Friday, August 27, 2010

Friday Bill Murray



I think you are going to have a good weekend . . . .
Also, I think I may have found a kindred internet soul in our love of Bill. Where is Bill Murray Hiding? is a blog that attempts to chart Bill's habit of turning up in expected places.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Ears and Eyes

What I’m Listening To Now

(Songs)

Honey Dove (2002 Version) – Lee Fields

25 to Life – Zola

Shadow People – Dr. Dog

FFunny FFriends – Unknown Mortal Orchestra

The Fire Thief – Hem

Fried Chicken – Rufus Thomas

Soul Street – Eddie Floyd



(Comedy Podcasts -- available for free on iTunes)

You Look Nice Today -- OPNWDE

Kasper Hauser – This American Life 1 & 2



What I'm Watching Now

(YouTube)

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Have You Ever Noticed That A Moose Can Look Like A Retarded Horse? (Part 3)

8/5/10 1325h

Arrive at Orgonon, Wilhelm Reich’s estate and museum.

I suppose since I’ve done the reader a disservice by alternating sleeping and claiming wakefulness through WR that I should take a moment now to explain about Reich.

This is the second part of what Laura calls the Equal and Opposite Sexual Utopias Tour Summer 2010. The first part was Sabbathday Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine. Shakers believed—believe, I guess, since there are still three of them—that each human could find God within him- or herself; they were—sorry, are—celibate to the point of separating the sexes; women worked inside and men worked on the farm, they bedded down in gender-segregated dormitories, and ate and worshiped on different sides of the room, as though church leadership thought there was a serious case of The-Cooties-On-The-Loose. Within the church hierarchy men and women were equals; as one ascends the ladder of religious hierarchy in the United Society of Believers – the actual name of the Shaker religion – one cleanses oneself of the Cooties. Other Shaker things they had to do included: confessing sins, striving towards perfection, separating themselves from the non-Shaker world. Their no-procreation policy goes a long way towards explaining why there are only three of them left. The other source of possible converts – orphans – dried up in 1960 when Federal laws prohibiting adoption of orphans by religious groups forced Shakers to stop plucking the low-hanging fruit.

You may be surprised to hear that there are any Shakers still, such are the archaic notions  attached to them. They belong to a time before Gore-Tex and cup noodles, a time when cutting-edge technology was germ-free milk. But three are alive and they are kicking back at Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village. The ladies that do the tours and manage the gift shop make it clear that YOU WILL NOT MEET THE SHAKERS during your visit at  Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village, while at the same time repeating, insisting, really, that it is a working village even though the Shakers are too old to do the work, because the Shakers have always hired out help from the community to do the work that they cannot perform. There are hired hands performing farm labor, ergo it is still a functioning farm. If you are really determined to Shaker-gawk, the meetings are open to the public, so you could worship with them on Sundays, but you cannot say hello to them on the tour. Both Christian and I are surprised that there aren’t more aging hippie divorcĂ©es joining up, since it’s all like communal and pastoral and everything. Kids had their own dormitory and their own work where they grew flowers and made bouquets and stuff.

Shakers were into equality and having their primary relationship be with God. They weren’t into getting down and dirty with each other; Reich on the other hand, was into equality and super-way into getting down.

