to grow beyond it... and somehow, I think it had less to do with their names than with one of those undefinable qualities that most people have and few people access. As humans, most of us have the ability to change who we are and how we are -- if we're willing to do it. That many who are able to simply don't says more about the culture that seeks to blind us all.

I mentioned that I grew up with two names. That's true. My given name is Michael. But no one calls me that. There's nothing wrong with it, the name. It translates roughly as "One Who is Like God." I've been called Mickey, or Mick most of my life. That's also the first name of the guy who saved my Dad's life in the Navy. It translates roughly as "You're so fine, you blow my mind."

As you might be able to tell, I'm still not all that convinced my name means much except that The State can identify me, track me, share my information with the Grand Marketeers of the New Millennium. I'm still me... and the me I am in the process of becoming. Whatever the hell that means.

Anachronistic Cartography

To stave off the itch while I'm waiting for my State Identity to catch up with me, I look through my travel atlas and ponder my next jaunt. My plan... still... is to go south, like the birds, and spend some winter days in southern Florida, maybe celebrate my birthday in New Orleans. But I've also been thinking, lately, of going north... to North Dakota, specifically, to check out what an oil boom looks like. I've seen boom towns in decline. I'm thinking it might be worth noting what one looks like as it's building up. 

But then there's that whole winter thing. And I don't want to count on another preternaturally warm winter. So I'm thinking. And looking over maps. And pondering my own ridiculousness.

The Crossing of St. Frank

The 8 page chapbook is ready and for sale. For a $2 minimum donation (that includes postage), I'll send you a signed one. It will be signed with one of the names I go by. You can try requesting which name, but chances are good I'll pick a different one. If you run into me on the street, chances are good I have some with me. Ask nice, buy me a beer, or donate to the travel fund, and I'll give you one.

If' you're reading this from Where I Am, find me, I probably have some on me. I"ll give you one for a $1 donation, or something in kind (a cup of coffee, a beer, a bowl of soup.)

If you're reading this from Not Where I Am, go to the Beggar Bowl Page. When you donate to the Travel Fund, there's a box for a comment. Make sure you tell me where to send it and who to send it to.  Gawd Bless.

__________________________

*free-twatting -, noun. Female version of free-balling.

A Baboon in New York, Intermezzo (RE: 39 Years Around The Same Sun)

Christ, I'm feeling dizzy today.

And no. I'm not hungover. Really.

I'm working on a new post -- describing for you, in precipitously close and agonizing detail, my first experience on a New York City Subway. But I thought I'd take the opportunity, on this, the anniversary of my 39th year around the sun, to point out that nn addition to being my birthday, February 20th is also the anniversary of the death of one of the few iconic 20th century heroes I will ever admit to having:

Hunter S. Thompson

He is not just one of the few journalists whose work I never tire of reading; he's the only one, except for maybe Ambrose Bierce, who really understood the function of a journalist in society.

And don't give me crap about Royko or Woodward and Bernstein; Royko was able to do his job because curried favor with the Chicago political machine; and The Watergate boys were just at the right place at the right time, and it was Bernstein who did most of the dirty work, anyway.

In addition to being one of the few journalists in the sordid, torrid media business who had any real balls, he's also one of the few American Literary Giants that came out of the last half of the 20th Century who was really worth all the noise. (There were others; but some never got the noise they deserved and some got it too late.)

And no... I don't try and live like he did. I'm fairly certain it's impossible.

And no... I don't aspire to be like him. I think it's challenging enough to be myself.

But on the anniversary of his death and in a celebration of my lingering -- quite against the laws of common sense and a short list of truly horrible excuses for human trash -- on this planet called Earth Corp., I wanted to spend some time this morning over coffee on the subject of necropsy and the American Dream.

Before I started this east bound leg of my travels, I sent out a post entitled The Third Thing. In it, I talked about the number three, and the idea that everyone needs three things in order to be happy.  I also wrote that one of the problems with needing just three things is that every person needs a different three things -- which obligates everyone to go about the business of finding them.

One of the other problems, though, is that most people accept reality limited by dualities. Republican/ Democrat. Right/Wrong. Left/Right. Weak/Strong. Rich/Poor. Success/Failure. Society raises us up to see only these combinations and to live out our lives based on decisions made with these dualities a priori.

What I've come to realize, though, is that while I was unsure of what my 3rd thing was when I left Mount Carroll, it was there all along:

1. Writing
2. Mobility
3. Hermitage

I'm a writer -- poet, novelist, short story scribbler, journalist, essayist, blogger. I write. I like words. I sometimes like big words, so buy a thesarus. According to the OED  (that's the Oxford English Dictionary). there's more than ONE MILLION Words in the English Language. 

