why I can't finish a book

I've had the same list of books on my blog for months. You might think that I've just been too busy to update the list, but no. I'm still reading all of those books. Except for the Kimmelman one. That I finished. In addition to the books still on the list, I have also started reading the following:

Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
The Best American Essays 2005
The Best American Travel Writing 2005
The Best Food Writing 2005
Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (although that was only a brief encounter before giving the book to a friend as a Christmas gift, so it probably doesn't count)

And I did begin and actually finish two books:
Nicole Krauss' A History of Love
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, which I read because of recent hype and because I absolutely hated the book when I was a kid, even though I couldn't remember why. I wanted to see if I'd still hate it, which I did--but not as much as I remember. Now it seems trite and heavy-handed but I'm not sure that was my reasoning as an 8-yr-old.

I seem to have a problem lately. I buy books and I start reading them, but I never seem to finish them before I get distracted by another. The stack by the side of my bed is perpetually growing. I'm not sure what accounts for this. I could say that I'm busy, but in all the time I've spent reading each of the books, I probably could have finished at least one of them. You could say that I'm just disinterested in the books I'm choosing to read, but I do like them all--perhaps too much. Maybe I'm just indecisive, unable to commit to any one narrative or collection of ideas. I keep telling myself that I can't buy a new book until I've read five that I already have, but it never works, so the stack keeps growing. And then there are the books I check out from the library. Ugh.

my mother, the feminist

My parents stopped by to visit me on Saturday on their way to the airport to visit my brother and the new grandbaby. Even though my parents sometimes complain about how little they see me, they never stop by my house unless they are on their way somewhere else. But that works out ok for me. They brought me dinner (because they felt bad that I'd lost my voice again), and my dad drank all of my juice--which as supposed to be helping my voice. But I suppose it's ok since I probably drank all of their juice at some point in my life.

At one point in the evening, I was chatting with my mom about her book group, trying to give her some suggestions for her upcoming choice. Currently, they are reading The Good Earth, and I asked her how that was going. "I almost threw it away after the first chapter, it made me so mad," she declared. And she sounded genuinely angry. Her anger came from the way women were addressed and perceived, how the protagonist (or the protagonist's father? I can't remember) wanted a wife so that he wouldn't have to do housework anymore, that he would have someone to work for him. Growing up, my parents always seemed a bit dismayed at my feminist views on the world. I always knew the views came from my mother, but she would never admit it. So I am delighted that it's finally out, that's she declared her outrage publicly. There's no hiding it now, no pretending that I'm some weirdo with no apparent connection to their worldview.

the cut-up

Thanks for participating, folks. Here is the result (in the order they arrived, no alterations):


Instead, I sat in the car and read a map and spelled out entire sentences with my tongue on the roof of my mouth, where nobody could read them. Your minds and memories'll be totally absorbed. He grasped my hand weakly, and as I thanked him for the interview he blurted out "love you!"’ DON'T WASH OFTEN ALWAYS WASH INSIDE OUT NEVER WASH IN HOT WATER "How often do the robots stop by to visit and reconnoiter and update?" she wanted to ease the boredom a little But in lambasting the evil hegemony of the discursive practices of the powerful, I am, at times, keenly aware of my own power in this constructed space of the classroom. He tried to lay hands on my broken bone, whispering, “Jesus. Jesus heal this man.”


The players/sources:
line one: lisa b., from Badlands
line two: lisa b., from Invasion of the Body Snatchers
line three: clint
line four: sleepy-e, from GAP
line five: sleepy-e
line six: dr. write
line seven: ron
line eight: middlebrow


If you want to play again, additional entries are being accepted.

why didn't they consult me

This morning I was walking up my street to the Smith's, trying to like winter. It's that point in the year where I have to accept things as they are and realize that no matter how much I hate winter, it's around for at least three more months. Every year when the first heavy snow falls, I have to try to make myself happy--or at least marginally content. But as I was walking, it was clear that the people who live on my street were not trying to help my mood. First, there was the house that just went through a massive remodel. It used to be a simple house with an amazing garden. The house's gardens spilled onto the sidewalk, vines and flowers spreading everywhere. A lush canopy of trees hung overhead. In summer, walking past the house was always the coolest spot--for a few seconds, summer seemed irrelevant. Even in winter, the garden was beautiful, all of the plants transforming themselves, lovely under a dusting of snow. Now the garden is gone. The trees are still there, but there is no undergrowth, no over-abundance of growing things. If it were the same owner in the house, I would be hopeful that the garden would return. But I'm fairly sure it's new people altogether who appreciate a well-trimmed lawn (oh, and they built a fence accessed by a keycode). And then there was the distressed brick house. The brick on the house has always looked uncertain--red brick with old spatterings of pink paint, not quite scrubbed away by sandblasting. But it was wonderful, especially in the summer when the garden was full of poppies. Now, they are painting the house--brown. And not a rich, warm brown. No, it's a pale and mealy brown. Awful, really awful. I want to knock on the door and make sure they realize how awful the paint is, beg them not to continue.

a game of cut-ups: your participation requested

At semester's end, I need a little distraction, a little play. So, I suggest a writing game: cut-ups, where a piece of writing is created from randomly selected sentences and phrases. Your task: email me (mhelquist at gmail.com) a line of text (something you've created or something you've borrowed) and I will assemble the lines in the order they arrive. Once I have a chunk of lines, I will post the results here. You can send more than one line, but please send them in separate emails so as not to disrupt the randomness of the project. If you send lines from published texts, provide some sort of citation so we know the genesis of the final product.

yet again, it depends on what "is" is

So, I'm sitting here listening to Lynne Cheney on the Diane Rehm Show--why, why do I do these things to myself. But she's stating that Pres. Bush and VP Cheney never said there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11--there is no connection, she says. Any American who thinks that there was a connection is wrong, she says. I could go on with my horrified response to this, but you already know what I'm going to say. Who the hell are these people and who do they think they are kidding?

the week in review

Holiday weekends are a pleasure, the way everything relaxes and slows. Thanksgiving is especially lovely because there isn't much to do but cook and eat and chat (all among my favorite activities). And even though tv and movies cast Thanksgiving as sort of a frightening thing, requiring alcohol to get through all of the family time, I quite like my family (although I will admit I was quite ready to get away from them this morning). I let my 5-yr-old niece be in charge of the family photos and she did a surprisingly good job. I especially like this one of my mom looking a bit witchy (she is a much lovelier woman than this suggests):



She also took some charming pictures of the holiday decor:



I also got in some good desert hiking (only one day instead of two because of the impending snowstorm). The canyons we traversed were challenging (ever so slightly beyond our abilities), so they provided good adventure. My arms are bit achy today because of climbing and chimneying and I think I need to get in better shape. It was good to get away. There's this feeling I get when I arrive at the desert (actually it always arrives when I'm driving through Wellington, when I know the desert is just around the corner), this blissful moment, where I instantly feel completely content and calm. I love that. Here are a few shots of the canyon:






The big disappointment of the week was not getting to meet the Rolling Stones. There's this art gallery by work that was showing some of Ronnie Wood's paintings (which, by the way, were all of the Stones, and the gallery could only play their music during the exhibit--if I were part of a larger-than-life rock band, I think I would want to escape it occasionally). Anyway, Mr. Gallery Owner taunted us with the info. that the Stones themselves would be stopping by on the day of their concert for a private party/ art viewing. The date of the show coincided with my 32nd birthday, so I decided I was destined to meet Mick Jagger. I don't even particularly like the Stones (I mean I like them when I hear them, but I don't own any of their albums), but I know celebrity when I see it, and if Mick Jagger is going to be next door on your birthday, it seems like you should get to meet him (or at least catch a glimpse of him). But no. Even though there were photographers hovering outside the gallery (ok, maybe only one) and the place was busier than usual, the Stones never arrived.

weekend lost to cold

Things I didn't do this weekend because of a nasty cold:

*attend my friend's art opening
*watch the latest movie attempt of Pride and Prejudice
*hear Doug Peacock read from his new memoir
*catch up on housecleaning and laundry


Things I did do:
*slept until noon
*watched 4 episodes of Six Feet Under
*read the latest Atlantic
*planned Thanksgiving pie baking
*used up a box and a half of Kleenex
*cut off part of a fingernail with my new chef's knife

the real measure of a teacher

This week, Slate has been running a series of articles about higher education, all worth checking out. One of today's articles was about RateMyProfessor, the oh so informative site for teacher evaluations. I'm very upset that I'm not listed on the site at all. Am I so banal, so easily dismissed that no one wants to dedicate a few minutes to rating me? The article asserts that the folks who get rated are typically those who are either excessively loved or hated. That would mean that I am right in the middle, which sounds just about right. I am a middle sort of person. I'm a tall girl, but not excessively tall (not tall enough, for instance, to join the Tall Club of Salt Lake). I am a good runner, but not a fast runner (in nearly every race I've run, I rate almost exactly in the middle). So, I am used to being average and unremarkable, but still it's an insult to not be on RateMyProfessor. And where's my chili pepper? (the site's marker of "hotness") Really, who cares about the teaching? When I was at Knox, I was hot. I was hip. Freshman boys tried to pick up on me before they knew who I was. The college's alternative magazine published an interview all about me. They asked me to be their advisor. And now? Not one rating. Where have I gone wrong?

where the hell did I come from?

