tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-42695806273775913542024-02-21T09:34:00.721-05:00PRACTICE SPACESporadically and leisurely.(-ly?)Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.comBlogger269125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-6980597180713279712016-06-26T11:51:00.002-04:002016-06-26T11:51:45.936-04:00GREETINGS FROM THE PRESENTHello, stranger! I've set up camp <a href="http://www.chelseyjohnson.com/" target="_blank">over here now.</a> If I can figure out how to haul it with me, I will dust off this thing and set it up there.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-32083766311720966852014-12-22T12:02:00.002-05:002014-12-22T12:19:52.447-05:00INCIDENT REPORT: "ISSUES, QUESTIONS AND CONCERNS"<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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What would bring this vintage blog creaking back into use? Only the incident report. From the latest <i><a href="http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/" target="_blank">Park Rapids Enterprise</a></i>, the above is only the beginning. Other notable incidents:<br />
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• A vehicle in a Park Rapids lot was "parked wrong," has been there since 6 a.m., unknown if occupied;<br />
• A Todd Township caller requested assistance in getting a very intoxicated female removed from her residence, called back and said she left with a sober driver;<br />
• A Becker County deputy reported a male on a bike riding down the middle of the road in Todd Township;<br />
• A male was reported on the shoulder waving a flashlight in Farden Township;<br />
• A Lake George caller stated a member of his crew witnessed a pickup truck driving down in the ditches and back and forth on the shoulder;<br />
• A Lakeport Township caller reported a vehicle on the lake via the Laporte access, they feel it should not be there as the ice is cracking and they are spinning tires;<br />
• A Park Rapids caller asked to speak with an officer in reference to a problem with her ex-husband's new wife;<br />
• Erratic driving was reported in Henrietta Township, driver pretending to pass non-existing cars and weaving back into the line of traffic;<br />
• A male wrapped in a blanket was trying to flag down vehicles in Todd Township;<br />
• A Farden Township caller reported a "bird strike," damage to bumper<br />
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When my dad and I walked across the bridge the other morning, we discovered that <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/12/17/167469845/suddenly-theres-a-meadow-in-the-ocean-with-flowers-everywhere" target="_blank">frost flowers</a> had formed on the Fishhook River's thin skin of ice.<br />
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Those are my Steger Mukluks, which are depressed about Virginia's pathetic performance in the snow department. We are both made in Minnesota and prefer our winters deep and cold.<br />
<br />Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-16626703617511716312013-06-10T11:19:00.002-04:002013-06-10T13:25:35.302-04:00TOP TEN THINGS I DIDN'T BLOG ABOUT IN 2012, PART THREEThese have been sitting in the hopper. I will get to 2013 by the year 2015, I'm pretty sure.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwe2wpaFZnc0Fvr8dZQmT38NwjYqR5J_hmaeUrjECPI6BDDqBDDTtjzd0S1pKYNtorqxc-rICiZDIG-vKJWR7Hggk9R2xyJnXSlfazrQkNx2ot60SXo89ic0Qc6SR9sIwZOTy_0ow9qI/s1600/footfootseven21.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinwe2wpaFZnc0Fvr8dZQmT38NwjYqR5J_hmaeUrjECPI6BDDqBDDTtjzd0S1pKYNtorqxc-rICiZDIG-vKJWR7Hggk9R2xyJnXSlfazrQkNx2ot60SXo89ic0Qc6SR9sIwZOTy_0ow9qI/s200/footfootseven21.jpg" width="200" /></a>Brooklyn, Iowa City, Minnesota, Berkeley, and Portland—through the entire thread of my life in my twenties and early thirties I traveled with these weird funny cats Foot Foot and Seven. And in 2012 I nearly lost them both. An era in your life closes when the animals you got in your twenties start to die.<br />
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5. LOST AND FOUND<br />
Seven went missing in early September. A friend who was watching her had taken her over to her mom's house, and Seven slipped out a torn screen door and disappeared. It had not rained for 80 days. There were false sightings at a high school, in a backyard, etc. Every night I watched the Multnomah County Animal Shelter's<a href="http://www.multcopets.org/intake-kennel-videos" target="_blank"> intake cam</a>, which just makes you want to turn into <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/10/garden/300-cats-and-counting.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">this</a>.<br />
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Two weeks went by. No rain. Hot sunny days. I thought of Seven, born in Brooklyn, street-tough, but pretty much a Real Housewife ever since her rescue, a sunbather and couch-sprawler, curvaceous and languid. For once, I thought, her rotund figure—her tag reads THE BASKETBALL WITH A HEART--might be her best hope.<br />
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When dark set in every night my gut would twist and my heart would start to pound. I'd lie in bed, unable to read or watch myself to sleep.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLf-SQjHqaAjn8qiLe7RNmz4HzEj4wwTlXYNYGUfO_6UtFemEZk3je4psEYInMwOhmugz8uFRltW-HLutAGDMBFwLDb_bdm7dX6JJOQ5wCuAJThusI7TvCKz4wBfBSxS9nC903nP_APU/s1600/sevenfound1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJLf-SQjHqaAjn8qiLe7RNmz4HzEj4wwTlXYNYGUfO_6UtFemEZk3je4psEYInMwOhmugz8uFRltW-HLutAGDMBFwLDb_bdm7dX6JJOQ5wCuAJThusI7TvCKz4wBfBSxS9nC903nP_APU/s200/sevenfound1.jpg" width="200" /></a>Fifteen days gone, and suddenly a photo popped up on my phone from Matilda: <i>Is this her? </i>Yes! I recognized her immediately. I began to weep with joy. Someone had seen a poster and recognized her. Seven had crossed busy Division Street (and survived!), and taken up residence in these people's backyard, for two weeks, under a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. (Exclamation points for miles.) It's almost enough to turn a person Catholic.<br />
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6. FOOT FOOT, 1998-2012<br />
Three days after Seven had been found, a vet broke the sad news to me that my cat Foot Foot had developed a swift, sudden mouth cancer that wouldn't quit. She struggled to eat. I blew all my frequent flier miles on a flight to Portland, where she was staying with my irreplaceable friend Torrence, to get my last fix of Footy's singular, jubilant, maniacal snuggling, and put her to rest.
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I was barely out of college when I adopted Foot Foot from an obsessive animal rescuer, or hoarder?, in a strange gated community at the tip of Coney Island. Two hundred-some cats lolled in cages stacked in every room of the house. I thought Seven wanted a companion. I wanted a <a href="http://www.shaggs.com/" target="_blank">Foot Foot.</a><br />
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I studied the caged cats. They were all fine. Any of them could come home with me, or none. Maybe all humans have this egoistic fantasy that our animals choose <i>us</i>—that it's more than whim or available inventory that brings them into our lives. But I wanted something better than "sure, okay." I wanted to <i>know. </i>I ended up back at the front door, ready to go home and think about it more.<br />
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But down in the corner, in a shadowy cage on the floor, I spied a scrawny adolescent calico tabby, a patch of brightness rising to her feet among her gray sisters. "Can I see that one?" I asked. When the rescue guy handed her to me, the cat flung herself into the crook of my neck, nuzzled in, and began to lick me like a puppy, purring. I knew: She was Foot Foot.<br />
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Foot Foot stayed scrawny and small, forever a kitten. Her back legs were messed up--a loose kneecap or something--leaving her both knock-kneed and duck-footed, and she had an ever-teary eye where a duct was blocked. Her fur was bunny-soft. But what defined her was her near-pathological affection.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipUTi9cNJK0VFPiSgPLJHx0UEh0RMryPaf9Y7dKTqn-7BWrMI6tOMMmK_YO6Cl8qbyQFzacmur985L5Hok8HkXCgC1RFXx3_tZBSG2Sbno5y_Ep55PpsdpIT_xNyML2JJYRxCyMGDxYgQ/s1600/FootFoot-08.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipUTi9cNJK0VFPiSgPLJHx0UEh0RMryPaf9Y7dKTqn-7BWrMI6tOMMmK_YO6Cl8qbyQFzacmur985L5Hok8HkXCgC1RFXx3_tZBSG2Sbno5y_Ep55PpsdpIT_xNyML2JJYRxCyMGDxYgQ/s200/FootFoot-08.jpg" width="200" /></a>Above all else, Foot Foot loved love, to a nearly oppressive degree. Peel her off of you and she would return, again and again. She would thrust her head against your hand, writhing and purring, and clamp her paws around your wrist so you couldn't stop petting her. While sitting forward on a chair, perhaps while playing Catan or Scrabble in my kitchen, you may have felt the odd sensation of two small paws on your upper back and turned to find Foot Foot standing upright behind you like a tiny masseuse, though really she was plotting her course over your shoulder and into your arms. If you ever took a bath in her presence, you would see Foot Foot traverse the rim of the tub, dab at the water, and set a paw upon your wet chest as she contemplated her impossible bind: there is the lap, but it is underwater.<br />
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When I got to her in Portland last September, she had shrunk to a ragged twig of a cat, and her breath smelled like a sewer pipe, like the evil thing trying to kill her, but her fur was still chinchilla-soft. She nestled immediately into my neck as if I'd never left her. My Portland friends, the ones whom distance has only solidified in my life, gathered around me at Torrence's. We ordered from Pizza-A-Go-Go. Aubree brought over a six-pack of hard cider and a bourbon-salt-caramel ice cream from Salt & Straw. My former housemate and longtime cat-uncle Rita snuggled Foot Foot and sobbed. I slept with her for the last time, nestled in my arms all night. I listened to "Coney Island Baby" by Tom Waits, a song whose chorus I liked to sing to her.<br />
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The next day, Foot Foot sprawled in a patch of sunlight on the floor and Torrence's roommate Gillian played us a song she had written about her on the guitar ("Foot Foot runs; Foot Foot walks; Foot Foot never stops.") The pain must have been excruciating. But she purred. She soaked up the sun. She still wrapped her paws around my wrist and held my hand on her.<br />
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Torrence and I brought her to the vet that afternoon. I nuzzled my face into her neck and whispered to her and held her tiny soft paw until she was still. I could not look at her there on the table, I did not want that image in my mind; I let my last experience of her be just the feeling of her soft fur and her warmth. The sky above the parking lot was the purest blue.<br />
