On to the next appt on 12seconds.tv

Meanwhile, back home, Mel and Avery are beginning to forge a different kind of bond in their relationship. When Nina returns she senses something amiss as the once strong trio has become more akin to a lopsided duet. Finding herself struggling with the realities of the new situation, Nina turns to Steve, whose once comforting and frequent emails slowly begin to wane. It isn’t long before all three girls must begin to examine their relationships with their own selves to understand their relationships with each other.

The Bermudez Triangle is a page turning novel of discovery, relationships, the pain of heartbreak and the glory of friendship.

Offical Symposium Weblog – the webcast should be available soon…I’ll post here when it is…

With the copious amounts of documentation available there, why should I even bother? Cause I’m pretty sure I have to write up a review of it anyways for the job – and this’ll probably bring my brain back around to it. These are notes I scratched down — and are not nearly as detailed as the above. A little personal flair, if you will.

To start with — a summary: Disruptive Technology > Change > Copyright. Those are probably the three biggest themes…with Collaboration just behind…and Library as Space…

There was also ample discussion concerning Wikipedia. It seemed nearly all speakers made a reference to it at some point.

I attended in person on Friday – but watched the webcast in my pj’s on Saturday — and the notes very much reflect that…

Panels: Library | Keynote | Research | Publishing | Adam Smith / Google | Economics

People: Barbara Allen | Suzanne BeDell | Paul Courant | Daniel Greenstein | Jean-Claude Guédon | Michael Keller | Tim O’Reilly | Karl Pohrt | Adam Smith | Ed Tenner | Hal Varian | Alicia Wise | Karin Wittenborg | Ann Wolpert |

Panel Session: Libraries

Josie Parker (moderator) Director, AADL -

• “first library director to blog.“
• Price of not changing: irrelevancy
• Proof of return on public investment

Audience QA: Audience member provides one of the best points of the conference — a matter of linguistics — we should speak about materials RISING into the public domain — not as FALLING.

Barbara Allen – Director, Committee on Institutional Cooperation

• Research Library Trends
• Changes in User Behavior
• Building Collections
• Actions

2003-2004 ARL Report
• Circulation / Reference Below 1991 levels – fewer people coming into the library
• Interlibrary loans are up 148% [wow!]
• Users demonstrating clear preference for digital format, even if available in print – for example – JSTOR – print items were used 692 times, in the same period – the digital format was accessed 12,000 times.
• Expenditures for collections up 4x while staffing per student is down, and 17% fewer products available.
• 1994 – 63 libraries – $11million dollars in electronic resources
• 2004 – 100 libraries – $270 million dollars in electronic resources — 14 libraries, 50% entire budget e-resources – mostly commercial publishers – journal literature
• OCLC database — 32 million records – NEARLY 40% UNIQUE PRINT BOOKS – 50% FROM BEFORE 1977
• Opportunity for collaboration in digitization.

Converging Trends
1. University Libaries must rethink their space — democratic OPEN space — bringing people together
2. Organizing principle: coherent ACCESS — partner with others – commercial and public collaboration to digitize unique records across organizational boundaries
3. Develop intelligence about our collections

A means to acheiving public happiness. We have the keys — without corrections – we are half monks — half beasts.

Michael Keller — University Librarian, Stanford University
Litigations…

1. Change terms of reference…
• The notion that the library is a building…
• The library of the mind
• The effect of the library on the scholar.
• The library is also an ethereal ideal
• Electronic card catalog — 50% increase in use
• Indexing by google increased hits on Highwire – from 10 – 15 million to a 1 – 1.5 billion
• Increasing ROI
2. Beyond Intellectual Access
• Sales of current books increase when you can search the books
3. Beyond Indexing
• Increase stock of knowledge – find new connections
• Not just about snippets, INTELLECTUAL ACCESS
4. INNOVATION
Taxonomical index:
• Informatics
• ***citation linking from footnotes in books***
• — Navigating information topographys —
• information in an explicit context
• A “who’s reading?” service — (AADL already has something going on with their HOT items).
• highlight names — direct link to biographies
5. Copyright and Fair Use
• Orphan works decision – amendment – 1923 – 1964 books not registered
• Section 108 – Copyright law — for archival reasons – to allow for reading online
• FAIR USE
• Intellectual Freedom
• Access to Information
• Alexandria library — Discussion of 500,000 books in the Arabic language waiting to be digitized revealing a more liberal history of the Middle East — Jenica pulled a nice quote so I’ll grab it as well — “If the people in these embattled lands can see the importance of preserving the universe of information in their culture, surely we can do the same.”

Karin Wittenborg – University Librarian, University of West Virginia

Google Project
• One of the most important projects — mass digitization will CHANGE everything
• Changing the status quo is a good thing
• Major redeployment of resources

Space
• Physical library – much depends on what we as librarians do in our reinventing
• “Libraries are sinkholes for space

Things we might do differently
• What are we going to do with our own space? Utilizing
• Libary as an Intellectual crossroads
• To discuss ideas
• Programming

Role of libarians

Q&A

More group study spaces…fewer paraprofessional staff…more professional staff…digitization resulting in index to contents…democratization of information…digital repositories…

Most works go out of print w/in 5 years of publishing…Article I of the Constitution — Section 8: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

Disaster Planning Question
• What needs to be redundant?
• Resource disruptions – great opportunity for collaboration
• Comment from Smithsonian Institute: Katrina is an argument for digitization…
• If information is in digital format – I can get it – by driving to the nearest network — or just getting to the network
• If information is in print — imagine trying to xerox a 342 page document