When I tell people that I grew up in Orem, I often joke that it feels like a confession. I just watched This Divided State, the documentary about the UVSC Michael Moore/ Sean Hannity controversy I'm thinking that I should stop telling people I grew up in Orem altogether. I followed some of the controversy, but I didn't fully realize how vitriolic the discourse became. Watching it all was so embarrassing to me. Nearly everyone portrayed in the film is pathetic in their vigorous anger towards the other side. The only key figure in the film who came across without any cause for reproach was the student govt. VP at UVSC (which is funny because I worked with his mom for a while at UVSC and I had very little respect for her). I would have to say, though, that the filmmaker made far more effort to make the conservatives look like asses than he did the liberals (many of whom, including Moore, were just as assinine as Hannity or any of the grumpy neocons).

I imagine that many liberals (from inside and outside the state) will watch this movie and stare open-jawed at the wacky conservatives--as represented by Kay Anderson, an Orem reactionary who cast everything in terms of good vs. evil. No doubt Anderson and his ilk in the film appear idiotic and at times dangerous as they conflate religious belief with political ideology. And I am often critical of Utah Valley and its excessively conservative bent. There's a reason I left the place and a reason that I don't go back except for family obligations. But to cast the entire county as backwards and narrow-minded is absurd. That's perhaps what made me angriest as I watched the film--watching Anderson assert his position as representative of "the community." I imagine that people watching the film who don't know Utah Valley or readily accept its reputation will believe that Anderson does in fact represent the voice of the community. But I grew up in that community; in fact, I lived all of my formative years there--from 4-24 (except for a brief stint as a Mormon missionary in London). I got my bachelor's degree at BYU. I have been immersed in that conservative haven for most of my life and I'm liberal, a registered Democratic, and no longer Mormon. I came from somewhere, so certainly in that conservative town there is room for dissent and independence. And certainly there is (or should be) room for us to discuss our differences.

The movie illustrated so well our dismissal of civil discourse. How embarrassing that both the Hannity and Moore crowds shouted down anyone who dared to speak from the other side (and how embarrassing that both Hannity and Moore encouraged this behavior). Who have we become (in Orem or in the nation) that we are so unwilling to talk to each other, to listen to the opposite view without feeling threatened? How pathetic our own beliefs and opinions must be if we believe that one person speaking can negate them.

ok--just me ranting.

if only it could all be like Candyland

When my sister M was a kid, she made up this board game called Getting Jabbed. It was sort of like chutes and ladders, in that it had a variety of encounters that led you either up or down the game board. However, you could never really make any progress in this game. The end result of the game was always death. Your first roll of the dice might lead you to a man wielding a knife (a bloody knife, mind you). This, of course, would send you to a lower level of the gameboard where you might fall into a boiling cauldron. This would mean that your game was over. You might also fall down to a blank square, but this would only mean that you were delaying your eventual end. Anytime you made some progress upwards, there would be another menacing figure with a knife or a hatchet or some other sharp object. We were laughing about the game today and I was thinking how my day (and recent days) felt just like this (not necessarily the boiling cauldrons and the knives).

By the way, M, despite her childhood morbidness grew up to be an extremely well-adjusted adult.

go see this movie!

Last night I finally saw New York Doll, the documentary about Arthur "Killer" Kane that I've been waiting to see since January, when I couldn't get tickets to any of the Sundance screenings. It's possible that a movie you've been waiting 10 months to see might ultimately prove disappointing, but this one did not. It was glorious.

The story itself is unbelievably charming and ironic (in the film Clem Burke from Blondie says how improbable it was for a New York Doll to become Mormon, like Donny Osmond becoming a New York Doll). I love the paradox of it and what a perfect narrative it creates--absolute symmetry. And there are more improbabilities, a story so perfectly constructed that you can't believe it's true. And Greg Whiteley does an amazing job highlighting the contrasts of Kane's life. Whiteley allows Kane to be both ridiculous and admirable. A fantastic moment is when Whiteley contrasts Kane describing his conversion as "an LSD trip from the Lord" and the Mormon bishop describing conversion as a warm feeling in your heart. Just look at the website, the contrasting images of the glam rocker and the nondescript white-shirted, middle-aged fellow--that says it all.

You need to see this movie. It's currently showing in NY, LA, and Salt Lake and will open elsewhere next week. I may be biased because I love the Dolls and I grew up Mormon, but even if you know nothing about the band (which the folks I saw the movie with didn't) you will still love it (which they did).

peter brady is stealing my memory!

During my Minneapolis crap-tv fest, I watched one episode of "My Fair Brady," The VH-1 horror that follows Chistopher Knight (aka Peter Brady) and his girlfriend (the first-ever "America's Next Top Model") as they try to (I guess) figure out whether they really want to be committed to each other. In the episode that I saw they were on a trip to Puerto Rico and they went to this restaurant in downtown San Juan where all the food on the menu are aphrodisiacs. The owner of the restaurant sits down to chat with them and puts poor Peter on the spot by asking them why they aren't married (and causing Peter, I'm sure, to wonder why they didn't just go out for "pork chopsh and and apple sausch"). After the chat, Ms. Peter goes on about how much she loved the owner of the restaurant, how comfortable he made her feel, how connected he seemed to life and love.

And as the whole scene is unfolding, I realize I've been to that restaurant. Slowly, I began to recognize the details of the courtyard and the inflections of the owner's voice. I didn't eat at the restaurant (way out of my budget), but I spent part of an afternoon in that courtyard, talking with the owner. We (me and various students from Knox, my former place of employment) were loitering outside of the restaurant (looking at a church I think), and the owner came out to chat with us. He told us the origins of San Juan's blue cobblestone streets and he invited us in to see his restaurant. The place was lovely, especially the courtyard. He talked to us about life and love and the importance of food and why he loved owning this restaurant. The afternoon seemed lovely and lucky and perfectly singular. And now Peter Brady and his silly paramour have stolen my lovely memory!

other peoples' habits

This morning, I was pulling an overfull bag of garbage from my garbage can and I noticed two spare bags at the bottom of the can. The last garbage had been changed out by a party guest (what lovely guests--taking out the garbage). I used to take this extra bag approach when I was a lowly Taco Bell employee, but I never do it at home. The person even tucked the extra top part of the bag tidily into the garbage can--unlike me who justs lets the extra plastic hang loosely from the rim. It was a funny moment, this, encountering someone else's habits at my house. It made me feel a bit guilty for not being a more efficient, tidier housekeeper.

some fears should not be overcome: a humiliating story for your entertainment

Imagine a woman who dislikes treadmills. She wants motion, not just the illusion of motion. But more than that, she is afraid of treadmills. It is unnatural--moving, but not moving. And imagine this woman in a hotel, in a strange city, in need of exercise. The woman makes three mistakes:

1. Rather than going outside to run like she ought to, she opts for the hotel exercise room.
2. In the exercise room, she has two options: a stationary bicycle or a treadmill. She decides to face her fear of treadmills.
3. She forgets about an important principle called velocity.

Now picture this: The woman programs the treadmill and begins to walk. She wants to run, but the treadmill is going too slow. So, she increases the speed. Still not fast enough. She increases the speed a little more. And more. And more. Soon she is at a good pace for her run. But the ground beneath her feet begins to move faster. And faster. And faster. Soon, the ground beneath her feet is moving faster than her legs can actually move. She decreases the speed. But nothing happens--at least not fast enough to to prevent the mismatch between the speed of her legs and the ground beneath her feet. She is too panicked to push the pause button on the control panel or the stop button that's on the handrail at her side. No, those bright red buttons are just too obvious. I won't tell you the rest of the tale, as I am sure you already have the frightful image in your head.

Some of you may remember my telling you about the road burn from the 4th of July road race. This is much worse (although, happily, confined to one bruised up knee).

Sometimes, it is a good idea to face your fears and overcome their burden. But there are some things you should be afraid of: grizzly bears, semi-trucks driving the wrong way in your lane, treadmills.

my new career path

I am quitting teaching. Yes, I am quitting teaching to become a wood chopper. My friend has a piece of land in Hanksville where he has a small, rustic cabin and big kiln where he fires his pottery. And he needs a lot of fire to operate that kiln. And thus, my new career. He said he would pay me $5 an hour plus room and board. So, I can live in the desert and soak up the sun and hike as much as I want (when I've recovered from the strain of wood-chopping). I'll have to practice a bit as I have no eye/hand coordination and I might initially be a danger to myself and the rats and lizards. But I will eventually have burly arms. The problem with my new plan, however, is that G. only fires twice a year.

So, my other plan to support me in the wood-chopping off-season is to become a Citizen Blogger. I went to part of a panel discussion last week about the constitutional right to protest the government and the title of one of the panelists was "Citizen Blogger." No other qualifications. I already have some good, blogging experience. However, I don't think that anyone will want me on a panel to discuss my random thoughts about life or the books I'm reading or the food I'm eating. So, I have to think of a new blog topic where people will beg to have me on their panels. I am currently taking suggestions.

math as poetry

Over the weekend I saw Proof, the movie version of David Auburn’s play. Watching the movie (which was good enough—and who really cares, anyway, because Jake Gyllenhaal is pretty) I started wondering why there are so many narratives with math as a backdrop, when most of the people I know find math to be painfully distressing. Is it because we are more willing to accept a character’s purported brilliance if it’s numerical brilliance? Is it just that the precision of mathematics provides an interesting counter-metaphor to the chaos of human relationships? Or is there something inherently poetic about math? Do we hope that there is in fact a theory of everything and that somehow math will save us?

I was never particularly good at math. I could get it done and get the answers right, but it always took me a long time. Part of the frustration was that no one could tell me why I was doing the proofs I was doing: “Don’t ask questions! Just do the steps!” I can’t blame my teachers, though. Most of them were football coaches, not mathematicians. Midway through my junior year of high school, I dropped out of trig and pre-calculus and finished my education blissfully math free. But with the decision to quit math, I also abandoned my latent desire to become an astronomer or a botanist.