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Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-17820596083946739372013-01-16T22:24:00.002-05:002013-01-16T22:24:23.500-05:00TOP TEN THINGS I DIDN'T BLOG ABOUT IN 2012, PART TWOINCIDENTS from the Park Rapids Enterprise, December 19-23.<br />
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The Henrietta Township transfer station reported bike tracks in fresh snow going toward the impound lot, thinks it should be checked out;<br />A Lake Hattie Township caller reported a small plane that continues to circle at treetop level around his and his family’s homes;<br />A caller reported vehicle in the driveway with its horn blaring, gone on arrival, it was a family member;<br />A caller reported a vehicle that “keeps being in her drive,” unknown owner;<br />A Park Rapids caller stated the neighbor is drunk and has been knocking on doors;<br />A Nevis caller requested removal of a car from her property, it’s been there over three years;<br />A caller reported her daughter-in-law will not stop sending threatening text messages regarding her granddaughter;<br />A male wearing slippers was reported walking on CSAH 1, seems confused, officer gave him a ride home;<br />A White Oak Township caller complained of the neighbors revving engines and snowmobiles, “so loud they can hear it in their house and over the TV”;<br />A 911 caller reported he was told to leave a bar but he has “stuff” inside, people were yelling in the background;<br />A conservator of an estate in White Oak Township reported a trapper trespassing;<br />A truck was reported tearing up a church parking lot in Todd Township;<br />Calvary Lutheran reported a male coming to the church, watched kids rehearsal and started preaching to pastor and holding a cross, he said he was an evangelist and she was the devil, she asked him to leave, wants law enforcement aware;<br />A 911 caller reported an older sports car doing donuts on Main;<br />A cell phone caller reports he was hiking in Paul Bunyan Forest and is now lost;<br />An intoxicated female in Park Rapids requested transportation to Pine Manors;<br />Ten-plus callers reported “deer all over the road” in Lake Emma Township;<br />A caller reported hitting a “phone pad” in his yard;<br />Theft of a deer stand was reported in Lake Emma Township;<br />A $300 toy tractor was reported stolen in Henrietta Township;<br />A Park Rapids caller reported “theft of green pants from under her bed.”</blockquote>
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How could I have let my subscription lapse in 2012?<br />
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<br />Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-41673169012287277432013-01-01T16:18:00.000-05:002013-01-01T16:23:28.553-05:00TOP TEN THINGS I DIDN'T BLOG ABOUT IN 2012, PART ONEIn no particular order.<br />
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1. My story <b>"<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Reverse-Kindle-Ploughshares-ebook/dp/B00AERFSW4" target="_blank">Escape and Reverse</a>,"</b> a story of wrestling both literal and metaphorical, found a home in the Ploughshares Solo series. I wrote the first incarnation of this story back when I was in Iowa. I watched many Dan Gable instructional wrestling videos (VHS!) from the public library in the course of writing it, and called upon the sensory memory of my own singular (well, single) wrestling victory at a Brooklyn lucha libre party Gavin and Gillian Russom took me to in 1997, where I threw myself into the task so vigorously I didn't even realize I had pinned my masked opponent until someone pried me off of her, euphorically oblivious with adrenaline. </div>
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I suppose this is an opportunity to make a nostalgic comment about how this was back when Williamsburg was still full of cheap raw lofts and broke weirdos who would cobble together a room full of mattresses to hold a massive tag-team wrestling tournament, with no social internet to perform it for, just the moment itself, but I'm over the old shine of secondhand glory, I was just one of the millions who happened to be there at that time, I just showed up to the party other people led me to. </div>
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I learned a lot writing that story. My sixth-grade social studies curriculum ("Minnesota: Land of Sky-Blue Waters") was dog-eared and ended around the 1950s so I hadn't really known what became of the Iron Range, except that it had shrunk in population and generated exceptionally tough Pee Wee hockey players. I loved watching those videos and reading wrestler message boards and calling my brother for insider info on the high school boys' locker room and reading about the crushing work (literally) of taconite mining. That's one of the most pleasurable things about writing anything, fiction or non: the research. You come out of it with way more knowledge than even makes it into the story.</div>
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You can find it in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Reverse-Kindle-Ploughshares-ebook/dp/B00AERFSW4" target="_blank">Amazon's Kindle Singles store for ninety-nine cents</a>. You don't need a Kindle to read it, anything digital will do. </div>
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2. I also wrote this essay for <b>Airplane Reading</b> back in February, about the strange yet sort of amazing time in my life when I used to fly every week from Portland to Stanford. <a href="http://airplanereading.org/story/207/take-flight" target="_blank">"Take Flight."</a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzI2EqQFuoR9licMz_DktN8UNw6BnHsTokfpRSfgCvW_tVcqdZ_tdlWBSJiwD0AcCWzJBSNY8t6Y8fUqW7Qu5XLNb1NtNzjRxljoY_MJQLpMYQE8XIEOMtKNF1H9wuP6U8a1ByEa8dXKI/s1600/20121026unbored333.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzI2EqQFuoR9licMz_DktN8UNw6BnHsTokfpRSfgCvW_tVcqdZ_tdlWBSJiwD0AcCWzJBSNY8t6Y8fUqW7Qu5XLNb1NtNzjRxljoY_MJQLpMYQE8XIEOMtKNF1H9wuP6U8a1ByEa8dXKI/s320/20121026unbored333.jpg" width="245" /></a>3. Also I contributed an essay to <b>UNBORED: The Essential Field Guide to Serious Fun</b>, which came out in November. This book, I must say, is fantastic. Even on a purely physical level, it's large and solid and printed on good paper and the design and drawings are terrific. And the content too is so great. It's all about making your own fun and your own life instead of consuming and following. If I were a kid, I would love it. As an adult, I love it. </div>
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Here's the <a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/18-9781608196418-0" target="_blank">Powell's link,</a> where it's currently a staff favorite and so 30% off, but if you look at <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Unbored-Essential-Field-Guide-Serious/dp/1608196410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1357074558&sr=1-1&keywords=unbored" target="_blank">Amazon</a> you can also see some screen shots that include the essay I wrote, "Rock Out," based on my many years of volunteering at the Rock'n'Roll Camp for Girls.</div>
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The <a href="http://unbored.net/" target="_blank">website</a> for the book has tons of good stuff too, like <a href="http://unbored.net/gary-panters-drawing-tips/" target="_blank">Gary Panter's drawing tips</a>. (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, that one.)</div>
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TO BE CONTINUED.</div>
Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-80620431680134023262012-05-22T09:00:00.000-04:002012-05-22T09:00:12.128-04:00NIGHT TIME WRITE TIMEThe other night I sat down at my desk. I used to always write at night, often very late, but the last few years I've taken to writing early in the morning and going to bed before midnight. Lately, though, I've returned to my nocturnal ways. And it works. <div>
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Writing at night: all those hours before you in the dark. Nothing in the way. And the room dark, and outside dark, and just the spotlight of the lamp and the screen, the desk a small stage. I light a candle every time and start the music (I'll listen to the same album hundreds of times when I'm writing, usually something instrumental like Sigur Ros or Amiina or Kammerflimmer Kollektief, lately it's been Yo La Tengo's <i>They Shoot, We Score.)</i> My notebooks around me. The little flame flickering. Just like I always have, from Brooklyn to Iowa City to Portland to Berkeley to Portland to Oberlin to Virginia. It is the most familiar thing in the world, this small pretty space in the dark. And more than anything else I know it feels like home.</div>
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</div>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-9812101790760621282012-05-21T12:05:00.000-04:002012-05-21T12:05:08.519-04:00WHERE TO BEGINPawing through a 2005 notebook I come across notes from a Stegner workshop.<br />
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Says John L'Heureux: BEGIN at a point where life has been lived in a certain way up to now, but something is about to change it—close enough to the denouement as possible, far enough back to gather up all the events and changes and explain why they're this way.</blockquote>
Then it says underneath (RE: NOVELS.) Which I'm not sure is about that or the next note. Either way: this is helpful to me right now.<br />
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Oh JLX, I do miss you. The man also pluralized "spouse" as "spice."<br />
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<br />Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-33166229815685440302012-02-27T00:37:00.001-05:002012-02-27T13:08:21.416-05:00DOWN ON DOWNTONThis "Downton Abbey" thing. I'm watching with 50 percent interest and 50 percent sense of obligation to keep up with the conversation and 50 percent for Maggie Smith. I love epic television shows, especially to watch in bed, and especially those without too much head-stomping and woman-assaulting (those months of "The Sopranos," "The Wire," and "Boardwalk Empire" were a nightmare factory.) And I loved "Big Love," so, you know, I can get sucked into the melodrama of socially restrictive, kind-of-incestuous white people trying to hoard their questionably gained fortunes. I want to believe. I really do. But this is the show everyone is twittering about?<br />
<br />
THEORETICAL DRINKING GAME<br />
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Drink every time Cora does the head-bowed eyes-tilted up lips-closed smile. This is one of her two expressions, the other one being when she forgets and actually raises her head like a normal person and looks concerned. Probably surprised at the view.<br />