ONE MILLION. 

Wrap your head around that for a second. 

                                                                                Okay?

                                                                                                                                                    Okay.

Mobility -- I've always liked traveling. Not being a tourist... TRAVELING. And it's not because I think any place I go will be intrinsically better than where I've been, or that I need to meet more interesting people, since I am blessed with amazing friends; I just like to be able to pick up and go.

This has always created problems. Ours is not a nomadic culture, and we don't trust people without identifiable roots. This has little to do with stranger danger as it has to do with categorizing and dismissal. Society preaches that we must categorize and dismiss... other people, other places, other things. ( You know... NOUNS.)  We must be willing to allow ourselves to be categorized and dismissed, and this is considered perfectly normal. Happy. Healthy.

THIS IS WRONG.

The third thing -- my third thing -- is Hermitage. Not home. Not roots. But a place that is silent where I can work when that's what I need to do. This doesn't necessarily have to be a specific place. It could be one or two or twenty different place. But I know it's something I need because, in looking back over my my adult life, it's something I have always insisted upon having. And when I don't have it... things go to shit.

Which, by the way, is how I define the parameters of my three things. When I don't write, my life goes to shit. When I'm not mobile... or when I can't be... I am miserable and I make the people I love miserable too.  And when I haven't had a quiet place to work, read, listen to my music, and draw energy and solace from the solitude, I get plain bat shit crazy.

What this also means is that some things will probably end up falling by the wayside. It's entirely probable -- in fact, I'm certain it is -- that I inadvertently pushed my wife away. Because, in spite of my intentions... which were genuine, deep, and grew out of the very core of my being... being married has meant having to mediate and compromise on things that I might be incapable of compromising on. And, even in a mobile life, no one can escape their own culpability. and that's something I have to live with. All of it.

And yes, I know that sounds selfish. It is. But it's honest. And honest counts for more.

And somewhere, in that combination of non-compromise, culpability, and grace -- because there is a certain grace that comes upon you when you see another part of yourself for Who You Are rather than What You Are "Supposed" To Be -- there's still more truth left to explore. More places to go. More poems and stories to write. More. And as I meditate on this and on the fact that one of my true and genuine heroes decided to blow his head off  7 years ago today, I am thinking about something he said in a BBC interview once from his Colorado Compound:

"Sometimes you have to kill off a life to find a new one."

Rest in Peace Dr Thompson. Sorry I never really knew ye, but thanks for the gift just the same.

Drink and be merry and wish me well, Dear Readers. This finding a new life stuff isn't always easy. But it isn't dull. And it sure is fun.

Earth Corp. sized Magnetic tornadoes on the sun. Not bad.

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THANKS FOR READING AND FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!]

[All Indications Contrary]: Excerpt from THE MUCKRAKER'S CHRONICLE

 I had a message from Sam. He wanted to talk to me. Mostly we exchange emails about the articles I send him and about when he's going to pay me. Sometimes we talk on the phone; but I hate talking on the phone.

“What does he want to talk to you about?” Maude asked. She was trying not to sound too worried. I would like to say that her worries were unfounded; but since I have a history of telling supervisors, foremen, editors, and publishers to go to hell, I can't really blame her for being a little concerned. To her credit, she does a better job of keeping it in context, or at the very least masking the depth of her worry.

“He didn't say. He said he wanted to talk about some things, is all.”

“He never told you what it was about?”

“Nope.”

“Do you KNOW what it's about?”

“What's THAT supposed to mean?”

“Exactly what I said.” It was her turn to cook. She was making chicken and dumplings using her great-grandmother's receipe. She hadn't made it in a long time, but I knew it was going to be good. When we first got married, we ate a lot of dumplings, usually sans chicken because it cost too much. Chicken bullion broth and dumplings. Flour was an easy commodity to afford, and for that I always felt lucky. That we could now afford to use chicken and even incorporate some vegtables I saw as an indication that things were still better than they once were.

“I'm not worried about it.”

“But you NEVER worry about anything!”

“That's not true. I worry about things all the time.”

“Like what?”

I thought for a second. “World peace?”

She wasn't amused. “You nearly quit the last time he wanted to have one of these talks.”