In college, I opted for an English degree instead of Journalism because I didn’t want to take statistics. But at the very end of my four years, I took two semesters of symbolic logic—what I considered the easiest way complete my math credits (somehow proofs seem a categorically different thing if they are housed in the philosophy department). I loved every moment of my proof writing. I spent hours working out proofs, fitting them into every spare moment, watching the steps unfold one after another. Maybe what I liked so much is that we actually learned what the proofs were about, why it mattered. When I read about Goedel’s proof, I was amazed at how much it explained, even though I wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. Once, I completed a proof in fewer steps than my teacher had. At first he thought I was wrong, but I argued my steps, showed him the move from one premise to another. And it was dazzling and elegant and surprising—even to my instructor. It was the proudest moment of my educational career. I don’t know what the proof was about or how it related to anything in my world, but as I guided the elegant progression of each line, I was certain of its poetry.

my hour with the salt lake literati

Last night, I went to hear a 50th anniversary reading of Howl. I don't particularly like Howl or Ginsberg or the Beats. Earlier in the week, I told a friend (who is a big Beat fan) that while I recognized the cultural significance of the Beats, I thought their writing was lame (or something to that effect). But, yesterday I heard Gary Snyder talking on NPR about the first reading of Howl, and he made it sound exciting (or at least worth considering). Partly in an effort to be more open-minded about my tastes and partly because I had nothing else to do, I went to the reading.

The evening began with quite a bit of obnoxiously self-indulgent poetry by various local poets, a film interview that Trent Harris did with Ginsberg, and some decent jazz music. Then, Alex Caldiero, self-proclaimed "sonosopher" chanted a dirge for Ginsberg and then (as the advertising for the event claimed) "channeled" Ginsberg for the reading of Howl. His reading was pretty impressive. I was downstairs from the library's auditorium in the overflow section and there were moments when you could hear Caldiero's voice reverberating down the stairs. I still don't like Howl much, but I can certainly appreciate its energy.

Not surprisingly, I ran into my friend who loves the Beats at the reading. We (the friend, his wife, and a couple of their friends) were going to go out for coffee afterwards, but D. somehow got himself invited to the after-party at Ken Sanders' (the used/ rare bookstore for you non-Salt Lakers). We walked over and there's a list (which of course we weren't on, but because D. is friendly and often loiters at the store they let us in). I've never been to any party with a list, so I felt all at once slightly cool and totally lame. I would be tempted to do some name dropping here, but I'm not even hip enough to know who's who. I will say that when we arrived, Scott Carrier was tending the bar, which I found awfully charming.

I realized that there are people who belong at parties like this and those who do not. I am among the latter. I don't know how to schmooze or network or converse with strangers or whatever one does at such parties (and more so, I don't particularly care to). While we did wander through the crowd a few times to get food and drink, we spent the hour we were there hidden among the stacks. And when you consider that we were chatting amongst all the P's and S's of the literary world, it was a pretty good way to enjoy a party.

confessions of the perpetually late

Today, I tried to check out a book from the public library and apparently I owe them so much money ($33.60 to be exact) in overdue fines that I no longer have borrowing privileges. It takes a special sort of person, I think, to be cut off from the public library.

The most pathetic thing is that I probably only finished one of the books that garnered me the thirty dollars in fines. I blame this sorry book-borrowing behavior on two factors: a) my friend Heidi and b) Blockbuster.


When I was in college, I constantly returned library books late (quite late, far beyond the advertised grace period) but I never got any fines. Then my friend Heidi, who worked at the library, told me that the advertised grace period was not the actual grace period. All that really meant is that I kept my books a week or two longer, to the point where I did extend beyond the actual grace period, and I got fines. But because I had a friend working at the library, all of those fines were magically forgiven.

I used to pay a lot of late fees at Blockbuster--not $30 worth, but enough to keep my slackerly habits in check. Now, with the end of late fees, I continue to live with the illusion that no one cares when I return borrowed materials.

watching the pot

Today, as I updated a friend about the banalities that are my current life, she made a throwaway comment about watching the pot.

And it was like this moment of revelation. Yes, I have been watching the pot. Not just watching the pot, but hovering over it, demanding the water to simmer. For months, for more than months. Me--watching over my life, trying to coax the rolling boil. And that clarity has me suddenly evaluating my behavior, planning alterations. How does that happen--a cliche suddenly transformed into the most meaningful idea you've considered in months?

readerly disappointment, or how a book about afghanistan became a book about a dog

This week I finally finished reading a book that I picked up several weeks ago in the Gatwick airport, Rory Stewart's The Places In Between. I had extra pounds that I didn't want to bother changing back into dollars, so a book seemed a reasonable purchase (and provided a good balance for the cookies and chocolate I bought with the rest of my funds). The specific book seemed a good choice because it was about a Scottish journalist walking across Afghanistan in 2002, just after the U.S. invasion. I had just been walking, so reading about walking seemed appropriate. And I want to learn about Afghanistan--it seems essential.

The book made me think about many things--about the value of walking, of seeing "the places in between"; about how unfortunate (and maddening) it is that a man could take this journey, but a woman certainly couldn't; about Afghanistan's ancient history and its present. I liked that Stewart told his story objectively, that he resisted commentary about the people and places he encountered.

At some point in the journey, Stewart acquired a dog--Babur, who he named after a Mogul emperor whose steps he was following. The dog was a nice addition to the story (after all, everyone needs a traveling companion), but at some point the book became about the dog. And this made me grumpy. I like dogs well enough, but I bought a book about Afghanistan, not about Babur the dog. This man walked miles and months across a war-ravaged country, seeing things that very few Westerners will ever see (much less read about) and he ends the book with an elegy for his dog: "I don't imagine Babur would have been very impressed to see my crying now, trying to bring back five weeks walking alone together, with my hand on a grizzled golden head, which is Babur, beside me and alive."

It's not that I think a writer should have to tell me the story I want to hear, or that he has no right to tell his story. Maybe for him the story was about Babur the dog (before walking through Afghanistan, he had walked through Iran, Pakistan, India, and Nepal--so maybe walking had lost some of its fascination). At the very least, though, somewhere in the blurb and the various exclamations of praise on the book's cover someone should have said, "This is a book about a dog."

honk for peace

This morning, on the way to the farmer's market, there was a woman standing on the corner with a handwritten sign that stated "Honk for Peace." There were many peace-loving drivers who obliged, and each time someone honked, the woman yelled with enthusiasm. It was as if with each honk of the horn, she believed peace was actually being achieved.

I want to be cynical about this woman's efforts, that she's not doing much but generating a lot of noise pollution (increased--to good effect, I thought--by the man who sits by the traffic light and asks for spare change respoding with loud singing, including a moving hare krishna chant). But then, I wonder whether my cynicism is right. I've been talking to my students all semester about how language does do something, that it does effect change. Thursday, we talked about the Rwandan genocide and the newspaper publishers who were tried as war criminals for promoting hate propaganda, that their constant references to the Tsutsi as "cockroaches" led, in part, to the genocide. So there is language altering material reality.

Also, my friend G. is a potter and spends weeks by himself firing work at his place near Hanksville. He told me about how someone asked him whether he'd ever felt an earthquake there. He wanted to say yes, but he stopped, thought for a moment, and replied, "I'm not really sure. I think I have, but I've never told anyone about it." So, the experience was uncertain because he'd never put it into language.

And, of course, there is theory about this. Take Saussure: "Without language thought is a vague uncharted nebula. There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language."

So, is the woman with her incitement to honking doing anything? Clearly change can begin with protest, with discourse, but how does that change happen? Is it just about the aggregate--that if enough people honk, someone will listen? Or does the act of discourse (the honking, in this case) change something in the world?

A while back, I heard some commentary about the media attention directed towards Cindy Sheehan's Crawford, TX protest, questioning the relevance of the attention. Why? the commentator asked, are we focusing so much time on something so anecdotal. Someone responded that 40 years ago Rosa Parks was just an anecdote.

So, readers, if you have thoughts about how anecdotes and honking become material change (or whether they actually can), let's hear them.

the weekly(ish) miscellany

a note on similes: At last week's reading, Billy Collins poked fun (a la Shakespeare) at the Petrarchan conceit. He noted that what such poems (old and new) assume that what women really want is a good simile. His comment started me thinking about the few men in my past who wrote me poetry. These men were not poets (not even in the unobtrusively poetic Writer's Digest sense), so I never could understand why they chose to wrote me poetry ("I am like a moth to your flame," "I am left in the desert without food or water") instead of making me dinner or some other more pragmatic gesture of love. They must have held to this notion that women are in want of similes.

a note on metaphor: Listening this week to the John Roberts' hearings, I realized how quickly metaphor can go awry. Early in the week, one senator (can't remember who) and Roberts himself talked about how judges were umpires. For the next few days, the umpire metaphor came up again and again (umpires are just calling the game, but everyone knows they have different strike zones; a different umpire=a different game; an umpire is only an intepreter, not a participant). I was half-expecting (and hoping) to see Roberts show up in a striped suit.

a metaphor of my own: Recently, on my semi-daily run I have noticed that the pathwaysd above Memory Grove are being transformed into some soft of Oly-promenade. There are new black lightposts with the SLC 2002 logo emblazoned on them. The new concrete sidewalk has a full-cover logo embedded in the cement. This perpetual focus on the olympics troubles me. SL is becoming one of those old Hollywood startlets who tries to hold onto fading beauty with too-bright hair dye and carefully pencilled eyebrows.

further evidence that I am aging: Yesterday, someone at the literacy action center made a comment that was delightfully funny and insightful and I was going to post it on the blog, but 10 minutes after I heard the comment, I forgot it. Not just the details--but the entire context within which it was offered. Had I remembered it, I am sure you would have enjoyed it. Sorry!

and a bit of blog cross-promotion: This week, I canned fruit!--which you can read all about at Three Tarts. I only bring this up because I am so proud of my domestic efforts.

is that kenny g knocking on my door?

