Answer Honestly. This May Be the Most Influential Vote You've EVER Cast.

"Other" responses (as of 11/5 at 9:30 a.m.)
The Vid x4
La Luna (Segovia, Spain)
Upstairs Pub x2
Le Petit Café
ALL of them of course
Respect your mother and have your 1st legal beer with her

(Also, read the tangent below)

My Saturday Night at Lotus Fest, Part 2

Part 1

...Let me tell you how I almost lost that photo.

Someone who looked like a tech guy for the band ran to the edge of the stage and jumped off. I moved out of the way, but my camera bag, slung over my shoulder, didn't move as much as I expected. He jumped through the bag, breaking a strap buckle and spilling some photo materials on the ground. My eyes went wide as I bent down to clean it up without people stepping on a UV filter or a macro lens attachment. As I gathered everything and put it on an empty part of the stage in front of me, I saw the tech guy gathering a group of people behind him. I wondered what they were going to do.

Sure enough, they all walked onto the stage for the last song of the set. Pandemonium ensued, and as the crowd started to jump in unison, I shot like crazy. The lights would flash on and off, of course, but the flashes of red played to my advantage.

In fact, I got two photos with a red background and crowd members jumping in a sea of blue light. The contrast immediately looked astounding on my camera's back screen, but I've grown to distrust that screen, so I didn't give it any more thought.

I kept shooting until I realized I was almost out of room on my memory card. Frantically, I went to the beginning of my card to delete photos from the night before. I could afford to delete them because a) the band was off-stage while everyone was shouting for an encore and b) I had dropped the previous day's Lotus photos on my laptop. Those were safe to delete.

But I also had photos I couldn't delete. I left photos that I hadn't dropped onto my laptop, so every time I went to delete the previous day's Lotus photos, I had to skip over photos from Monday and Tuesday. That made the time it took to delete photos longer, which meant I missed some of the action on stage.

I was afraid I would miss too much of the encore if I kept going to the beginning and skipping through earlier photos. so, I began to delete photos I had just taken. I went maybe ten photos back and pressed the "trash" button on each of a series of photos that were either too blurry or poorly lit.

The deleting became so automatic that I cleared one of the crowd-jumping photos.

I whispered, "Crap!" to myself and stopped deleting immediately. I had made enough room to finish the night (25 & 33), and while I didn't make it back to the vendor's tent in time to buy their album (they ran out almost immediately), I went home with kick-ass photos.

IDS management agreed. Even though I didn't get the front-page photo (that distinction went to Ryan Dorgan's photo from Los de Abajo on Friday night), my photo of the crowd on the stage (the one I DIDN'T delete!) was the dominant element on the photo page.

So, it was a good day.

My Saturday Night at Lotus Fest, Part 1

So... um... this is what I promised on October 8. Whoops. Hey, at least I'm posting it! :P

I refer to specific photos a few times. They appear here.

---

I got to the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival on Saturday, October 26, at about 9:30 p.m. I had driven back from a friend's wedding in Brownsburg (west of Indy), and so I couldn't be there for the more well-lit events. I would also have to try my best with my wide lens, which only opens to an aperture of f3.5. (I also had an IDS lens, telephoto, with a wider (and therefore better) maximum aperture, but I planned on being right in front of the stage. I wouldn't need to zoom.)

I parked near Seventh & Washington, slung my camera bag over my shoulder, and made my way to the music tents. I caught the end of The Horse Flies set, so I got at least one good photo from their act. (17) After they finished, and after I realized that this might be my only good photo, I thought I would have to get some unique stuff if I were to make it into the night's slideshow. So I found people selling food outside Roots. (18)

Then Bajofondo started. Because I took the Roots food photos from more than a few angles, and because I had to wait for a time that they weren't busy to ask their names, I didn't make it to the start of the concert. Regardless, I weaved my way to the stage, holding my camera bag in front of me and my camera above my head in an attempt to explain why I was pushing people aside.

I made it to stage left (audience perspective) and started firing. (...Firing PHOTOS.) I tried using both my crappy wide lens and the really good telephoto, but because I only had one camera body with me, I had to switch the lenses every time I wanted to change the zoom significantly. I also had going against me the lights on the stage. They were green, red, blue, yellow, purple, and generally everything else but white, or else they were nonexistent. With all the flashing, I had to wait for the rare white light, although I settled for snapping photos with the other colors. Generally, colors are good, but if they screw up the general color balance to the paint that Photoshop can't fix it (and that happens a lot), you're in trouble.

