INCIDENT REPORT#11

Has it really been six months since I posted an incident report from the Park Rapids Enterprise? Well, trust me, it was worth the wait. The newest edition spread out before me on my dining room table is a gold mine.

I present to you the full gamut of what the males and females of the greater Park Rapids, Minnesota area were up to in the mere four-day span of October 15-18. Enjoy the theft, drugs, nudity, noise, bad wedding behavior, snowmobile capers, and mysterious moaning and ice cubes.

Miscellaneous: Oct. 15: A small black car was reported traveling at high rates of speed on a Nevis Township Road; A domestic was reported in White Oak Township; A brick was reported thrown at a window in Park Rapids; A fight between females was reported in Park Rapids; A Park Rapids caller reported waking up to find a younger male sitting at the dining room table moaning, ice cubes are all over the floor; A possibly abandoned car was reported in Park Rapids; Oct. 16: An Akeley caller reported "having problems" with a male's items being stored in his garage, the male is in jail; A Lakeport Township caller reported he was going to dispose of pain medication for his mother, who died, and himself and he found them gone; Several speed and other warnings were issued in Akeley; A driver was reported to be repeatedly crossing the center line in Helga Township; Citations were issued in Nevis for speed and lack of proof of insurance; Park Rapids caller requested a welfare check on a young boy, 8 or 9, who's in a parking lot on a bike talking to people in cars; Oct. 17: A Nevis Township caller reported to speak to a deputy about a vehicle she and her husband may purchase from Craig's List, some things appear to be fraudulent; A vehicle was vandalized in Park Rapids; Snowmobile windshield damage was reported in Todd Township; A caller reported her ex-stepmother has her two children in Minnesota (Lake George Township) without her permission, Florida authorities told her she had to contact the sheriff's department here for assistance in retrieving them; Two trucks were reported mudding on Helga Township property; Identity theft was reported in Akeley; A hitchhiker was reported in Fern Township; Gunshots for more than an hour were heard in Rockwood Township; Oct. 18: A Helga Township caller complained of a driver "messing around by his property"; Lakeport Township caller reported she and her husband are "having issues" and he is letting the air out of her car tires; A caller reported trespassers on the land he leases from Potlatch in Hart Lake Township; A Helga Township caller reported that two males who smell strongly of alcohol have been in his bathroom yelling for over five minutes; A naked man was reported coming out of the woods in Farden Township, crossing Highway 2 and heading back into the woods southbound; A party with loud music was reported in Farden Township; Loud music was reported in Park Rapids; A small amount of drugs was reported in Park Rapids; A Park Rapids caller asked for officer assistance in retrieving "stuff" from an ex-girlfriend; Squealing tires were heard in Park Rapids; A vehicle was reported all over the road in Park Rapids, vehicle pulled into a parking lot and a male got out yelling; Possible smell of drugs was reported coming from a Park Rapids apartment; Animal related: Oct. 15: Straight River Township caller reported cows in the yard are destroying hay bales; A "dog call" came from Nevis Township; Deer shining was reported in a Clover Township field; A dog was reported barking through the night in Hubbard Township; A German Shepherd was chasing deer in Park Rapids; Oct. 16: Dogs were running in traffic in Akeley, taken to the animal shelter; A deer was hit in Todd Township; Oct. 18: A black Lab was "hanging around" in Hubbard Township, neighbors were feeding it but now they're gone; A barking dog was reported in Park Rapids, "happens every weekend;" Burglaries, thefts: Oct. 15: Theft from a residence was reported in Park Rapids; Oct. 17: A shed break-in was reported in White Oak Township, a refrigerator, microwave, and other items were taken; A Todd Township caller reported two males were hired to steal her boyfriend's snowmobiles, caller states she received a call from a female who's a family member of the alleged thieves who states the males were getting a truck and trailer to pick up the snowmobiles; A pole barn break-in with a generator taken was reported in Henrietta Township; A residential break-in was reported in Akeley; Oct. 18: Theft of a tip jar was reported in Lake Emma Township, male suspect is part of a wedding party, they have it on camera; A vehicle window was broken and a CD player stolen in Park Rapids; Fires: Oct. 16: A grass fire was reported in Henrietta Township; Oct. 17: A vehicle was on fire in Guthrie Township, everyone safe and out of the vehicle; Accidents: Oct. 15: A rollover was reported in Park Rapids; Oct. 16: A rollover was reported in Henrietta Township, vehicle's on its roof but driver is out.

Hides for Habitat drop boxes at the Two Inlets Country Store, last November.

COLUMBUS CAN BITE IT

In dishonor of Columbus Day, here's an essay by Paul Metcalf that we're reading in my nonfiction workshop tonight. I'm pairing it with a Sherman Alexie piece, "Captivity," that I didn't scan for here, but you can read both in The Next American Essay edited by John D'Agata (Graywolf Press.)