A few weeks ago, I heard a song that I loved by this Canadian singer Feist, so I went to my B&N and bought the CD (a bargain at $10). I was happily listening to the CD over and over when my sister declared to me that it as "a little smooth jazzy." What?! I responded that the beauty of the album was that it was eclectic. A remake of a Bee Gee's tune ("Inside and Out"), a heartwrenching balad, a sweet French tune, a quirky pop song, and on and on. And this woman has an amazing voice. The more I listened to the cd, though, I had to admit that there is a recurrent smooth jazz vibe. Ugh--I hate smooth jazz. I really hate it. But I love this cd. And this has me worried that perhaps my music tastes are deflating, that it's just a matter of time before I have the Breeze programmed on my car radio. But I have justified myself with an internal dialogue about how Feist is beyond genre and that because she has collaborated on a variety of eclectic projects (from folk to rap) that there is a certain amount of irony in her remake of the Bee Gees and her disco-dripping "Leisure Suite." And if there's irony, it's all ok.

For some reason lately, I'm hyper-aware of the fact that I'm aging. I know I'm not old--just aging. My sister (again) was telling me that she was taking some girls from her church to a local rest home to play bingo and sing the residents songs. Even though I know the possibility is decades away, I had this sudden, frightening image of me as an octogenarian having to play bingo and listen to well-meaning teenage girls sing. And even worse--the idea that, in spite of myself, I might enjoy it.

ucky-ovo

I was just commenting on Dr. Write's site and the letters for confirming my post were uckyovo. I think this should be a word, so I propose you all start using it (I added the hyphen, as it seemed necessary). I was talking with my Lang. in Society students about neologists, and how they could (and probably do) generate new words. I can imagine lots of possible meanings and contexts for my new word. It would make a great exclamation of dismay upon cleaning out one's fridge--"Ugh, ucky-ovo." If I change up a few letters and make it "ucky-evoo," I can actually hear Rachael Ray, that perky foodtv gal, using the word when her precious EVOO (which she always reminds the viewer is her acronym for Extra Virgin Olive Oil--does she not understand the purpose of an acronym?) goes rancid.

being alone

Tonight, I intended to go to the Greek Festival with my sister. But she spent the last two days getting into and out of a flash flood in the San Raphael, so (needless to say) she was extremely tired. Remembering that Billy Collins was reading tonight and deciding that poetry was a better solitary activity than eating baklava in a crowd, I headed over to the library.

Until tonight I had never, at least not in memory, read one of Billy Collins' poems. And if it didn't sound so meaningless, I would want to tell you that upon hearing his poems I laughed and cried. Some of his poems were so sardonic about poetry and poets that he reminded me of myself in grad school when we'd go to open mike night at Avogadro's Number and laugh at all of the hopeful poets who were dreaming about unicorns and butterflies. The evening ended with a hilarious recounting of all of the people he's fooled with his invented form, the paradelle (his storytelling was prompted by an audience member who had received some critique when he taught the form in a writing workshop and wanted to know whether or not it was a real form). And he wasn't only funny about poetry--most of what he said and read was playful and witty.

And there were moments and words that were so sad and lovely. I loved most his poem about listening to Johnny Hartman, where he speculates about beauty and foolishness and all the songs written about both. The last bit: We are all so foolish,/ my long bebop solo begins by saying,/ so damn foolish/ we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

I was delighted by the evening. Part of me was wishing that someone had come with me, perhaps so I could talk about what I liked most without having to explain the context, or so that I could have company while waiting to get a book signed, or just for sharing the pleasure of something unexpectedly lovely. But then I realized I didn't particularly care that I was alone. I didn't have to reduce the joy of it by talking lamely afterwards, "that was great" "yeah, he's really funny" or try to avoid the joy reduction by constructing the details of what I really wanted to say.

On the long trip back from London, I idly opened my window shade. I expected sky, clouds, some water. But I saw the Greenland ice cap--the mass of land, the icebergs floating up channels, the unavoidable reality that the ice is melting. I thought for a moment that I should nudge my friend awake, but I decided not to. I decided that I wanted this part of the trip to be just mine. I considered telling her about it later, but even the idea of it I wanted to keep for myself. I stared out the window until the sea opened up and the icebergs began to look like fishing boats.

Sometimes laughter and perfect views are better without anyone to share them.

pop a top

My dad (who spent much of his career as a substance abuse counselor) told me once that it was a good thing I didn't drink because I'd probably be an alcoholic. He doesn't remember telling me this and he feels guilty about it, but I always wonder what he was trying to get at. He wasn't saying this to scare me straight. I was well into adulthood and I'd already established a clear pattern of non-drinking behavior. I mean, I had a party in February and there's still a six-pack in my fridge. And I can't think of any other particularly addictive habits I have. There's the coffee, but even that's pretty restrained.

So I'm not a drinker, but I love drinking songs. It doesn't really matter who the artist is--if the song's about drinking, chances are I'll love it. I've never been able to figure out why I like drinking songs so much. Maybe it's because my dad is right and I have some inner alcoholic, who's hollering amen and waiting for the next round.

You can check out CMT's list of the top 40 drinking songs here I'm not sure "Friends in Low Places" should be #1, although it is the song I most want to sing karaoke.

hip theory

On my recent seemingly endless flights to and from London, I finally read Leland's Hip: The History. It was actually pretty good--an interesting look at America's racial and cultural history. For Leland, American culture is all about the evolution and pursuit of hip. There are moments where Leland's prose becomes a bit ridiculous, a little too hip--mostly when he is presenting a summary of of one of his points. For instance, "The hipster, viewed coolly, is the outlaw as metaphor" or "If a tree fall in the forest and no one notices its fundamental dopeness, it is not hip." Luckily, sentences like these only come at the end of sections or chapters, and the rest of the book is quite lucid and full of illustrative examples. It's a smart book full of entertaining pop culture references. (and it is quite lame that he titles his acknowledgement page "shout outs")

After reading this book, I'm thinking that we need to add hip theory to the lit-crit cannon. It seems just as justifiable as feminist theory or queer theory--especially if we're talking about American lit. Leland gets it started with his list of hip authors: Emerson, Twain, Whitman, Raymond Chandler and the like, and of course all of the Beats. He talks more about the writers and their cultural moment than he does aobut the texts themselves, but I think a lot of American lit could be explained by considering it through the lens of the hip. Take The Great Gatsby. Sure it's about class, but I think part of the downfall might be explained by a misguided pursuit of the hip. So, you lit teachers, I think you should start up this movement.

if snoop dogg were to teach my class

So I found this website today--Gizoogle--which translates text into Snoop Dogg-esque slang. I put the course description for my Language and Society class (seemed fitting) through it and this is what came out:

Language impacts bustin' we do . Im crazy, you can't phase me: how we think, how we learn, how we vizzy ourselves n interact wit otha and cant no hood fuck with death rizzow. We wiznill look carefully at tha patterns n functions of language ta gain a gangsta sense of how language establishes our cultural identities n social allegiances, how language creates n disseminizzles knowledge, how it develops n maintains shot calla. We will interrogate tha functions of language n hustla how simple alterations in language use miznight lead ta distinctly different outcomes, bizzoth in terms of blingin' n cultural impact so you betta run and grab yo glock.

That last sentence cracks me up.

post-trip blues

Perhaps it's a bad idea to travel so close to the beginning of the new academic year. Not only do I have to deal with post-trip blues but also with pre-semester anxiety. Last night I had a nightmare (I'm sure partly induced by the fact that I was trying unsuccessfully to convince my body that it was the middle of the night and not eight a.m.) that a woman who lived across the street from me while growing up decided I was an incompetent teacher and staged a coup on my classes. lisa b. appeared in the dream; when I told her how I had handled the situation (basically yelling "give me my fucking class back" to the woman who'd staged the coup) she told me--with a chuckle--that I had responded "exactly wrong." oh well, hopefully tomorrow will be coup-free.

England was excellent. I think we picked the right balance of camping and B&Bing. Just when we were tired and smelly, we had a B&B waiting for us. And while I occasionally was annoyed by my heavy back (especially when we passed the hikers with their small daypacks), my favorite part of the trip was the night we spent camping on the hillside of a small farm. We had an amazing view of another hillside and a river valley. Here's something of what our view looked like, although this certainly doesn't do it justice.



Hiking in the Cotswolds made me think about why I hike. At home, most of the places I go to can't be reached by car, so the walking makes practical sense. But in England, we walked in a variety of environments (woods, hilltops, fields, city streets, golf courses) and roads were never very far away. As the B&B owner in our second to last city reminded us before our final 15 mile walk to Cheltenham, there was also a bus that went directly there. On the way home, I started reading a book about a man who walked through Afghanistan just after the war. People kept laughing at him, telling him to just take a car. Walking from town to town made me realize how big the world really is. We shrink it in so many ways with fast transportation and global markets/ culture, but it's really quite stunning in its immensity. When you take a day to make a journey that you might have made in a matter of minutes, everything feels slower, farther away, more significant. In the walking, you find details. And walking, we were able to meet people that we wouldn't have if we'd been going by car or bus. The woman in Hawkesbury Upton who called at us from across the street just to hear about our journey and to make sure we had enough water. The pub owner who offered us tips on shortcuts. The various people who went out of their way to guide us through the trail's confusing city paths. It was certainly a trip worth taking.