• ♥Putting a copy of the Fair Use statute next to every copy machine♥

Keynote

Tim O’Reilly

What Job Does a Book Do?
• If a book is immersion – World of Warcraft is a book

Hacks series
• Teach and appeal to entertainment
• Make Magazine

Britannica vs Wikipedia
• Showed several graphs of wikipedia trouncing britannica

• A device that has a lot of DRM will not take the world by storm
• 1988 – The Davenport Group
• — SOM links – self organizing maps — looks for material that is related
• Safari U

What Job does a Library do?
• The preservation of information
• Archive.org vs Library of Congress — shows graph of archive.org dwarfing LOC in hits…

Why the Google Project matters
• Free is replaced by commercial ecology only when you let it go
• Last.fm vs. Pandora — Both suggest new music — but last.fm has the plugin Audioscrobbler which listens to what you actually play when you’re not listening to the service to better gauge your listening habits.
The Orphaned Works problem
• Books:
  • 4% in print – [amazon search inside this book]
  • -75% or more – The Twilight Zone © Not for sale, rights reverted to author, may be in the public domain
  • -20% public domain – Open Content Alliance
  • 32 million unique titles in all U.S. libraries
• Fewer than 4% of books are commercially exploited
• ***DRM is a lot more like a cat than a dog — When you take a cat to the vet – you hold it loosely – whereas you take a dog to the vet — you hold him tight***
• The near term opportunity

The Long Tail
Does Online Search Drive Discovery?
• Compare sales of physical books versus e-books
• Print Books show 6% spike in sales with online library searches
• Safari tech books show 23% spike in sales
• Google Print v. Bookscan

Building a Digital Economy
• Incentives for turning books free
• Depending on the job a book does – Reference may eventually be entirely online

How will publishing itself change? Visions of the future
• Web 2.0 – The Internet as a platform – Information Businesses
• Software as a service, harnessing collective intelligence
• Once you’re on the network, how do you gain value from your users? COLLABORATION
• Amazon — 10,000,000 user reviews – on every page – amazon asks the user to add value
The Perpetual Beta – Ongoing Services
• Rough Cuts — giving access while the book is being written, watch it grow and comment while it is being published
• Asks how many people use linux? A few raise their hands. How many people use Google? Everybody raises their hands.Google is a linux application.
• Data is the next Intel Inside – applications are increasingly data driven
• Concern of the publisher — all of the data lying with one producer
• An internet of interoperability
• Platform beats an application every time
• Safari API – A Web Services Based Help System
• Bookster?

Panel Session: Research

Ed Tenner — Professor & Author, Princeton University

Unintended Consequences: The future of search; the future of libraries
• Literacy level controversy – several stories on the low levels of literacy amongst the incoming college freshmen
• Google searching and the “good enough” syndrome of relying on the first page of hits
• Comparison with Clusty
• World History: Wikipedia v Britannica (there is no entry
• Everything Bad is Good for You – but does this mean that everything good is bad for you?

Academics and Open Source
• Search Engine Optimization? – In the 21st Century – “Good Enough” isn’t

[It should be noted that Superpatron pressed Mr. Tenner on his remarks on Wikipedia's version of World History -- which Mr. Tenner found to be inadequate -- asking if Mr. Tenner then contributed to the page. Mr. Tenner said he hadn't - but that maybe now he would, and write a paper on it. Looks like he could be pursuing that avenue].

Jean-Claude Guédon – Professor, University of Montreal

Mass Printing v. Mass Digitization

Digitization of our culture — Possibilities
• Dissertations and theses – citation metrics – reorganizing the map of knowledge…
• Concordances — finding the least used 100 words
• H.G. Wells – The World Brain
• Wittgenstein - language games — communities — the semantic web

Ann J Wolpert – Director of the Libraries, M.I.T.
Research / Teaching / Learning

[There were lots of audio problems here -- and I found this to be the slowest part of the entire symposium - so not much noted...check the others]

BREAK

Publishing Panel

Suzanne BeDell – Vice President, ProQuest Information and Learning

Alicia Wise – Chief Executive, Publishers Licensing Society

Publishers and Google

Vision
• Growth in digital markets
• value added services

Daniel Greenstein University Librarian and Executive Director, California Digital Library

Open Content Alliance
• Placing the information into a single player’s hands

The Publisher’s panel left me wondering — if you’re so concerned with one player having all the information – and you keep talking about collaboration and the expansion of the market – Why aren’t you contributing as well, and if you are – why aren’t you doing it better?

Adam Smith – Google – Funny how difficult it is to find a bio page for him…

Google Books
• Full Book View – Public Domain – 20%
• Sample Pages View – 5%
• Snippet View – 75%

Graph that showed that when it comes to Google Books — google is doing the digitization, hosting, indexing and authentication of the materials. In google scholar — google is only indexing.

Discovery
• Full-text search
• Serendipitous Discovery
• Comprehensiveness requires collaboration
• 67% of monographs known by OCLC not held by current partners
• 60% titles are unique
• Discovery metadata and Google — URL LCCN
• Examples of way people are using googlebooks to make lists

Here’s where I asked my question – and somewhat bungled it. Something to the effect of — You showed us the greasemonkey script that allows one to look up materials in the local library, and your books in the libary project have “find in a library” links in them — but ALL of your books – or at least most of them — have ISBN’s — and therefore should be able to have a “find in a library” link. I’m just wondering -why the discrepancy — and why are you letting your users write your programs for you?”