The first thing you need to know about Reich is that he is out there. A look at the local promotional materials in the cabin’s Welcome To Rangeley three-ring binder, you’ll learn Reich was a “researcher” who was doing “energy experiments.” This leads one to wonder whether he perhaps invented the electric car. What it means, in fact, is that he thought he had discovered the primal life force—seriously—the cosmic energies of all life, which he called orgone. Much like the midi-chlorians that make a Jedi, orgone charges all organic matter and is present in the very atmosphere. Reich fled Europe in 1939 and moved to Maine in 1942, which is when he built Orgonon, an observatory, library and lab on 160 acres amidst Rangeley’s lakes to study the cosmic life energy. He also started building orgone accumulators—to collect the stuff—boxes that layered metal against organic matter, with wood on the outside and metal on the inside. The accumulators could pull down orgone from the atmosphere and, well, accumulate it into concentrated  energy, like a bullion. The idea is that if a person sat in an orgone accumulator everyday for a certain amount of time they would be cured from cancer, illness and become generally more healthy and revitalized.[1] When we showed up the next day and asked to sit in some accumulators the staff member who greeted us told us that the orgone accumulator is not a magic box, you have to sit in it every day, thirty minutes to an hour for weeks at a time to see results and that everyone thinks they will sit in the accumulators for a long time but they always leave after five minutes. The four of us scoffed at such lackadaisical treatment of the orgone accumulators. He left, we sat in some accumulators and after about five minutes of sitting in silence all of us left our boxes. While we tried to exit quietly, we were stopped by the same staff member who turned out to be the assistant director of The Wilhelm Reich Museum and Infant Trust. What followed was an intense conversation, where we first convinced him of our genuine interest in Reich, after which he admitted that he didn’t use his box, he made a blanket that he sleeps under, using steel wool and sheepskin for the layers of metal/organic material., it would boost the immune system, cure illnesses like cancer and stream the positive life force directly into the body.

The other thing you need to know about Reich is that he is really important. W. Reich worked with Sigmund Freud and was a well-respected psychoanalyst in his early working years in Austria. He hightailed it out of Germany in 1933[2] to Scandinavia, settling in Oslo until 1939, when he came to the U.S. Reich connected Freud and Karl Marx, postulating that a person’s neurosis came from not just their relationships with their mothers, but from all aspects of their life – the physical, sexual, economic and social conditions that shape the lives of individuals. Essentially, a poor rural fisherman is going to have a different set of living conditions and neuroses than a city-dwelling wealthy shipping merchant.

Then there is transference. Freud’s description of a psychoanalyst is someone who acts as a blank slate so that, ideally, the patient will project their own neuroses onto the analyst, shedding light on the therapy that needs to be done. At the same time, this dynamic fosters patients to transfer strong emotions – from a relationship with a significant person – towards the therapist: the patient falls in love with their therapist. Freud thought he could make use of this phenomenon by analyzing the transference. Reich came along and said Hey, if we are getting love transference from our patients, we’re also going to get hate transference, as well. Our patients friggin’ hate us. No one had considered that yet.

See? This was a really smart guy. He influenced lots of people like Saul Bellow and Yoko Ono[3] and psychological developments like primal therapy.

OK, so maybe even his important ideas were way out. Reich’s work had always been concerned with human sexuality and he believed that good sex was a fundamental part of the healthy life. That’s not a mind-blowing statement today, it’s a generally accepted truth. But to get specific: Reich thought that pent-up sexual energy could cause physical blockages in the body – in muscle fiber and organ tissue – and he called these blockages “body armor.” Of course, a super-strong orgasm could shatter body armor because it would release lots of sexual energy. Theoretically, a person that could regularly release enough sexual energy through orgasms could keep themselves healthy. On the other hand, if a person denied themselves orgasms, the armor would become hard and stiffen, causing neurotic and physical illnesses. Reich isn’t talking about your workaday orgasm here, he’s talking about skin-meltingly transcendent orgasms that pulse throughout the entire body. He sets the bar pretty high for pleasurable orgasms.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Reich’s enthusiastic praise of orgasms is addressing only the ladies. After all, women and their desires – or lack of them – did capture the interest of psychoanalysts from early on. The tumescent penis seems to take care of itself, its demands are simple, and ejaculation, even in the most unpracticed of hands, is all but guaranteed. Reich flipped the concept of frigidity on its ear by saying that what passes for the male orgasm – ejaculation – is a pale version of what men could have. Sure, Reich thought that most women were frigid, but that wasn’t exactly news since most Freudians took that as given. But Reich thought that most men were frigid, too, and this mind-fucked his male colleagues, who thought they had one up on the ladies.