Anyway, here's one more picture--just me on the trail.


And Terra, my fab travelling companion (and long-time friend):

backpacking aesthetics

I'm sitting here with my backpack strapped on, trying to adjust to the feel of it in preparation for the upcoming Cotswolds trip, wishing it weren't so heavy. It has my tent in it and a sleeping bag--things that I don't necessarily have to take on the journey. We are on the trail for five days and we're only camping two nights. I could easily contact B&Bs in those towns and make reservations like I have for the other three nights. Then I could take out the tent and just carry clothes, food, etc. But I won't.

As it is, I feel slighty guilty that I'm sleeping at so many B&Bs. I have this backpacking aesthetic that I can't seem to shake--that you should carry your own stuff, that you should be independent and able to care for yourself on the trail. I'll probably be cursing myself by our last day, but there it is. Perhaps I feel I need to pay penance for my trip to Peru, where porters carried all of my gear and cooked every meal. I didn't think much about the circumstances of that trip. I was going with my dad and some of his friends. Someone else planned it. I just went along. And I felt guilty the entire time that I was carrying a day pack and the porters were carrying everything else (practically running up the mountain to beat us to our destination)--and making very little money. Maybe I'll think about that as I walk down the trail.

We'll see how it all goes. A travelogue of sorts will be forthcoming, I'm sure.

lis' weekly miscellany

I decided to post weekly on all the minor matters that may not deserve an entire post, but are still worth mentioning. So, here you go.

1. My 5-year-old niece to the neighborhood boy who had been harrassing her all day: (with fists up) "Hey buddy, do you wanna piece of me?"

2. Watching PBS's Do You Speak American? Robert MacNeil (talking about Texas metaphors) said he heard LBJ say during the Vietnam War: "If we get 'em by the short and curlies, their hearts and minds will follow." We should never elect presidents from Texas.

3. After ranting to a friend about how annoyed I am by the egos of young twenty-somethings, I realized I am becoming my mother--who we lovingly call "the dream squasher." I am now embarking on a path of recovery. My name is Melissa and I am becoming my mother.

Farewell to Ibrahim Ferrer

I mentioned before on the blog how I love Ibrahim Ferrer, so I was sad to learn this morning that he died over the weekend.

When I saw Buena Vista Social Club, I developed a bit of a crush on Ibrahim Ferrer. He seemed so charming and humble. And then that voice--so rich and expressive. I was so happy when he started releasing solo albums. And I love that he was playful with his music--e.g. collaborating with Damon Albarn on Gorrilaz' "Latin Simone."

And his story, of course, is compelling. How he'd always been a singer, but because of changing tastes and politics he ended up shining shoes for a living. When BVSC came around, he said of the experience, "An angel came and picked me up and said, 'Chico, come and do this record.' I didn't want to do it because I had given up on music. But now I have my own record, my first one ever, so I'm very happy. I don't have to shine shoes anymore." What a lovely thing that a man who's clearly meant to make music gets a chance at age 70 to do it again.

the new food blog

As if one blog weren't enough, a couple of friends and I decided to start a food blog. It's called Three Tarts, so if you like reading about and looking at food, I hope you'll check it out. Friend #3 (Sarah) has yet to arrive at the blog, but she got married last week, so we'll forgive her.

my flashy new shirt

It's the rare shirt that deserves its very own blog post, but you have to see this beauty!

I think I may have a future career as a mannequin

To really appreciate this shirt, you have to see the detail:



Every flower has more than 80 sequins (I counted while impatiently waiting for the picture to load).

I don't know where I'm going to wear this thing, but I'll be happy it's in my closet (along with my red velvet pants)--just in case.

The best part of the shirt is how I got it. I saw it in the window of an antiques shop in Forest Grove, OR. But the store was closed. We went back the next day during posted business hours--still closed. I had to fly home the next morning, so no flashy shirt for me.

Well, this week lovely friend and colleague Jonathan (we were in Forest Grove for a conference) stops by my classroom with a Smith's grocery bag. I was in the middle of student presentations, so I looked at him quizically: "What's this?" "Later," he said. So, when all the students shuffled out, I dug into the bag. The shirt! J. had stayed in Forest Grove a day longer than me and went back to the antique shop. It was a delightful suprise--the highlight of the week, really. And it fits perfectly. Can you be fated to have a piece of clothing?

in praise of schlubbiness

I read an article ("The XY Files," Lori Gottleib)in the newest Atlantic that is really bugging me, and I'm not even sure why. It's a personal narrative about a woman's decision to have a child with anonymous, sperm bank sperm. She talks a lot about Single Mothers by Choice, "a national group for women who want to have children but won't shack up with the wrong guy to do so." I'm not the sort of person who thinks a child necessarily needs two parents to grow up happy and whatever, and I think if a woman wants to have a child, well why not? But the article just made me depressed.

Maybe I just don't like the idea of selecting the perfect genetic material. Diane Rehm recently aired a show about the so-called genius factory, the Nobel Prize sperm bank that ended up having very few Nobel-prize winning donors. One story was about a mother who freaked out when her genius-sperm son declared that he wanted to be a pro-wrestler. Ha! Served her right for trying to concoct a certain sort of child. Poor kid, though. Gottleib's article gets into this territory a bit, as she purposefully avoids "genetic schmutz" like schizophrenia, breast cancer, etc. in the donor's family history.

But more than that, I was bothered by Gottleib's sense of relief at avoiding the messiness of a relationship and getting right to the baby-making. Consider this comment: "Instead of marrying a schlubby but lovable man and thinking, I hope our kid doesn't get his crooked nose or bad eyesight or thin hair, I could pick from cold, hard DNA." Obviously, the carefully selected DNA will surprise her, and she seems to know this (she's clearly not trying to create some sort of uber-child) but what distresses me about the comment is the dismissal of the "schlubby but lovable man." I know she's being playful, but still--it's as if dating and mating have become like shopping, where there's no space for imperfections.

My parents' relationship has always struck me as a bit boring (they don't share similar interests or the "core connection" Gottleib describes), but they have created an amazing life together rich with struggle--and joy. I'm the daughter of a "schlubby but lovable" man, and I unfortunately share many of his schlubby characteristics. Even though I hate the fact that I carry around wadded up tissues in my pockets just like he does, I am always delighted by the recognition that I am very much my father's daughter. Our imperfections make us interesting, give us stories to tell.

everything bad is good for you

Or so argues Steven Johnson in his newest book about media culture. He says we shouldn't discuss pop culture in terms of morality but rather in terms of cognition. And, his argument goes, today's media is actually making us smarter. IQs have been steadily increasing since WWII and according to Johnson media is the reason.

Media-junkie that I am, I want to accept his argument but I'm not entirely convinced. Perhaps I'm skeptical because Johnson spends so much time discussing video games. I'm not a gaming fan, and I find that while avid gamers are extremely skilled in whatever games they favor, I don't see how those skills apply elsewhere. Does a gamer's increased cognitive ability to make decisions in a gaming world apply to problem-solving in the real world? I don't think so. Even if a game requires a comlex, embedded problem-solving process, the process is still discreet with only a certain number of variables (and, if you can't figure it out on your own, you can buy a gaming guide to help you out). In real-world problem solving there are many variables and you can't always guarantee that those variables will remain the same. People who are good at video games aren't so immediately. They are because they move through the same levels (problems) over and over again. If I had the chance to revisit intellectual and emotional problems over and over again, I'd eventually get it right, but I don't think it would make me more prepared for the next cognitive puzzle.

Johnson also talks about how tv and movies (less so than tv) are becoming more cognitively challenging (no longer the chronological narrative, but a mix of narrative threads, multiple characters, unexpected structures). While I agree with his assessment that tv is changing in these ways, I don't know whether that cognitive shift means smarter people. Just like IQ measures a specific type of intelligence, any cognitive increase that we get from more-complex tv watching seems limited to a specific set of skills. If I am able to process a more complex narrative, does that mean I am able to process more complex ideas in all cases? Because Johnson doesn't consider applicability, I find myself skeptical. I think I am a more sophisticated tv-watcher than say my parents, but I don't really think that my tv-watching skills (if you can call it that) affect any other aspect of my life.

Even though I don't fully buy Johnson's argument, I'm glad he's making it as I always find arguments against tv, etc. to be sort of silly.

more thoughts on art

When I was an undergrad, I had this ambition to write an honors thesis about art and social responsibilty, but it never went anywhere beyond a lot of scribbled notes about Ayn Rand's antithetical view to my argument (I'm still not entirely sure why I was so hung up on Rand). Anyway, I've been thinking about the matter lately, not so much about art and social responsibilty, but about the relevance of art (as I mentioned in my previous cockroach post).

So, I was quite interested in a book review in the Guardian about John Carey's What Good are the Arts?
Carey, apparently, critiques elitist views of art (e.g. Clive Bell's comment that "All artists are aristocrats ... Why should artists bother about the fate of humanity?") and argues that the literature is a superior art form.

