A male party was reported passed out in a truck in Arago Township, First Response arrived on the scene to learn he was taking a nap while waiting for a tow; A Rockwood Township caller reported her 18-year-old daugher is "out of control"; A Park Rapids caller reported being assaulted outside a Park Rapids bar, but the responding officer says the reporting party (RP) does not recall the assault and the manager is now calling about the RP being loud; A car eastbound on Hwy 34 was reported to be turning headlights on and off; "A lot of shooting" was reported in a sand pit in Rockwood township, caller found a considerable amount of litter when he arrived; A Fern Township caller reported neighbors dumping garbage in his driveway; A Farden Township caller reported "her uncle is drunk and out of control," he grabbed a knife, went to the back bedroom then outside; A Todd Township caller reported receiving harassing text messages from her children's father's new girlfriend; A Henrietta Township caller complained of a flashing light on a radio tower; A Park Rapids caller reported four small children in the backseat of a Neon, concerned with lack of carseats and seatbelts; A Park Rapids caller reported someone broke into her apartment while she was in jail; A Todd Township caller reported being slapped by his girlfriend, she left on foot, headed towards Park Rapids; A Park Rapids caller states "neighbor's footprints are in his mom's yard"; All the mailboxes on CSAH 32 to Highway 71 were open in Arago Township; Footprints were reported circling a Park Rapids yard, party appears to have been looking in windows; A Park Rapids caller reported a group of kids in the store are staggering, seem to be intoxicated; A Park Rapids caller reported someone breaking into their home, could hear scratching and pounding and saw hands; A trophy was stolen from an Arago Township residence, caller believes her ex-husband stole it; A little blue car "coming in from the west" was reported traveling at a high rate of speed; Gunshots were heard at the old Deer Town; A Park Rapids caller reported someone put something in her mailbox, would like to speak to an officer.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
INCIDENT REPORT #10
I can't believe how long it's been since I last posted selections from The Park Rapids Enterprise's incident report. Here are some recent happenings.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
GHOST SQUIRREL
My dog has taken a deep scholarly interest in squirrels. Our walks have become characterized by the pause, paw lifted and ears pricked, followed by full-throttle barreling toward some distant tree, where he then rises on his hind legs, one paw resting on the bark, and gazes longingly upward at his chattering, taunting quarry.
But nothing thrills him more than these guys, a long lineage of whom inhabit the town square.
The albino squirrels here are leisure squirrels, well-fed and publicly adored. With Emmett as their main threat, they can look forward to long and happy lives.
Most albino and leucistic (another white-skin condition) animals are not so lucky. In the wild, they're vulnerable to sunburn (!) and easier for predators to target. Hunters are the worst of all--strange how humans place an enormous monetary value on a white animal ($60,000 for the chance to shoot a white tiger) that is less about the animal and more about the thrill of killing it.
Paradoxically the animal is much rarer alive than it is dead. The population of skinned and stuffed albinos surely outnumbers the living (and continues to grow).
Astutely put: "It is an incredibly Victorian attitude that if something is unusual your response is to kill it."
That's right, little guy. Beat your retreat.
By the way, a Google image search of albino animals yields a pretty mind-blowing gallery. Gorillas, kangaroos, peacocks, giraffes, moose, pink dolphins...
But nothing thrills him more than these guys, a long lineage of whom inhabit the town square.
The albino squirrels here are leisure squirrels, well-fed and publicly adored. With Emmett as their main threat, they can look forward to long and happy lives.
Most albino and leucistic (another white-skin condition) animals are not so lucky. In the wild, they're vulnerable to sunburn (!) and easier for predators to target. Hunters are the worst of all--strange how humans place an enormous monetary value on a white animal ($60,000 for the chance to shoot a white tiger) that is less about the animal and more about the thrill of killing it.
Paradoxically the animal is much rarer alive than it is dead. The population of skinned and stuffed albinos surely outnumbers the living (and continues to grow).
Astutely put: "It is an incredibly Victorian attitude that if something is unusual your response is to kill it."
That's right, little guy. Beat your retreat.
By the way, a Google image search of albino animals yields a pretty mind-blowing gallery. Gorillas, kangaroos, peacocks, giraffes, moose, pink dolphins...
Monday, April 13, 2009
DIRTY MOUTHS IN THE FAR NORTH
Swearing at the Friday night meat raffle in Nevis (population 400) made the front page of a recent Park Rapids Enterprise. Wild times!
Sunday, April 12, 2009
Saturday, April 11, 2009
LIVE AND ALIVE
In the last couple of weeks I have been feeling pinned and wriggling, and what it makes me crave more than anything is live music. I want to plunge into a loose crowd in a dark room and feel only the sound and the moment.
