Last week I had a hip arthroscopy to repair a torn labrum in my hip. Healing has gone well, with rest, excellent care by Henry and plenty of pain meds. Things were moving along peachy, with increased use of my hip and even some time on an exercise bike, when I started getting nauseated and having odd vision. I looked in a mirror and saw my left eye pupil entirely dilated, while my right was normal. I became worried.
A trip to the ER and an amused doctor later, we concluded that I got atropine in my eyeball, left over from a motion-sickness patch I had been wearing behind my ear. Atropine is a chemical also known as belladonna and has been used by women to dilate their eyes. The idea that women ever purposefully did this to their eyes for beauty amazes me. Of course, we also wear high heels.
There is nothing I can do but wait. I asked for an eye patch because one eye being dilated was too uncomfortable, and also because I've never had a valid reason to wear one. I've been hobbling around my house with an eye patch, on crutches, and anxiously waiting for my upgrade to a cane on Thursday. It doesn't get much cooler than this!
Jogged down here from my hotel digs by the big GM factory in the city of Pontiac. Friday night, first week of June - the week of GM's bankruptcy. Notice the closed-up store behind and the nearly empty parking lot.
But this fellow sure isn't giving up. From Midwesterner's practical mindset and (relatively) work-together approach, I think they'll figure something out. However, it's hard to see anything like the economy Southern Michigan has known persisting very far into the future.
Word is Pontiac got some movie making business going. There is so much lawn here. How will they maintain all these lawns with the economy going where it is?
Welcome to The Crystal Cabinet, a Vox group where you can post your thoughts on how poetry you've read connects to and illuminates topics of common interest in current events or history. In "Blake: Prophet Against Empire",
And they enrich each other tremendously: That's the reason for for this group! In my undergraduate honors thesis, "The Mass Sacrificial Spectacle: The Doors in Poetry and History", I took a page from Erdman's "Prophet Against Empire" and found that the poetry of Blake-inspired poet (and yes, rock star) Jim Morrison seemed to similarly mirror the events of the "counterculture" revolution of the 1960s. Working with Jim's UCLA film school classmate and Doors filmographer Frank Lisciandro, I found confirmation of this from Frank, an actual participant at the time.
The relationship can best be expressed by comparing Blake's "The Crystal Cabinet" with the lyrics of The Doors' "The Crystal Ship". Both have dimensions beyond historical events, but both relate to apirations for a better world. While "The Crystal Ship" is a short lyric, most of Jim Morrison's poetic opus can be found in these three works:
The late Duke University scholar Wallace Fowlie gave some more official credence to the notion that Jim Morrison might have been a real poet in his work, "The Rebel as Poet".
However, I was left with the feeling that Fowlie just never did the historical work that an Erdmanesque approach entails. Fowlie didn't seem to be very aware of the events of the 1960s, perhaps most notably, from three to six million people killed in a U.S. military bid to contain "Communism" in favor of an equally dubious puppet state in Vietnam. That causes him to miss a huge dimension of Jim's poetry, much as Northrop Frye misses much of Blake.
When Oliver Stone's movie on The Doors came out in the early 1990s, with many others I was similarly disappointed. Fowlie's later book (it followed the movie by about five years) has marked quite an improvement. Now, things are looking up even more: A new documentary on The Doors (website, trailer), reputed to be very unlike the Stone movie, has premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and has now garnered the narration of the movie star Johnny Depp.
At the other end of the pendulum-swing from the draw of movie stars, science itself seems to be affirming some of the more apocalyptic themes of Jim poetry. As Western lifestyles and technology continue to develop and are adopted across the globe, we face looming, catastrophic environmental and human impacts. Climate change and mass obesity are a couple of my "favorites".
Perhaps more immediately, we witness now the collapse of the great counterrevolution to the movements of the 1960s, the Reagan Revolution. As it dies in a cascade of revelations about the economic Depression-bringing filth and cheating behind Reagan's vaunted "Morning in America" of "deregulation" (policies carried in large part through the Clinton Administration (1) (2)), the world begs for new visions. The mix of poetry and history is hard to beat for that.
I'll end with an invitation to post your best here, and a quote from Morrison's "The American Night":
Now damn you, dance
Now dance
or die sleek & fat in your
reeking seats, still
buckled for flight
Starting out from Menlo Park, heading up Kings Mountain Road: Some solid groves of redwoods (click on any picture to see a larger version, and click on that version to see the largest version).
The Tour of California bike race will go through this intersection up on the mountain (at the Google Maps links on this post, you can always get a "Street View" option: Drag the little person to see a 3D panorama of the entire route!):
Snow at the summit of Kings Mountain! Descending from Kings, with all that rushing, frigid air, it was time to stop and put the hat back on.
Woodside Road and Skyline, site of the locally well-known Alice's Restaurant:
The turn-around point on this ride, La Honda and Old La Honda:
Old La Honda affords some nice views as you twist up the mountain on the windy road:
The town of Woodside is home to a rustic flavor of venture capitalist:
Fully expecting this triathlon to be roasting hot, as it usually is there in Sonoma County, CA in late July, we exulted as the heat never really came. Instead a maritime blanket covered the noble Russian River and most of the bike ride through Sonoma's gently rolling, truly endless and buff grape vineyards.
