20 to 459 to 59 to 75 to Piqua. I'll leave late Good Friday morning and stop in Richmond, Kentucky and watch Ghost Whisperer. Then I'll leave early Black Saturday and arrive at the old homestead later that morning. I suspect both Jess and Al will be there.
I'll be honest with all y'all: I'm scared. Bought it site unseen. If it wouldn't be too much of an inconvenience, I'd like to take you guys with me. You went to Iowa. This is a much shorter drive. (Limited bathroom breaks; I am my Father's son, after all. Who called shotgun again?!)
Pictures to follow.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Thursday, March 25, 2010
You Say Crawl Space, I See Basement
"Hmm... I wonder what this switch does..."
[thwozzzzz... poof]
My oldest brother, Jess. All-American decathlete, former record-holder at his alma mater in the high jump. 6 feet 10 inches, for those of you keeping score.
Husband to Jane, father of 2 beautiful girls.
The "mechanical room", just east of Piqua, Ohio, photographed by aforementioned Jane, Sunday, March 21, 2010, almost exactly 9 years to the day of our dad's death.
He's just looking out for his baby brother. As usual. See you in about a week, god willing. (Wisdom tooth flare up. Long story.)
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Art Of The Trio
From time to time, the world belies itself (is that the right word, "belies"?) and reveals that there is indeed just a little bit of justice in this world, at least every once in awhile, that is!
He got off the heroin in 2000 and has pretty much been on a tear ever since. (Urban legend has it that Larry Grenadier simply locked him in his apartment for a month.)
Well done, Brad m'boy. Well done, sir. Score one for the good guys.
Bonus track, yet again, for you diehards. (You know who you are.)
He got off the heroin in 2000 and has pretty much been on a tear ever since. (Urban legend has it that Larry Grenadier simply locked him in his apartment for a month.)
Well done, Brad m'boy. Well done, sir. Score one for the good guys.
Bonus track, yet again, for you diehards. (You know who you are.)
Friday, March 5, 2010
16 Minutes Of Musical Perfection
Knoxville: Summer Of 1915
This is the very recording I listened to several times a day and night during the last half of my senior year in high school. I don't remember how I stumbled across the piece or the recording, but no one, not even Dawn Upshaw, has been able to match it in exquisite tone, depth of feeling, and grace of intent and execution. This is the soundtrack for Act III of my life, coming this summer to a bean field near you.
Note: Unless the geniuses who uploaded the song have fixed it, they completely mangled the end of Part 1's transition into the strings' descent into Part 2, where it's almost as if the fiddles are the musical embodiment of falling leaves after a late Spring thunderstorm in Eastern Tennessee. Idiots. God is in the details, folks. Even on Youtube.
I can't really put into words what this music means to me, so I'll just let you listen and read along with the text if you want. I dare you to try to be unmoved by the end. Would that life were a movie, one we could write ourselves into.
Part 1
Part 2
It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently, and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by: things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt: a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, paste-board, and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.
A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping: belling and starting, stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks: the iron whine rises on rising speed: still risen, faints: halts: the faint stinging bell: rises again, still fainter: fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew. Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose. Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes . . . Parents on porches: rock and rock. From damp strings morning glones hang their ancient faces. The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.
On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine . . . with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth, and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening. among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble, and in the hour of their taking away.
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.
-James Agee, from A Death In The Family
This is the very recording I listened to several times a day and night during the last half of my senior year in high school. I don't remember how I stumbled across the piece or the recording, but no one, not even Dawn Upshaw, has been able to match it in exquisite tone, depth of feeling, and grace of intent and execution. This is the soundtrack for Act III of my life, coming this summer to a bean field near you.
Note: Unless the geniuses who uploaded the song have fixed it, they completely mangled the end of Part 1's transition into the strings' descent into Part 2, where it's almost as if the fiddles are the musical embodiment of falling leaves after a late Spring thunderstorm in Eastern Tennessee. Idiots. God is in the details, folks. Even on Youtube.
I can't really put into words what this music means to me, so I'll just let you listen and read along with the text if you want. I dare you to try to be unmoved by the end. Would that life were a movie, one we could write ourselves into.
Part 1
Part 2
It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently, and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by: things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy, breaking his hollow iron music on the asphalt: a loud auto; a quiet auto; people in pairs, not in a hurry, scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body, talking casually, the taste hovering over them of vanilla, strawberry, paste-board, and starched milk, the image upon them of lovers and horsemen, squared with clowns in hueless amber.
A streetcar raising its iron moan; stopping: belling and starting, stertorous; rousing and raising again its iron increasing moan and swimming its gold windows and straw seats on past and past and past, the bleak spark crackling and cursing above it like a small malignant spirit set to dog its tracks: the iron whine rises on rising speed: still risen, faints: halts: the faint stinging bell: rises again, still fainter: fainting, lifting, lifts, faints foregone: forgotten.