What Reich really wanted was for all people to be free, non-conformist, totally in touch with their genitals (sorry), able to have teeth-knocking, eye-crossing, body-throbbing orgasms that kept them healthy and happy. (He totally preferred the boning cure to the talking cure.) Reich started tracing sources of repression and realized that repression starts in infancy and childhood. While he could coach an adult into therapeutic sex as a kind of analysis on the fast-track, W.R. really wanted to find ways to not repress children to begin with, to prevent the initial body armoring that laid down the pathways to neurosis.

Reich left Europe because at some point it became a less than welcoming place for Jews, even less for horndog Jewish psychiatrists. The road through Rangeley has signs for the turnoff to The Wilhelm Reich Museum and Infant Trust, the symbol for which deserves a dedicated page on accidentalpenis.com, but wouldn’t get it because the symbol is purposefully phallic and to date there is no penisonpurpose.com.


8/5/10 1335h

Tour begins. Tour guide takes us to a small room to watch a film on Reich. I fall asleep as soon as the room darkens and the electric waves of the television roll over me.

8/5/10 1336h

Christian presses his leg against mine to wake me up. I nod vigorously to show I am alert.

8/5/10 1337h

I fall asleep again. Repeat the above entry.

8/5/10 1338h

Christian gives up trying to keep me awake.

8/5/10 1400h

Video ends. I feel the damp spot on my shirt where I drooled and become embarrassed.  Tour guide collects us to go into the house.

8/5/10 1615h

We’ve seen the observatory, office, nap room, library, the paintings that Reich made as well as his paints and brushes. We’ve heard about his efforts at cloud-busting, by which the Wilhelm Reich Museum and Infant Trust actually mean rain-making, and have seen some of the cloud-busting equipment, which employ orgone energy to work. Reich saved the Maine blueberry crop of 1953 with his cloud-busting technology.

The tour has ended but we dither still. I ask one of the tour guides if there is an orgone accumulator we can sit in. She says that there are some boxes down in the Student Laboratory, which is now used for staff offices. If we go there tomorrow at ten am and ask nicely, someone will let us in and we can sit in the accumulators. We drift over to the W.R. gift shop where a woman who must have been past retirement manned the cash register. I ask her what she thinks about W.R. She smiles shyly and says “oh, he was before his time. He was right about a lot of things.” I nod and she nods. After ten seconds of nodding she adds “like about cancer and cloud-busting and all.” Christian buys a book and a postcard. When he hands the cashier his credit card she smiles (again, shyly) and says “sometimes I steal these by mistake.” He signs the slip and after a small hike to WR’s tomb we all pile in the car to head back to the cabin.

8/5/10 1705h

As we turn out of Orgonon Laura spots berries. We pull over and the four of us practically run to pick wild blackberries and blueberries. The hills around Orgonon are loaded with berries, and no one minded us there, picking and eating until our tongues turned blue. I had a Feeling I’d never had before, some simple happiness in the serendipity between our human needs and the lands’ offering in a place that still feels wild. Because that part of Maine is an Old New England, all forests and beasts and witches. It feels unknown by man¸ unknowable. And still, there is this happy moment.

We pick almost a quart of blackberries and blueberries. We stop at the Rangeley I.G.A. to buy Grape Nuts ice cream on the way home.

8/5/10 1745h

Arrive back at cabin. We all change into bathing costumes to swim in the lake. Except I do not swim in the lake as I had been recently tattooed and fear there might be something in the water that could make the tattoo infected. I tend to err on the hypochondriac side of health issues, suffering from the variant of hypochondria that causes me to think I may have horrible diseases but will never admit when I am actually ill.

The three swimmers report that Rangeley Lake is dark but clear and warm. I take some notes on the porch and wave at them from time to time. We drink some cold beer and watch the sun go down. The Ducks return for their evening visit but leave quickly. I suppose we are more of a morning spot for them.

8/5/10 1955h

Chowder-making begins. Christian does some culinary magic and produces one of the best fish chowders of all time. We all agree: it is awesome. 


8/5/10 2230h

After a lengthy discussion to decide the evening’s movie, we watch “Wanted,” mostly because I told everyone I really wanted to watch it.