The comments about the snootniness of art have me thinking more about the recent trend to bring art to the underserved: Born into Brothels, Eve Ensler's work in women's prison, Mark Salzman's work with juvenile criminals. While the various artists are making a seemingly generous act, there is still an element of snootiness in what they're doing. Less so with Born into Brothels (can't remember the photographer's name) than with Ensler or Salzman. I'm not saying that none of them has good intentions, but the kids' photographs get shown to rich westerners (to raise money, of course, but I still sensed this assumption that these viewers will have more ability to understand what the kids are doing, to see the value of their art--and this is underscored by the parents' unwillingness to let their kids get more education, to spend time taking photographs); the prisoners' words get interpreted and performed by professional actresses, Salzman's book is as much about his own writing as it is the kids he works with. With Ensler and Salzman there is almost a sense of surprise about what they read ("the delinquents have souls!") And Salzman's writers don't work at all with craft (whereas he continually references his own efforts to craft Lying Awake); it's as if art for these writers should only be about expression, not art in the terms of careful craft. I hate to by a cynic, but it seems like there's an assumption that these writers won't be able to get writing in terms of "high art."

Ok, just some caffeine-induced rambling. I'm going to stop before my thoughts get totally convoluted.

Also interesting is a collection of artists' comments on art in anticipation of the publication of Carey's book.

Harry Potter and the Curse of Hype

I swore I wouldn't buy the new HP. As I declared to lisa b. last night, the last book was tediously long and Rowling's editor needs to reign her in. And it's not like I don't already have a dozen books stacked by my bed, waiting to be read.

But I caved. Maybe it was the kids at the farmer's market sporting HP glasses. Or maybe it was all the folks on my children's lit listserv talking about the arrival of their books and their HP parties. Or maybe it's just that, despite myself, I really do want to know who the half-blood prince is. Whatever the catalyst, I caved to the hype. Now I have it--all 650 pages of it.

It was funny being at the bookstore today: a group of kids on the way in, arguing whether there would be any left ("they ordered billions," one declared. "it's not a problem); the near sense of awe as people approached the display--"there it is"; the adults hidden away in corners, devouring the thing. I can't imagine what the midnight release parties must be like.

I feel a bit ridiculous buying it, especially since I was so displeased with the last one. But, if you've read 5 you may as well read all 7. And besides, if you teach children's lit, you're almost obligated to read it, right?

when I was a broadway orphan

Yesterday, I was sitting in a coffee shop, idly working but mostly eavesdropping on conversations (of which, unfortunately, there were few). The coffee girl started telling a customer about how she received an injury: in trying to rescue a Bengal tiger from a tree. The story was full of detail about how the tiger moved and she moved and for a few seconds I was cursing my mundane life, wondering how I might also be of assistance to exotic animals. And then I quickly realized that she was lying, and that the guy was buying it, wondering how he might get such an exotic woman. And then she paused, and he shifted nervously, realizing that he'd been duped. She laughed and admitted she was joking, telling the real story--which had something to do with walking down the street.

My envy of her exotic lifestyle quickly shifted to envy of her ability to lie. I am a terrible, terrible liar. Even when I want to lie, when I think lying might serve me well or entertain me, I just can't lie. Just after I finished my cancer treatments, everyone kept asking me about how I lost my voice and giving me rememedies for it. Knowing they all meant well, I still hated people asking and having to tell them my health history. So, my sister and I made up a bunch of lies that I could tell people instead. There were many (kick-boxing lessons, getting mugged, being a singer in a heavy metal band) and they were detailed. But I never told a single one. Every time I was about to, I felt guilty for lying and for playing with people's sympathy. This was my favorite:

When I was eight, I was Annie on Broadway. I was a star. I could sing louder and longer than any Annie had ever sung before. I was selling out the place. jAnd then, I got a cold, a bit of laryngitis. But the show must go on, of course. They filled me full of lemons and honey, and I bravely stepped out onto the stage. Just me and Daddy Warbucks bringing hope to the masses. I sang for weeks soaked through with lemons, and one day my voice simply stopped. I was put to the streets with my red curls and my patent leather shoes. They foudn another Annie in the wings of the stage and scratched my name off every program.

The plan for the end of the story was for me to have tear hovering at the corner of my eye, gliding slowly, sadly, haltingly down my cheek and to offer a final chorus: "Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya tomorrow. . . "

housekeeping

I finished reading Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping this weekend. I've been meaning to read it, of course, for years. I'm actually glad I waited so long because now I can go out today and buy Gilead instead of waiting for years, hoping she'll write something else. I especially found the last few chapters among the loveliest prose I've read.

The summary on the back on my copy says the book is about "the dangerous and deep undertow of transcience," but I'm not sure that gets it right. Yes, the book is about transcience, but I don't think any judgments are made about its merits. (and maybe the blurb writer was just trying to be cute with the emphasis on water). Dangerous suggests avoidabililty. It's not such a new thing that Robinson is saying, that life is transcience and memory pulls at us because it's an acknowledgement of loss. But what I adore about the way she says all of these things is the way she links it to housekeeping, the mundane acts of dusting and straightening.

I've never thought about this much, how we try to affirm our own permanence by keeping house. I am generally a disinterested housekeeper, but recently I have become strangely attentive to domestic chores. This weekend I cleaned cupboards and sorted stacks of paper in my office and painted. I was particularly caught up in the painting, and I was inexplicably upset when the plan I had for my kitchen stools didn't quite work out. Then I finished reading the book and started wondering about my motivations. I think I can comfortably say (I'm still contemplating the matter) that my efforts at cleaning and painting were efforts to work myself out of a lingering funk. My own life has seemed starkly about transcience lately, and perhaps newly painted stools and tidy cupboards will ward it off.

blanding

Blanding is an unfortunate name for a town. It was called first Sagebrush and then Grayson, and I think either one is better for a town that is essentially bland. The town changed its name because a wealthy investor promised a thousand-volume library to any town that would adopt his name (actually his wife's maiden name; his name and 500 of the books went to Bicknell, UT).

I did get a bit of the "adventure" promised by Blanding: many deep scratches from canyon bushwhacking, a serious case of road burn from getting tripped by an over-eager kid in the 4th of July 5k, a cold, and a speeding ticket. Not really the sort of adventure I was looking for, but oh well.

I also learned that Blanding has some serious class strife. The town was settled by two main groups: the "Hole-in-the-Rockers" and the "Pachecoites." The Hole-in-the-Rock contingency arrived first. These folks decided to ignore long, established routes to the area and created a "shortcut" to get from the west to the east. The shortcut took six months of ridiculously hard travel and they had to blast and build a variety of wagon pathways across slickrock and down steep plateaus. The Pachecoites came later--north from Mexico, abandoning Mormon settlements because of political unrest. In the town's social structuring, it is better to be of Hole-in-the-Rock stock than Pachecoite. (my family, btw, is equal parts of both). And amazingly, the division still matters. When my aunt was a teenager, she dated an outsider (a family that came to work for an oil company) who everyone disapproved of. My dad found him once outside their property yelling about how to be any good in the damn town, your grandfather had to come through the Hole-in-the-Rock. Everyone you meet down there has to tell you who their parents and grandparents were and where they came from.

What amuses me about the whole thing is the assertion that the folks who came to the area in the most ridiculous, foolhardy way possible are better. Many of my family members (me included) possess a legendary sort of stubbornness, and I think this is where it all started. Sometimes tenacity is a virtue, but other times it is just a waste of time.

basecamp to adventure!

That is the tourism tagline for Blanding, Utah, which is where I'm headed for the 4th of July weekend, so I'm very excited.

Blanding is my dad's hometown. This year is the town's centennial and this weekend my dad's 50th high school reunion. So it's going to be a big family reunion/nostalgia fest (for my dad and his siblings, not so much for me). I will try to escape to hiking as much as possible (and the area around Blanding provides great hiking, thankfully).

Blanding is a funny place. It's small and sleepy and everyone knows everyone else. And even though I've never lived there and only visited a dozen or so times, the weekend will be filled with strange people coming up to me and declaring, "Oh, you must be LaMar's daughter."

I won't be blogging for several days, but I'll try to collect some good Blanding anecdotes for the return.

the decline of higher ed?

Has anyone seen the new PBS documentary Declining by Degrees? It's an investigative report on the state of higher ed, and worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet. The program tries to cover too much, I think, but it introduces some interesting questions. The two issues they seem to focus on are 1) the decline of the social contract that education should be accessible to all and 2) the existence of an unstated "no harm" contract between students and faculty--that both parties have tacitly agreed "I won't expect much of you if you don't bother me."

While I am interested in item #1, I found myself most bothered by #2. The reporter (John Merrow) asserted that the responsibility for remedying this situation lies with instructors (and in small part with the institutions, which he says need to focus more on teaching and learning). About this issue, he primarily talked with profs at 4-year schools, focusing on the distractions of research/ tenure. The assumption seemed to be that if profs did less research and taught more the problem would be solved. But I don't think it's that simple. I've taught at a 4-yr LA and a CC (both of which promoted teaching/ learning over research) and I've felt more of the "no harm" pressure at SLCC than at Knox. The difference? (and mind you, this is an anecdotal argument) Money. Knox had money, the students had money, and they had time to focus solely on education (and drinking, of course). Students at SLCC don't have money. They are working part-time, full-time, raising kids. They are in school to get a better job. I know I'm generalizing here, but whatever the circumstances, many students at the CC are there not because they were unprepared, but because they cobuldn't afford other options (and I actually would like to get more than an anecdotal sense of this). Because of economic pressures, I think students are more likely to pursue credits than education. It's not necessarily that they are disinterested in education, but rather that they are overwhelmed by the obligations of their lives. While Merrow's report focused somewhat on these economic issues, I wish he would have considered more fully how re-affirming the social contract about educational access might provide some remedy to the decline of teaching/learning.

nostalgia--a survey of sorts

I've heard two comments in the past few days that have me thinking about nostalgia. Without going into the contextual details, both comments suggested a link between nostalgia and age: "I am surprised to feel so nostalgic at such a young age" and "Being young, I wasn't interested in nostalgia."