I SHOULD HAVE SAID: Why do your users HAVE to write your programs for you?

What I remember him saying: We love that our users write these programs…It is part of our agreement [the find in a libary links]…

Why I don’t remember anything else:
Everything went black except for the microphone — which pulsated in front of me…Stagefright? Adrenaline? I felt like I was in fight or flight mode…

Anyways — Saturday –
I woke up and logged on in my pjs and only took a few notes:

Panel Session: Economics

Paul Courant – Professor, University of Michigan

Hal Varian Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Like I said — not many notes on Saturday…
I did, however, take Karl Pohrt up on his recommendation and checked out Accelerando from my library…

Panels: Library | Keynote | Research | Publishing | Adam Smith / Google | Economics

People: Barbara Allen | Suzanne BeDell | Paul Courant | Daniel Greenstein | Jean-Claude Guédon | Michael Keller | Tim O’Reilly | Karl Pohrt | Adam Smith | Ed Tenner | Hal Varian | Alicia Wise | Karin Wittenborg | Ann Wolpert |

Lazyweb request — somehow enable geotags to work with google map directions and a flickr slideshow – so that you can see landmarks as if driving to your destination…

Someone should really buff down those edges.

Things have been quiet around here lately because things have not been around here lately. These things are namely me. (I suppose I could argue that things haven’t been around me lately, but can one be a moving centrifugal unit? Wouldn’t that create a world of chaos where all other sentient beings thrown into this plenitude of existence are constantly pushing against each other’s opposing space bubbles? I suppose…brings to mind monads…and the world is chaos…but I have managed to digress sans elegance.)

What I mean to say is that I recently spent the week between my last final and the beginning of grad school in the state of Georgia — and the week escaped me. I couldn’t stop it. The damn thing spun too fast. If ever I was centrifugal it was in relation to last week.

There were many happy moments of music, drinking, experiments in child psychology, and an incredible, phenemonal dinner of delirium that won’t be soon forgotten.

Then, all of a sudden, I was eating a Jumbo Chicken Burrito, sipping Sangria and saying my goodbyes on 05.05.05.

Yet this time I was ready to go. Not because I don’t love my friends. Not because I was anxious to get back. Rather it was because I didn’t belong there.

This dawned on me darkly while driving somewhere between the eighth and tenth hour of the return trip. I’ve been trying to sort it out since — sketching it out in my little black book in the hopes of turning it into some resplendent piece — but it has managed to remain somewhat grizzled.

There’s probably a reason for that — and I should just get down what I’ve gathered so far — and allow you to make your own inferences into why I might have arrived at this supposition.

There is a town in Georgia that lies on the map approximately halfway to Atlanta from Athens, and, thus, approximately halfway to Athens from Atlanta. That town is called, for some odd reason, Between. It is neither here, nor there. It just is. And perhaps that is where I should go for to do my living.

From what I can recall – the day of my awakening was brilliant. Nearly perfect. Blue skies, sunshine, not too hot, not cold at all. The kind of day that sickens people if they are forced to watch it pass from the interiors of some personal Bastille. A day of romantic romanticizing, jubilant jollies and dreamy daydreams – all of which can be accomplished without the presence of such a day, but prosper in an environment that fosters such fancy.

In plain speak, it was a perfect day for thinking.

As I drove along, crossing into the eighth hour of a planned 11 hour drive, I was getting plenty of thinking done. There were certainly distractions to be had. NPR’s Day to Day was flowing from the stereo, other cars were around to be avoided, the Ohio landscape was stretching out to the horizon – but the day was just too bright to be ignored. Too damn cheery. The day was becoming an intrusion. It was the antithesis of my own feelings.

Wrapped in that sunshine, my arms extended onto the steering wheel, my feet pressing and releasing the gas and brake pedals with no real harmony, my body began to disappear – and I began to sink. I sank into myself, I suppose — and the brightness of the world seemed to pour down into my blackness, two streams spilling into a great vacuous shell. From my vantage point I was able to observe the deluge from its two entry points merge and fall, spilling down from above, the light of the cars and land and sky and world segueing into dissolution. (I wonder now whether this is the same point at which another’s intuition and/or empathy begins to fail.) Perhaps the most marvelous part of all was to watch as my own reactions rose into the light, manifesting themselves as something akin to flitting butterflies.

Watching those golden Lepidoptera rise to the mouths of the cave meant that I had become something of a third party to the whole process. It was the first feeling of comfort that I had felt in quite some time. I was alone — with great distances not only between myself and others, but between myself and my self. There was none of that charge of expectation, that electrical energy that surrounds one when in familiar places. That energy was now a cradling wind of reality that billowed about in the cavernous depths – touching everything without selection.

Perhaps this distinct disconnect, this self-awareness is the aim of meditation. But the immediate difference is that in meditation one is attempting to control thought. Here I was simply observing – almost being struck by thoughts, much like the bugs meeting their timely ends on the grill of my Ford Focus.

And what thoughts come? What surfaces out into the world and eventually overtakes me – from either the week past or from conjectures of what is to come?