Despite my best intentions and after thirty minutes of demonstrating my commitment to watching the full film, I fall asleep.








[1] As in, every day for an hour for six months.
[2] In a truly impressive move, Reich left in March 1933, just two months after Hitler took power as Chancellor. What was it that prompted this sibylic fleeing of fascism? He read the newspaper. More specifically, Reich read a newspaper that published a scorcher of a critique on his book The Sexual Struggle of Youth, in which he was vilified for being a Jew and a communist as well as being a ladies’ man (true – though he was not raised in the faith – true and true). After reading the excoriation, he put the paper down, called for his mistress and their suitcases, packed and they rolled up north the next day. In this act, Reich confirms what all writers fear: negative reviews do mean that They are out for you and you should leave the country.
[3] He is not, however, the one to blame for breaking up the Beatles.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Friday Bill Murray



He sets you up to knock 'em down. Yes, even here I still have my crush on Bill Murray. Commitment to silliness ranks high with me.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Have You Ever Noticed That A Moose Can Look Like A Special-Needs* Horse? (Part Two) (*Thanks to Heather for the correction)

 
8/4/10 1900h

We meet our friends Laura and Andy at the previously agreed-upon location on Main Street in Rangeley. They are just as concerned about food as Christian and I are. The four of us could be described as food and drink enthusiasts, chowhounds. We walk the handful of blocks on Main Street to pick out the restaurants we would consider for dinner. There seemed to be three kinds of dining establishments in Rangeley: sports bar & grill, established older local restaurants – a pizza joint and a diner – and new eateries. Correction: one new eatery.

The four of us decide to go the rental cabin first and come back for dinner. The cabin perches on a steep hill over Lake Rangeley and is quite charming. It has the right amount of lakeside Maine hokiness: wildlife-themed upholstery, sturdy wood furniture, wallpaper featuring a family of black bears playing in front of a log cabin without tipping over into campiness. After the business of deciding bedrooms, unpacking cars, opening windows, and a general freshening up, we head back to Rangeley ready to eat.


8/4/10 2015h

This is a pleasure: going down the blocks, reading menus one by one , deciding where to have dinner. The pleasure is in weighing the options, seeing how creative or uniform the menu is, whether a restaurant can re-invent a dish. Duck Fat (in Portland, Maine), for example, uses duck fat to fry their fries. A staple of the menu redone, and so delicious too. All of us hope that there will be a culinary revelation at the next place. Or the next place. Or the next. We even have a phrase for a menu that looks promising: “There are a few things here I wouldn’t mind putting in my mouth.” (yes, really.) We decide that the new place looks the best.

The new place was very new. So new that the staff didn’t seem sure of what to do. For example, we ordered olive bruschetta and received brie and anchovy bruschetta.  The food and drinks were all fine nonetheless. I didn’t mind putting a few dishes from there in my mouth.

8/4/10 2200h

Arrive back at cabin. Since we have come to Rangeley to visit the Wilhelm Reich estate, Christian proposes that we prep ourselves by watching a film he brought named WR. We all agree and, after reading some byzantine instructions posted on the refrigerator regarding various remote controls, the DVD begins.

I fall asleep almost immediately in a padded arm chair whilst sitting up, head drooping.

I was informed the next day that Christian walked behind me and quietly suggested that I might be more comfortable stretched out on a bed. I apparently turned my head, Exorcist-like, and said “I’m fine” and promptly resumed snoozing. Why is it when one is caught dozing one protests no no no, I’m not sleeping? As far back as I can remember, I’ve never heard anyone cop to it, Yeah I’m sleeping and it’s awesome! I’ve tried to tell myself that I should just be an adult about it and not pretend to be in a conscious state when I’m like unconscious. That is, if one is capable of pretending while sleeping. I don’t claim superpowers of consciousness, I just wonder how much the dozing mind is connected to the part of the brain that tells the mouth to say I’m awake, I’m awake.

8/5/10 0745h

I drive to I.G.A. Rangeley. I buy: 1 gallon milk, 1 bunch (5) bananas, 1 lb strawberries, 1 pint Maine blueberries (placed next to the California blueberries, absolutely insane, I know), 4 single-serving size yogurts – 2 peach, 2 pomegranate.