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Drink every time the Earl has an outburst of righteous rage as he once again makes an ethically obvious decision. It's like the President at the climax of an American action movie, every time. Except on a tiny, sputtering English scale.<br />
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Drink every time you see Matthew's mouth poised partially open, his tongue hovering shyly just inside like a little pink fish. (Once you notice, this happens hideously often.)<br />
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Drink every time someone says "ma-MA" or "pa-PA." Then shoot me.</div>
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I think watching the hopelessly addictive "<a href="http://www.pbs.org/manorhouse/" target="_blank">Manor House</a>" some years back may have skewed me hard. It's the PBS reality show set in an Edwardian manor in the same period. After you watch the poor staff working 16-hour-days to the point of total physical and nervous breakdown, while the upstairs family say things like "I've never felt so cared for in my life" and take to calling their tween son "Master Jaunty" (seriously), the shine really goes off the landed gentry. </div>
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Also it probably doesn't help that right before "Downton" I watched season one of "Homeland." Say what you will about its politics (I have a whole abandoned post that attempts to but I gave up), that show was so debilitatingly exciting that anything afterward was doomed to feel limp and banal. I <i>quaked</i> through the finale. Before that, it was two seasons of "Treme," a show full of pleasure and unruliness and ramshackle joy.<br />
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Speaking of which: is there any <i>pleasure</i> in Downton Abbey? I am hard pressed to think of a situation where people actually seem to enjoy themselves for more than a moment. (Maybe Edith driving the tractor.) It is all genteel false smiles, or small suppressed private smiles, and the rare wicked smirk. How anyone's Anglophilia survives the show intact is beyond me.<br />
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I mean, I like it. I'll keep watching it in bed until PBS takes away the free stream. The widespread fervor just confuses me.</div>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-34908675066011741342012-02-20T07:04:00.000-05:002012-10-25T07:05:09.578-04:00MOSQUITA Y MARII prefer to go to movies knowing as little as possible about their plots, preferably nothing, so I went into <a href="http://www.mosquitaymari.com/" target="_blank">Mosquita y Mari</a> with only a few keywords I'd scanned from the local film festival program--teenage girls, Los Angeles, Chicana, queer. I liked the sound of it but what is more predictable than an indie-film coming-of-age story? I came expecting it to be decent, flawed, another sympathetic sigh of a lesbian movie.<br />
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Instead, it was just good, good, <i>good</i>, all the way through, the kind of movie that fills your chest so the weight lasts for hours afterward. The film is about two fifteen-year-old girls in the Huntington Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. They go to high school, they study together, they find an abandoned chop shop that becomes their secret hangout, they pile onto a dirt bike, they share headphones, they wear tight black jeans every day, and they fall into an intense friendship. I have never seen a film that captured this kind of teen girl friendship so perfectly, the love and fascination and tension and jealousy of it.<br />
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The word "gay" never appears. None of the same old tropes of queer coming-of-age stories are recycled here. Instead a whole complex world, personal and cultural, engulfs you. I don't want to say anything about the plot or even post the trailer here because it contains some of my favorite moments in the film which are so subtle. But go see it. It is pitch-perfect in its nuance and understated intensity.<br />
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<br />Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-76438504331282781132012-01-09T14:22:00.003-05:002012-01-09T15:58:24.089-05:00BACK TO THE FUTURE PART 2012I am infatuated with the name of Restore our Future, who make attack ads for Mitt Romney. Restore our Future! This phrase is fantastic (literally) on so many levels:<br />
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1. How can you restore something that<i> has not existed yet</i>? I love the idea of the future as this object we built some time back--decades ago, presumably, if it has deteriorated to the point of requiring restoration, like a Victorian house or vintage automobile or Renaissance painting. The future is <i>old, </i>people.<i> </i>Needs a good touchup.<br />
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2. To restore a future, we would have to have had it first. And then it wouldn't be a future anymore, would it? It would be a present or a past.<br />
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3. Although in a way, the future is a real thing as much as conceptual art is. We all construct it every day, individually and collectively, as a people and as affinity groups and as a nation. The future is an <i>idea</i> that has been used as a tool for us and against us for a very long time, depending on which "us" one is at which time. "Our future" has been used to to establish college funds and medical research, and "our future" has been used to nearly exterminate the Native Americans. For something that does not yet--and never will--tangibly exist, "the future" has a profound influence on decisions that affect the present.<br />
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4. Which "our"? Which future? There have been so many.<br />
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5. But maybe that deliberate ambiguity speaks subliminally to the <i>my</i> more than the <i>our</i>. How many of us would like to restore our own future? How many people would love to go back and polish up their idea of what their life would turn out to be, to have everything still possible, to brighten and retouch that vision as if it had not aged a day but was still new, still <i>now</i>? What this imperative asks for is to <i>give me back my idea of what life was going to be like</i>. It's a bitter demand. It's rallying cry full of disappointment and indignant nostalgia.<br />
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Hilariously, one of the largest donors to Restore our Future is <a href="http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/60329.html" target="_blank">a guy who made his millions betting on the collapse of the housing industry</a>. Also, the chairman of New Balance, noted.<br />
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I live in Williamsburg, Virginia, a town that fervently and aggressively wiped out an enormous portion of its physical present and future in the 1930s by reverting (recolonizing?) much of the town to the year 1774. Evacuated of its residents, cleared of all 19th- and 20th-century structures except reconstructions, Colonial Williamsburg™ guards a past that is constantly rubbing awkwardly against the present and battling the future (as time weathers paint and erodes brick and renders the longtime Thomas Jefferson reenactor increasingly anachronistic as he ages away from a plausibly 1774-aged Jefferson and into the next bygone century)--but I'll write that essay elsewhere.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-78480435118949878762012-01-08T22:13:00.001-05:002012-01-09T09:20:03.189-05:00SIX HAS ALWAYS BEEN MY LUCKY NUMBER<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
Happy (estimated) birthday to my sweet Emmett, born circa January 2006 somewhere around Tillamook, Oregon. I took him home "to foster him" on September 8, 2006, when he was eight months old. In the rescue business they call this a "foster failure." </div>
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I couldn't have failed better.</div>
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I don't know what else to say except thank you, Emmett, for being the perfect road trip buddy, polite party guest (and host), woods wanderer, and reading armrest. You changed my life. I'm so glad you're in it.<br />
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I don't blame you for not wanting to fetch. It's stupid to keep bringing something back to a person who just throws it away again. </div>
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Happy sixth, little friend. Please stick around for another dozen if you can.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-18132067875216798402011-12-30T16:01:00.000-05:002012-01-09T09:21:42.686-05:00THE CHANNEL IS OPEN<br />
Went to the Walker Art Center yesterday. My favorite thing in there right now is a video piece called “Flooded McDonald’s” by <a href="http://superflex.net/floodedmcdonalds/" target="_blank">Superflex</a>. It's part of the John Waters-curated exhibit "<a href="http://www.walkerart.org/calendar/2011/absentee-landlord" target="_blank">Absentee Landlord</a>." (Brilliant.)<br />
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The film is exactly what the title says. An empty McDonald’s looks like it’s been abandoned mid-day. The camera lingers on each thing in the room: Meals both fully intact and half-eaten, a container of glistening french fries, trays of refuse, an empty cup on its side on a seat, a chair, a tall Ronald statue, a full coffeepot. All these objects become characters in the film.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNmfJasy0N8qfIrkNVXb7iQHx389H00fPXMiZ_RA_sPspKmwWc9TMjw1HvlI9Q5fiWiT80YfYlIXnEFMIn2zYC66SRVQsiU5mgC-brl0aC5VJ3IBHiFy9n6Szi8bMJcHuYPqAU-wLV4U/s1600/IMG_5223.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbNmfJasy0N8qfIrkNVXb7iQHx389H00fPXMiZ_RA_sPspKmwWc9TMjw1HvlI9Q5fiWiT80YfYlIXnEFMIn2zYC66SRVQsiU5mgC-brl0aC5VJ3IBHiFy9n6Szi8bMJcHuYPqAU-wLV4U/s320/IMG_5223.jpg" width="320" /></a>Then water begins to rush in beneath the crack of the door. It’s thrilling to watch it pour in, clear and fast. It fills the room quickly. The first things it picks up are crumpled wrappers on the floor.<br />
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As the place fills, things start to move. The rising water animates everything. Ronald rises to his feet and begins to bob. Eventually the cup on the seat gets lifted. Ronald tips over. The food is liberated from its tabletop inertia and joins in the flow, traveling to corners of the restaurant it shouldn’t be. The chair. The coffeepot is suspended so just its lip remains above the surface, floating along still full of coffee. The swinging doors of the trash cans begin to flap in and out. There’s a merriness here as everything falls from its place, displays collapse and all the bright litter is animated. Little kids in the room giggled.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="225" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/2966602?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="400"></iframe><br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/2966602">Flooded McDonald's</a> from <a href="http://vimeo.com/superflex">Superflex</a> on <a href="http://vimeo.com/">Vimeo</a>.<br />
