Panic City

Damn, this area is jittery today, the third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. Hurricane Gustav is forecast to make landfall Tuesday morning down on The Bayou (Bayou Lafourche), in Cajun Boy's territory, yet I had difficulty buying gas this morning in Slidell, which is far removed from there. I don't know why, but that really cheesed me. I think it was just icing on the cake of overkill broadcasting, premature evacuations, and and a general sense of panic. Anyway, I was yelling, slamming my fist on the horn, and punching the steering wheel whenever I encountered the usual rush-hour frustration on the way into work this morning. I rarely get worked up like that.

Here we go again

Well, this certainly sucks out loud. Fortunately, I reserved a room in Memphis just in case we feel compelled to evacuate. Maybe we'll go to Graceland or something.

The Moviegoers

DW and I had an opportunity to play Politeness Man yesterday at the local cineplex, during a viewing of the movie about another superhero, Bat Man. Perhaps 30 minutes into the film, the ball cap-wearing philistine two seats over received, and responded to, a text message, shining his cell screen and making clicky noises. I said nothing, assuming that a theater employee would catch him next time around. After all, this theater previously had been a tad militant about its no-cell policy.

Sadly, the theater appears to have accepted the cellular decline of Western civilization, and such militant enforcement is no longer the case. With about 15 or 20 minutes left in the film, the cap-wearing philistine Cellular Man received a telephone call and began to engage in a conversation, no doubt concerning the purchase of whatever controlled substance he planned to use after the movie. "Get off the phone!" I shouted at him, to no avail. DW went to the lobby to summon help from theater employees, who were milling about, no doubt daydreaming about what they would do with that oily gunk to which the motion picture industry refers as "butter." I can only imagine the depraved horrors that go on in that den of celluloid atrocities. John Waters might learn a thing or two from the gunky daydreams I imagine these folks were having. I'm just saying.

Oh yes, back to our story. DW returned with a theater employee, who sat next to the cell phone scofflaw, spoke with him for a few seconds, then got up and left. Cellular Man and his wife placed their feet on their knees and refused to allow DW to pass through to her seat (one gets the feeling that these vile people have done this before). I looked underneath DW's seat and could not ascertain whether she had taken her purse with her, or I would have gathered her up and left the premises. I also worked through the mental calculations of whether it would be worth it to engage in a brawl inside the cineplex. Just then, DW summoned a theater employee, who returned with her, told the Cellular People to allow DW through, then disappeared instantaneously. Cellular Woman let her through, but Cellular Man attempted to trip her before letting her pass. A negligence action against the theater might have been an interesting prospect had DW fallen, but I'm glad she made it back to her seat. As the credits rolled, I shouted, "leave your damn phone home, next time, [expletive deleted]!" This all happened in a half-full theater, and nobody else had a thing to say about it. The Cellular People verbally accosted us in the lobby. DW made a point of loudly telling Cellular Woman not to try and intimidate her, which had the effect of shooing them of. The management provided us with movie passes, and I fired off an irate e-mail to corporate headquarters when we arrived home.

I think that if the cell-phone prohibition is dropped, then I should be allowed to blurt out snarky remarks and spoilers during movies. That is how some people used to watch movies in New Orleans, after all, which could make bad movies very fun.

There's No Place Like Home Depot

T likes his tool belt. A likes the new piano.

You can do it. We can help.

Home Depot Honors Fallen Soldiers With Great Prices On Tools
Hats off to The Onion. This is the tackiest thing I've seen in a long time.

Just a couple of pictures

A dilemma, wrapped in an enigma, shrouded in something or other

It's been a little over two weeks since my mother died, and it's difficult to articulate exactly how I feel about it. I've had some moments of leaden sadness, but, for the most part, I quite honestly don't feel much at all. The ability to deny appropriate emotions, or at least to suppress them deeply, is something I inherited from my mom, so perhaps it's appropriate that I'm having a hard time feeling as though I'm having a hard time. We were estranged--first partially, then entirely--during the last few years of her life, but the lack of emotional response strikes me as a bit odd.