Now is the night one blue dew. Now is the night one blue dew, my father has drained, he has coiled the hose. Low on the length of lawns, a frailing of fire who breathes . . . Parents on porches: rock and rock. From damp strings morning glones hang their ancient faces. The dry and exalted noise of the locusts from all the air at once enchants my eardrums.
On the rough wet grass of the backyard my father and mother have spread quilts. We all lie there, my mother, my father, my uncle, my aunt, and I too am lying there. They are not talking much, and the talk is quiet, of nothing in particular, of nothing at all in particular, of nothing at all. The stars are wide and alive, they seem each like a smile of great sweetness, and they seem very near. All my people are larger bodies than mine . . . with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth, and who shall ever tell the sorrow of being on this earth, lying, on quilts, on the grass, in a summer evening. among the sounds of the night.
May God bless my people, my uncle, my aunt, my mother, my good father, oh, remember them kindly in their time of trouble, and in the hour of their taking away.
After a little I am taken in and put to bed. Sleep, soft smiling, draws me unto her: and those receive me, who quietly treat me, as one familiar and well-beloved in that home: but will not, oh, will not, not now, not ever; but will not ever tell me who I am.
-James Agee, from A Death In The Family
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Corn Cutters
"Boys," Mat says, "It was a hot day. There wasn't a breeze anywhere in that bottom that would have moved a cobweb. It was punishing." He is telling Elton and Andy.
It was a long time ago. Mat was only a boy yet, though he was nearly grown. His Uncle Jack hired him to help chop out a field of tall corn in a creek bottom. It was hot and still, and the heat stood close around them as they worked. They felt they needed to tiptoe to get enough air.
Mat thought he could not stand it any longer, and then he stood it a little longer, and they reached the end of the row.
"Let's go sink ourselves in the creek," Jack said.
They did. They hung their sweated clothes on the willows in the sun to dry, and sank themselves in the cool stream up to their noses. It was a good hole, deep and shady, with the sound of the riffles above and below, and a kingfisher flying in and seeing them and flying away. All the afternoon when they got too hot, they went there.
"Well sir," Mat says, "it made that hard day good. I thought of all the times I'd worked in that field, hurrying to get through, to get to a better place, and it had been there all the time. I can't say I've always lived by what I learned that day -- I wish I had -- but I've never forgot."
"What?" Andy says.
"That it was there all the time."
"What?"
"Redemption, " Mat says, and laughs. "A little flowing stream."
-Wendell Berry, from Remembering
It was a long time ago. Mat was only a boy yet, though he was nearly grown. His Uncle Jack hired him to help chop out a field of tall corn in a creek bottom. It was hot and still, and the heat stood close around them as they worked. They felt they needed to tiptoe to get enough air.
Mat thought he could not stand it any longer, and then he stood it a little longer, and they reached the end of the row.
"Let's go sink ourselves in the creek," Jack said.
They did. They hung their sweated clothes on the willows in the sun to dry, and sank themselves in the cool stream up to their noses. It was a good hole, deep and shady, with the sound of the riffles above and below, and a kingfisher flying in and seeing them and flying away. All the afternoon when they got too hot, they went there.
"Well sir," Mat says, "it made that hard day good. I thought of all the times I'd worked in that field, hurrying to get through, to get to a better place, and it had been there all the time. I can't say I've always lived by what I learned that day -- I wish I had -- but I've never forgot."
"What?" Andy says.
"That it was there all the time."
"What?"
"Redemption, " Mat says, and laughs. "A little flowing stream."
-Wendell Berry, from Remembering
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
"We didn't know any better."
That's what mom would tell me every time I asked her how she and her family managed to eke out a living on the northern-ish prairie in post World War 2 Iowa.
I suppose you could interpret it to mean that these backward farmers were too stupid and unaware to realize they didn't have to raise livestock and can tomatoes in order to skimp through the winter, that they could get "real" jobs that didn't involve backbreaking labor and ridiculous hours. (What are those jobs again?) That they could go to college and lead lives of relative ease and leisure. (Some did go away to college; most came back even better well-read farmers.)
Or you could be more generous and conclude that that was simply their life, the one handed to them by their parents, and their parents before them; it's just who they were and what they did. They didn't really have a choice, as such.
Not me. The more I think about how brutal north central Iowa winters can be, and how pungent the poop of 2 dozen pigs and cows can be, and how the kitchen garden wasn't hidden behind the homestead but was planted as close to the road as possible, as large as possible, in order to show your pride and thrift in running a farmhouse to your neighbors -- the more I consider the notion, they really didn't know any better. What could be better than participating in a system of growing and sustaining things that in and of themselves begin not only to sustain themselves but also the small universe around them? Horses eat oats, horses poop, cows eat grass, cows poop, poop goes on the fields (and the garden) to grow vegetables and, well, oats, horses eat more oats and work the fields used to grow oats, corn, beans, tomatoes (obviously).