Or was he—for all the mysteries, the obfuscations, the clouds of black ink that, like the squid, he oozed out around the facts of his life—simply put, an outrageous, wholesale liar?

Metcalf finds him uncannily, literally Quixotic. If only Columbus had merely been jousting at windmills rather than chopping off Haitian people's hands for fun.

Read: "...and nobody objected"

FEMALE TROUBLE

That's the name of my radio show on WOBC. I'm on Fridays, noon to one (EST). I play music made by/with women (and girls.) I'm about to head over to the station for round four.

A moment of anxiety hit after show number two or so when I thought, Oh no, I'm going to run out! I'd already played many of my favorites, the songs that made me go who is THIS? the first time I heard them. And I never want to be the DJ who plays all riot grrrl and/or the same handful of bands every time. Especially '90s Northwest bands.

The good news is, I am never going to run out. There is so much weird, inventive, great music made by female musicians across the last century. And I have become obsessive about digging through eMusic and Amazon marketplace etc. I can't stop listening to the Brazilian all-woman postpunk group As Mercenárias. I really like the High Places, especially "Storm" and "Gold Coin." Bettye Swann's "Don't Touch Me" runs through my head all day. I remembered about the Bush Tetras. I'm keeping my eye out for a Las Ultrasónicas album that's under 20 bucks.





Incidentally, if anyone has the Thompson Twins' "This Is A Foxy World" you could make my day. (My gmail moniker is chelseyjohnson.)

Over and out, off to play! Today all I know is there'll be some Mo-Dettes, Sharon Jones, Jenny Hoyston, Antietam, Twinkle, Pens, and maybe the Chiffons "Nobody Knows What's Going On In My Mind But Me."

A DOG CALLED RAISIN

This is simply to show you a picture I took last year. I took it with my old LG cellphone camera so the quality is, you know.

This is Raisin.

Raisin belongs to Jo Jackson. This is at a gallery show that she and Chris Johanson curated in Portland. Raisin is a real, actual dog. Though its planetary origins are, to my knowledge, unverified.

WAKE-UP OPTIONS.

1. KIKI, my parents' cat. (Née Isaac and male; since moving in with them, his name has turned from Kitty to Kiki and sometimes just Kkkhhh, and his/her gender is in constant flux.)

2. At the Nelson Bros truck stop in Clear Lake, Minnesota, this new invention: "GO-nuts." As described in the picture:

Option One was a great one this morning. Option Two I'm trying on the way back down to the cities, though I worry it might be a little disappointing á la those peanut-butter-and-jelly-in-the-same-jar products.

ADDIE FOREVER

The last time I saw my grandmother was August 21. She was sitting at the kitchen table in my parents' house. The oxygen tubes were out for the moment and my mom had persuaded her to wear the wig that she said itched her head, where the chemo had left her with birdlike tufts. She'd been saying some weird things, drifting back and forth between past and present, herself and her inventions. She applied lipstick, shaky but sure.

My car was packed up and Emmett was following me around with an anxious gaze, wagging tentatively, don't leave me. "I'm taking off now," I said, bending to kiss her. "I love you."

Her cheek was very soft. She put a hand on my face. "Love you too," she said. "We'll see you at Christmas."

And I almost believed it--even though I knew better and she usually did too--that the next time I came home would be Christmas and she would be there at that same spot at the kitchen table, where she always holds court.

My grandmother Addie loved her kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, going to the lake, Reba and Dolly, reading Vanity Fair and People, eating Mexican food at Compañeros, dancing, and the sun. She had great legs. Her parents were Norwegian and she spent her whole life in northern Minnesota. My grandfather claimed proudly that she was "tougher'n boiled owl." To her great shock, she discovered at age 65 when she went to sign up for social security or something that on her birth certificate, her legal name was not actually Adeline but Leigh Camilla. "Why did they call me Adeline?" she said over breakfast at Perkins on Paul Bunyan Drive. "I would have liked to be Leigh!" But Addie she had been, and Addie she stayed. Seventy-seven years.

Here is one of my favorite pictures of her, dancing with my cousin Ben, from my cousin Sarah's wedding just eleven months ago.


And this was just January, with her great-grandchildren Ava and Addie, her namesake.

This is how I'll always know her: vital and warm and with her arms around one of us.

ROLE REVERSAL AT THE RACK

My friend Matilda (Tilly, you witty brainiac, why aren't you a blog writer?) pointed me toward the site of one Kat and her dry, funny, compulsively readable stories about working at Portland strip clubs and the general weird politics and culture of stripping. Like,

My psychiatrist regular paid me to talk to him about my love life, which is our usual thing. He never buys dances or sits at the rack, he just hands me $20’s to talk to him while he drinks gin and plays video poker. I try to make stuff up that is loosely based on the truth.

Now that you can't make up.

TASTES LIKE THE SUN

In the perfect convergence of my favorite chef and my favorite newspaper, Amy now has a food column in the Park Rapids Enterprise. Behold, Recipe-phile!