8/5/10 0825h

Coffee making begins, press-pot style. We've figured out that the press pot is really the best way to get the full flavor of the coffee bean. But you have to start with a decent coffee bean to really enjoy it. I like something along the lines of a cafĂ© au lait, and I probably drink the equivalent of four cups of coffee in a long morning, two in a regular morning. But this is vacation, so this is a long morning. Christian and I drink our first cups in weathered Adirondack chairs on the lake’s edge.

Then, quite suddenly our first meeting with the Ducks. Ducks do not get enough credit in general for how fast they can move when they want to move. There is a Mother Duck and five almost-adult ducklings. They are different shades of brown: light and dark, very pretty. The Mother Duck has some kind of algae hanging down from her bill and the Almost Grown Ducklings try to eat the algae off her bill. It gives the strange appearance that the A.G.D. are wrestling with the M.D. The Ducks storm the banks, squawking, toddling around our chairs and close to us – they are not scared of humans– and scavenge around for a while before plunging back into the lake swimming on. I wonder how the Ducks schedule their days.

More coffee. Breakfast: fruit, yogurt, homemade granola that we brought. Andy and Laura wake up. The four of us effortlessly manage a sweet harmonious state of slowly getting ready for the day and doing other stuff -- reading, talking -- both solo and in pairs and trios. More coffee, some nibbles.  

The decision is made to go to lunch, buy groceries and then to Wilhelm Reich’s estate. Since the shops closed early and we might dither at the estate at the end of the day, we thought it best to get all the groceries needed before we went to the estate/museum.

8/5/10 1145h

As we come into Rangeley proper, we see there is a craft fair on Lake Street, just off Main Street in the middle of town. It stops us all in our tracks. We instantly move dithering to the top of the day’s agenda. It may be a small craft fair, but just the same all four of us drift towards it, as though the beaded toe rings and wooden wind chimes were singing sirens.

In the very back corner of this craft fair I found something I have wanted for at least two years and have never seen: a foraging basket. Picture a basket more tall than wide with a sturdy base, the top an open oval, with backpack straps. Some might call it a papoose, but to me it’s a foraging basket for fiddleheads, ramps, kindling, the sorts of things I find deep in the woods behind the farmhouse.

Foraging basket purchased and wearing said item, we leave the craft fair and do some shopping. There is a fancy-pants grocery store on Main Street where we buy a few foodstuffs. Over to the fishmonger’s for fresh haddock, back to the cabin to drop off, everything. We stop at a small barbecue stand for lunch (because revelatory cuisine can be anywhere and this place had very good hamburgers -- he put bacon in with the ground beef), and, finally to Wilhelm Reich’s estate.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

This Word Does Not Mean What You Think It Means

This blog is about bad kanji that people get tattooed on themselves. Most tattoo parlors have books of kanji with terrible, really horrible translations. I've seen them myself and I feel bad for the people that get these nonsensical kanji tattoos. I don't even know how to feel about the people who claim they have researched their tattoo kanji and its just . . . gibberish.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

August 6, 2010






There is only one August sixth a year, and I’m glad this one has past.

For the most part I live my life. I have moved on, as some obliviously cheerful people put it and yet on the evening of August 5th I still have to reach out to hear my parents’ voices. I consistently miss Mother’s Day, but if I do not call my mother by evening on August 6th we would both feel empty. August 6th  is the measure by which I gauge how far I have come or not come in grieving my sister.

1:20 am on August 6, 2007 my sister Sarah, age 34, passed. Funny euphemism, passed. It’s what you say when you can’t say died. The truth is, she had glioblastoma multiforme brain cancer. She died from it.

You don’t hear about this often enough. People die. It is part of the that cycle: your body ceases to function and goes on to (possibly) become nutrients for plants and the animals that eat them. Humans in turn eat the animals and suddenly there is a food chain. The general is easy enough: people die.