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But as the place continues to fill, the water goes from clear to dirty. It darkens, clouds, fills with bits of trash. French fries drift by, ghostly cups, the chair a tilted shipwreck. The water reaches the big electric M on the wall and it blinks a few times, buzzes, goes out. Eventually it rises to the backlit menus and those too go dark. By the end of the movie the screen is a hazy brownout, water to the top of the field of vision.<br />
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It’s like watching <i>death</i>, I whispered to my companion, who said, I was just thinking that.<br />
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Also, it’s like America.<br />
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That alone was worth the admission. I also liked Mike Kelley’s framed carpet and <a href="http://www.metropicturesgallery.com/exhibitions/2002-11-02-mike-kelley/" target="_blank">map of his junior high</a>, and the Glenn Ligon coloring-book painting, and this dolphin oracle you could ask questions by typing them on a keyboard. After you hit return, an ellipsis appears, and then the dolphin squeaks and chirps and writhes a little while its subtitled answer materializes. It is terribly charming.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The answer to "Are you messing with me, dolphin?"</td></tr>
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The much-hyped graphic design exhibit exhausted me in about two minutes. About ten years ago I developed serious design fatigue. I had worked at a design magazine run by a megalomaniac tyrant who had us all on 70-hour work weeks. I was eating too many Twizzlers out of my desk drawer and getting skinny, severely underpaid and overworked, and I got so sick of Good Design. I mean, I love good design. But I tired of the fetishization of it. (See also: the hilariously/cruelly named Design Within Reach.) This exhibit was a tornado of type and logo, and it was crammed into a few big rooms where every surface seemed to swim with letters, but not in a beautiful or harmonious or interestingly-clashing way; it was like walking into a world of internet sidebars. Most of it was advertising. That’s the problem with graphic design. Almost all of it exists to sell you something. The embedded museum shop was indistinguishable from the exhibit.<br />
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But speaking of Facebook, this breakdown of the eight elements of status updates was in one of the newspapers on display.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghKrxD6Mr0FWORaHREzCUpFqxsdDbe-0Mb2dPPVAAnFRqJEYXK9j-mkGts0OpmB-QKjjFyeYc2k1tcRIRXAHsyqcXnWGjTGCP8ueIG9LTS2hqkqoBscVBhGqfOHS4xLCO2JIEVVqnjT6U/s1600/8fbthings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghKrxD6Mr0FWORaHREzCUpFqxsdDbe-0Mb2dPPVAAnFRqJEYXK9j-mkGts0OpmB-QKjjFyeYc2k1tcRIRXAHsyqcXnWGjTGCP8ueIG9LTS2hqkqoBscVBhGqfOHS4xLCO2JIEVVqnjT6U/s400/8fbthings.jpg" width="300" /></a><br />
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Last stop before heading back north was <a href="http://birchbarkbooks.com/" target="_blank">Birchbark Books</a>, which is owned by Louise Erdrich and is now one of my favorite bookstores anywhere, beautifully selected and appointed and staffed by an extremely relaxed dog named Dharma.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-FjiK9da3TgRB5igAUcz_mGUVYQBKQQPEVhYCClYHzsuD3eyW3oNW6g_8JOJAR-6pfN0AXB9FKgzatSKOVPghcv-HqSIZ7LOwnVUL6Lfu7gS5PMBh_Jg9uJTiMiU3trJyOfarITD95LE/s1600/birchbarkbooks2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-FjiK9da3TgRB5igAUcz_mGUVYQBKQQPEVhYCClYHzsuD3eyW3oNW6g_8JOJAR-6pfN0AXB9FKgzatSKOVPghcv-HqSIZ7LOwnVUL6Lfu7gS5PMBh_Jg9uJTiMiU3trJyOfarITD95LE/s320/birchbarkbooks2.jpg" width="240" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; color: black;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3oBZ4CXv3H_p5WbqI7CSPvG7iwejEHVhqg1TKWTW5g9ZIT4ukHlV24YK5S1ru9IdxQqH1F1EbX6yi2HcYd4XjB8RPu2d0iFxJ1wjZnGyPFSSehjC8U6bV9d4XTYmXj0-Obc3ZxJXmhuc/s1600/birchbarkbooks1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3oBZ4CXv3H_p5WbqI7CSPvG7iwejEHVhqg1TKWTW5g9ZIT4ukHlV24YK5S1ru9IdxQqH1F1EbX6yi2HcYd4XjB8RPu2d0iFxJ1wjZnGyPFSSehjC8U6bV9d4XTYmXj0-Obc3ZxJXmhuc/s400/birchbarkbooks1.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
It's one of those stores where the selection is perfect instead of vast. And there are handwritten recommendations by Louise Erdrich all over. Doesn't get much better than that.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQCVJideUyauKbbznC3xnxZ6y8neIpV6_c5_yvJ5yeNhtGMzLnhSDcOC30rN8ayIzrELw53RLIyjm1oRVUXSHvgsPixXptELlyLzCLyZt9AjbQk_jk2II5sTgm8SAMMi4jYOQUhSRcyp4/s1600/birchbarkbooks3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQCVJideUyauKbbznC3xnxZ6y8neIpV6_c5_yvJ5yeNhtGMzLnhSDcOC30rN8ayIzrELw53RLIyjm1oRVUXSHvgsPixXptELlyLzCLyZt9AjbQk_jk2II5sTgm8SAMMi4jYOQUhSRcyp4/s320/birchbarkbooks3.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-73600374882174639422011-12-27T11:51:00.000-05:002011-12-27T22:48:18.511-05:00CATCHING UP KEEPING UP<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghiUoqcS_FY26Ao48d8sHtmr1zclu8YTpot_bZuNiUcfehwBb-svhkBMU3CSLc9Hih-UvYMBe1nY7D45bdO4qOFLm6vqJam6l5jPN1Vs_VbtHp1ySneNVUORp6Tni5j7EOLeghxndUAY0/s1600/cardcatalog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghiUoqcS_FY26Ao48d8sHtmr1zclu8YTpot_bZuNiUcfehwBb-svhkBMU3CSLc9Hih-UvYMBe1nY7D45bdO4qOFLm6vqJam6l5jPN1Vs_VbtHp1ySneNVUORp6Tni5j7EOLeghxndUAY0/s400/cardcatalog.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
Well, blog. We have a lot to talk about.<br />
<br />
One thing is that I abruptly and semi-impulsively deactivated my Facebook two weeks ago. I had 900-some friends and all but a handful are people I actually know or have known in my many lives. I think I even like almost all of them. But the noise got to be too much. Facebook was like too many radio stations playing simultaneously. I forget half of what I hear but I remember almost everything I read, and so all that trivia was printing itself all over my brain.<br />
<br />
And the pleasure had gone out of it. The first, most potent pleasure of Facebook for me was finding the long lost. There were so many: from my entire childhood in Park Rapids, from Norway, Iowa, New York, Oberlin, the Stegner crew, music-world people, writers and editors, Portlanders, et cetera. But pretty soon, everyone was found. And the thrill of the discovery quickly sagged into the mundane. I loved the initial burst of information, when it was like running into someone unexpectedly in a bar in another city: the catching-up. <i>Where are you? What have you been doing? You look great. These are my dogs!</i> But then it didn't stop. It went from catching up to keeping up. Keeping up with people, keeping up appearances. We were back in that bar every day. It started to feel less like a bar and more like a storage unit.<br />
<br />
There are the friends who click Like and there are the friends who show up. (I've been both, I'm not exempt.) But I am more interested in the latter these days. I want your real face. I want your microexpressions and your voice. I want us to see the same thing at the same time, and I don't mean on YouTube. I want laugh and conspiratorial whisper, not just quip and complaint. Maybe 90% of Facebook and Twitter are quip and complaint.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN68v8nFy4QC2yu6Jd-pg93hJzQuW5jE7TeFIrR3Aqp-IwHu8alEDnU6-Muz4EfmqgPDaBOQlk9TehdPufN_ENsZ4hM1GRMQ7IS3KH7RKX6iRKPoP9hdQa6jGYFUX738vmvyJ_T4HPQDI/s1600/look.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN68v8nFy4QC2yu6Jd-pg93hJzQuW5jE7TeFIrR3Aqp-IwHu8alEDnU6-Muz4EfmqgPDaBOQlk9TehdPufN_ENsZ4hM1GRMQ7IS3KH7RKX6iRKPoP9hdQa6jGYFUX738vmvyJ_T4HPQDI/s400/look.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
<br />
When I worked at magazines in New York around the turn of the millennium, the (permanent) trend kicked in of articles shrinking while their photos grew. We were supposed to relocate more of the info to captions and sidebars, fragmenting the content like pre-cut food. "Quippy kickers," they called it at one publication. To dig into the substance of an article--the <i>body</i> of the text, as it is notably called--takes time and effort, and maybe people just wanted to look, not read. To snack, not eat. I think Facebook does the same thing. Magazines got shorter and so did we. Our images grow and grow while our (visible) content shrinks. We just sample each other. Swish and spit.<br />
<br />
My departure is probably not permanent. I know myself too well to claim that I'm Gone for Good. But the time away has felt great.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAbSqFUqNn5N6uCGGFyC9vSW0154idWxL_oOY9s1JPPhtAAoDB5u0SO5wXwkNQgyj_1AlZrgSSXk2LqiIn6Av-zIc_d9pF0XSn39kJ8AXYjIE9TXCSsEXzSJIxirvvsk-2f1tHSNkl14Y/s1600/ice-envelope.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAbSqFUqNn5N6uCGGFyC9vSW0154idWxL_oOY9s1JPPhtAAoDB5u0SO5wXwkNQgyj_1AlZrgSSXk2LqiIn6Av-zIc_d9pF0XSn39kJ8AXYjIE9TXCSsEXzSJIxirvvsk-2f1tHSNkl14Y/s400/ice-envelope.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
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Meanwhile, friends (yes, friends, not friends™!): let's write.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-78401549176381735822011-11-17T17:37:00.001-05:002011-11-17T17:53:18.026-05:00REAL SHOTS FIREDMy essay about fear, power, and the first time I shot a gun is now up at The Rumpus, if you'd like to take a look. <a href="http://therumpus.net/2011/11/silhouettes/">http://therumpus.net/2011/11/silhouettes/</a><br />
<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5OUHTDMGCs70RpAm6JmrYxzpYjYlmyKKq-UsIg-btcyYlneB2gDlS_l0V0G0I2Yug16H9PBP5VfdC33s98pceXb1cX-i6fEQc2lsSdgtQGLPbWr7bEgLfsHhNVprYUkSyVYop_MIPOok/s1600/bullets-silhouettes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5OUHTDMGCs70RpAm6JmrYxzpYjYlmyKKq-UsIg-btcyYlneB2gDlS_l0V0G0I2Yug16H9PBP5VfdC33s98pceXb1cX-i6fEQc2lsSdgtQGLPbWr7bEgLfsHhNVprYUkSyVYop_MIPOok/s400/bullets-silhouettes.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
<br />Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-59885308743815133522011-07-16T23:47:00.005-04:002011-07-17T11:10:35.600-04:00NOTES FROM IOWA 75<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIdYY9HoGr04bbqLsXRyyVH61bf4oxDzhIG8q6xEaTf8tfZsDgy0WzVffq21Mzuf0B827wcSIwNn_kDLLbjI6Dk5v7XlegVIc65bkzNN2RR96rypRYNQnB5jPBaUv-_MCRcjOGtszi5Vc/s1600/iowa75-2.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIdYY9HoGr04bbqLsXRyyVH61bf4oxDzhIG8q6xEaTf8tfZsDgy0WzVffq21Mzuf0B827wcSIwNn_kDLLbjI6Dk5v7XlegVIc65bkzNN2RR96rypRYNQnB5jPBaUv-_MCRcjOGtszi5Vc/s400/iowa75-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From <a href="http://raygunsite.com/">Raygun</a> in Iowa City.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>In June I took a respite from packing to drive out to Iowa City for the 75th anniversary-reunion-celebration of the Writers' Workshop. It was worth the nine-hour drive across I-80, whose stretch of Ohio-Indiana-Illinois makes one think things like, <i>This</i> is what we're fighting for? I swear once you cross the border into Iowa everything looks better. I loved living in Iowa. It was one of the prettiest, most underrated landscapes I've ever lived in. Deep emerald in summer, endless gold in fall, snow-blanketed fields washed pink by sunrise and sunset in winter, a huge blue sky.<br />