I looked around the stage for someone lit by little more than white light. Eventually, I found Luciano Supervielle to the left. (19) He had a few things going in my favor: 1) back light, in such a way that it made his hair into a highlighted silhouette; 2) near-angelic light from a (white!) light to the right; and 3) enough light below him that I could see details on his face. (Oh, also, he was smiling. That helps!) I tried that photo about ten times until I was completely satisfied with the framing, the focus, and the lack of motion blur.

I then moved to Gustavo Santaolalla, a little to the right. I wanted to try a silhoouette again, especially since the light right behind him would be too blown out if I didn't have it covered. After the last successful photo, however, I grew a bit more confident and just went with what Gustavo provided. I didn't get his face in what I eventually selected (20), but the action, the white light, and the composition (I got the violinist, Javier Casalla, as well) more than made up for it. Plus, if you look close enough, you can see him yell!

The whole concert, I tried to shoot for interaction among the bandmates. Gustavo would jam with Javier, with the drummer, and with the bandoneón player, and sometimes three people would converge. Interaction almost always makes for a great photo, so I was really shooting for that. I got it (21, 23), of course in conjunction with everything else I was trying to use (white light, some silhouette).

I was also trying to get crowd shots. I had some success the night before, but I wasn't satisfied. Whereas the problem on the stage was the wrong kind of light, the problem when I turned around to face the crowd was the lack of light. lights fell on the audience less often than white light did on the stage, and when it did, it usually wasn't intense enough. Every photo I tried to get was too blurry to be any good, because I had to slow down the shutter speed to let in enough light. ...Well, ALMOST every photo was too blurry. With a combination of luck, a rare really bright light, and new-found strength in holding my camera still over my head, I got it. (22)

(A friend told me that the guy in the middle put it up as his Facebook profile picture. It's almost like someone putting your photo on their refrigerator!)

My photos had improved a lot since the start, so I started to think of leaving. I wanted to get photos at another concert, my card was almost full, and I wanted to buy Bajofondo's CD before everyone else got it. Of course, I had to things going against me: 1) there were SO MANY PEOPLE to slip past; and 2) I might miss some good photo ops. So, I stayed.

That made all the difference. I got possibly my favorite photo of all time at the end of the concert. (24) But I almost lost it. Let me tell you how.

...Next time. This post is getting a bit long-winded.

Please Check This Out. Right Now!

Believe me, I'm going to post a longer entry about last week some time soon. (I've already started writing it. Teaser: it's about Lotus Fest.) I just wanted to share this with you right now. If you don't read anything else in the Daily Mail article, at least read the lede. I swear it will stay with you for a long time.

I'm curious. And I just got a PollDaddy account.

Hey, Look, Another New Blog!

Believe me, I'm trying to update this blog more than once a week. Regrettably (or not?), much of my writing effort is diverted to class work. The most conspicuous diversion from this blog is here. It's my blog for my magazine reporting class. Take a glance if you want, especially since it will show a different part of me (more formal and purposeful) than this blog.

Speaking of which...

***

That's What She Said

A friend of mine sent this to me over Gchat in the newsroom one night. The source is here:

“It was a little bit frustrating,” IU volleyball coach Sherry Dunbar said of the match. “I felt like we struggled all night and never really got into a rhythm.”

::facepalm::

These chalkings popped up last Friday morning. (That's right, on September 11.) Unfortunately, they showed up in places with high foot traffic: the B-line Trail, and Seventh Street in front of the Union.



Hopefully, you don't have these wonderful conspiracy theorists on your nearby campus. They are by no means a majority voice, or even a significant minority voice, but they are loud in chalk.

Drought!

In case it isn't obvious from the lack of posts already, classes have started at IU. With those pesky buggers, and combined with the photos, the applications, and other minutiae, I haven't had time to write for this blog as much as I want to.

...

...

Actually, I HAVE had time. I can do what I did in London and write down ideas and rough drafts in a book or on a loose piece of paper. I can send things to myself in an e-mail or a Google Doc while I'm working in the newsroom. I can make a note in my planner during class. I can develop any of those ideas in my head or while I'm eating.

So, basically, this is an admission that I'm not busy enough to stop writing. I'm pretty busy, don't get me wrong, but there are holes in my day when I can write, and I can--no, need--to fill them. I say "need" because I've found that my life goes smoother when I examine things (news, myself, a book, etc.) through writing and not simply in a conversation with myself. (It happens, as you know, but it's not always productive, largely because I can't pull it out later and look at it again.)