But the specific? There is a term that begins to name the specific, “actively dying.” That means the body is shutting down. When a person dies in this specific way, of this specific cancer, the brain shuts down the body in a haphazard fashion. Body fluids flood the chest and lungs producing a breathing sound that makes the living quake. The death rattle—the doctors say it is painless, but it doesn’t sound painless. Recognition, higher brain functions, movement are gone. The heart is beating at 150, and still the blood barely circulates. All that is left is the inert body and crackling breath, slower and slower, then a sigh, and … over.

Too much? Yes, probably.  

A different specificity: Sarah did not die alone. My parents, an aunt, an uncle and I were in the house taking turns by her bedside. It turned out, my uncle was on watch when it happened; he held her hand, smoothed her hair and told her she was beautiful (that is the way I imagine it). Rattling went to whisper. She stopped actively dying and simply died.

It’s still not clear to me what you do when a person that defined your life leaves forever, a sister, someone you expect to be with you the rest of your life, someone you fight with, compete with and still cheer on.

I thought that perhaps this August 6th would be different. It was, but not in the way I had hoped: I wanted to be able to tell funny stories, give a toast, honor her by having adventures with friends someplace new. Instead I cried until it became an unsettling sob. Christian and our friends held me and comforted me, each in their own way. This August 6th is different only because grief hit me in the evening instead of the morning. That’s not much, but it’s still a little different from last year.

I ache for my sister; I wonder where she is now; I wish I had been a better person when she knew me; I wish she could see the turns my life has taken. I wish she knew Christian.

I wish, I wish, I wish.






















Sunday, August 8, 2010

Have You Ever Noticed That A Moose Can Look Like A Retarded Horse? (Part 1)

 
There is so much to write about these past few days that I actually don’t know where to start. We met our wonderful friends Laura and Andy in Portland (Portland, Maine that is). We met in a cooking bookstore and then had lunch at Duck Fat and yes, we had potatoes fried in duck fat and yes, they rocked.

The four of us went up to Sabbathday Shaker Village which is the only living Shaker community left in the U.S. There are three Shakers living there on a functioning farm – lots of help is outsourced – and living the Shaker life. Our guide, a middle aged lady in culottes, with a white mock turtleneck underneath a gingham checked cotton shirt that she constantly re-adjusted and then tightly wrapped around her stomach. She told us that the last three living Shakers were there. She also told us that Shakers are responsible for creating perma-press and circle-saw technology. I imagine that some of my readers might not have seen a Shaker village, but they are these little pockets of loveliness: hand-made everything, purpose-built structures made for meeting, eating, living amid enormous gardens of flowers, herbs, vegetables and orchards. It’s just too bad they don’t believe in procreation or these villages might be peopled and still functioning rather than becoming museums. That being said, I adore the slogan of Sabbathday Shaker Village: “The Fruitage Will Never Fail.” They were referring to their massive apple orchards, but I think I can apply it to our eight trees as well.

We kept heading north to the Rangeley Lakes Regions to the cabin we rented for a few nights. Rangeley Lake is beautiful, and we got some gorgeous pics to prove it. Even more of a boon, the little cabin was perfect: hokey enough to feel like a country lake cabin and nice enough to feel comfortable. And it was right on the lake, we had coffee down on the shore in the morning. The water was perfect: warm and amazingly clear. There was a wee family of ducks that liked to hang out on our little cove. It was funny to see them scavenge, then get worried they have lost the group. So they would waddle-run over to check on the group before their scavenging led them off again. They are really sort of into group harmony. I liked them an awful lot.

You might be wondering why we chose Rangeley for our little vacay to which I will say “Wilhelm Reich.” And more on that soon.

Saturday, August 7, 2010

Well, I Never . . .



I thought we lived in the middle of nowhere. I mean, this photo is civilization for us: look, a wall! But we finally got back from Rangeley, Maine. And that is the middle of the middle of nowhere. And that was just one little spot! Maine is huge! You can get miles from the middle of nowhere into the outer space of nowhere!