<br />
All you people who didn't come because you felt insecure or underpublished or worried that people were going to be competitive and size you up (what? at Iowa?), it was in fact so not like that! It was so friendly and relaxed, no résumé checking at all. No one murmuring disdain about your last workshop disaster or cackling over Conroy's lacerating one-liner. No velvet rope or VIP rooms. Just a big loose-knit party. Here are my ramshackle notes from the weekend. <br />
<br />
1. The best thing in Indiana is <a href="http://www.montevidayo.com/">Joyelle and Johannes</a>, who opted not to reunite with the masses but graciously fed me lunch. <br />
<br />
2. First stop after checking in with my excellent hosts Kembrew and Lynne and new tiny Alasdair: Marilynne Robinson at the Englert. Choice quote TK when I find my little notebook.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1DTE6tY2WF4WfUyh876wa2T-CqB0XY6Gn-dmiwvIzxu1QRgpoD5yIk6JizJ-KrANsHf9592xrvc5zMLRGrOxzqbzRNBtgYPRSE29A77mixWU0yZ9IVVhDr_aHLPHi1Xy5TnWdnoA0vs/s1600/iowa75-13.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjm1DTE6tY2WF4WfUyh876wa2T-CqB0XY6Gn-dmiwvIzxu1QRgpoD5yIk6JizJ-KrANsHf9592xrvc5zMLRGrOxzqbzRNBtgYPRSE29A77mixWU0yZ9IVVhDr_aHLPHi1Xy5TnWdnoA0vs/s400/iowa75-13.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>3. O George's Bar of the flocked wallpaper and utterly transfixing scrolling backlit Hamm's sign! In a narrow dark booth that night——Peyton and Pauls and I devised, or derived, titles for bestselling novels. The dim scrawling in my notebook includes<br />
<blockquote><i>The Justice of Riga</i> (name of an actual sword!)<i> </i><br />
<i>The Executioner's Son, </i>or should it be <i>Daughter?</i><br />
<i>Orphan Season</i><br />
<i>American Teeth</i><br />
<i>American Lesbian</i><br />
<i>The Lesbianists</i><br />
<i>The Leper's Guide to Sanitation.</i></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigC_0-bMgwfi6Lli80L482DFKeildKE-YTv50i3CavQkcb2lpeRdJ_lASKlE6Nx1Awj92avHKxTZNFrOWvAGwNsWhqffKyy0nTwkw28KA8l6w7NieeJuFlfyufz-CyM940f6zHuvwfF60/s1600/iowa75-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigC_0-bMgwfi6Lli80L482DFKeildKE-YTv50i3CavQkcb2lpeRdJ_lASKlE6Nx1Awj92avHKxTZNFrOWvAGwNsWhqffKyy0nTwkw28KA8l6w7NieeJuFlfyufz-CyM940f6zHuvwfF60/s400/iowa75-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>4. Next we hit the immortal Foxhead. When we were at the workshop, the Foxhead was the poets' bar and George's was the fiction bar. Now it's the opposite. I always liked the Foxhead a little better, but George's had that enchanting Hamm's sign and would make you a toasted cheese sandwich (a hamburger bun with pickles and a slice of American cheese) for $1.50. (Still!)<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhWS3Unawa5yC_-aYyrRHkh8UpUgRQ4gaVwo0z9glL1XFjC_K-pfw51c28WLX8ohbHObtRDmUr51WY4lQxEw36gfggW_M7gWjng2gBrXg1G4QVp1SbycYYQUw1zHpTAH2THLFPnmUwEc/s1600/iowa75-4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZhWS3Unawa5yC_-aYyrRHkh8UpUgRQ4gaVwo0z9glL1XFjC_K-pfw51c28WLX8ohbHObtRDmUr51WY4lQxEw36gfggW_M7gWjng2gBrXg1G4QVp1SbycYYQUw1zHpTAH2THLFPnmUwEc/s400/iowa75-4.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Foxhead outside</td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiicR3QUmx0cm7_qA2flIYRTLIU5Cy-Er_EJ6I9v_78zBMl6F8Q0DsOFHKEhO0hPJW0-QYRaykfannC_2JJjx7ee-FSlgAXoGo5YzLDSRM2uXPXHCfKzGspGXQqCyF9AN_7ayf_WSpGU24/s1600/iowa75-7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiicR3QUmx0cm7_qA2flIYRTLIU5Cy-Er_EJ6I9v_78zBMl6F8Q0DsOFHKEhO0hPJW0-QYRaykfannC_2JJjx7ee-FSlgAXoGo5YzLDSRM2uXPXHCfKzGspGXQqCyF9AN_7ayf_WSpGU24/s400/iowa75-7.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Foxhead inside</td></tr>
</tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-EYFCUWKC3iKMsDo3YlXfuBM2B7A84czlv4GFfXHZihyphenhyphenRkyHsxTJkSjzOj6fPiO5mcIueWyCnoox_nCqwox594SQRkI4DimXjE6yFvJemjp5QmTDE1D_F-cgPlnJtBU1yNNmwkzQ55w/s1600/iowa75-14.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt-EYFCUWKC3iKMsDo3YlXfuBM2B7A84czlv4GFfXHZihyphenhyphenRkyHsxTJkSjzOj6fPiO5mcIueWyCnoox_nCqwox594SQRkI4DimXjE6yFvJemjp5QmTDE1D_F-cgPlnJtBU1yNNmwkzQ55w/s400/iowa75-14.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Two Foxes</td></tr>
</tbody></table>5. Because my whole life is a small town, of course I ran into Jarrett who I used to know in Portland. He now lives in Iowa City and runs a coffee cart called Wake Up Iowa City. That was my first stop in the morning with Lynne. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTS5RqVsrS-WPScikb5-KXo90bbd_DREeUU1Akt_8DQDxrBuPj0jUd4Ufi_qb0uJNL4_OQakjhx1Wwcqvg_J5e6xW-uqGYY-ezA51c2kuLeP7mmk9J9Odc24hHr5vgoRyW2C-sIZ7QiTU/s400/iowa75-5.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Says the blackboard: THE ESPRESSO MACHINE IS ACTIN A FOOL. SORRY</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTS5RqVsrS-WPScikb5-KXo90bbd_DREeUU1Akt_8DQDxrBuPj0jUd4Ufi_qb0uJNL4_OQakjhx1Wwcqvg_J5e6xW-uqGYY-ezA51c2kuLeP7mmk9J9Odc24hHr5vgoRyW2C-sIZ7QiTU/s1600/iowa75-5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a>I love Upper Midwest punk. There's something very low-key and homey and unpretentious about it. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZW_cTw3aD_29SbnDZSCcXawqgdllon-ztdMdKqWOJrNDsBOoKrpn1QvwEeUXD3l_XcZaaEKtKyibx4_t6RY3rhMQeUS61ysGhxzbxVUjceYwqt7vSebdX6Eo6MldblYrTEHBRdz7YeI/s1600/iowa-coffee1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZW_cTw3aD_29SbnDZSCcXawqgdllon-ztdMdKqWOJrNDsBOoKrpn1QvwEeUXD3l_XcZaaEKtKyibx4_t6RY3rhMQeUS61ysGhxzbxVUjceYwqt7vSebdX6Eo6MldblYrTEHBRdz7YeI/s400/iowa-coffee1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Do you have to-go cups? we asked. "Just bring the mugs back whenever you're done," said Jarrett, "or do whatever with them." This pair were too good to risk, so we opted to gulp down the strong black French-pressed coffee right there.<br />
<br />
6. And then off to some panels with grandiose titles. (What Makes Literature Immortal? How Realistic is Realism? etc.) And the Golden Microphone goes to: Allan Gurganus, hands down. Thank you for your bracing sardonic wit and appropriate irreverence. ("Back then, 'diversity' meant admitting a Quaker from Maine. Who wrote prose poems.")<br />
<br />
I took hardly any pictures of Official Events, but the <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2011/0625/Write-stuff-The-workshop-that-shapes-American-literature">Christian Science Monitor</a> has a long thoughtful article. (At the end of the slideshow of famous and famous-ish writers is a nice shot of a group of us chatting on the museum steps--captioned, appropriately, "other alumni.") <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfIYGl8HmfxIR2rVzHxFRISzt8tASiGNcHeXxPwUwDNrCvLf6tfJJx00lRs2yFRJtJKkviBtCNFkMcGqZbLB00h0ND70MlPd35H7E32bobdKB4AmPAT_mHfI-r3DnA5TzJa8aNpQ_BvJA/s1600/iowa75-11.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfIYGl8HmfxIR2rVzHxFRISzt8tASiGNcHeXxPwUwDNrCvLf6tfJJx00lRs2yFRJtJKkviBtCNFkMcGqZbLB00h0ND70MlPd35H7E32bobdKB4AmPAT_mHfI-r3DnA5TzJa8aNpQ_BvJA/s400/iowa75-11.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dey House, partly, its massive new addition too large and luxurious to fit in the frame of my 50mm lens</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>7. At noon my phone rang. Malena and Antoine's flights had been canceled in Denver the night before. They then got in a van with four Iowan women, none of whom had ever met before, and drove all night, twelve hours!—only to hit a deer 15 miles from Iowa City, at which point I was called to retrieve them from the side of I-80.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm0fOrenuKoMYKSouK-IgYscNz-He2fxHW-n1ZLmunKqEmbr5Ds2DfWZLKZnNaMayhd9ioXPt4CtH-cSogfV86AQCqB0vxwLt8bRlmqA_2FzFK1p9Dd_3_joF1K99GJ-z-OZAemHJB-cU/s1600/iowa75-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgm0fOrenuKoMYKSouK-IgYscNz-He2fxHW-n1ZLmunKqEmbr5Ds2DfWZLKZnNaMayhd9ioXPt4CtH-cSogfV86AQCqB0vxwLt8bRlmqA_2FzFK1p9Dd_3_joF1K99GJ-z-OZAemHJB-cU/s400/iowa75-6.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>8. My beloved tiny house at 723 1/2 East Jefferson Street still stands. The sunny yard to the west (my bedroom window) is now a giant vinyl-sided, student-tenant-crammed addition to the modest gray bungalow that once was, and the shady yard to the east (my kitchen windows) is now a parking lot to a new apartment building. I guess I lived there at exactly the right time, with Jamie Schweser as my landlord ($360/month!) and awesome lesbian neighbors Mel and Kara in the main house's basement apartment. (They duct-taped corncobs to the rearview mirrors of my U-Haul on the day I drove away.) I wrote so many stories in that house.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKGQiq7NMAYymCIyUzh1l0Fov7NVJ80zdkSMOT61sBuBQmVQBaly3dK7C5BJB7jtABruDxH7zzXVRtWURlJ5889iNMVY3dMHPr2g1FPO1lmoFm4iQerWjvdGzFWSVlDQZ3peKWHno8tOo/s1600/iowa75-12.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKGQiq7NMAYymCIyUzh1l0Fov7NVJ80zdkSMOT61sBuBQmVQBaly3dK7C5BJB7jtABruDxH7zzXVRtWURlJ5889iNMVY3dMHPr2g1FPO1lmoFm4iQerWjvdGzFWSVlDQZ3peKWHno8tOo/s400/iowa75-12.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Sometimes I would roll the television cart into the bathroom and watch movies in the 3/4 (exactly me-sized) clawfoot tub while my cat Foot Foot walked around the rim of it. I fell asleep watching <i>Breathless</i> and woke up when the water had gone cold.<br />
<br />