It touches the little ache of longing I feel lately for my other life, my Portland life, where I associate shows with bear hugs and shouting greetings and cheering on friends. I also just need the relief of seeing other people making their art, live and in the moment.
Last week the Mountain Goats came, in solo form. There's a little student nightclub here that's actually a great venue, dark and intimate with good sightlines and a sprawling beer list--in my youth I saw countless bands here, the 90s playbook (Guided by Voices, Tortoise, Velocity Girl, Tsunami, Shellac, Come, Gaunt, Cibo Matto, Labradford, the Jesus Lizard, Run On, Ui, Tribe 8, and many more fallen through the memory gap.) The kids packed the place for the Mountain Goats, sitting adoringly on the sides of the stage and singing along loudly and fervently as a tent revival.
John Darnielle is a great performer. Of course he is funny and energetic and a gifted songwriter, but also he is not afraid to be weird, ugly, strident, hit a curdled note, make strange faces, double over, sweat, pull his glasses off and put them on again a second later. It's good to remember: you have to be embarrassing and awkward in the service of art. It's part of the process. It's real.
A couple of nights ago Des Ark came through, also solo, and played to maybe fifty people. The intimacy suited her stripped-down songs and aching voice. She played mostly newer material--no "Subtleties of Chores and Unlocked Doors," my favorite--but closed with an encore of "Lord of the Rings and His Fascist Timekeepers," where she broke before the last verse to resituate herself on the steps of the stage, unmiked, inches away from us, taking it to the next level of close.
It touches the little ache of longing I feel lately for my other life, my Portland life, where I associate shows with bear hugs and shouting greetings and cheering on friends. I also just need the relief of seeing other people making their art, live and in the moment.
Last week the Mountain Goats came, in solo form. There's a little student nightclub here that's actually a great venue, dark and intimate with good sightlines and a sprawling beer list--in my youth I saw countless bands here, the 90s playbook (Guided by Voices, Tortoise, Velocity Girl, Tsunami, Shellac, Come, Gaunt, Cibo Matto, Labradford, the Jesus Lizard, Run On, Ui, Tribe 8, and many more fallen through the memory gap.) The kids packed the place for the Mountain Goats, sitting adoringly on the sides of the stage and singing along loudly and fervently as a tent revival.
John Darnielle is a great performer. Of course he is funny and energetic and a gifted songwriter, but also he is not afraid to be weird, ugly, strident, hit a curdled note, make strange faces, double over, sweat, pull his glasses off and put them on again a second later. It's good to remember: you have to be embarrassing and awkward in the service of art. It's part of the process. It's real.
A couple of nights ago Des Ark came through, also solo, and played to maybe fifty people. The intimacy suited her stripped-down songs and aching voice. She played mostly newer material--no "Subtleties of Chores and Unlocked Doors," my favorite--but closed with an encore of "Lord of the Rings and His Fascist Timekeepers," where she broke before the last verse to resituate herself on the steps of the stage, unmiked, inches away from us, taking it to the next level of close.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
MEET "BOOBU"
Monday, March 23, 2009
MIAMI BRIEFS
1. The last time I was in Miami was 2003, when one of my enterprising traveling companions wrangled us fancy hotel rooms by pretending to be the management of a famous band. Half a dozen years! I cannot believe how long that sounds.
2. The airplane from Orlando to Miami was the ricketiest vehicle I've ever been on. It made the Mesaba flights from Minneapolis to Bemidji seem like luxury jets. The flight attendant was the co-pilot, a tall and brusque man with stern eyebrows, a heavy accent, and not a wasted word. "PLEASE BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS," he shouted down the aisle. "WE ARE GOING." Then he went into the cockpit and closed the loose sliding door as much as he could. It didn't close all the way.
My seat, the glamorous-sounding 1F, in fact had no window. To my right and in front of me were nothing walls of grimy beige plastic. To my left, the closed door with its metal staircase folded against it. The sensation was that of traveling in a large carton, perhaps one stashed in the back of a covered wagon.
An hour in I realized I had to close my New Yorker and my eyes and try to imagine myself anywhere else. I have only thrown up once on a flight, ever. It was a tiny bush plane, in Churchill, Manitoba; the pilot at one point turned the plane perpendicular to the ground, and when he righted it, I lost my lunch. But this flight came close. When we landed, the co-pilot burst out of the cockpit--"OKAY, WE'RE HERE," he hollered with a mighty clap--and I tottered down the steps to the tarmac to wait for the baggage handlers to roll my suitcase from the cargo cubby to where I stood about twenty feet away. They had to duck under the wing.