I am a highly nostalgic person and I know that makes me a bit odd (I can precisely remember a moment of nostalgia at age seven: driving home from a family vacation, watching the horizon, thinking about my best friend, contemplating all the fun I'd had over the summer--and feeling sad knowing that time was altered and that we were altered and that those experiences would never happen again. Sometimes I even feel a sense of nostalgia for the passage of the immediate present into the past--in my happiest moments, I'm always a little bit sad because I know the moment is being shifted to an unretrievable past.) Even though I know I'm far more nostalgic than most people, I've strangely never thought much about nostalgia and age--that there's a moment when one becomes nostalgic or that there's a proper age to embrace nostalgia.

So, tell me:

• Do you consider yourself a nostalgic person? If so, how does the nostalgia manifest itself? If not, is there an age where you think you'll become nostalgic, where it will feel acceptable?
• Also, just because I love nostalgic songs and books tell me your favorites (and please, no Proust!). My favorite nostalgic song: Tony Bennett's "Once Upon a Time"

cockroach photographs and the relevance of art

I've been working on an essay that is, in part, about cockroaches and this week I've spent a lot of time looking at Catherine Chalmers' book American Cockroach. It's a book of photographs of cockroaches presented in three chapters: Residents (cockroaches in miniature domestic scenes), Imposters (cockroaches on pretty flowers dressed up like other, "cuter" bugs--if Anne Geddes photographed roaches instead of babies, this is how they'd look), and Executions (cockroaches "dying" in very human, vindictive ways--burning at the stake, an electric chair).

**Note: You can see a few of Chalmers' images and hear some of her comments on an old Studio 360: http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/show040304.html. You can also catch one of her short cockroach films at the Arts Festival this weekend.

Chalmers' work is pretty wild--gross, but strangely thought-provoking. I'm not typically a fan of conceptual art, but Chalmers really had me thinking about why we are so disgusted by cockroaches. In had a hard time looking at the first set of photographs because they so well conveyed our fear of cockroach invasion (huge cockroach antennae peeking out from behind a tiny sink, in wait for the unsuspecting human), but the cutesy outdoor scenes made me noticeably calmer. The roaches in disguise, outside of the house seemed like acceptable creatures. It has me thinking about how we interact with the natural world; the hierarchies we make for animals, bugs, plants; and how we determine what is safe and fearful. But Chalmers' work also has me thinking about the relevance of art.

For me, Chalmers' photographs are intriguing and they do help me to reconsider the cockroach, but I can imagine that someone who is living in public housing where cockroaches might be more abundant, where they might be crowded out of their hiding spaces during daylight hours would find Chalmers' work completely irrelevant, even laughable. There is certainly a class issue connected to her work--the woman, after all, makes her living raising and photographing bugs.

These thoughts, along with the current lisa b./ middlebrow discussion about poetry, have me wondering whether we've made art (and I'm using the word in the broadest of senses) too conceptual to be relevant to a wide range of folks. Creation, expression, even design seem like basic human acts, but often art is limited to certain spheres. I'm thinking about Born into Brothels. The kids taking the photographs clearly had a keen sense of how to interpret the world around them, to make something beautiful and communicative from the world around them. But when they showed their work, who did they show it to? Wealthy white westerners (I realize that part of the purpose was fundraising, but I still hoped to see the art having some relevance for the children's adult family members). I've often heard the argument that people can't contemplate the aesthetic if they are too consumed with meeting basic needs, but I'm not sure I buy it.

Last week, working with my writing group of adult learners (who all, in one way or another, are struggling to meet some basic needs) I realized how common the need to express and create is. One woman, in an uncharacteristic fit of anger, wrote a detailed fantasy about stealing a friend's car, driving out of state, and finding respite and a new start at a roadside cafe. As we talked about the story, she told us how much she had wanted to run away when she wrote the piece. She said, "I guess I ran away in my story." Another woman described a significant change in her life and how at the moment she felt like she was half inside a bottle and half outside a bottle. The writing isn't technically proficient, but it is lovely and meaningful. I think sometimes we make art so conceptual, so sophisticated, that we fail to make it relevant for everyone.

in the realms of the unhip

nothing brings out the dorks like 80's night at a dance club. and if said club has a name like Port O' Call, you're really in trouble.

sigh. I--dork that I am--just got back from 80's night at said club (and believe me, the name fits). Too wired from all the synth-pop to go to sleep, so I thought I may as well blog.

My favorite part of the night: some guy who kept coming right up to me and my sister, then abruptly walking away (was he trying to decide which of us to address? thought we looked better far away than close up?).

The evening led me to several conclusions:

• You can tell how old people are by the way they dance. People my age dance in a slow, long-armed sort of way. People just younger than me dance like they've been plugged in and are short-circuiting. People just younger than that mate on the dance floor.
• Men who want to meet women at dance clubs typically say they've been sent on a mission for a friend (e.g."my friend wanted to meet you, but he's shy"; "my friend needs to learn a few dance moves")
• Bucks Fizz's "I Hear Talk" is the best (forgotten) song of the early 80's
• Bucks Fizz is a terrible name for a band

I am music

Driving home yesterday, I was listening to The World (not in some trance-like metaphysical way, just the radio program), enjoying the world music segment when I realized that while I quite like world music, my cd collection is world-music-less, except for the following:

• Buena Vista Social Club (the everyman’s world music)
• Ibrahim Ferrer (I’m in love with him)
• a Putamayo “summer party sampler” (great for housecleaning) that I got for free back in my music-seller days at B&N

As I was sitting in traffic, I decided that I fear too much world music would suggest a shift in identity, like I would have to start burning incense all the time and drinking yerba mate.

Why, as adults, do we still associate music tastes with identity? It seemed vaguely reasonable to falsely claim love for Skinny Puppy as a teenager in order to cultivate an appropriate goth identity, but now? We all do it, right? While music tastes may no longer be relationship deal breakers, they do provide pause (like the time I found a Spice Girls cd in an ex-boyfriend’s otherwise acceptable collection). And we all have some music preference that we keep hidden. Mine? Barry Manilow (I can sing all the words to Copa Cabana).

education as commodity

Two events today have me thinking about my future as a teacher and education more generally.

First, I received a letter from a recently graduated high school student who wants to jump into my class mid-semester. He is trying to complete his Associates degree by the end of summer (a noble goal) and mistakenly thought that the course would be covered by his AP credits. He stated in his generally well-written letter: “I do not need an A, but just to pass the class.” While the student is clearly ambitious and probably quite bright, the request really rankled me.

Secondly (and perhaps more importantly) I gave my classes a mini-lecture on plagiarism; I even passed out copies of the relevant sections of the college’s Student Code of Conduct. The process made me ill, partly because I hate confrontation of any kind, but mainly because I was angry that I found the lecture necessary. In recent weeks, I have faced several cases of blatant plagiarism. Usually in these cases, I try to trust the students’ good intentions (ignorance of citation conventions, etc.), but this semester folks are handing in texts that were written word for word by someone else. (And beyond the basic dishonesty of the act, what bothers me is that they think I won’t know—that I can’t distinguish their writing from someone else’s, that they don’t think I can do a Google search).

I feel sometimes as though I should stop worrying about what I’m teaching my students or what they are learning and just give them all a gentleman’s C (or is that a B now?); sometimes, it seems like that’s all they want anyway. Teaching required courses, I am used to having some students primarily focused on the hoop they are jumping through, and sometimes I even enjoy the challenge of convincing them that it is worth their time to learn how to write well, but the attitude seems to be increasing. I don’t always feel so cynical; I generally find my students to be smart and engaging and committed to their education. And I should acknowledge that I did a fair bit of hoop jumping in my undergrad years.

But, I can’t help wondering whether students’ occasional bad habits are becoming institutionalized—the norm rather than the exception. Or maybe it’s always been this way and we are just more aware of it because of the abundance of online papermills, policing tools like Turnitin.com, etc. I know I’m not the only one asking these questions, and I’m not sure what I can add to the discussion, but today it feels personal.

Social Security is retro chic?

In preparing for today's class on rhetorical analysis (websites specifically) I was browsing through Rock the Vote. Their current campaign is "I 'heart' Social Security." Number 10 on their list of reasons to support SS: "Because Social Security is retro chic." Huh?


And they have trucker hats! (http://www.rockthevotegear.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=RTVG&Product_Code=RTV102). That makes me so damn happy.

trucker hats are for truckers

Since I made my students write commentaries this weekend, I was planning to write my own (a good, humbling, teacher exercise to remind me what it feels like to be a student); however, I spent too much time responding to their drafts of last week and I didn't get it done. Even though I didn't get the thing written, I did spend much of the weekend ruminating about my topic of choice: trucker hats.

Who decided these mesh and foam monstrosities were cool? Trucker hats should only be worn by truckers! What I find particularly offensive about trucker hats worn by non-truckers is that they never fit. They are worn with an extra inch between skull and brim (apparently held aloft by hair?). A former student of mine often wore a trucker hat, and I could barely make out her eyes under the puffy cap. If you are not a trucker and you still want to wear the hat, I think it's ok only if you can answer yes to one of the following questions:

• Do you regularly incorporate words like "breaker" and "10-4" into your sentences?
• Is your name Large Marge, Pig Pen, or Dick Simon?
• Do you watch Convoy every Labor Day?
• Have you ever worshipped at a Transport for Christ Mobile Chapel?
• Do you own a copy of C.W. McCall's Greatest Hits? (bonus point if you have it on 8-track).
• Was The Wichita Lineman your wedding song?