I have had significant interaction with my sister in the past couple of weeks. She contracted a nasty sinus infection that quickly turned into pneumonia, landing her in the hospital. That was pretty crappy, coming right on the heels of the funeral. She is astonishingly better and more in-control than she was a couple of years ago; I hope she is able to maintain her current frame of mind and keep body and soul together on the scant financial resources she will have. I'm going to do what I can to help her set things up. Beyond that, I'll take things very slowly--much slower than she would like, I'm afraid.

Yes, let's beat up disabled children, shall we?

Who is this Michael Savage idiot, anyway? Other than someone I'd like to smack upside the head, I mean. What a douche!

Holy Psycho Anarcho-Nihilist, Batman!

We saw The Dark Knight this afternoon. We had been looking forward to viewing the film at the local IMAX, but that crummy theater closed its IMAX permanently just in the nick of time. Christopher Nolan actually filmed parts of the film with IMAX cameras, so this film must be particularly sweet on the right screen. I thought about driving to Houston, but the IMAX there is sold out for all features this weekend. Oh well.

All the hoo-haw about Heath Ledger's performance in this movie is justified. His Joker isn't just a gangster in a goofy get-up, but a cynical anarchist and a nihilist who engages in antisocial behavior because he likes to watch the chaos he creates. Ledger looks and sounds wonderfully creepy, though a funny, brainy kind of creepy. The Joker also comes close to seducing Batman out of his job, and the wanted superhero is susceptible to that kind of seduction. Their cat-and-mouse game is wonderfully played by Ledger and Christian Bale. Heath Ledger's performance might land him the Oscar he should have won for Brokeback Mountain.

Daily Zen, woo-hoo!

Shall I tell you what it is to know?
To say you know when you know,
And to say you do not, when you do not,
That is knowledge.

- Confucius

Death in the Family

My mother died early yesterday. I've been estranged from the family for quite some time, but I will be attending the funeral tomorrow. It might be a bit more difficult than most funerals; we'll see.

ETA: I'm in shock. The funeral was very nice, and not at all confrontational.

Blinding me with science

Researchers at Harvard have discovered six genes they believe are related to autism causation. However, they noted that pretty much each family with autistic genes has its own unique etiology. Evidently, these genes are responsible for the activation of synapses in the brain in the first few years of life; in autistic kids the activation switches never turn on. The good news is that the medical profession is getting better at formulating medications that flip genetic switches. Also, the result appears to validate applied behavior analysis programs and their intense, repetitive training, which may help develop synapses. My sons' ABA training is hard work for them, but they enjoy learning, and the ABA appears to have improved their intellectual capabilities as well as their overall behavior.

The Magic Bus, Death Edition

Wilderness . . . not only offered an escape from society but also was an ideal stage for the Romantic individual to exercise the cult that he made of his own soul.

--Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind (quoted by Jon Krakauer)

Christopher McCandless died alone inside an abandoned bus on an Alaskan trail in August 1992, and, if youtube is any indication, the bus has become a shrine--to what, exactly, I don't know. Nothing against McCandless; I've always had a fondness for people who march to the beat of a different drummer, and certainly there are a fair number of people who yearn for what they perceive as a simpler, more primitive life, a life that will provide them with a spiritual epiphany. I say "what they perceive as" based on McCandles's diary entries and what litle I've read about the amount of time and energy hunter/gatherer types spend hunting for game, gathering edible vegetation, warding off disease, and staying warm. Certainly that kind of life is more primitive, but simpler? I'll give my eight hours a day to the U.S. Courts, thank you.

Into the Wild is Jon Krakauer's meticulously researched and brilliantly written account of the last two years of McCandless's life. McCandless graduated from Emory University in 1990, then went on the road. He changed his name to "Alexander Supertramp" and cut off contact with his family. He frequently went days without eating, and lived on rice and whatever he could hunt or gather. Finally, in 1992, he took off for his great Alaskan adventure, a trip he thought would bring about an inner spiritual transformation as he lived off the land. By July 1992, McCandless's diary entries indicated that he was ready to leave the wilderness and return to society. The problem was, McCandless was untrained and unprepared to live in Alaska. The river he had walked across to get to his bus had swollen and become impassible by the time he was ready to leave, and he hadn't bothered to obtain a detailed map that would have directed him to an easy way across the river a few hours from where he was. So he went back to the bus to wait things out. Something went terribly wrong at the end of July--McCandless belived he had eaten toxic potato seeds--and he starved to death by the middle of August. Krakauer opines that a toxic mold or fungus that had grown on the seeds imparied McCandless's ability to metabolize food. Whatever caused him to starve, Christopher McCandless weighed 67 pounds when his corpse was found.