No wifi, no cell phone coverage (I don't have one, but our friends do and they had very spotty coverage). It's not like the this part of Maine went off the grid: it was never on the grid. And even though I don't have a cell phone and fast forward through all the commercials on TiVo, it felt really good to be totally out of reach. Oh, and the night sky was amazing.

But I'm back to my Vermont home and more is soon to come.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Maine, Here We Come!

We are taking off for Maine for a coupla days. This will complete my eastern seaboard tour 2010 (except Florida, Georgia and South Carolina), and I couldn't be more thrilled. In the meantime I'll be writing posts so there will be plenty when I'm back.

Oh My Word. Maine. Another state I never thought I would get to!
And off we go . . . .

Some Pictures From The New Camera


Yes, there is a new camera in my life. It takes excellent pictures and is a handy-dandy little thing. So now that I figured out this thingy, here are some long promised and long delayed photos.





If there is one thing you oughta know about me, it's that I love cheese. In all forms. I'm not that picky. But going to Grafton Village and finding their cheese-making place made me super happy. 
God I love cheese.


Watch Hill, Rhode Island. I am salty.


Outside the BBQ joint in Statesville. I'm on to you, Christian. 



Also outside the barbecue place. And possibly one of the best signs ever.

We’re A-Going To The Fair


Christian, Sal and I went down to the Pownal Fair the other day. We don’t do a ton of community-based entertainment, but no one misses the fair, right? It was really kind of lovely. The first thing we saw was a DJ, perhaps in his fifties or sixties. It was hard to place his age with the voluminous, thick black and white beard that enveloped his face and reached towards his belly. To say that this beard was his defining characteristic would be an understatement. To say that this man knew what he was doing with one turntable and a microphone would also be an understatement. He was the Pied Piper of Pownal for the evening. The children of Pownal gathered around him on the dance floor as he played Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas. The kids, obviously dropped off by their parents and perhaps encountering the instruction to “dance” for the first time in their lives, were flinging their small bodies every way possible. When a song stopped, the Beard instructed them to “keep dancing, keep moving.” At another break in songs around 5:15 pm, the Beard announced that they were gonna keep dancing straight until 6:30 pm, a feat that had never been accomplished before. The kids revved up again and began moving: they thought they were about to break a world record. When their energy flagged, the Beard would pass out prizes which was enough to keep the small dancers moving and motivated.

Clearly, this man, the Beard, had a twofold duty: (1) to entertain the children so their parents could walk around without being pestered and (2) to make the same kids as tired as humanly possible. I think he was accomplishing both things handily. Or at least his beard was.

Walking past the DJ, we saw the field where the tractor pull had taken place; trucks were loading up the last of the tractors and taking them home. Tented booths housed bingo, hand-made jewelry, stuffed animals, feather boas, and princess outfits.  The lines for cotton candy, lemon ices and ice cream were starting to stretch out into the walking lanes.

Then, judging from the beeline I made to the booth, I decided to play some bingo. I can’t tell you why, exactly. It was a decision that surprised me as much as it might surprise you. From the other people playing bingo I can say that I am really too young to play seriously. But they had those ink markers and I wanted to use them to stamp on a bingo card. Here are some things I learned about bingo:

It goes way faster than you think it will.
The announcer is really hard to understand.
Someone almost always gets bingo before you.
You will start buying more cards to have more chances at getting bingo even if you don’t really want to.
The prizes at bingo aren’t all that great.

I spent my two dollars – the amount I told myself I could spend – and left. I met up with Christian and Sal on a little grassy knoll with other Pownal families where we all watched the Beard enforce his dancing regime on the kids. And after a spell we left.

And that, friends, is the Pownal Fair for 2010.


Monday, August 2, 2010

What I'm Listening To Now

In Our Talons -- Bowerbirds

Kick Drum Heart -- The Avett Brothers

What Condition My Condition Is In -- Bettye LaVette

Excuse Me While I Break My Own Heart -- Whiskeytown

If I Had A Boat -- The Holmes Brothers

Shadow People -- Dr. Dog

I am the unreliable witness to my own existence