Chickens forage, lay eegs, get fat and delicious from the "wild" grasses and fruits and whatnot they come across, they brown up nicely in the oven or crisp in the shortening-laden frying pan, served with just-picked russets and asparagus (in April, of course).
You get the picture. I.e., poop really is a beautiful thing.
Hard to believe it's already been a year. Exactly a year yesterday evening at 5:50 PM. I think I miss her now more than I did a year ago.
Funny. It's all in the hands of some title company in Cincinnati, not exactly known for its, what, alacrity with regard to foreclosed properties. But I did promise her during her last breaths that I'd move up there and protect my nieces and nephews from their parents. And even in her compromised condition at the time, I'm convinced within myself that she of all people knew I was only half-joking.
Payback may be a bitch, but redemption is the bastard everybody pretends to like but forgets to talk to.
Not me. I'm all but yelling in its face. Go figure.
I suppose you could interpret it to mean that these backward farmers were too stupid and unaware to realize they didn't have to raise livestock and can tomatoes in order to skimp through the winter, that they could get "real" jobs that didn't involve backbreaking labor and ridiculous hours. (What are those jobs again?) That they could go to college and lead lives of relative ease and leisure. (Some did go away to college; most came back even better well-read farmers.)
Or you could be more generous and conclude that that was simply their life, the one handed to them by their parents, and their parents before them; it's just who they were and what they did. They didn't really have a choice, as such.
Not me. The more I think about how brutal north central Iowa winters can be, and how pungent the poop of 2 dozen pigs and cows can be, and how the kitchen garden wasn't hidden behind the homestead but was planted as close to the road as possible, as large as possible, in order to show your pride and thrift in running a farmhouse to your neighbors -- the more I consider the notion, they really didn't know any better. What could be better than participating in a system of growing and sustaining things that in and of themselves begin not only to sustain themselves but also the small universe around them? Horses eat oats, horses poop, cows eat grass, cows poop, poop goes on the fields (and the garden) to grow vegetables and, well, oats, horses eat more oats and work the fields used to grow oats, corn, beans, tomatoes (obviously).
Chickens forage, lay eegs, get fat and delicious from the "wild" grasses and fruits and whatnot they come across, they brown up nicely in the oven or crisp in the shortening-laden frying pan, served with just-picked russets and asparagus (in April, of course).
You get the picture. I.e., poop really is a beautiful thing.
Hard to believe it's already been a year. Exactly a year yesterday evening at 5:50 PM. I think I miss her now more than I did a year ago.
Funny. It's all in the hands of some title company in Cincinnati, not exactly known for its, what, alacrity with regard to foreclosed properties. But I did promise her during her last breaths that I'd move up there and protect my nieces and nephews from their parents. And even in her compromised condition at the time, I'm convinced within myself that she of all people knew I was only half-joking.
Payback may be a bitch, but redemption is the bastard everybody pretends to like but forgets to talk to.
Not me. I'm all but yelling in its face. Go figure.
Friday, January 29, 2010
When The World Continues Not To Make Sense
Good netizens of swittersville. Or something. A favor.
I've known Tia for almost 20 years. We met in college. She was my first love.
She and Tom were married in 2003, I think, in Maine. Beautiful ceremony and reception.
Soon thereafter they had a daughter, Sarah. They live in Montpelier, Vermont. Great town, great state. The Northeast Kingdom, they call it I believe.
Awhile ago they had another daughter, whom they named Jane. The birth had some complications, and Jane had to stay in the hospital, in and out of intensive care for the most part.
Jane fought hard, buttressed by the love of her parents and by the love for Tia and Tom.
Jane died yesterday afternoon, at the age of 6 months 6 days.
I wonder if, over the course of the next several days, you might hold Tia, Tom and Sarah close to your hearts and wish for them the ability to be strong for one another in perhaps the most fragile moment of their lives. You were there for me; by extension, could you be there for them?
There are no words. Whatever she needs.
(Hug your kids, call your mom.)
I've known Tia for almost 20 years. We met in college. She was my first love.
She and Tom were married in 2003, I think, in Maine. Beautiful ceremony and reception.
Soon thereafter they had a daughter, Sarah. They live in Montpelier, Vermont. Great town, great state. The Northeast Kingdom, they call it I believe.
Awhile ago they had another daughter, whom they named Jane. The birth had some complications, and Jane had to stay in the hospital, in and out of intensive care for the most part.
Jane fought hard, buttressed by the love of her parents and by the love for Tia and Tom.
Jane died yesterday afternoon, at the age of 6 months 6 days.
I wonder if, over the course of the next several days, you might hold Tia, Tom and Sarah close to your hearts and wish for them the ability to be strong for one another in perhaps the most fragile moment of their lives. You were there for me; by extension, could you be there for them?
There are no words. Whatever she needs.
(Hug your kids, call your mom.)
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