Sep

13

This American Life in my life…

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When I’d just gotten out of the Marine Corps, I got a factory job making sheet plastic. I spent the entire day watching molten plastic come out of an extruder in a column, and it rose up into a tower to cool, was folded by a set of molds, and then it came down, ran over a razor blade that opened the sheet and wrapped itself around a cardboard tube on a spindle machine.

It was not a good workplace. There was constantly carbon in the air from the melting plastic pellets. I almost got my arm caught in the machine several times. There were open circuit boxes with live wires hanging out. Some parts of the warehouse floor were actually caving in. For six bucks and hour I’d work 12-18 hour shifts, standing up, with two or three 10-minute breaks, and nothing but the sounds of the machines and the pneumatic system and idle conversation with my supervisor. Every so often, a buzzer would go off and I’d have to cut the plastic and start a new tube, take of the old roll, weigh it and write down the weight, dump the roll in a box, pull off some wet packing tape and seal the box, stick a label on it and stack it symmetrically on a wooden palette, make a new box and then turn back to repeat the process. If the plastic were thin, the whole thing would go FAST, and sometimes it was tough to keep up. I must have cut thousands of roles, and packed them, and sometimes I’ll still dream about it.

We had a beat-up stereo, the antenna of which I rigged with a length of wire and attached to the cooling tower, boosting the reception a bit. I used to float back and forth between WNCW in Spindale, NC, probably the best NPR station I’ve ever heard, and the local NPR affiliates around Anderson, SC. One Sunday, when the place was particularly quiet, I heard a show entitled Fiasco, with stories about a disastrous performance of Peter Pan, a badly planned corporate plot to pour boiling oil on invading Visigoths and intra-NPR conflict over car-talk programs. I laughed so hard that I lost track of the roller machine and had to cut the next roll almost a foot from the ground and get it over the new tube without breaking my fingers.

I found out the show was called This American Life, and after that I was hooked. It was a sort of story-journalism; each episode had a theme and the show would have several stories on that theme. I never missed it until, the next spring, I took off for a six-month hike on the Appalachian Trail and, as happens in life, time passed.

Three years later I’d finished my hike, worked a winter in Vermont and gone around the world on another six-month trip. I was so in debt from that latter that I worked 80-hour weeks at an inn in Vermont, with one day off (maybe) where I’d volunteer at a rock-climbing gym in Rutland. When winter ended and we were laid off, I had about two months of no work before I could go back to the inn as a gardener, and being that I was in so much debt I had to live on pasta and tomato paste and do NOTHING, except go to the rock-climbing gym and volunteer in the hopes that there’d be free pizza. The only splurge I allowed was a dial-up internet connection, where I almost exclusively listened to NPR, and I discovered that the three years of “This American Life” I’d missed were available for free on the internet. Other than the rock-climbing gym, that’s all I did.

I’ve been addicted to it ever since. I estimate that, if I were to stack up the hours I’ve spent with TAL in the background, I’ve devoted at least a month of my life listening to it, which is quite a bit if you think about it. I’ve heard almost every show, many of them several times. My favorites are the ones where the entire hour is devoted to a single topic, although there are many good stories on the multiple episodes, too.

In homage to all the lonely hours TAL’s stories filled, a list of my favorites…

  • Christmas and Commerce – David Sedaris’s describes working as an elf in Macy’s during Christmas
  • Dawn - Jack Hitt tells the story of the American south, of a man who became a woman and did voodoo
  • Harold - One of the best, the story of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor
  • Pray - Alix Spiegel goes to Colorado Springs, home of an American evangelical awakening, and finds it “medieval”
  • Niagara - A whole hour of melancholy stories about Niagara Falls
  • A Teenager’s Guide to God – Following a Christian youth group on a mission
  • 24 Hours at the Golden Apple - 24 hours at a popular diner in Chicago. Surprising depth.
  • Them - Act 3, Newfies, about two GI’s during WWII who end up in the German army.
  • House on Loon Lake – Spooky
  • Before and After – Before and after the September 11 attacks
  • Act V – Prisoners perform Hamlet
  • Teenage Embed Part II – Hyder Akbar follows his father to Afghanistan and keeps a record of his travels
  • Starting from Scratch – Acts I and II, about the Puppy Channel and Vegas Joe respectively, are great stories
  • Heretics - Carlton Pearson, an evangelical minister, stops believing in hell and loses everything
  • What’s in a Number? – 2006 Edition – John Hopkins University study estimates 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq
  • After the Flood – Stories from post Katrina New Orleans
  • Godless America – Self explanatory
  • Habeas Schmabeas 2007 – Show about the Bush Administration’s effort to dismantle the right of Habeas Corpus

Hope you enjoy

Sep

8

Petra Haden

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When I went to NPR this morning, I followed a link to a live recording of Petra Haden and her a capella group doing a cover of Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’. I must admit, I didn’t care for it at first, but it grew on me quick, and by the end of the day I’d listened to it five or six times. You can also follow the picture above (which I lifted from NPR’s website), to an interview/performance with her on World Cafe.