McCandless's death made national news, and Outside magazine assigned Krakauer to write an article. The article led Krakauer to people who had known McCandless in the final two years of his life. His interviews with those people and McCandless's diaries allowed him to piece together a gripping narrative of an adventurous but tortured soul in search of himself. McCandless was obsessed with Tolstoy, Thoreau, and Jack London, and his extensive wilderness adventures somewhat emulated his favorite authors.

McCandless detested his materialistic (by his standards) parents, and he rejected their offers of a new car and a mommy/daddy scholarship to law school (he did what?) Krakauer himself is a wilderness adventurer, having disappointed his own father by rejecting the family's one true path to success, also known as Harvard Medical School. He drew upon his own experience climbing a glacial mountain in Alaska in an attempt to understand McCandless. Krakauer felt vibrant and was intensely focused throughout his climb, as he was in all his adventures. Danger brought him alive. McCandless evidently had the same kind of feelings throughout his adventures. The most obvious difference is that, although Krakauer took huge risks, he was a trained, experienced climber who made appropriate preparations. A less obvious difference is that Krakauer didn't come off as all that interested in using his adventures to gain a complete spiritual transformation.

The most dangerous thing I've ever done in the great outdoors is some mild-mannered open water diving. Diving provided me not with the thrill of danger, but rather a feeling of tranquility, something that was badly needed. I haven't been in a few years, but I'm planning to go down again one of these days. I did go hiking once in the Bear River Range in Utah with no compass and a small supply of water, and I felt terribly stupid when I got lost. However, I was able to see the parking lot from the highest peak and maintain my sense of direction until I got back to the car. One of my fond fantasies is to hike, camp, and run the Rio Grande rapids in the Big Bend region of Texas. If I go, I'll attempt to be properly prepared and provisioned.

Into the Wild brought the movie and novel Fight Club to mind. Chris McCandless and Tyler Durden shared a desire for a return to a primitive lifestyle, and both had inter-generational issues. McCandless tested his body by living in an extreme manner on the edge of society, while Tyler and his followers tested their bodies by having the crap beaten out of themselves. McCandless, however, became an anarchist and withdrew from civilization, while Tyler became a fascist and attempted to create anarchy by destroying civilization. I suppose sons have always had issues with their fathers--Oedipus Rex is rather an old play--and father/son issues have persisted even after Freud has gone out of style.

The book also raised one issue of which I was vaguely aware but had not articulated--the responsibility of an individual to conduct himself or herself in a particular manner to spare the feelings of his or her friends and family members. I have thought some about living my life in comformity with the expectations of others (I agin' it as a general proposition, but I suppose I admire nonconformists far more than I emulate them), but not so much about regulating my actions to spare their feelings. Chris McCandless's relatives wondered aloud how he could bring them so much grief. It's a fair question. However, apart from acting on an actual death wish--something Krakauer didn't see in McCandless--I don't know that one should be responsible for the feelings of anybody beyond his or her spouses and children. Beyond that, one's life is one's own, I suppose.

As for transformative spiritual experiences, I'm dubious about reliance on external stimuli, without something more, though I suppose that some experiences and phenomena are more helpful than others. In the end, however, the actual transformation occurs inside the individual, and can't be borrowed from nature or any person or institution. On second thought, I suppose that intense physical activities requiring complete concentration and perfect coordination of mind and body tend to eradicate the distinction in Western thought between mind and body. Nondualist Eastern thought rejects such a distinction in the first place. Perhaps one can gain a kind of existential, experiential transformative spirituality through adventures like McCandless's.

I can see why people see seomthing admirable in McCandless; I can also see why others see him as a reckless idiot. What I don't get is why people still make pilgrimages to what McCandless called his Magic Bus. Now I've got to see Sean Penn's movie version, which features the bus and other Chris McCandless locales.

Why, it's an article about me.

The Glen Rose Reporter ran an article this week about my search for my biological parents. The article came about after I asked the newspaper for archival materials, and I'm grateful to the newspaper for publishing it. Hopefully, someone will come forward with some useful information.