Already she has written about making wild raspberry syrup, broccoli pesto, green bean salad with spicy cherry tomato vinaigrette, swiss chard pie (I had that one when visiting a few weeks ago, it was amazing--olive oil crust!), and kimchi, for starters. Park Rapids has come a long way since we entered kindergarten there together.

The latest is one I've had chez Amy before, and it is simple and mind-bendingly good: fresh corn soup. Golden and hot, it tastes like the sun. I'm going to head down to a roadside vegetable stand and get the ingredients right now so I can make it for fast-breaking tonight at Kazim's. Kazim has been fasting for Ramadan (and blogging about it for the Kenyon Review), and I love the small impromptu dinners we've had when the sky grows dark. He lives right across the street from me now, and it's such a pleasure to cross over to his huge old house and sit down around the table with a handful of friends and neighbors. The dinners are lush with summer vegetables, hearty and generous, and even though Kazim has to cook without tasting them, they turn out absolutely delicious every time. Good ingredients, good hand on the spoon. And their two hilarious kittens wrestling gymnastically before melting sleepily into our laps.

IN THE SHADOW OF BOOK TOWERS

Up to my ears in nonfiction. Literally, if I could stack this all in one tower, not to mention the other books I already returned to the library, I think it would go up to my ears.
Putting together my nonfiction workshop, I've been reading nothing but. I'm really into it.

Discoveries:

• I like Dorothy Allison's essays better than her short stories.

• I love James Baldwin's fiction, and I have discovered I like his essays just as much and maybe more. Here's what he says about writers, in "Alas, Poor Richard":

...it is extremely difficult to deal with writers as people. Writers are said to be extremely egotistical and demanding and they are indeed, but that does not distinguish them from anyone else. What distinguishes them is what James once described as a kind of "holy stupidity." The writer's greed is appalling. He wants, or seems to want, everything and practically everybody; in another sense, and at the same time, he needs no one at all; and families, friends, and lovers find this extremely hard to take.

• The New Kings of Nonfiction, edited by Ira Glass, is a disappointment. For one thing they weren't kidding when they said "Kings"--all but two of the contributors are dudes. (And the one Susan Orlean piece is a meticulous character study of a ten-year-old boy.) Maybe I'm just an impatient reader when I'm panning for teachable gold--but I'll more likely assign segments from the radio show.

• I've long held a candle for Jo Ann Beard's stunning essay "Undertaker, Please Drive Slow," which originally appeared in Tin House and is now anthologized in their nonfiction reader Cooking and Stealing; now I have also read "Werner," which appears in Best American Essays 2007 (ed. DFW) and that too has blown my mind. I was literally balled up on the edge of my seat with bated breath as I read it; and then, well, you just have to right now read "The Fourth State of Matter," available in full here on the NY-er, which is about a lot of things, but crucially, about the unwittingly life-changing decision to leave work early one day. Unbelievable, I want to rave, incredible, but those words are the opposite of her stories' flesh-and-blood truth.

What she's doing with this fusion of other people's stories and her own imagination is pretty astounding. It's the kind of thing where I can't wait to get to that point in the syllabus so my students can experience it.

• I am hard-pressed to name a single literary anthology that does not contain Jamaica Kincaid's "Girl." On hand I have no fewer than six.

This is what it looks like if I lay my head on the table. Which just maybe I sometimes have to do.

THIS HEAT GOES TO ELEVEN

At the peak of the triple-digit temperatures last week, I found myself hunkered down on the floor of a tiny windowless practice room at rock camp every day, earplugs jammed in tight, listening to four 13-to-14-year-old girls figure out how to write a song from scratch together. 107 degrees and no air-conditioning, just a few strategically placed fans, and the volume turned up loud enough so that my fellow band coach could hear the keys, bass, and guitar over the drum kit that was two feet away. Every forty-five minutes we'd break to go grab handfuls of ice cubes or run outside and stand under the misting hose in the parking lot, then head back in for another attempt to hammer out the breakdown or a raucous six-minute jam.

It was awesome.

By Friday the song was finished, and the launch into the chorus--Deisha's lone eight kick-drum beats followed by Vivian's pulsing keys and Zoe's delicate guitar riff and Keziah's nodding bass and sweet voice--never failed to put a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. (Sleep deprivation also took its toll, I'll concede.) Casey Parks came out to visit during the last band practice and interviewed the girls about their process at camp, then posted a great article and video at the Oregonian. Watch it! (The below photo is Casey's, not mine.)

Though this was my seventh summer at rock camp, I'd never before managed a band. It seems I've done just about everything else--since 2003, I've done the morning and afternoon assemblies; since 2006, I've been on the board of directors; last summer, I assisted Tara with her noise-making and pedals workshop. I love all those things. But nothing before has matched the pride and love I felt when Jellyfish Rave took the stage at the showcase. I knelt on the floor front and center and the beam from my heart could have lit them as bright as the stagelights.