3. Miami temperatures in the mid-70s. The air is downy and warm. I could cry at the sheer gentleness of it.
4. At the Turkish restaurant, my dish was called "I'm Crazy About Tomato!", or, as the waiter called it for short, "Crazy Tomato."
5. Miami men wear fitted button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up just one cuff-length, untucked over narrow yet loose jeans, and flip-flops or loafers. The women wear tiny dresses and shorts and impossibly high heels, but their walks betray them, tottering on the shoes, holding a boyfriend's hand for support, or hunching and crossing their arms across their chests as they duck around the slow walkers. I have not seen so much cleavage since the Renaissance Faire of 2002.
6. The beach at night was vast and pale and empty, the ocean vast and dark and empty. I admire the ocean but it will always make me feel uneasy in some way--I don't like not being able to see the other side. And it has that intense smell. It smells like life and like death. But I was very, very happy to see it.
I keep picturing a map and myself as a tiny fleck on that map, down at the fingertip of the U.S. In my mind's eye the map is a biological one, not political, no roads or city dots, just green. I'm reading Karen Russell's book St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and the stories are about the super-weirdness of Florida and especially its dark swamps and critters. That interests me much more than Beyonce's mansion. Manatees over celebritees.
2. The airplane from Orlando to Miami was the ricketiest vehicle I've ever been on. It made the Mesaba flights from Minneapolis to Bemidji seem like luxury jets. The flight attendant was the co-pilot, a tall and brusque man with stern eyebrows, a heavy accent, and not a wasted word. "PLEASE BUCKLE YOUR SEATBELTS," he shouted down the aisle. "WE ARE GOING." Then he went into the cockpit and closed the loose sliding door as much as he could. It didn't close all the way.
My seat, the glamorous-sounding 1F, in fact had no window. To my right and in front of me were nothing walls of grimy beige plastic. To my left, the closed door with its metal staircase folded against it. The sensation was that of traveling in a large carton, perhaps one stashed in the back of a covered wagon.
An hour in I realized I had to close my New Yorker and my eyes and try to imagine myself anywhere else. I have only thrown up once on a flight, ever. It was a tiny bush plane, in Churchill, Manitoba; the pilot at one point turned the plane perpendicular to the ground, and when he righted it, I lost my lunch. But this flight came close. When we landed, the co-pilot burst out of the cockpit--"OKAY, WE'RE HERE," he hollered with a mighty clap--and I tottered down the steps to the tarmac to wait for the baggage handlers to roll my suitcase from the cargo cubby to where I stood about twenty feet away. They had to duck under the wing.
3. Miami temperatures in the mid-70s. The air is downy and warm. I could cry at the sheer gentleness of it.
4. At the Turkish restaurant, my dish was called "I'm Crazy About Tomato!", or, as the waiter called it for short, "Crazy Tomato."
5. Miami men wear fitted button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled up just one cuff-length, untucked over narrow yet loose jeans, and flip-flops or loafers. The women wear tiny dresses and shorts and impossibly high heels, but their walks betray them, tottering on the shoes, holding a boyfriend's hand for support, or hunching and crossing their arms across their chests as they duck around the slow walkers. I have not seen so much cleavage since the Renaissance Faire of 2002.
6. The beach at night was vast and pale and empty, the ocean vast and dark and empty. I admire the ocean but it will always make me feel uneasy in some way--I don't like not being able to see the other side. And it has that intense smell. It smells like life and like death. But I was very, very happy to see it.
I keep picturing a map and myself as a tiny fleck on that map, down at the fingertip of the U.S. In my mind's eye the map is a biological one, not political, no roads or city dots, just green. I'm reading Karen Russell's book St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves and the stories are about the super-weirdness of Florida and especially its dark swamps and critters. That interests me much more than Beyonce's mansion. Manatees over celebritees.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
MINING & FORGING
The difference for me in writing stories and writing a novel comes down, maybe, to this: In writing a story, you take one element and blow it up. Writing a novel, you take every element, everything you know, and try to distill it into one thing. This task is staggering.
At some point in my freshman or sophomore year of college, I started conflating my writing notebook and my personal journal--no longer separate, just everything in one notebook, as it came, the invented and the real all mixed up and sometimes overlapping, and I continue this practice to the present day. But holy mother, is it making the novel mining a crazy experience. It turns out I started taking notes on what would become this novel (I thought it was a story then) in two-thousand-fucking-two. So I am digging back through seven years' worth of life, or rather lives, to pull out sentences and notes and ideas I'd forgotten. This is about twelve or thirteen journals of all sizes--Moleskines, spiral-bound sketchbooks, big 8x10 art books and little square ones and all shapes and sizes in between, a couple of them dog-chewed in the corner so the pages are hard to turn.