A Child's Nostalgia

T meets up with Ronald McDonald, the magic maker of McNuggets.

A advertises his mother's alma mater. Surprisingly, the WalMart in Logan, Utah, carries no Utah State hats or t-shirts, and DW and I had to go to a sporting goods store and look around to find one of the few items of USU memorabilia available in the town where that university is located. Around here, you can't avoid LSU stuff in any mercantile establishment.

A had a rough weekend at home. He was having allergy issues and obviously felt under the weather. His TV/VCR went haywire and I had to hide it from him, and he hasn't learned how to push all those fun buttons on the Playstation 3 that we use as a DVD player. He also became nostalgic, something that is unusual for him. He directed me around town by pointing in the direction he wanted me to drive, and we drove past his old school and on some old joyrides that we hadn't done since gas was maybe $1.50 a gallon.

There's nothing like the smell of beignets in the morning

I had breakfast this morning with gentle reader Doug from Calgary. It was nice of his company to send him down here, and it's always nice to meet online acquaintances in person.

Of Families and Frontiers

DW's family reunion last week was a success, as some of the gentle readers of this space can attest. None of the uncomfortable scenarios I feared materialized, and my blood pressure remained normal the entire time. I would like to send all good karma, positive energy, and prayers to the family of one gentle reader whose grandson was struck by a motorcycle shortly after the family returned home.

This was a reunion of DW's parents and siblings and of my FIL and his siblings. My FIL's family on both sides has been in Utah and Idaho since the 1840s. The earliest of those were genuine frontier settlers--ranchers and farmers, mostly--whether they intended to be (in the case of the Mormons) or not (one ancestor's family stopped in Almo, Idaho, on the way to California and just stayed there). Some of DW's relatives currently work the land, and my FIL is an agricultural economist, but DW and her siblings grew up in urbanized settings, with only occasional exposure to the arduous physical labor of ranchwork. When I was a kid in Oklahoma, our yard bordered on a cattle farm, but I knew absolutely nothing about the work that went on back there. Neither of my parents and none of my grandparents were involved with agriculture of livestock, so I have less of a connection to the land than does my DW.

The mythology of the Old West and the westward-shifting American frontier, of course, have always served as part and parcel of the definition of who and what white Americans are, realizing, of course, the violence and injustice in taking much of that frontier from its native inhabitants. Also, the ideal of the American small farmer has been a part of our politics since Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton disputed the nature of our country. The taciturn dirt farmers; the cattle ranchers; the oilmen; the gunsligners; the pious Mormons; the prospectors; the dreamers; the hustling preachers; the evil railroad and mining companies--these all form a part of our collective national self-image, I think, though clearly not part of the reality in the lives of most Americans of my generation. We are reminded of that past by the mythology of the West and by artifacts like the accordion that DW's grandfather took on the trail to pass the time while he tended sheep.

During the reunion of this family with its own roots in what was once a frontier region, and in the days subsequent to that reunion, I just happened to read two fabulous books that address boundaries and frontiers, albeit in very different ways. I liked Cormac McCarthy's The Road so much that I purchased his Border Trilogy, and I finished reading All The Pretty Horses (1992)yesterday. The plot has teenage ranching Texans running away into Mexico, then returning home, in the 1940s. In the Texas these boys knew, property transfers (in this case, horses) were effected with contracts and lawsuits, while in the Mexico they came to know, such transfers were effected with arms and official corruption. The northern Mexico of McCarthy's story somewhat resembles HBO's Deadwood, an outlaw encampment where might made right and life was cheap. All The Pretty Horses ends with our protagonist riding off into the sunset, into an uncertain future in a disappearing frontier.

At the Salt Lake airport, I spotted a copy of Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air (1997), a firsthand account of the May 1996 Mount Everest disaster. Ironically, perhaps, I began reading the book over the Wasatch Range and the High Uintahs--tall mountains, for sure--and got through about half of it while flying at an altitude only slightly higher than the summit of Everest. Krakauer--an adventure sports journalist--was a member of one of the ill-fated expeditions that climbed to the highest point on the planet on May 10, 1996. As a hypoxic Krakauer descended, an unexpected storm blew in from the South, stranding several climbers at altitudes where human beings are not naturally equipped to be. Krakauer and his fellow climbers found themselves at the frontier of human survival; there were nine deaths, including the leaders of both expeditions. The clouds, viewed from above, appeared innocent enough, but they brought a thunderstorm/blizzard with hurricane-force winds. A series of bad decisions delayed for several hours the final ascent of the two expedition parties at the center of the story, most notably the failure of the leaders of those parties to ensure that ropes were set up at a potential bottleneck very near the summit. The leaders also failed to set a firm turnaround time to ensure that climbers would not run out of supplemental oxygen, whether or not they reached the summit. However, a few climbers assumed a reasonable turnaround time, turned around short of the summit, and survived. The highest peak I've ever hiked is 10,000 feet, and, after reading this book, that may be the highest this lowlander ever hikes.