Any suggestions for additional trucker hat integrity questions?

See the following website for guidelines on how to construct your own trucker hat and reclaim the trend from the indie hipster mainstream: http://www.blacktable.com/gillin030701.htm

garlic scapes

Today was the first day of the local farmer's market, which in lots of ways is my favorite day of the summer. Too bad today was overcast and rainy (when will it end?!) But it was still a lovely day. Before the rain, I got to sit on the grass and eat my raspberry Berliner (a jelly-filled masterpiece that I only allow myself to eat in the summer--not that I don't find appropriate replacements in the winter). And the lovely, lovely vegetables. I finally decided to get a 1/2 share with one of the local farmers. I'm a big fan of CSA, so it's about time I joined in. And it will be nice getting surprises throughout the summer. What I like most about the FM is that I rarely decide beforehand what to get, so I can spend the rest of Saturday morning looking for recipes.

The market was a bit small today; because of all the rainy weather, farmers got off to a slow start. Regardless, I still found:

• chard, of course--my favorite veg
• salad greens, including some almost painfully spicy stuff
• fava beans (chianti anyone?)
• radishes and parsley
• the tiniest bit of peas (he was scraping the bottom of the bucket and only came up with $.25 worth--good thing I arrived when I did)
• garlic scapes--really, the best part of the market in early summer. So garlicky, so crunchy, so tasty. If you have yet to experience the joy of garlic scapes, you can read more about them here: http://www.maryjanesfarm.com/SimplyMJ/articles/column39.asp

Now I just have to decide what to cook first and what to do with the scapes (frittata, pesto, hummus?)

Along with all the amazing food, the Farmer's Market is great for socializing/ people watching--friends you haven't seen in a while, folks you wish you knew. If I didn't want the vegetables, I would probably go anyway just for the crowds.

Washes and razors for foofoos—for me freckles and a bristling beard. W.W.

Amen, Uncle Walt. Amen.

But what's the female equivalent of a bristling beard?--I may not be willing to go that far.

Ah, Escalante

I just got back from a lovely trip to the Escalante. Good friend D. is moving to Texas, so we decided to take a "farewell" journey. Our original plan was to do a 3-day backpacking trip, but the weather did not cooperate. A lot of rain (and even a bit of snow!) on Thursday night/ Friday morning made the dirt road to our remote trailhead impassable. So, we opted for a shorter trail, closer to town and just off the paved Burr Trail. Despite the ease and accessibilty of the trial, we mostly had the canyon to ourselves (we passed an outgoing group of horseriders on day one and a solo hiker doing an insect study for USGS on day two). The canyon was lovely and wide (easy trekking, but great views). There were also many sidecanyons to explore. We wandered up a few--bushwhacking to a gorgeous arch and scrambling up a few narrow-ish rockfalls. Nothing too dramatic or challenging, but sometimes it's nice to take an easy route.

Oddly, one of the trip's highlights was food. Not Clif Bars and freeze-dried dinners, but a wonderful restaurant--Hell's Backbone Grill. If you ever get to Boulder (UT not CO) you must try it. Because we arrived to rain and ominous thunder/lightning Thursday night, we wimped out and stayed at a motel rather than camping. So, we had dinner at the neighboring restaurant. We liked it so much we went back for breakfast the next morning and dinner the day we got off the trail. I'm so used to eating Navajo Tacos and greasy burgers when I go to Southern Utah, I was thrilled to find this restaurant (which I'd just read a short blurb about last week in High Country News). The food is amazing--mostly organic, locally produced, delicious, and pretty (garnished with tiny edible flowers and the like). Trout encrusted with blue corn and pecans--it rivaled trout cooked straight off the hook. Grilled fennel, snap peas, baby greens. And this chocolate chile cream pot--sigh--perfect texture, just a hint of chile.

It was the perfect backpacking trip, really. Enough time on the trail to get grungy and tired, with a bit of luxury to balance things out.

The Ethos of Being Assertively Unhip

Now that I've recovered from my anger at the sexist canoeist, I thought I'd ponder a bit (as per Middlebrow's request) on what it means to be "assertively unhip."

To begin, I don't mean the self-conscious unhipness of trucker hats and re-sale shops. If you're trying that hard to be "unhip" you are definitely seeking the "hip" label. And you could say the same thing about me--that by asserting my unhipness I am hoping for hip. Instead of being counter-hegemonic against the pressures of hipness, I am just trying to fit in (which isn't really too hip, so I've made my point.) When I was a kid, I decided to give myself the middle name "crazy cat" which I'm pretty sure I intended as a derivative of hep cat. The truth is I've always just been a geeky girl trying to make peace with herself.

You could argue, as Clint did, that by mentioning both my love for American Idol and the Smiths in the same posting, I am asserting hipness (in that counter-hegemonic way). However, while in some circles my obsession with the Smiths earns me points, in others it makes me just as dorky as watching American Idol does. And oddly, the only folks I've seen in recent years wearing Smiths t-shirts are twenty-somethings wearing trucker hats. A couple of years ago, I went to a Johnny Marr concert. The crowd was divided between 20-something hipsters and 30-somethings like me. So, I guess I could be hip if I were still in my twenties, but it's just sort of sad that I'm still listening to the music I loved in high school. I'm like those middle-aged folks still hollering out for "Freebird."



Speaking of hipness (or the lack of) has anyone read Leland's Hip: A History? I've only heard a couple of interviews with him on NPR, so I don't know much about the book or its merits. Most of the reviews on Amazon are positive, but I love this bit: "But I can see Leland pitching this book to the suits at HarperCollins: 'See, the book is HIP. Instead of acknowledgments, it's got 'Shout-outs,' see? That's from rap. I may be 45 but I can Talk to the Young, a Target Market!'" If anyone has read it, I'd love to hear what you think.

Canoeing with the Sexist

This summer, I decided to volunteer for an outdoor rec. program that works with special populations (youth-at-risk, folks with cognitive and physical disabilities, etc.). Yesterday was volunteer canoe training. I've done a fair bit of canoeing (two summers teaching in the Boundary Waters, and I was looking forward to the training so I could understand more about adaptive canoeing and just so I could get out on the water (I haven't been out since last year's short trip to the BWCA).

We get to the reservoir, and after a few minutes of instruction, we group up (3 to a canoe) to practice. I asked the folks in my group (a woman and a man) if they wanted to paddle stern. No takers, so I volunteered. After two seconds on the water, it was clear that uptight man paddling in the middle of the canoe wanted to be in the stern. Let me just point out here that there is no real need for a paddler in the middle of a canoe. They don't really add anything to the process (except, perhaps, for a bit of speed). All one needs is a paddler in the bow for balance and forward power and a paddler in the stern to steer. So, the man (who because of a brief conversation on the shore knew that I'd paddled before) immediately started steering--from the center of the canoe! Duh--it doesn't even make sense in terms of the physics of the craft to steer from the center. And he was doing wild, agressive steering. It takes very little motion (unless you're paddling in windy conditions or rapids) to steer a canoe. So, I tell the guy to stop steering. But he doesn't. And I tell him again. No luck. He tells me, "You can't do it." Uh, yeah, I can if you would stop being a sexist ass. He tells me, "You're in charge, you've got to tell us what to do." (I guess he was expecting me to yell, "Hard right, hard left."--no agressive paddling was needed on the sleepy reservoir). I don't need you to do anything, I hollered back--just paddle forward. Apparently the man was not capable of doing such a thing--he kept doing D-strokes and prys and other wild flappings. I don't think he ever stopped to consider that the canoe might not have been going along smoothly because he was counter-acting my steering. I really, really wanted to wack him in the head with my paddle. I've been fuming about it since yesterday. Nothing pisses me off like a man who thinks a woman can't accomplish physical work.

Idol Mania

I will be watching a lot of American Idol this week--too much, really. It's the finale, so finally we will have our new prince/ princess of pop. This the week that I realize how much time I've wasted the past six months listening to amateurish bubblegum pop. *sigh* But it was worth it. I figure I'm just making up for not fawning over teen idols when it was age appropriate.

Now that the show is wrapping up, I can get back to the music I should be listening to:

The Smiths--and when I say the Smiths, I don't mean Morrissey. What can really beat that too-brief nirvana of Johnny Marr and Morrissey? I recently saw an interview with Morrissey. Commenting on the far too soon break-up of the band, he said (referring to Johnny Marr): "I don't know how he lives with himself." Honestly I don't know either.

The New York Dolls: I liked these guys in high school, but had sort of forgotten about them (shameful) until the recent Sundance documentary about bassist Arthur "Killer" Kane. I haven't seen the movie yet, but apparently a distributor has picked it up and it should be out in the Fall. So, here's the story (too bad VH-1 didn't jump on this one): Kane, after his brief glam rock glory became a Mormon. With his new found faith, he continuously prays to get back together with the band. Which, thanks to Morrissey (who, as a lad, was president of the Dolls' UK fan club), happened at the Meltdown Festival. They (reportedly) killed. I'm so charmed by the idea of a glam rocker turned Mormon whose only wish is to revisit the glam days. Sadly (but somehow fitting with the story) Kane died shortly after the reunion. Regardless of the great story, you must listen to this band. I will love them forever for bringing back the 3-minute pop song.

Kelly Joe Phelps: I'm still always amazed that he's white. He's too much for words, really. Great lyrics, mellow raspy voice, amazing slide guitar. If you ever get the chance to see him live, go. Even if you've never heard him, go. Even if you don't like Blues, go.