That was months ago, and I was over it. I had gotten pretty pissed off – justifiably – after Sam gutted an article I wrote about the Arliss Church of God and it's relationship with the Arliss Town Council. Apprently several members, some of whom own businesses that frequently advertise in the Star Advocate – said I was picking on “a fundamentally American Institution.” At least, that's what one of them wrote in a letter that she didn't want printed in the paper. Sam showed me the letter. The author, one Fay Parris, was also upset that I spelled her last name wrong. That her husband is also a respected church elder and majority owner in the one of the biggest graineries in the county also had something to do with it. Sam wasn't so much concerned about the fact that I was highlighting what we both see as a problem, even though Establishment Clause issues tend to have little place in small town discussions. He was more concerned about losing the advertisers – which is his concern, not mine, and that's what I told him.

“Relax, will you? I'm not going to quit.”

“He might fire you.”

“He can't fire me. I'm freelance.”

“Well, he could stop taking your articles, then.”

“He won't.”

She snorted. “Why?”

“I'm the best writer he's got.”

“That's why I love you; you're so humble.”

“And here I thought it was because I don't leave the toilet seat up.”

“Not anymore.”

“See? Proof that I can change.”

She finished stirring the pot on the stove and turned the heat down to let it simmer a little longer. The house was starting to smell like chicken and dumplings, and it was making me hungry. She came back into the living room, sat down, and lit a cigarette. “You're not taking me seriously.”

“I am. I just don't think there's anything to worry about.”

“What did you write about this week?”

“The usual. Small town intrigue. County politics. Committee meetings. Boring shit, really.”

“So why does he want to talk to you?”

“Maybe he wants to give me a full-time job.”

She shook her head. “You wouldn't take it.”

“Probably not. But it's always nice to be asked.”

I could tell by the way she was smoking that she was getting pissed off; when she smokes when she's mad, she guns them, like she's trying to get every bit of smoke before it burns down to the filter. I didn't see any reason to worry about Sam's intentions. Sometimes he just liked to check in with his writers; Sam had the personal touch. His operation employed three full time employees not including himself, his wife Sandy, and his son David, who was the business manager. He was a politic and considerate guy, with an ocassional tendency to fly off the handle in ideological discussions. I didn't always agree with his truths, but I liked that he had them. Sam didn't always like my truths, either. But no one's perfect.

“I know you think it's a big fucking joke,” she said, “but some of do actually worry about whether or not we're going to have a roof over our heads.”

“I didn't know that was a concern at this point.”

“It's ALWAYS a “concern”,” she said, stamping out the butt of her cigarette in the small plastic ashtray sitting between on the end table between our chairs. “It's just not always YOUR concern.”

“That's unfair,” I said. “I'm working, right? It's not my fault there's shit here to do that doesn't include shoveling cow shit and farming corn. We knew it was going to be this way.”

“So it's my fault?”

“No. Who said anything about fault? It's not about fault. We moved here for your job; we discussed it, decided, and did it. I was okay with it. I'm still okay with it.”

“You were going to lose your job in Phoenix anyway.”

“Yes. I know.”

“And the problems started out the exact same way. And then one day, you get called in for “a talk”, and ...”

“I told you I wasn't going to screw this up, okay? Trust me. He just wants to talk. It'll be fine.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I haven't done anything to piss anybody off lately.”

“Huh. How would you know?”

She had a point. “I'd know. That's all. People here are obvious.”

“No. They just don't tell you to your face.”

“So they're cowards. How is that my problem?”

“Because instead of telling YOU they tell ME.”

Sigh. And that,I thought, is the point.

“What have you heard?”

Not me. Peter.”

“Again? Doesn't that spineless bastard have anything better to gossip about?”

“He's the President of the playhouse board,” she said. “People tell him things.”

“Are they trying to threaten your job again?”

“No.”

Yes. Just not directly.

“I just don't understand why you have to be so difficult.”

“I'm only as difficult as the situation demands,” I said. “If people would just behave, I wouldn't have any problems with anyone.”

She smiled. A little smile. “Maybe you're the one who needs to behave.”

“Maybe you need to teach me.”

“Flirt.”

“Tease.”

She stood up and walked into the kitchen. “Dinner's ready,” she said.  

   

Excerpt from THE MUCKRAKER'S CHRONICLE: The Flying Man From Pin Hook

The Flying Man From Pin Hook

By JJ Rafferty for The Arliss Star Advocate

Pin Hook – Wallace Gimley has carried the same dream with him since the age of five: he wants to fly. He says he was inspired by comic books and old film clips of inventors trying to test flying contraptions.

“Hawk Man was always my favorite,” Gimley told me as we sat together in his barn that he turned into a make shift study, design, and building space. “I read the comics first. Superman could fly, of course, but that was different. He flew because he was Superman. But Hawk Man, he had wings. Actual wings.”