The journal-mining is dangerous work. I have to stay on task and resist the pull of my own past lives. Retrospection is a bitch, and the periods of doomed euphoria are a harder tug than the moments of immediate darkness. It is intense (and I'm not saying this with wistfulness or nostalgia, just clear sight) to realize how different a life can be and how rapidly it can change, over and over. And it's sometimes shocking to realize how much I've forgotten--I'm not an avid chronicler of events, more ideas--and it makes me glad I wrote down what I did, and wonder what happened between those pages that I wish I had access to now.
Through it all, multiple characters and stories pop up, some of them later realized, some abandoned. Little flags and post-it notes. The elements of this thing I'm working on. The constant is that I was constantly making things up in the middle of living the real thing, and often the fiction has the real truth and the documentary leaves it out.
All of it fuels the story, but it puts me into a strange cloud where I feel like I am perpetually on the verge of a sneeze or tears.
I think DFW had it about right with his extended analogy of DeLillo's hideous hydrocephalic infant. It does feel like this.
At some point in my freshman or sophomore year of college, I started conflating my writing notebook and my personal journal--no longer separate, just everything in one notebook, as it came, the invented and the real all mixed up and sometimes overlapping, and I continue this practice to the present day. But holy mother, is it making the novel mining a crazy experience. It turns out I started taking notes on what would become this novel (I thought it was a story then) in two-thousand-fucking-two. So I am digging back through seven years' worth of life, or rather lives, to pull out sentences and notes and ideas I'd forgotten. This is about twelve or thirteen journals of all sizes--Moleskines, spiral-bound sketchbooks, big 8x10 art books and little square ones and all shapes and sizes in between, a couple of them dog-chewed in the corner so the pages are hard to turn.
The journal-mining is dangerous work. I have to stay on task and resist the pull of my own past lives. Retrospection is a bitch, and the periods of doomed euphoria are a harder tug than the moments of immediate darkness. It is intense (and I'm not saying this with wistfulness or nostalgia, just clear sight) to realize how different a life can be and how rapidly it can change, over and over. And it's sometimes shocking to realize how much I've forgotten--I'm not an avid chronicler of events, more ideas--and it makes me glad I wrote down what I did, and wonder what happened between those pages that I wish I had access to now.
Through it all, multiple characters and stories pop up, some of them later realized, some abandoned. Little flags and post-it notes. The elements of this thing I'm working on. The constant is that I was constantly making things up in the middle of living the real thing, and often the fiction has the real truth and the documentary leaves it out.
All of it fuels the story, but it puts me into a strange cloud where I feel like I am perpetually on the verge of a sneeze or tears.
I think DFW had it about right with his extended analogy of DeLillo's hideous hydrocephalic infant. It does feel like this.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
MAKE WAY FOR WAO
Two trends I have noticed in undergraduate short stories.
• The office is the new courtroom. AND OR, the office is the new unhappy suburban home. TBD.
• Oscar Wao is the new Holden Caulfield.
Both these developments cheer me.
The office-as-setting is no less inspired by television and movies than the courtroom, and just as vulnerable to familiar tropes and cliches, but at least there's a significantly better chance the writer has actually spent time in one. (And no "you can't handle the truth!" moments.) I am also noticing a marked drop in unhappy-married-people-in-the-suburbs stories, and I wonder if the office is also the new unhappy home, the locus of thwarted ambitions and entrapment and mortal dread. Prickly exchanges have moved from the kitchen table to the break room table, the loneliness-in-company of the bedroom transferred to the loneliness-in-company of the cubicle.
Re: Caulfield vs. Wao, I think it's high time for the know-it-all prep-schooler to clear some space for the persecuted-yet-indomitable, longing, lovable geek. Is this another ripple of the Obama effect? Either way, I'm down.
• The office is the new courtroom. AND OR, the office is the new unhappy suburban home. TBD.
• Oscar Wao is the new Holden Caulfield.
Both these developments cheer me.
The office-as-setting is no less inspired by television and movies than the courtroom, and just as vulnerable to familiar tropes and cliches, but at least there's a significantly better chance the writer has actually spent time in one. (And no "you can't handle the truth!" moments.) I am also noticing a marked drop in unhappy-married-people-in-the-suburbs stories, and I wonder if the office is also the new unhappy home, the locus of thwarted ambitions and entrapment and mortal dread. Prickly exchanges have moved from the kitchen table to the break room table, the loneliness-in-company of the bedroom transferred to the loneliness-in-company of the cubicle.
Re: Caulfield vs. Wao, I think it's high time for the know-it-all prep-schooler to clear some space for the persecuted-yet-indomitable, longing, lovable geek. Is this another ripple of the Obama effect? Either way, I'm down.
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