Notes on a Road Trip

Your humble correspondent's in-laws are holding a family reunion in Logan, Utah, this week. It's been quite nice thus far, with none of the dueling banjoes or visits from the sheriff's office that would not be surprising in an any meeting of your humble correspondent's own maternal family.

I had a surprise! sneeze Wednesday morning in the airport garage--I'll spare you the gory details, gentle reader--but the end result was that I flew from Baton Rouge to Salt Lake City a la commando.

The flight from BR to Dallas was uneventful and so boring that I composed some bad political haiku.

president barack
springtime for america
allergy season

arizona john
eternal desert summer
sincerely, george bush

Your humble correspondent played golf for the first time in his life yesterday, and actually enjoyed it. Thanks to gentle reader Bill and my other brothers-in-law for talking me into going.

Fathers and Sons, Postapocalyptic Version

On the recomendation of gentle reader Craig, I read Cormac McCarthy's dystopian father/son novel The Road. Civilization as we know it was destroyed by nuclear warfare several years before the story takes place, and few survivors remain. Among the survivors are a father and son who are constantly on the move, seeking warmth, food, and survival. The unnamed father in the story is a jack of all trades, a la McGuyver, who can make use of anything he can scrounge. He protects his son against cold, illness, predatory gangs of survivors, and a dangerous desire to share the duo's limited resources with other desperate survivors. The son is the father's sole reason for living, and the father is the only other person in the son's life.

The son was born shortly after the nuclear winter began, and, therefore, knows nothing of the world as we know it apart from what his father has told him about it. The son also relies on his father for explanations about the harsh ethics created by their dire circumstances. I kind of related to this aspect of the story, especially when the son would say "it's okay" whenever the father would provide explanations. My oldest son frequently says, "it's okay," as he works to calm himself following a disappointment such as me not taking him on an airplane whenever we drive past the airport (not always successfully, as he destroyed the armrest in my car the other day). Much like the father in the story, I worry about my childrens' futures after my own death. They are entirely dependent on the adults in their lives in order to function in the world, and, barring a cure or a miracle, they will always be largely dependent on other people. They are particularly close to me and always have been. I'm sure they'll fare well without me being around, but the concern will always be there.

Additionally, some poignant moments in The Road involved the father either watching the son sleep or putting him to sleep. Our boys are ages 9 and 11, and we have the same bedtime rituals we had when they were infants. Those rituals have always been almost sacred to me.

ETA: I recommend this book to any gentle readers who might be expectant fathers. You know who you are.

T uses anything that looks like luggage to feed his fantasy of driving to the airport and boarding an airplane. He mostly used plastic first aid kit boxes, but brought out my old briefcase once or twice. He's happy as a clam riding around town with those containers in the car, at least until we drive past the airport.

Mystery

It's a mystery to me why I'm trying to track down my birthparents, aside from wanting health information and genetic history. I think I might have dropped it by now but for my irritation at the notion that I am legally barred from just calling up and getting my birth records like anybody else could. There's an adoptee rights rally scheduled for July 22, in the park directly across the street from my office. The National Conference of State Legislators will be in town, and there's a big push on in several states for open-records laws. Maybe I'll go; it's certainly more pragmatic to walk across the street than to march on Washington or Austin.

Yesterday, as we were preparing to check out of our hotel so we could pick up A. for a weekend visit at home, I suddenly contemplated all the disappointment my kids have experienced over the years. I briefly sobbed. They've had a great deal of joy also, and they enjoy their day-to-day lives. I wonder whether my deal yesterday had anything to do with my search for my own origins or my profound disappointment in my own family of origin the past decade or so.