I'll give you guys a treat, though: evidence of my busyness. The photos are mine; the video is not.

This is a friend of mine talking with Jared Jeffries after an assignment:
This is during a rainy women's soccer game against Evansville:

And this is Baron Hill. (I'm the photographer on the left! The other guy is the Herald-Times' Jeremy Hogan.)

The London Paper came back to haunt me.

I'm a hypocrite. At least in this one instance.

I made sort of a big deal this summer about not picking up the free London papers. I wanted "'quality' news" and didn't want to waste my time on rags like The London Paper and London Lite. So, I ignored and brushed off the vendors who "flip(ped) the paper a few times frying-pan style" and tried to push their papers into my hands.

Last Friday, the IDS had its first Slash meeting of the year. In these meetings, we talk about how the week's paper and Web site were and what we're planning to do the next week. A lot of it (sometimes most of it, depending on how the week went) involves critiquing the mistakes we made, like a poorly-worded headline, or a bad layout, or using an Oxford comma.

During the meeting, the marketing department passed around a clipboard for people to sign up for paper distribution. For a free shirt, one could stand in the Arboretum, by the Sample Gates or elsewhere around campus and give papers to people passing by. I found an open slot in my Monday schedule, took a pile of papers from the backshop, walked to the Arboretum, and passed out issues of the paper to students.

After about the ninth person who gave a short wave and a polite, "No thanks," I realized what I was doing. Here I was, the guy who looked away as vendors offered me The London Paper, getting the brush-off as I try to give away free newspapers.

Karma.

"If you want it aaaaaany time, I can get it!"

God, it’s wonderful what you can pull from your subconscious. And how random those pulls can be!

An obscure Paul McCartney number, “Come and Get It,” has been swirling in my head on and off for about three years. Most times, it comes to mind as I’m trying to get into a Spanish-language mindset. In a way, it’s a vestige of a time when I was trying to go to Spain after my junior year of high school and would translate almost every snippet of song in my head. With this song, I had wrestled over whether the lyrics should be translated as, “Si lo quieres, ¡aquí está! Ven y óbtenlo” or, “Si lo quieras” or, “venga y obténgalo.” (I was in the middle of learning the commands and the subjunctive tense.) Because of that constant internal quibbling, it ingrained itself into the mixed tape of my mind, recycling like the end piece of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

But it also reshuffled itself. Because I had recalled a song from the past and attached a different memory to it, I lost where I had originally heard it. Had it been on a late Beatles album? I asked myself, or was Paul’s voice developed enough that it could conceivably come from his solo work? I decided on the latter, and I went on for about a year convinced that it was a Paul McCartney solo number. When I looked through my McCartney songs on iTunes, though, I didn’t find it. Consumed with other things to do, I moved on, content in not knowing its origin for sure and allowing it to float around in my head without a home.

With the confluence of two Beatles forces, however, I have finally found the source. I want to finish the Beatles biography before classes start so that it doesn’t run into the reading requirements for my Jimi Hendrix class. (And every other class, of course.) While I was still reading the book at home, I thought of the great idea to put all the Beatles Anthology recordings onto my computer so I could, in effect, “listen” to the book as I read descriptions of the band’s studio work. Now that I only have 84 pages left, I’ve started to get into their latest work, the things that are covered in Anthology 3. Buried near the end of Anthology 3, to my great surprise, was “Come and Get It,” the old Spanish-practice standby!

Immediately, the old feelings of the song came back. I mean the OLD feelings, before I used it to debate the subjunctive tense in my head. This song, and an early version of “The End,” brought back memories of me acting out the lyrics and moving in time with the melody. I would point at an imaginary person, maybe someone who really wanted a candy bar or my Game Boy, and curl my finger as I sing, “If you want it, heeeeere it is! Come and get it.” Or I would take the place of Ringo and play his drum solo, which is regrettably overshadowed by electric guitar in the Anthology version. Of course, all that would happen in the privacy of either my own room or a spare room in Grandma Farris’s house in South Bend.

(The latter room figures prominently in recollections of “The End.” I would lie down on the guest bed, slowly rise up as the final crescendo built, and stand up on the bed just in time to fall dramatically back down once the final piano chord struck. Either that, or I would slowly fall off the edge, clutching the covers in fake desperation and hitting the floor in time with the piano.)