There is a recognition that I had lost a lot of what I had taken with me when I first moved. I had forgotten details about certain people – certain mannerisms had managed to recede into what they should be — nothing worth remembering. Certain frailties in relationships — or even relationships that had managed to mingle themselves among those ugly little beasties -grudges- had all scattered and run for cover once I had escaped their area of communion. Since my return they had on occasion come out to remind me of their existence — but upon realizing that they were no longer relevant – simply shrank away in shame. Those are the details I had lost — and with that realization – a particularly amazing member of the legions of golden lepidotera flitted by with this quote emblazoned upon its wings:

“The devil is in the details.”

The quote brought me closer to the surface long enough to hear Ridley Scott on NPR declare that, “Someone once said God is in the details.”

There were moments in the week when I was hit with those sudden remembrances of lost details: some which certainly should not have been forgotten – but losing many of them had made life just a bit sweeter. Could it have been selective memory? I can’t say. But to be in a situation where they suddenly drift in and distort the picture of reality you are struggling with is disconcerting to say the least.

In the end, standing there at the bottom of that cave as my body drove for Michigan, I came to a realization that seemed rather timely:

I am neither here, nor am I yet there. I am in between. I am constantly between. Upon leaving Atlanta, it was to begin school, and upon beginning school it is to get a job, and constantly there will be something to set at either end — so that I may remain between. Always between.

So…
That’s that. I’m gonna be setting up another blog as a repository concerned with class notes and whatnot — stuff not likely to be of interest to very many. I’ll drop a link along the way once it’s done. I can’t be sure how much time I’ll be spending here…Although I do have a couple humorous moments from the first day of class that would be better suited here. All business there — all funny funny here.

We intended other things not so clearly defined. Like the horrific memory of an early teacher pounding into our heads the idea of prepositions and prepositional phrases – and the doom that would rain down upon us should we dare to end our sentences in such a state. It has stayed with me, though not in its intended form. I learned more about the nature of people than words in those two years. They can’t be trusted. They are all insane.

I’ve lost faith in medicine. Another notch on the wall. I wonder whether all hands immediately reach for their pockets, billfolds, wallets, etc. etcetera ETCERA!!!!

I’ve lost faith in nearly all things, and now I stand silent, a black hole on a beautiful day. I can trust in normalities – the beauty of a bird’s song is simple to behold, much more complex to appreciate.

I can’t, however, trust that this one particular squirrel doesn’t understand me. I spoke to him moments ago as he clung to a tree, startled that I had pulled back the door to allow the slight breeze to fill my nostrils with the pleasantries of spring. He did not move. He only fixed himself upon the bark and stared at me. At other times he would chatter – but this time he seemed to be listening.

I know it is the same squirrel. He became trapped in our home a few months ago. Somehow he had managed to get caught in a conduit leading to the furnace. (the furnace has a shut off safety precaution whenever something is blocking its main vessel, so he was not toasted squirrel) In freeing him from his captivity – a process that involved my father’s old army duffel bag and increasing amounts of adrenaline – part of his tail became shorn. I’m not sure what freed those fibers from that feeble creature, a creature not so much feeble as demanding a poetic line, but to this day his lack of tail cover serves as an identifier.

He is more deliberate in his motions than the other squirrels. He will sit for hours at the feeder. He often sits so that he may look in through the glass door to spot whomever may be seated at the kitchen table. In this case, me.

I wish I could communicate with that squirrel. Right now it seems we just have an “understanding.” Understandings are things meant to be misunderstood. I try not to reach these artificial understandings with people anymore because they are simply a means of saying “let me get what I want and if you get something out of it as well, so be it, but this is about me, even though we’ll say its about us.”

There is something magical about this relationship I have with this squirrel. Something in distance and lack that creates momentum for sentiment.

There is so much more I want to say, but I’m beginning to scrape the bottom of the well. Things aren’t as lucid as they were moments ago, if lucid could be the term. Millions of zany dots crashing about and into each other, some occasionally screaming to be heard. Now there are relatively few thoughts. I had zoned in on the squirrel and everything else seemed to move away to give me my space. Is this meditation? Is this controlled thought?

I’m intrigued by the possibilities of thought control exercises. I’d intended to research it. I intend to research lots of things. I am plagued by curiosity. Since I moved up here I have yet to remove my favorite childhood toy, a Curious George doll from its perch in the back of my Focus. I think I’ll do that now. So that I may take a picture of it. Oh, but perhaps I should stay. I wouldn’t want to just walk away from this exercise and lose all motivation to continue. Standing and moving about may be just the sort of thing my attention requires to ignore things that I find pleasant.

If I do move about, the headache will certainly become much more prominent. With nothing to occupy my mind but destination, I’ll have more cognizance relegated toward physical ailments – of which I obsess over quite a few right now – particularly in the nether regions. The unspeakable. Those invisible pieces of ourselves that only the doctors we no longer trust have complete knowledge of. And there is another preposition. And there is another fear. And another complaint. A gripe. Collected so many of those I made a category for them in this here CMS.

Managing content. Ha. Can I manage this? I can’t even manage myself. Oooooo! Jerry! Jerry! You see? Things are supposed to be superfantastic, but I leap at the opportunity to hurl insults at myself, possibly to deflect your chance. I imagine when I begin something like this, that I feel is earnest and honest, a queue of people ready to unleash their own slings. And this isn’t “cool” to be discussed. It isn’t sage. And yet I’m firing it out and into the open abyss of the world this afternoon – with but a fleeting glimpse into the future of how it will come back to haunt me when seeking employment at the great salvation location that as yet has to be determined.

Employment. Classes. Stress. Erratic physical abuse.