If you’re still starving for more Petra, there’s also a cover of I Can See for Miles by the Who on You Tube.

Sep

7

Of anthems and European identity…

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This article was originally published on here on AttiCusInk, but has been edited and migrated to my Newsvine column.

It continues to amaze me how many Europeans do not realize the incredible position they’re in, or the things of which they are capable. The United States is in decline. My nation is being ripped apart for the sake of a few, super-rich people whose ideologies, in the end, are not so different than the kings, emperors and dictators who defrauded Europe, and the Star-Spangled Banner gives them a coloured flag and a martial theme to hide behind.

Read more…

Sep

6

Saturday Session August 25th

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On the 25th of August, some friends and I walked through Maastricht, the Netherlands, which was built by the Romans as Mosa ad Trajectum, and which borders the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. Although technically part of the Netherlands, Maastricht is culturally a city-state, a bit Dutch, a bit Belgium, a bit German, with its own dialect and full of eccentric Maastrichtenaars who seem to think their city is the center of the world.

I moved to Maastricht with my wife, who was born here, almost two years ago, and although we miss our previous home in Vermont, we have found Maastricht to be a cornucopia of wonderful eccentricities, oddities and hidden gems.

To pay homage to our new locale, I decided to create a series called “Saturday Sessions,” to showcase the interesting, curious, hidden, absurd and sublime of our new locale. The Sessions will be at least twice a month, maybe more, and they will usually occur on Saturday — although Saturday may also mean Friday or Sunday, or any other day of the week, and regardless of the day they’ll be called “Saturday” sessions to preserve the alliteration, although, on second thought, Sunday would also serve this purpose, but I’ve picked Saturday, so there! Moving right along…

Maastricht is full of little villages that it gobbled up as it expanded over the past millennium or so, many of which still have a powerful, local identity and there are even variances on the local dialect. One of the more incorporated villages is Wijck, on the other side of the river from Old Maastricht. It’s full of cobbled alleyways with flowering vines, beautiful facades and locally owned shops. We gradually moved to the antique market, full of typically overpriced but lovely relics, taking pictures along the way.

We went to a farm on the edge of the city, which is only open for two hours on Saturday (how convenient) and which sells all manner of used furniture, housewares and the like. It’s extraordinary, not for its wares, but because it’s in a beautiful building, square-shaped with a central courtyard, in the middle of a farm field.

Later, in the Vrijthof, or central square of the city, we went to the Preuvenemint, one of the many festivals that occur throughout the year. In theory, the Preuvenemint is a chance for local restaurants to sell small portions of their fare at affordable prices, but in practice, the festival has evolved into a chic affair, with Maastrichtenaars often decked out in full Sunday regalia, out to see and be seen. The food has become so expensive that many small, ethnic restaurants have been priced out, and it has become normal or people to eat before going out.

Accompanied by the strains of local musical acts, we slithered through the crowds, stopping to drink wine and observe the atmosphere. A local brass band played a song on the edge of the square. The “booths” where people are eating dinner are virtual restaurants, with crystal chandeliers, neon and mood lighting. It’s beautiful, really, despite the ridiculous prices, and surreal, that the interiors of Maastricht’s best restaurants would unfold, inside out, into the city square.

The highlight of the day, though, was the tango. Away from the noise of the Vrijthof, in a small square lined with old trees, was a stage set up for local tango enthusiasts. As we walked around the corner and into the soft light, I was struck with that feeling I get so often in Europe, of rootedness, of feeling a sense of place, a thing that is very rare in the United States. It was dancing of a kind I do not often see in America, where dancing often takes on the form of whatever vulgarity appears in recent pop-media. American students in Maastricht often seem to be simulating sex instead of dancing, and the art of seduction, of romance, even platonic intimacy, is lost. The people in the square were like an old movie, dignified, lovely, civilized.

Say what you will about American innovation, cultural or technological, I often feel that the U.S. is suffering from a lack of roots. Though free form, it often leaves us without the grounded sanity of old cultures. Watching the people tango was enchanting, a reminder of why we live, really. Art not only enriches our culture, it makes us sane. Where often artists tend to make me nuts, art without the intent of art is what makes us human.

More pictures from Saturday, August 25th, are available at the AttiCusInk Flickr.

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