It's not difficult to see that Gimley takes his passion seriously. The proof hangs from the rafters and are set around on tables; drawings and scraps of paper with scribbles and calculations and sketches cover nearly ever inch of the barn that once held animals back when he was growing up on the farm set far back on Pemblebrook Road. The only thing left of the tractor and the cows, horses, and pigs is that lingering odor of straw, old manure, and rust. Since inheriting the farm after the death of his mother after a long battle with cancer five year ago, Wallace Gimley has turned it from a working farm with 50 acres of good crop land to a design and manufacturing facility focused on the production of a single product – a contraption that will enable him to fly. Not an airplane, which he says puts too much between him and the air, and not even a glider, which he calls “cheating.” No. Wallace Gimley intends to build something that, in conjunction with his own body, will enable him to fly on his own power.

“I call it my own private Menlo Park,” he joked, showing me around. The allusion is intentional. Gimley says that Thomas Edition is one of his heroes and his primary inspiration. “Everyone thought he was nuts, too,” says the self-proclaimed inventor. “He went around talking about this thing called electricity and how people didn't need to light candles all the time just to see. He envisioned entire towns lit up in the night with these strange filaments. And look what happened! And just think,” he paused to light a home-made corn-cob pipe. “Just think about what the world would be like if Edison had listened to all those yahoos and forgot about electric lights.”

He points out several designs to me – all of them, failures. But he says with each failure he learned something new, something that he was able to fix in the next design. His early designs took him less than 6 months to design and build, starting from the age of 10. Now however, he says he takes more time to plan things out. He may spend as much as a year on design, and that much time on small scale testing. He throws out terms like lift, aerodynamic, wing span, center of gravity. That's the secret of his next design, he says. Center of gravity. He wouldn't go into details but said, “That's the mistake they all made. Even the Wright Brothers. “They all understood what Newton said about gravity. But they didn't move beyond the apple falling from the tree.”

And if you're thinking that Wallace Gimley went to school and studied aerodynamics, wing design, or physics, you're wrong. In fact, Wallace Gimley dropped out when he was 14 years old. “I wasn't learning anything.” But he points out that there's a difference between schooled and educated. His parents, hoping to encourage him to put himself back in school, made him work everyday on the farm; and he says that even though they were trying to manipulate him into giving up on his dreams, he's thankful for every day of hard work. Without it, his body might've gone soft... which would have ultimately made his dream impossible. “It's as much about the man as it is the contraption,” he said, smiling.

Gimley educated himself by reading. He read everything he could get his hands on, even when he was exhausted from work. He read history and science and math. He inhaled books about inventors and about flying. When his grandparents died, he inherited their collection of National Geographic Magazine, going back nearly 40 years, a complete collection fo Encyclopedia Britannia, and a four volume American Heritage Dictionary, including a Thesaurus. He claims to have read them all several times over, except for the Thesaurus, which he says is only useful “when a person wants to sound smart instead of be smart.”

So how does a man with an 8^th grade education support himself enough to be able to focus on his dream of flying? He sold all the animals except for a milk cow, and he leases out the crop land to one of his neighbors. He grows a garden and hunts when it's in-season. He also sometimes builds things or repairs things for his neighbors; he's as handy at fixing a tractor as he is sewing a stitch. Most of the money he makes goes into building his contraptions, and what's left is enough for him to get by on.

“I don't need all kinds of nice stuff,” he says. “But I do need to fly.”

He's made six attempts over the years; the contraptions – or the remains of them – hang high from the rafters of his barn. Gimley says he's broken his collar bone twice, his left arm once, sprained both knees and gotten five concussions. But he has no intention of quitting, even if his neighbors, who have tolerated his … eccentricities … for years would prefer that he live quietly and farm his land much in the way his father and mother did. Gimley says it's not the contraptions that bother them so much, but the occasional explosions and “evidence of experimentation.” But he insists he's a good neighbor in spite of his oddities. He also insists that each and every one of them will change their tune after he tests his seventh contraption. That one, he claims, is the one that will fly. And when it does, they'll all brag about being his neighbor rather than commiserate about it.

Gimley leads me to a the back corner stall in the barn; there's a large object there, covered with a sheet. He won't show me what's under the sheet. “That's the contraption,” he says with a smile. “That's the one that'll fly.” He plans to test it as soon as the weather is warmer, maybe as around early summer. Until then, he tinkers and tests and makes his calculation and prepares to fly.