Now I have switched trains and am moving about the tracks of which there are several tunnels in succession that grow darker with each passing moment. It starts with feelings of worthlessness, which are only accentuated by ruminating on my age. And time. And you just can’t stop it.

Lately I’ve given up on people. I think they all hear what they want to hear – and there is nothing you can do to stop that. I am in doubt as to the strength of any of my friendships. I only hear intermittently from those I love. And if I keep talking about this I’ll start crying again. And that’s just what we need. Another 28 year old man child crying into the internet.

I’m only able to look back, it seems. This all started because I took the time, a considerable amount of time – about 4 years now, to think about what I wanted to do with myself and what I enjoy. That vision has remained constant. But it is shrouded in a “Gaussian blur” behind several other layers with similar effects employed. It is an image of aspiration, a goal, but isn’t clearly defined. I’m losing sight of the dream when I stare directly at it because I can’t pick out the details.

Ultimately it is going to come down to me. To my motion in the world. Frenetic Kinetics. What will happen then? I can’t even depend on myself now. I fail so often at the little things. Oh. Wait. Wait for it. Yes! There it is — a welling in the eye. pathetic.

There is a space between the brain and the skull. I think my mind is stuck there. Cycling round and round. Claustrophobic.

I’m screaming into the void. I’m screaming into the void. I’m screaming into the void.

I got in trouble for this once. I got grounded for a while. I wrote what I thought was an artistic piece and sent it off to that same teacher we mentioned before. I remember only that it included a phrase turning about something like “the grass was like razor blades, cutting into the sole.” Mother got a call and the nuns were passionate in declaring that they could have called the police. That this could be perceived as a threat. I was stunned. I was then very angry. I was forced to write an apology for something I wasn’t sorry for. Someone had misinterpreted what I was saying and I was cubbyholed and made to apologize.

I’d see that teacher every so often in the years that followed. The strangest emotions would always creep up. There was something in it similar to the feelings you go through when seeing an ex shortly after a breakup. Only I had no love for this teacher. Looking back I wonder whether I can push her over into the crazy lady pile. Looking back I wonder whether any of those women teaching at the school had any sanity. And I feel bad for the counselor. Who was learning. And was assigned me. And tape recorded me. And I don’t know how anyone can’t put on a show when they are told they are being tape recorded. What could her class possibly learn from me? People hear what they want to hear, and sometimes people say things just to be heard — but I don’t know that you can ever say that people say things clearly. Words are symbols. Yada yada yada.

Where is this coming from? Is it a natural response to the guilt I have for over-exposing myself to helpings of wine last night? What is it with wine that I can’t restrain myself? Was that masochistic?

Should I just delete this entire rant? This is going to come back to haunt me, isn’t it? Because, heaven forbid we should ever be honest with anyone.

Oh there’s a lot of anger in me. I shouldn’t leave off so angry. I should exercise some thought control and see if I can’t walk away from this feeling superfantastic.

Even though I can’t see it clearly, I know I have a plan. I also know that I have a lot of growing up to do – and a lot of inner objections to that Idea. Perhaps my notion of growing up is skewed. I know I’m a different person than I was ten years ago. I think I’m wound tighter now. I think a lot of that has to do with how I spent (that squirrel is freaking out. But it’s not the same squirrel. What is he so pissed off about now? There. I took a picture of him. But he is the impostor squirrel – so don’t get the wrong idea.) Now for a loaded question – what the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah — how I spent the last four years of my life. If there is one thing to put my finger on to get a pulse of a direction my life should have avoided — it would be my last job. I should’ve walked out of that place and never looked back the minute I got that paper degree. That paper degree that says that I can read and think real good. Yeah. Reaaaaaaal good.

I think that place gave me a lot of issues that I’m still holding onto today. Issues of respect and self-respect. I think it tore me up and spit me out and didn’t have a problem in the process.

That squirrel is freaking out again. This is why children torment animals. This is why we can’t live in communion with them. Their words don’t register as symbols with us, just as annoyances.

Whatever. I’m done with this. I can’t talk about the deli anymore. That will just make me start feeling more pathetic and angry all over again. If there was one thing Mark McGuire had going for him during his testimony – it was that he wasn’t there to talk about the past. I wish I could say it as clearly as him, and mean it — “I’m not here to talk about the past.” I think that perhaps healing whatever is wrong with me starts with figuring out why I’m here. I’d like to work myself toward a more spiritual life — but I think my issues with my fellow man make a common spirituality impossible. I could ramble on about God here — but the phone is ringing.

It was Uncle Larry. He left a message. Hi Uncle Larry. Sorry I didn’t pick up the phone to talk to you – but I really don’t think I could handle it right now. This is making me laugh. I think that’s a good sign. We’re headed toward the land of the superfantastic.

Yeah. So. God. I’d love it if I had faith – but at the same time — something about God makes me think of Horses and blinders. God’s path is a different story. You can walk the path of God — and you can walk that path alone. I think I believe the bit about God being within us a tad more than the rest of it. I tend to associate God with will. And as should be evident – my will is not strong. Faith in myself is near rock bottom. I am not the same person I was a decade ago. I’ve been defeated many times. But this spiritual side is something that has been missing for probably fourteen years now. I guess that’s basically when I lost faith.

Funny — that’s also when I ran into crazy lady and the nuns.

Is faith meant to be shared? I think faith is meant to be shared in the sense that you let your actions dictate your faith, and your faith dictate your actions. The latter portion is where I’m falling short. I have a profound lack of faith in my will – which is weak – and I haven’t come to know God in any sense.