9. Anyway. Iowa City has gotten a little fancier. There are more coffee shops and restaurants. The Record Collector and Daydreams Comics are still going. The public library is much fancier, and the new workshop building is stunning, replete with sumptuous wood-and-leather library. But mostly it still feels exactly the same. For example, La'James College of Hairstyling is still in business, <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ixKw0SimCThLapdIjRFXCvhRhAJb-_tVSq1R5rkNumxfptaQtidtDNQ3z0KRsEYPBTNk_MmOhw5TUNdIcOW4DjMwEcVRZxDw1IXnVibirkME0wxtAe9WLTjuvD4Fx8GEtjxJwlfQw8s/s1600/iowa75-9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-ixKw0SimCThLapdIjRFXCvhRhAJb-_tVSq1R5rkNumxfptaQtidtDNQ3z0KRsEYPBTNk_MmOhw5TUNdIcOW4DjMwEcVRZxDw1IXnVibirkME0wxtAe9WLTjuvD4Fx8GEtjxJwlfQw8s/s400/iowa75-9.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>and the Hamburg Inn No. 2, though much cleaned-up and remodeled since my time here, is still very much itself, pie shakes and all.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuexezthXw6WT4tGQs-zhZPe7kQLDxmw6zf_0zxJQKmsk_-6qV4J3UtzzdRA8dsKb4YdegW0aqcVSVRJ6tJmzASB9_DAQQqmJPK4NxCO5iwnn60kbErbGe_datW0qeA8jQ1RQKQQv5qi4/s1600/iowa75-10.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuexezthXw6WT4tGQs-zhZPe7kQLDxmw6zf_0zxJQKmsk_-6qV4J3UtzzdRA8dsKb4YdegW0aqcVSVRJ6tJmzASB9_DAQQqmJPK4NxCO5iwnn60kbErbGe_datW0qeA8jQ1RQKQQv5qi4/s400/iowa75-10.jpg" width="400" /></a></div> At Artifacts--which is still called Artifacts but no longer owned by Mark, who opened up another place three doors down--we discovered the world's most fascinatingly repulsive lamp. It is very heavy brown ceramic and it costs $125.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAOaTXXUtJSAdFmuNaDtySvWNaMT244628hwzjUxbdYaXY8BYpltcRQNnFt1cIxRkLD2Cq56Jc5TcIIiFdEeTh3HR2vOgeqTlP7AP4A6rttmxIBHRh1Nwyi7wbuO1VuAYcJUy063wrMHw/s1600/iowa75-15.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAOaTXXUtJSAdFmuNaDtySvWNaMT244628hwzjUxbdYaXY8BYpltcRQNnFt1cIxRkLD2Cq56Jc5TcIIiFdEeTh3HR2vOgeqTlP7AP4A6rttmxIBHRh1Nwyi7wbuO1VuAYcJUy063wrMHw/s320/iowa75-15.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>10. On the last morning I met Cathy and Malena and Shannon for breakfast at the Hamburg Inn. I saw them a block away walking up to the restaurant together, these three wonderful brilliant people I have now known for eleven years, and for the first time all weekend my friendly nostalgia swelled into a wave of emotion. For a moment I pretended we all still lived here, and I was just meeting some of my favorite friends for breakfast. The force of the recall knocked the tears right into my eyes.<br />
<br />
I paused to let myself miss them, our time there, my sweet little Iowa life. Then I picked up the pace and hurried to meet my friends. There was a wait for a table and the morning was chilly, but I didn't mind. All nestled together on the outside bench, we stayed warm.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-47394982622021809322011-07-15T14:40:00.000-04:002011-07-15T14:40:48.929-04:00AUTHENTICITY FAIL<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Nice try, J. Crew. Minnetonka Moccasins ditched Minnesota (surreptitiously as they could) years ago for cheaper labor. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqGU49GnvrZ6yIz14CJp_nK0FDO89NgjxYbDSGgV6UnRkHiCNo1LJzqtF1tl4khw9CbMlbs1bJy3rncVms4lGedIoFj7-Cr3HmDdrXAcKSy0JbDr_Zz9wSpw46NTKGZQ3pVcergx3bG7s/s1600/minnetonka-jcrew-oops.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqGU49GnvrZ6yIz14CJp_nK0FDO89NgjxYbDSGgV6UnRkHiCNo1LJzqtF1tl4khw9CbMlbs1bJy3rncVms4lGedIoFj7-Cr3HmDdrXAcKSy0JbDr_Zz9wSpw46NTKGZQ3pVcergx3bG7s/s320/minnetonka-jcrew-oops.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>And get a better proofreader.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-55271458950565389072011-06-30T09:35:00.023-04:002011-07-12T00:16:34.831-04:00OVER & OUT<div style="text-align: left;">The end of the school year was a sweet one. For the last meeting of my Beyond Genre workshop (full title: "Beyond Genre: Fabulism, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction"), we convened in the town cemetery at 7:00 pm. Then I set them loose to collect names of the dead and bring them back to life on the page.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
So we prowled around the tilting tombstones with notebooks in hand. But finding names was so entertaining it was hard for anyone to stop to actually start writing character sketches. Chauncey Wack! Rufus Jump! And his son Giles Jump. Halloween K. Peabody! Darius Darling. Narcissa Pay! </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Living in such a tiny town, walking my dogs down the same streets every day, I always liked veering off to take the cemetery route. There was always something to read. Other lives to imagine. One of the best parts of teaching is that you can share these things with a little audience. You love a story, and then you get to teach it. You find a lovely spot, and then you wait all semester for an evening that's temperate enough to bring the students to it. And they bring chocolate-covered Oreos. What a job.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMu2KZrbxguClkJhYqFIykEJKb8ZfXmNi7myFgOr2Psh0MH1hX0ZleBSJt_DAsO8_OabWeAKIMH-VKB5BFmm6TylDtWmWRAct7vZbjKBumCFVz3f7wzUKZnJkdP-qb6hS6ZZk010z6Y0/s1600/beyondgenre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSMu2KZrbxguClkJhYqFIykEJKb8ZfXmNi7myFgOr2Psh0MH1hX0ZleBSJt_DAsO8_OabWeAKIMH-VKB5BFmm6TylDtWmWRAct7vZbjKBumCFVz3f7wzUKZnJkdP-qb6hS6ZZk010z6Y0/s400/beyondgenre.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Names in hand, before we headed back to the seminar room.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">My friend Ginger Brooks Takahashi came during commencement week to give a talk about her <a href="http://www.brookstakahashi.com/">art</a>. She said that it's important for young artists to know that there isn't just one Art World, there are many art worlds and ways to be an artist. Smart and true. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKR4KkwWlMZhIk014-q8hK4OIMe5Q3OMGdScjj242-mLWeWgDDZhKYcGtQIBEuaIi-2k-misB7BJc2fiCOAgWG0cyordjRJ58qiOA2seC-1FMOYnhqRFlPK5KF3vy0XJcouKknFwnHF4/s1600/endofyear5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLKR4KkwWlMZhIk014-q8hK4OIMe5Q3OMGdScjj242-mLWeWgDDZhKYcGtQIBEuaIi-2k-misB7BJc2fiCOAgWG0cyordjRJ58qiOA2seC-1FMOYnhqRFlPK5KF3vy0XJcouKknFwnHF4/s400/endofyear5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">In college Ginger and I played in a band called Endor, along with Gillian and Lena. We had a handful of songs and did a cover of "The Metro" by Berlin. All that survives is a very scratchy tape recording of a co-op basement show and some photos wherein I'm wearing a suit made of duct tape. But it was one of the most rewarding things I did in college. Ginger has a punk soul and a great pop sensibility, an excellent combination. She is also brave and enthusiastic. Which in a way are sort of the same thing.</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2h2v9tUMQW495lhtEtHJyfiV83QV_xL0CkkgSSAxDuOju2wGinLqjUU5izNkrSHzF7w1e6XN69SadTnj5YCMgMHPknLn_KbcJ_xn_VQIB5P17-kuhkJj3V3yKWI8-Bu47G13ZzjY-BA/s1600/endofyear1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2h2v9tUMQW495lhtEtHJyfiV83QV_xL0CkkgSSAxDuOju2wGinLqjUU5izNkrSHzF7w1e6XN69SadTnj5YCMgMHPknLn_KbcJ_xn_VQIB5P17-kuhkJj3V3yKWI8-Bu47G13ZzjY-BA/s320/endofyear1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Last radio show at WOBC.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">On Commencement Day itself I didn't walk in the ceremony (I don't own the requisite regalia--Iowa's graduation is an informal affair--and didn't rent it this year). I headed down to Tappan Square anyway to scope out the crowds and bid farewell to some of my students. I was seeking, I think, a sense of closure. I had hoped that the ritual would give me a sense of finality. But when I got there, though the president was just launching into the C names, the ground was already strewn with trampled programs and people wandered around, talking and mingling. It was as apt a closure as any—a handful of people going through the formal motions in the background, while real life chatted and shuffled around and made kind a benign mess.</div><br />
Nothing ever really feels over.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKvZWDlb91vYy4oW4Q1AuyRpEo3KcynBB19995zj-86fwZFSVpjAzwxpebvNeL9Y6hB7DZtIdgh87uFyii2V4qeLml_InauiyBz_KC532wuEcGQqJ-ImUHlNcujuW-9gjyW4UrN5hf08/s1600/commencement3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSKvZWDlb91vYy4oW4Q1AuyRpEo3KcynBB19995zj-86fwZFSVpjAzwxpebvNeL9Y6hB7DZtIdgh87uFyii2V4qeLml_InauiyBz_KC532wuEcGQqJ-ImUHlNcujuW-9gjyW4UrN5hf08/s400/commencement3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Classic OC. </td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thanks, Oberlin. What good stories you've given me.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7OQobMK6w6deyFjcvLVN_D8FmnwGcU5sbUV5lehgvDbKX_IYqDqeQGjB2VecRUXiKNIrjpFfWujtgCHOBaunRGSFtYWlrPcmD80ssMq5tW7i9Q9_hDnhLPfMx-8tjp6br1fLBvXgNswQ/s1600/endofyear6.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7OQobMK6w6deyFjcvLVN_D8FmnwGcU5sbUV5lehgvDbKX_IYqDqeQGjB2VecRUXiKNIrjpFfWujtgCHOBaunRGSFtYWlrPcmD80ssMq5tW7i9Q9_hDnhLPfMx-8tjp6br1fLBvXgNswQ/s400/endofyear6.jpg" width="400" /></a> </div>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-90278540777884657402011-06-06T13:09:00.002-04:002011-06-06T13:11:47.580-04:00I'M STILL LIVING IN THE DARK, I'M STILL LIVING IN THE DARKDo you ever wake up with a song in your head, and you can't do anything until you've played it? This morning that song was "Electrocution" by Bill Fox.<br />
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/q5ORkWPzyBw" width="425"></iframe><br />
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<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1854751/Bill%20Fox-I%20Stayed%20Up%20All%20Night%20Listening%20To%20Records-02-Eclectrocution.mp3">Bill Fox: "Electrocution"</a><br />
<br />
A year or two ago I was looking for this song "The Dress You Bought in Cleveland," which meant something to me in 1995, and came across this comp of Ohio bands, <i>I Was Up All Night Listening to Records.</i> I'd never heard of Bill Fox but I couldn't stop playing that song.<br />
<br />
Well. Apparently Bill Fox is (not)famously brilliant--Guided by Voices' love for him is all over their sound, he's like a proto-Pollard--and (not)famously reclusive. A lengthy Believer piece had a writer lurking around Cleveland for weeks trying to find the guy, and failing. As it turns out, <a href="http://www.cleveland.com/popmusic/index.ssf/2009/02/cleveland_singersongwriter_bil.html">he works at the <i>Plain-Dealer </i>selling ads</a>. <br />
<br />
He played here a few weeks ago. A forty-minute set in a gymnasium, early evening light in the high windows, a couple of handfuls of people sitting on the floor before the huge stage where it was just Bill Fox and his guitar. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXgswubYF6OIjkMYA55AC7VnMzecvicpa0W9myXtVqneeJcFfobB9bwEizKTlPHDzsl9nnYcG3J3QILCZ0b_fHvnHr9ilSESM7PBhECFiabh_Sd03ZwbXrPKhDn268sPr-48NJBvz2S4s/s1600/billfox1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXgswubYF6OIjkMYA55AC7VnMzecvicpa0W9myXtVqneeJcFfobB9bwEizKTlPHDzsl9nnYcG3J3QILCZ0b_fHvnHr9ilSESM7PBhECFiabh_Sd03ZwbXrPKhDn268sPr-48NJBvz2S4s/s400/billfox1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgulPHUxnl3NP2LG6Iaw3bsQe8w6VsKdjxjhCKouJLAuB2CDUNhnAEyqtKuPNLqBY_3QYFj30bGO72rqS-afRqmvX4nv_QPPtim9koA0mt0NFBJz3gyl9wLpcL7AOd3GtPevhM2LefUlN4/s1600/billfox2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgulPHUxnl3NP2LG6Iaw3bsQe8w6VsKdjxjhCKouJLAuB2CDUNhnAEyqtKuPNLqBY_3QYFj30bGO72rqS-afRqmvX4nv_QPPtim9koA0mt0NFBJz3gyl9wLpcL7AOd3GtPevhM2LefUlN4/s200/billfox2.jpg" width="148" /></a></div>His voice now was hoarser than the recordings, which have a crackly sweetness to them--it was strained, a little laryngitic Westerberg-ish. Between songs he hardly said a word. He played some of beautiful songs from <i>Shelter from the Smoke</i> and <i>Transit Byzantium</i>. He did not play "Electrocution" or "Bonded to You," my other favorite. And he played several protest songs in 6/8 time that I wasn't that into. But he clearly meant every word. And I was just glad to have him there.<br />
<br />