This event is logistically challenging: The race pamphlet says there is plenty of parking in Guerneville by the river, but I think that's true only if you arrive there at 5am. I joined some much more proficient triathletes in the pantheon of participants who almost missed their swim start due to taking too long finding a parking spot and trekking from that far flung place to the swim start. It was an insanely rushed last fifteen minutes.
The main challenge of the Russian River swim at this time of year is not scraping your hand on the bottom. Swimming upriver felt like being in a movie inspired by "Heart of Darkness". The overcast and dim weather gave a gloomy, soothing, mysterious feel. My favorite part was passing under a large, old, moss-encrusted, high and ornate bridge out there in the seeming wilderness.
The more expert swimmers stayed near the center of the river on the way downriver, and away from it on the way up, I suppose to leverage the current. Makes sense to me anyway.
Outta the river:
The bike was fast and rolling. The scenery of enveloping oaks and green vineyards was enough to keep you going if you got tired.
The sun did come out for the run, but was not too hot, and the finish
was there to carry one through. I felt so great at this finish. I
think a lot of it was having dropped a few pounds at this time of year. It felt like some of my better races in highschool and college:
Despite all this I got my PR of 6:13! Never could have come close to that without so much generous coaching and teammate help in the couple years I've been doing this. Now, just a little less cheese and fewer chickens in the diet and 2009 . . .
Back in October our team, Team Sheeper out of Menlo Park, CA (next to Redwood City), won the National Triathlon Championships for Division II ( 70.3 miles distance)! You can find me at the far left in the photo below (click on it, wait, and when the page refreshes, click on the photo again to see the full-size view) and near the bottom (!) of my age division in this race here.
The generous coach, whom I'm standing next to in the photo, let me,
"cubicle guy" these days (obviously
not the big scorer on the team :) ), hold the trophy for this shot!
Despite the fantastic scenery, it was
a pretty tough bike ride out in that desert with all those hills and
the heat by the end of the day; was 90 for the run. The swim was the
nicest ever, there in calm, warm, shallow Lake Mead (formed by Hoover
Dam).
With the latest news from Livejournal I've had several people ask me about Vox and whether or not I recommend it as a "replacement" or another option for those who already use and like Livejournal.
Pros of Vox:
- Aggregator in the "neighborhood view" makes reading the latest from friend's easy!
- Integration with Flickr for photo sharing/posting
- Ability to upload and play videos and music through my blog
- Mostly pretty
- Ability to cross post to Livejournal!
- SEO - my vox posts are found easily on google (take that as a pro or con!)
- PRIVACY. Vox let's you create friend and family filters on a per-post basis
- ...and more!
Cons of Vox:
- Not very many of my non-work friends are using it :(
The more of *you* I get to sign up and use the service, the more useful it will become to me! Win-Win!
So far this is my favorite thing about the holidays - our fake fireplace video!! Curling up with a book and listening to the cracklin' firewood - waiting to catch that moment when the video loop starts again. Lovely!
I love music, but have a fairly passive relationship when it comes to listening and discovering something new. I listen to KEXP in the car, or Pandora through itunes or iphone when I don't feel like listening to my own collection. My early experience in learning about new music was done in the usual way for people my age: mix tapes*, and later, mix cds. I know muxtape was popular, and of course shut down (booo) before I ever bothered to check it out. I was excited to find 8tracks.com because it is so simple! The limitation of
8 tracks works perfectly for my attention and focus. I love the short
amount of time it takes for me to make a small set, and how easy it is
to make a themed mix. Sure, the site suffers from some obvious
usability issues, and so far I haven't been able to upload mp4
files...but I'm hoping the specific, targeted nature of the site means
it won't go the way of muxtape. In fact.... stop reading this post!
Don't use the site!
David Porter sums up what I like about 8tracks in his post:
"8tracks is not about “personal listening” in the sense of a user goes to 8tracks.com and makes a playlist and then turns around and listens to it himself or herself. That is not the objective of the service. Rather, we seek to provide a useful, legitimate platform so that those relatively rare people with the knowledge and time to make great playlists can do so for others who love music and want to discover new artists, but who simply don’t have the time to do so themselves."
You can listen to my existing mixes on 8tracks. Also, in the style of the day, uploading a new mix will spam my Twitter**.
*Incidentally, explaining "mix tapes" to an 8 year old is a trip. Cassete tapes, a time without mp3 players, recording on to tapes from the radio! Try it sometime.
**Although, would prefer to have an option to post when I choose to, instead of every time I upload
Lots of press lately about how Yahoo is moribund, in trouble, what will it do, and so forth. To me it seems rather straightforward: While search may be Google's game, there is room for more than one provider of online consumer software. No doubt, Google Docs is great. But YMail beats GMail hands down in my book. I am so happy to pay $25 per year for YMail without ads.
Neighborhood
Explore friends, family, friends & family, or entire neighborhood.