I can’t go back to the church. I hold beliefs in the rights of men that would be grounds for excommunication. The church is supposed to be about a community — but lately it seems to be an exclusive club. Built with walls of shame.

So I want to exercise my spirituality. I want to feel a keener sense of it while I’m carrying out my daily activities. I want to begin to appreciate life again – and perhaps more important — appreciate myself.

I think we can leave off here. We’ve come to a better place than where we started. We’ll see how this plays out in the coming days. Thanks for sticking around.

The past few days it had been nice and below freezing. Snow accumulated and driving to class meant hitting occasional patches of back tire slippage and fishtailing and all kinds of fun stuff I didn’t get to do in Georgia. Today the temperature shot up near 50 degrees — and the humidity just went nuts. It was really eerie outside. Silent. Thick. When I took this walk I was very conscious of any car approaching — the only noise, it seemed, for miles.

In a nod to Monsieur: While I was outside meandering about looking for that Scooby-Doo owl or some other scary sight that matched up with my surroundings — I kept reminding myself:

What you can’t see won’t hurt you… it’ll kill you!
Lock your doors. Bolt your windows. There’s something in THE FOG!
When the fog rolls in… the terror begins!
It is night. It is cold. It is coming.

Let me tell you a brief story that shows you how life moves in cycles. Right when I was first beginning this website, I had just gradumutated from college and was spending some R-n-R time at my brother’s in Alaska. It just so happened that one of those days that I spent up there fell on his birthday. Further background investigations will tell you that both of us had just had our hearts ripped out and stomped on by members of the opposite sex. I had pretty much calloused mine over at this point — not to be penetrated again (as yet holding to that, though I’m not really in a position to attract) while my brother was still fresh out in the dumps. Well, either out of pity or true love, some of his friends decided that it would be best if they had a boys night out. Not being one to shun the fun a mere two years ago, my brother and I acquiesced.

We were to meet Sir Chuck at the Goldrush Bar in downtown Anchorage. I can’t remember now if it was called the Goldrush Bar or not, but I do know that when this locale first grew out of the frozen tundra of South Central Alaska it was in the form of a brothel for the entertainment of all those grizzled men who would amble in fresh from their diggin to, well, start diggin again. I remember mulling over these thoughts, my eyes wandering around the wooden interior, my gaze taking in the staircase on the left, following those stairs up to the second level that spanned over the full length bar, marveling at the frontierish feel and then noticing several rooms behind the bannister on the landing where in and out scurried several scantily clad entertainers. (It was like one of those frenetic scenes in Scooby Doo where Shaggy and Scoobs would be chased by the monster into one door only to emerge chasing the monster from another.) Hmmmm. Yes. I could see how this could have worked.

So there I was trying to take in this fine architecture, managing to take in several Captain and Cokes, and still maintaining an appreciation for the beauty of certain forms when my line of sight was hampered by the presence of another shape.

Listen. Even while harboring the most vitriolic sentiments towards the opposite sex after having my heart ripped out, I could still appreciate the beauty of the female form. I just was going through an unhealthy stretch of misogynistic behaviours. Unfortunately, this thing that had just wandered over was anything but beautiful. Well, maybe I’m being unreasonable. Perhaps she had some nice qualities that I wasn’t seeing, it was rather dark in that strip bar… No. Nooo. No, I think I had it right the first time, except for maybe the moniker of “thing.” This “woman” was definitely not beautiful. When I say “woman”, I mean woman. Not girl, not young lady…woman. A true Alaskan rugged outdoorsy been through many many a cold winter and could kill a bear with my dagger eyes so don’t think I’d have a problem gettin to you woman.

So there I am – man who hates woman staring back at my nemesis – in a slightly crude, slightly shoddy female form. Imagine a sculptor working with clay towards creating Venus when a sudden shift of the table knocks her from her perch and she lands with a sickening splat on the floor. The sculptor simply picks up the Venus, and out of sheer exasperation decides to abandon the project as is and start a new one, leaving the now deformed lumpish freak of Venus standing on the table nearest as testimony to the wonders of Nature. That was my nemesis. Only dressed in pithy amounts of leather rather than clay. And she had not been dropped, but rather in an act of volition had descended from her table to take her stand before me as woman who hates man.

“Hel-lo,” She croaked. “What’s your name?” Oh God did she croak. I knew she’d been heading for me. I had some sort of sixth sense about it, outta the corner of my eye I saw the shadows creeping across the floor – I felt an icicle between the hairs on my neck. I knew that just by leaving the safe seclusion of my brother’s condo that night, still unable to face the world with a suitable level of comfort — leaving rather than sitting idly by with the slug of intermittent shyness weighing on me, timid and aloof, comforting myself with the hypnotic notes that are emitted from the obsessive squeezing of air between the palms of my hands — I knew that by leaving that security I was going to face something that was potentially a harvester of my insecurities. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your interpretation — I had had what can now be described as an enlightening talk with my brother driving into Anchorage towards that very bar.

I had seen an episode of Seinfeld a few nights before and remarked how I found it rather disheartening to be able to draw a closer comparison between myself and George Costanza rather than anyone else on the show. In this particular episode George decided that he was going to tackle his problems with the opposite sex by employing a new approach. Honesty. And so it was that I would borrow George Costanza’s line in an Anchorage Bar, and use it to the amusement of my fellow rabblerousers, and the bemusement of one dropped Venus.

“How about a lap dance sweety?”
“I’m 24. I don’t have a job, and I live with my parents.”