I like knowing that someone like Bill Fox can be hiding out in Cleveland, a city half leafy and homey and half in ruins. A treasure in the rubble who has no interest in being found. He's like that cave in the new Werner Herzog movie: all this beautiful art concealed behind a landslide, its secrecy its saving grace.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-41541956624073016622011-05-24T10:21:00.001-04:002011-05-24T10:21:00.601-04:00BLANK TIMEClasses are out and I'm writing and writing. It's such a treat. I can be a little obsessive and it's a great pleasure to fixate fully on my work again instead of my students and their stories and needs. I wandered over to This Recording to read what other writers say about writing. <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2buapel">Chekhov's words</a> I instantly copied and put many asterisks by (and, I confess, felt the urge to send to my students). The one I'm lingering on now is <a href="http://thisrecording.com/today/2010/11/4/in-which-you-must-now-proceed-elsewhere.html">Toni Morrison</a>:<br />
<blockquote><span style="font-size: 150%;"></span>You learn how to use time. You don't have to learn how to wash the dishes every time you do that. You already know how to do that. So, while you're doing that, you're thinking. You know, it doesn't take up your whole mind. Or just on the subway. I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in that packed train, where you can't do anything anyway. Well, you can read the paper, but you're sort of in there.<br />
<br />
<br />
And then I would think about, well, would she do this? And then sometimes I'd really get something good. By the time I'd arrived at work, I would jot it down so I wouldn't forget. It was a very strong interior life that I developed for the characters, and for myself, because something was always churning. There was no blank time. <br />
</blockquote>And I looked at my iPhone sitting black and serene on the desk. How my blank time has changed since it entered my life. And I'm going to grandiosely generalize and make that an <i>our</i>, since every line I stand in is a row of people finger-stroking a little screen. Even waking up in the morning--that moment of easing into consciousness as the world materializes again, sorting the dream from the day and trying to make sense of it--has changed. Too often I cut it short, reach for the nightstand, and look for what the device has brought me in the night. Which is? <i>E-mail</i>.<br />
<br />
For years now I've clenched my fists under the table at the friends who can't stop texting during the board game, who pause dinner conversation to attend to the clinking-glass sound of their iPhone, and so on, whose attention is divided between the here and the there.<br />
<br />
It's annoying. But even worse, I think, is what it does to solitude. I tell my students that you can write everywhere, in your mind--in the shower, walking across campus at night, during the orchestra concert, etc. I solve a lot of story problems when I walk the dogs (notably, a two-handed affair). But alone, walking home or waiting in line at the post office, how often do I compulsively, absently pull out the iPhone and check something or other? Vs. what did I do before?<br />
<br />
Nothing will <i>doom</i> writing, per se, I'm not saying that. But I think a lot of us are missing out on those unplanned moments where we go places in our minds. We look at the weather app instead of the sky.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-61087237854030899672011-05-07T17:39:00.001-04:002011-05-07T20:01:30.486-04:00AMY THIELEN WON A JAMES BEARD AWARDI emerge from weeks (months!) of bloglessness to shout this out. Amy won a James Beard Award in journalism! I can personally attest that Amy's gifts in the kitchen are equaled only by her eloquence and humor and grace as a writer. I have been a vegetarian since 1989, and still I will read with relish and delight Amy's accounts of, say, cutting up a whole pig in her yard or cooking steak in the Spanglers' sauna.<br />
<br />
Go read her blog <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%20http://sourtoothjournal.blogspot.com">here</a> for aforementioned and more. And here are the articles that won her the prize:<br />
• <a href="http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/100449049.html">"From the Bean Patch, Plenty"</a> ("Their pods pack as much insulation as an arctic-rated sleeping bag"<br />
• <a href="http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/80806632.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue">"Low-Tech Wonder"</a> ("My first aioli separated. I fixed it, but sat through dinner beneath a black-mood cloud, undone by a broken sauce but loath to admit it.") (I've got to make the recipes for romesco sauce, chimichurri, and hazelnut praline) (or just go over to Amy's when I'm home in MN and gaze at her hopefully from my kitchen stool perch)<br />
<a href="http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/taste/84602722.html">"Walleye: Plentiful and Only a Phone Call Away"</a> ("It turns out that walleye's firm flesh steams beautifully, and within 15 minutes after getting to work I was dipping moist, snowy chunks of sake-steamed walleye in a spirited ponzu sauce that I Midwesternized with a little freshly ground horseradish in place of wasabi.")<br />
<br />
Proof you can live in the middle of the woods with six-month(+) winters thousands of miles from a coast and be the most kick-ass chef and food writer ever AND be recognized for your genius. (As does the brilliant artist she's married to, Aaron Spangler.) High fives, old friend.Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-83041966564520727122011-02-24T14:39:00.001-05:002011-02-26T15:14:01.895-05:00NOSE TO THE GRINDSTONE<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6GewvX3DaVQkaUbyOPa2lBnd7PguQpDUJfEdUzZ9kr6xeEQcxjrLoWyrkxFhmeLd65J6ZCl3_DYrJhKfGKeKPjAck0Hv0Gc9i17LPg9U8xJUnCaXpkm1119eLDcWLwQ3RmKXRC4lb2OY/s1600/IMG_0173.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6GewvX3DaVQkaUbyOPa2lBnd7PguQpDUJfEdUzZ9kr6xeEQcxjrLoWyrkxFhmeLd65J6ZCl3_DYrJhKfGKeKPjAck0Hv0Gc9i17LPg9U8xJUnCaXpkm1119eLDcWLwQ3RmKXRC4lb2OY/s200/IMG_0173.jpg" width="150" /></a>All of January and nary a post. I was writing in my snowy den. My third January in Ohio was an interior one, literally and figuratively. Snowfall was too erratic to even snowshoe. The landscape was sometimes white as a page, other times brownish and deadish. Much like the writing cycle. We stoked the fireplace and got a lot done. I use Scrivener and on many days the little toolbar that shows your progress toward your target went from red to green, and sometimes even blue (exceeded!) <br />
<br />
If you are writing a novel or collection or any kind of long-form project, you have got to try <a href="http://www.literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php">Scrivener</a>. <br />
<br />
I did start a <a href="http://chelseyhotel.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> upon which I will post the Incident Reports. I like Tumblr so far, mostly because I like looking at <a href="http://vintagelesbian.tumblr.com/">queer old vintage photos</a> and following <a href="http://tatteredcover.tumblr.com/">various</a> <a href="http://powells.tumblr.com/">excellent</a> <a href="http://mcnallyjackson.tumblr.com/">book</a> <a href="http://housingworksbookstore.tumblr.com/">stores</a>, whose Tumblr authors are just the kind of smart, witty readers & writers one would wish for as tastemakers in the bookselling world. <a href="http://ofanotherfashion.tumblr.com/">Of Another Fashion</a>, an outgrowth of the brilliant <a href="http://iheartthreadbared.wordpress.com/">Threadbared</a> academic/fashion blog, is an amazing archive of the style of women of color. I also really like the <a href="http://lazybookreviews.tumblr.com/">Lazy Book Reviewer</a> and <a href="http://thingsorganizedneatly.tumblr.com/">Things Organized Neatly.</a> Things Organized Neatly exemplifies the purest form of my Virgo paradox, which is cluttered chaos on the macro and obsessive/aesthetic on the micro.<br />
<br />
More coming soon.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLMW-jpQ2c0e3xcXvDiKDQ2rz4oTZu1hmfc4Z6TjrL3zMvPQ7mV9n6Xa6Y6Z-FHqkrKWDsiTuF4fL5Cf87u94ovZ89Bed23UH_CW3yx0Ergw55VFv1D_nrxkMndmo1JjznSsJZZZO78iA/s1600/IMG_9519.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLMW-jpQ2c0e3xcXvDiKDQ2rz4oTZu1hmfc4Z6TjrL3zMvPQ7mV9n6Xa6Y6Z-FHqkrKWDsiTuF4fL5Cf87u94ovZ89Bed23UH_CW3yx0Ergw55VFv1D_nrxkMndmo1JjznSsJZZZO78iA/s400/IMG_9519.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-13454055771697571702010-12-29T11:24:00.003-05:002010-12-29T11:35:52.874-05:00MR. CARTERYears after the fact, I can joke about high school theater and its devout practitioners. The drama we threw ourselves into and created, our over-emoting, our line-quoting, all the ways we fell in love with our own adolescent performance. It's an easy target. But yesterday I attended the funeral of my beloved English teacher, play director, and speech coach <a href="http://www.parkrapidsenterprise.com/event/obituary/id/26614/">Martin Carter</a>, and was hit hard in the heart by how important and wonderful that freaky funny little microcosm was and is.<br />
<br />
Maybe things are different in urban and suburban schools, where the stakes are higher, competition stiffer, and the top talent really might go on to be professional actors. But in the homogeneous middle-of-nowhere small-town school where physical prowess reigns and strict gender codes keep kids brutally in their place, the theater department is a rare refuge. A place to escape and a place to pretend to be someone else. To try on other lives for size. To construct another time and place to inhabit where you are implicitly important to the story. And Mr. Carter was genius at bringing us in and making us feel like we mattered. <br />
<br />
He had a lot of pain in his life--he'd been orphaned young and raised in a foster home, and his only son was in and out of trouble and died tragically--and the way he carried that was neither a hard bitter scar or a needy open wound, but a steady pulse of sensitivity, the openness of his marvelously expressive elastic face, his slouchy, purposeful stride. It fueled his drive to make life better for the kids he could reach every day. He was a magnet for misfits, nerds, smart kids, shy kids, weirdos, kids that were or felt different in any way.<br />
<br />
He had a big classroom next to both an outside exit and the door backstage—a gateway and escape. In it he taught literature by day, coached speech practice after school, and gathered us for play rehearsals in the evening. Mr. Carter's room was like a living room for me and my friends and our fellow speech-and-drama nerds. It was where you could go to find each other, to take a break, to eat lunch in his office in peace. In the back of the room were three closet-sized dressing rooms, in which I smoked my first and last puff of clove cigarette (I fell down from the headrush). In the makeup room, our faces were slicked with thick sticks of stage makeup, a heavy perfumey grease that was near impossible to wash off. Newly crow's-feeted and cheekboned, we blinked at ourselves in the wall of mirrors, trying to touch without smearing the new faces on our faces, these garish caricatures of adulthood: <i>Is this what I'll look like?</i> In the costume closet, surrounded by decades of discarded prom dresses, we turned off the lights, gathered around my Ouija board and summoned spirits who spelled badly and alluded vaguely to ominous deaths.<br />