My brother laughed. He laughed so hard he cried. He laughed and struggled to utter out, “I can’t believe you actually said that.” But I had. Like someone just beginning to feel the onset of poison, the leather-skinned, leather-clad deformed Venetian woman slowly stopped shifting her weight around, er, dancing, and without taking her eyes off me began to back away.

Then I finished another drink. And then Strawberry Shortcake started dancing. Strawberry Shortcake!!!

I wanted to end it on Strawberry Shortcake – but I think it is important to finish something you start. Bring it full circle if you will – so that you don’t wind up with a disfigured Venus.

I’m 27. I don’t have a job, and I live with my parents.

The good news is that there’s a plan. The better news is I may be taking some classes this Fall. Today was a good day. It was a day where I could actually muster some effort into this keyboard. There was a lotta love around and I could appreciate it. It was a different day than the days I’ve been having. I only hope that tomorrow continues the trend. Sometimes just having the mantra of super-fantastic doesn’t work. Sometimes no matter how hard you try to stay positive you still can’t dig your way out of this gut feeling that you are inconsequential to anything else.

Jennifer is divine. No. Really. She has a degree from Vanderbilt University and everything that testifies to her divinity. Or something like that. All I know is that she knows enough to have the legal authority to pronounce my see-store married. Which she did.

Jennifer doesn’t drink very often. As a matter of fact she is what you could call a lightweight. She is so lightweight that when she goes out drinking with, say, two of her cousins, her pores open up after the first drink and begin emitting highly flammable alchoholic fumes. In fact – I distinctly remember being one of those cousins present on a particular familial gathering, watching from a distance…

I was standing next to our waitress in the recesses of a dark hallway. It was around the Christmas holidays and the bar was full of people having a problem maintaining their sobriety – So much so that the CD that was playing had been stuck on a skip for about three minutes before I nearly lost my shit. I stood up and mosied over to our waitress and asked her if she could hear anything amiss. She stared vacantly for a while and then admitted that,

“Oh yeah. Oh my gawd! How long has that been doing that?” I told her it’d been long enough. “Well,” she slurred. “Why don’t you come back here and help me pick out another CD?”

Cue the wah-wah.

So there I was, being led back through this dark hallway by this attractive, curvy, if not all that intelligent waitress – into the recesses of the bar, the back office even, where she began fumbling with the keys. While waiting I just happened to cast a glance towards our table and noticed that my cousin Jennifer was having a hard time hearing exactly what it was my cousin Brian was trying to tell her. Now, I don’t know if that was because of the din of the crowd, the skipping of the CD, or Brian’s softspoken manner — but most likely it was these three factors combined along with the long curly Yezbickish locks that flow from Jennifer’s head. Those Medusa strands had already ensnared a few admirers, making for some interesting observations of, well, I wouldn’t even call it coquettish ways. It was more or less a sort of informed befuddlement on the part of my cousin. I think those interactions were dragged out for our own amusement.

Anyhow — the strands of hair. Why do I think they were the culprit? Well, as I was saying – I was about to get a groove on with the waitress*…er, an actual groove – as in the CD sense, because the older one was skipping – when I looked over and saw my cousin Jennifer leaning across the table — her long strands of curly Medusa like hair dangling…Right. Into. The. Candle.

I can’t remember exactly how much hair product she had put in her hair for the night out on the town — but that top went up in flames. Let’s just say that the dark recesses the waitress and I had retreated to were no longer dark. The entire bar, as I recall, let a sudden hush fall over it. It was kinda like those cartoons where there is a gigantic flash in front of a bear’s eyes and all of a sudden where once there were pupils – now there are hypnotic black and white swirly spiralling thingamajobbers. The sudden stun passed for most everyone else – but my cousin Brian was now assisting Jennifer in beating out the flames. This particular scene was reminiscent of the tortorous times my brother, or Uncle Jim, or see-store for that matter would continuously repeat that god-awful phrase “Why are you hitting yourself?”

As they had succeeded in dousing the flames — I had managed to make several steps towards the table. Both the waitress and I saw the “inferno” and had come to check out the damage. It wasn’t long before the entire bar began to smell like burnt hair — and a sudden mass exodus was underway. Where once it seemed like unthinkable good-n-plentys were to rain down on me for no apparent reason other than the goodly graces of the holiday spirits – now there was simply that horrific stench driving a wedge between us. Hmmmm. I can’t remember her name.

But Jennifer might. In fact — before we were making our way back into the recesses of the bar it was Jennifer who recognized the waitress from some of her classes while she was still working on her degree. It was Jennifer who coaxed the waitress into sitting down with us and chatting. It was Jennifer who told the waitress that indeed I too was from Atlanta. It was Jennifer who put the whole thing in motion — and then burned it all to the ground.

Ladies and Gentleman — it was Jennifer who was bit by a Brown Recluse – and has lived to tell the tale.

I give you,
Jennifer…

*I think she was tootin. How else can you explain it?

P.S. There may have been some selective memory involved in this recollection. No matter –

It’s an introduction…
Jennifer – the floor is yours.

I haven’t done much volunteer work since leaving High School, and haven’t been to a nursing home since a previous volunteering day turned into an odd and disturbing memory that I’d rather not get into here. Fortunately – this time around everything was much more enjoyable. I could tell things were going to be different from the moment I pulled up and saw God’s Love Bus parked in front of the center. I walked into the Center abit nervous, being out of practice and all, but strode up to the receptionist and asked to speak with K, whom I was supposed to get my instructions from. She was bounding around the corner at the same time, shuffling a bunch of paperwork and asked if I was Kevin.

I responded in the affirmative.

They were loading up the residents onto the bus, using the wheelchair lift, so I found myself standing around for a bit. I tried asking one of the resident’s if they were excited, but didn’t get a response. Some of the other resident ladies behind her giggled at me – as I’m sure they knew that this particular resident wasn’t exactly the talkative type. I fell back into ranks a little redder for the wear and waited for further instruction before I attempted anything else.

Soon after I was told to load up onto the Love Bus, and we were on our way to the Edsel Ford House. We hit a bit of traffic on the way up, all told probably extending our trip by about forty minutes. When we arrived I helped wheel in a few of the residents, and K told me that I should probably be in charge of E, as he was the only male resident to make the sojourn.

“It can be a male bonding experience,” she said. “We had to bribe him to get him to go.”

Well, E turned out to be a rather large fellow, well over 200lbs. He was sportin’ a Detroit Piston’s championship t-shirt and crackin’ jokes with anybody who would listen as he was being lowered on the lift. K introduced him when he touched down, we shook hands, watched as one of the other residents joked that she was gonna Evel Knievel it outta the bus without the lift, and then he and I began to wheel in towards the house.

Oof. It was a bit harder than I had expected – but once the momentum got started things got a little easier. Until I had to start steering.

Now E. had been able to make his way out to the bus with his walker. He’d fallen and broken his hip a while back and was at the home for rehabilatation purposes – so he was quite cognizant of everything going on around him, and more than capable of wheeling himself around, but perhaps to humor me – decided that I could be his chauffer for the day. As we made our way to the entrance of the house I had to make my first maneuver, a simple 180 so that I could pull E. up the ramp. Amazingly enough, when we were in the house, backing down the hallway, I could feel a bead of sweat on the tippy top of my forehead. We’d only travelled about 100 yards from the Love Bus, the tour hadn’t even started, and here I was slightly winded, nervous, and slightly timid as to what other acrobatic twists and turns the tour would provide.

The house itself was amazing. Over 60 rooms, 13 fireplaces and luxuries that made your head spin when you realized how much wealth was squeezed into one location. The online tour is here, from which you can see everything we were able to see and more. Unfortunately the house isn’t up to par when it comes to wheelchair accesibility, so we only managed to take in the first floor’s sights. Still, that was quite the show. A personal favorite of mine was the modern room, which had a Brady Bunch feel and a kick ass bar surrounded by 18 rose-colored mirror panels. The golden statue on the above page made its home the bar cleverly referred to here as the “niche.”

As I said, the house wasn’t exactly accomodating for wheelchairs — and E. and I ran into a little trouble as we were making our way from the Dining Room into the kitchen…The doorway was just wide enough to squeeze the chair through – but I had begun our grand entrance into the next room slightly askew and managed to bump one of the larger wheels against the wall as we were passing through.

We were in what is properly referred to as “a fix”.

I tried backing out, to which E. objected:

“No-no-no! If you back up the front wheels turn to adjust.” He was right, you know. He knew more about the contraption than I did. Looking down I could see that the front wheels were now perpendicular, moving back any further was simply swingin’ us into the wall. So there we were, E. and I, rockin’ back and forth between two rooms, with a tour behind and a tour in front of us. Blood was quickly rushing to that orb upon my neck and I could feel the pores in my armpits begin to open in an effort to cool the quickly overheating person. The tour guide came over and fiddled with the front wheels as E. continued, with a chorus of backers, to explain how to get out of this mess. Somehow, eventually – I managed to get us into the next room, all in all a delay of no more than a minute and a half — but in my own mind taking on what seemed an exorbitant amount of time. We would make it out of the house, (obviously) having caused only minimal damage to the legs of certain 15th century chairs, E. having filled in our particular tour guide concerning obscure tidbits of info on Edsel Ford and his father Henry not included on the tour, and after a quick lunch in the tea room, (which featured running over the foot of another tour guide with whom E. had struck up a quick friendship) back onto the Love Bus for a much quicker ride back to the Center.

Heading back I was engaged in conversation by a 102 year old woman. It was odd listening to her talk about her son. He’s 74. How often do you talk to someone with a 74 year old son? That said – her son worked for a car company, she couldn’t remember the name just now, (I later learned it was General Motors) and he had 500 engineers working under him before he retired and he had gone to college too and also lived in South America — and it was about here that the conversation began to loop over onto itself. Keep in mind that at 102, her vocal chords weren’t what they used to be, and with the bus engine below roaring, I could barely manage to pick up a syllable. Eventually, after the third go round with South American living I simply began nodding and smiling whenever I saw the corners of her mouth move in a similar fashion.

All in all a very good time was had by all, and next month we can look forward to the possibility of a riverboat tour!!! It was interesting how quickly I began to pick up on the traits of those who went on this excursion. E. was sharp-witted, S. was angry, but courteous, e. was hilarious with a biting sense of humor – just to pay tribute to a few. It was a day well spent — and an experience I’m looking forward to repeating. Back in front of the center I shook E’s hand and promised him that next time I saw him I will have picked up some driving skills. I said a quick goodbye to the lady residents, many of whom had by now stopped giggling at me, their coquettish ways now working themselves into courteous smiles as they wheeled by me on their way to the Bingo match. Lord. Don’t get between a resident and the Bingo match.