<br />
No matter how ridiculous, we were always welcome.<br />
<br />
When we would go down to the Twin Cities for the state speech meets and one-act play competitions, or I would visit Amy who had moved to a cushy suburb, it shocked me how well-trained and equipped other schools were. The immaculate sets, the cushy auditoriums and classrooms, the students' exquisite poise--even the techies scurrying around were super-cool, dressed to the alternative nines. We were a ragtag northern bunch, with our nice clothes from the Fargo mall, rayon dresses and teal button-ups and cheap shoes from Baker's, many of us still permed and mulleted. I people-watched with awe and fascination and occasional seizures of inferiority. We were so small.<br />
<br />
But Mr. Carter elevated us all. Everyone knew him, and he knew everyone; he was sort of a legend. And he took for granted that we were as good as or better than anyone else there, no matter where we or they came from. And, it turned out, we were. He loved to win, yes, and he often did--but mostly he just loved us. The real prize, always, was him.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHXflkr-UIlkRzZkcyWixgTB63O2x-E8yhy9CT4P3W4rQ7_GTbmOVpa35UsPXFg4MOy6hxySdZBfbPXxL7SZ0ko0bMS7QrILJ5cntN6_r0PSgRyb6L8qsqMvzYgfN_Jlrm8qiLlF_W6FQ/s1600/web-martin-carter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHXflkr-UIlkRzZkcyWixgTB63O2x-E8yhy9CT4P3W4rQ7_GTbmOVpa35UsPXFg4MOy6hxySdZBfbPXxL7SZ0ko0bMS7QrILJ5cntN6_r0PSgRyb6L8qsqMvzYgfN_Jlrm8qiLlF_W6FQ/s1600/web-martin-carter.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo from the <i>Enterprise</i> from 1993, the year he technically retired--yet his funeral was full of current high school students. "I see Mr. Carter pretty much every day," one girl told me. Teacher for life.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-15360751603287892592010-12-27T00:57:00.000-05:002010-12-27T00:57:38.386-05:00ME TOO, BUDDY.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPXcCSFNr8xvvsZJToLjGwfzgzMaIl7-aLYolRvV4MzUQR5rFuWtFzOoERBEeZxGt-bLRttjU1MCotunB6viGV2p5Pgp1LQmF659mxwpVl3dzmhdDSd2pAuAF38K1v0F-fJd7X2eCZY2o/s1600/xmasedout.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPXcCSFNr8xvvsZJToLjGwfzgzMaIl7-aLYolRvV4MzUQR5rFuWtFzOoERBEeZxGt-bLRttjU1MCotunB6viGV2p5Pgp1LQmF659mxwpVl3dzmhdDSd2pAuAF38K1v0F-fJd7X2eCZY2o/s400/xmasedout.jpg" width="265" /></a></div>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-63882423715124606742010-12-07T23:24:00.000-05:002010-12-07T23:24:19.834-05:00ZOO SHAMEOver on the <a href="http://www.uminnpressblog.com/2010/12/quadrant-on-zoo-history-shame-and.html">University of Minnesota Press blog</a>, a brief Q&A with Lisa Uddin, who writes about zoo shame, i.e. "why people feel bad at and about the zoo":<br />
<blockquote>These decades [the 1960s and 70s] of intense revitalization transformed many U.S. zooscapes from the so-called “Naked Cage” template of animal display – widely condemned – to early incarnations of the naturalistic, immersive enclosures that typify zoo design today. Zoos also began revitalizing their animal collections in this period, breeding select species whose populations in and outside of captivity were dwindling. This spatial and biological overhaul often gets discussed as an institutional turn to wildlife conservation. What is missing from these accounts is analysis of how the turn was also fully contemporary with the smoldering racial tensions that defined the urban experience in the long postwar period, and, more specifically, the shame that made cities unbearable for so many Americans... I am considering how zoo renewal variously reflected feelings about race and urban space, how it amplified those feelings, and how it offered channels for relief. The shame of American zoos, I argue, is part of the shame of American cities. </blockquote>The last time I was at a zoo was in the summer of 2008, when I went to see some bands play at the Oregon Zoo (friend of a friend playing, got in free, otherwise it would pain me to pass dollars through a zoo's ticket window.) The Cowboy Junkies were playing when we arrived and I wasn't ready yet to succumb to a blanket on the grass, the soporific was already heavy in the July afternoon air, so I wandered the perimeter and came upon the elephants.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJDB2uPkZDBXHsn6QTyAS4nAsE_jVahVMBh7e8B1wsyoXSQjPaZfmPV2J9XfF2ur72VCpTW-Ql-LDCLhFwDf4vCdVW1_VSY6SdVQrGEHV6yrzT96d2pVWr6BoMyCclhIR37fpc8-b7I0/s1600/elephants1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJDB2uPkZDBXHsn6QTyAS4nAsE_jVahVMBh7e8B1wsyoXSQjPaZfmPV2J9XfF2ur72VCpTW-Ql-LDCLhFwDf4vCdVW1_VSY6SdVQrGEHV6yrzT96d2pVWr6BoMyCclhIR37fpc8-b7I0/s400/elephants1.jpg" width="400" /></a><br />
The elephants were walking back and forth in the same easy meter as the Cowboy Junkies. I thought of a beautiful essay a friend of mine wrote about watching these same elephants sway in time to the music. "They were dancing!" she said, and that fit so well with what her essay was about, a moment of relief and beauty and redemption after an ugly, rattling event. But what I learned later, by accident, was that elephants sway when they're distressed.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqJDB2uPkZDBXHsn6QTyAS4nAsE_jVahVMBh7e8B1wsyoXSQjPaZfmPV2J9XfF2ur72VCpTW-Ql-LDCLhFwDf4vCdVW1_VSY6SdVQrGEHV6yrzT96d2pVWr6BoMyCclhIR37fpc8-b7I0/s1600/elephants1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR1vAG6tSqBi5V_wTjICqDDUsWhjWQOeOXKapneSCJlp_SXt9dTWbvKCKYALlY7pwMnLSYpTtF-ICpsnbZYkJia0FXP_-pUOSGDu6dpe_2a6ih4sDkFQIbuPsludtwmOHdw13Ta2qaRfc/s1600/elephants2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR1vAG6tSqBi5V_wTjICqDDUsWhjWQOeOXKapneSCJlp_SXt9dTWbvKCKYALlY7pwMnLSYpTtF-ICpsnbZYkJia0FXP_-pUOSGDu6dpe_2a6ih4sDkFQIbuPsludtwmOHdw13Ta2qaRfc/s400/elephants2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4269580627377591354.post-59793291014225935302010-11-07T14:13:00.004-05:002010-11-07T14:18:19.269-05:00THE VOICES IN YOUR HEADI was thinking recently about how what you listen to while your brain is still forming, up through your early twenties, is extremely important. I'd been walking the dogs on a leafy lovely day and suddenly this stupid plinky song from my churchgoing childhood reappeared in my head like a little religious Chucky. It would not leave. I remembered every word, every verse. When I tried to dispell it with another song, an even more insipid Sunday School song popped in. ("Stop! And let me tell you/ What the Lord has done for me." With hapless leader Mrs. Crandall wielding a cardboard stop-sign prop.)<br />
<br />
The best antidote to this was going to see Guided by Voices on Halloween night. I got <i>Bee Thousand</i> and <i>Alien Lanes</i> when they came out in 1994 and 1995, and I fell instantly for the off-kilter lyrics, tumbling melodies, songs that launch right into their best parts and cut out before they're over. Their brevity just makes them sweeter--the songs know to leave the party while it's still good, even if the famously inebriated band members don't. And I found I remembered every word and melody, even ones I hadn't heard for years.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwJpRwgNj25zZ0poG9IZTt5LGNFx7bNBO-XioGEa0mKxNqjPLkSZotWwPy4OLjJMRbgFNoxzHinvDBv9uBeLNL4d6leqqTWlCxWmFSNtF5vah1-7E8aXQ7RzOsXne7DcMSxjYWm4Mrygs/s1600/GBV-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwJpRwgNj25zZ0poG9IZTt5LGNFx7bNBO-XioGEa0mKxNqjPLkSZotWwPy4OLjJMRbgFNoxzHinvDBv9uBeLNL4d6leqqTWlCxWmFSNtF5vah1-7E8aXQ7RzOsXne7DcMSxjYWm4Mrygs/s400/GBV-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I think these guys are legitimately grandfathered past the no-smoking law.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Guided by Voices seem to embody something particularly Ohio in a way that makes me feel a surge of affection for the place: their exquisite tunefulness wrapped up in unpretentious bar-band raucousness, the bass player's Spinal Tap-worthy ruffled shirt and open vest and vertical-bass moves, the wiry guitarist in his Dead Kennedys shirt hands-free chain-smoking through the entire show, Tobin Sprout playing diligently, delicately off to the side with a sort of wary bemusement on his face, Pollard the fourth-grade schoolteacher downing a half-dozen too many and singing his heart out, barking out the title of every song--"This is a song called 'Echoes Myron!'" "This is a song called "My Valuable Hunting Knife!'"--before launching in.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZlTC460TNyvCNu6AECUz-gu0Fp43R_s5YvjyuqiactZBvD0Gt-fBH9BbUYS0a9KNWR6ch1JT6xQ3PaI9dbxl4uCMIVP0AVwoGPLS9lLou5X8bLP0XQAWrSsv6va46HZ7djpM7vgvhhy8/s1600/GBV-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZlTC460TNyvCNu6AECUz-gu0Fp43R_s5YvjyuqiactZBvD0Gt-fBH9BbUYS0a9KNWR6ch1JT6xQ3PaI9dbxl4uCMIVP0AVwoGPLS9lLou5X8bLP0XQAWrSsv6va46HZ7djpM7vgvhhy8/s400/GBV-2.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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</tbody> </table>I last saw GBV play in 1995 and this show was, to my surprise, ten times better. Or maybe not to my surprise, because at that show they got so drunk they could barely play. This time, they were still drunk, but more joyful, and louder, and more loved—the crowd was mostly thirty- and forty-something Ohio folks, true fans, old-school, fists in the air, singing and bouncing along. They totally ruled the college kids in quantity and quality. All I need to tell you is, a student in front of me pulled out her Blackberry and checked her e-mail during "I Am a Scientist."<br />
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I stayed until halfway through the third encore, by which time Pollard had shifted from the onstage beer cooler to drinking straight out of a tequila bottle, a fight had broken out during "Motor Away," and I knew where the night was headed. Best to leave while the party's still good. Still great, in fact. Their songs are forever lodged in my auditory cortex, and for that I'm forever grateful. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq4ZjI3h8f0u3skpQwPiAej-a4BPbrYQUqGlF9OrlmCTxNeRcxbq2OAXYRQ5jvLGblPeNDDuN0nNfbnNY4r45CLDS5GwmkTFNTD0TSYg1QJ4BTc5Y5nygUaIhCaKiBcpfm5CkZ7M_gA0Y/s1600/GBV-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq4ZjI3h8f0u3skpQwPiAej-a4BPbrYQUqGlF9OrlmCTxNeRcxbq2OAXYRQ5jvLGblPeNDDuN0nNfbnNY4r45CLDS5GwmkTFNTD0TSYg1QJ4BTc5Y5nygUaIhCaKiBcpfm5CkZ7M_gA0Y/s400/GBV-3.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
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</tbody></table>Chelseyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00740136323320850496noreply@blogger.com0