All these memories coming back in two little songs simply overwhelmed me. The events of those last two paragraphs came flashing back to me in five short seconds of condensed nostalgia, and the whole experience has plastered a smile to my face. The feeling is even better than when I listened to "Closing Time" on my last walk in London. This is wonderful!

Question, for those of you willing to answer: Has any song brought back that intense nostalgia in you? A song that you hadn’t heard in A LONG TIME but that conjured up the same feeling it did 10 years ago? Respond with a “tangent.”

[P.S.: A good history of the song is here. Paul wrote it and played all the instruments for the "Beatles" version, but he wrote it for a movie and another band in the Apple Records family. So really, it's neither a Beatles song nor a solo McCartney song. Paul had simply recorded it before a day's Abbey Road session.]

Another Peril of Facebook

Warning: There's some naughty material about to follow. If you offend easily... well, you might want to read on anyway, 'cuz it's really funny. All names have been withheld because I wouldn't want my name to be attached to this outside of Facebook.

I was going to write an update of what I've done in the past week (it's been VERY busy!), but then a little nugget of cheer dropped onto my laptop that I had to share with all of you.

***

While I was reading the Beatles biography today, a friend on Facebook updated his status with this:

"(name withheld) is going to beat the wood."

Someone, who apparently didn't know what that innuendo meant, commented on the status:

"Hope you are doing good and school is going well, too!
Thinking of you! Aunt Rita"

Two people ::liked:: the status update after Aunt Rita made the comment.

***

I DARE you not to laugh.

I'm Back! (And somebody's gone...)

Sorry for the lack of posts, folks. It's been eight days since I could devote some time to writing a blog entry, what with my last day of summer work, my first day back at IU, workshops for the IDS, helping other people move, going to men's soccer practice and volleyball practice to take photos, and starting work at the IDS's visual GA desk. Inadvertently, I timed my return to the blog with the passing of a titan of the Senate, Edward M. Kennedy. So, instead of providing a recap of what I've been doing (which will come later this week, after I've done more stuff), I give you one of Time's lead articles today, which brilliantly sums up Ted's life, accomplishments, embarrassments, and role in following (and creating!) a legacy.

(Also, take a look at James Poniewozik's blog post on this morning's cable news coverage.)

The Book You Read, The Books You Don't

In re The Beatles by Bob Spitz:

I’ve done more things this summer than I have in any other summer: travel to three countries, take a class, do an internship, submit or resubmit four research papers, refine a Web site (it’s not online yet, but it will be), maintain a personal blog, and get back in touch with a childhood passion. That passion (consuming anything about the Beatles, whether in walking Abbey Road, listening to Anthology again, almost buying a vinyl on Brick Lane, or reading the biography) has welled back up in me after lying dormant (relatively) for roughly the last seven years, and it fueled a lot of the excitement of this past summer.

Unfortunately, that passion, especially the latter manifestation (reading the biography), got in the way of other books I’ve always wanted to read. Case in point:

I was packing up for Bloomington last night. (Not finished yet!) I brought too much stuff last year, including some books that I kept in my dorm room largely for show, so I wanted to trim down the stock a little bit. I didn’t think that would be too hard; my personal Wells Library filled a milk crate and three shoeboxes. But as I browsed through the titles I would leave behind, I began to regret whatever time I had wasted over the summer. (Yes, I did waste some time. Watching new-to-me episodes of House can be productive, but watching familiar reruns of Scrubs can’t.)

I kicked myself especially over the classics. Sure, I had books that were already read, an unopened book about poker, and non-essential reference books that I could easily leave at home. But as I tossed The World Is Flat into the keep-at-home tote—

The Godfather! I started reading it last year after I “won” it at a Quizbowl meet during freshman year. I’m not even halfway through it! And The Art of War! I didn’t buy this at Barnes & Noble just ‘cuz it was on sale! And St. Augustine’s Confessions! I’m not even a THIRD of the way through this! Ugh! Why did I start reading that 900-page monster when I had THESE?!

After some exasperated sighs, some head-clutching, and some annoyed hair-combing with my hands, I resigned myself to my fate and began to toss most of them aside. I didn’t read these books when I could, and now that the school year is starting, it’s just gonna get harder to fit them into my schedule. I still have some shreds of hope, however, because I chose The Godfather and The Confessions to bring to my dorm room. I can find time.

(“I can find time.” I can’t wait to read this at the end of the year and laugh at my blind hope.)

Anyway, this is what I’m bringing to IU, excluding textbooks:

• The Godfather, by Mario Puzo
• The Confessions, Augustine of Hippo
• Gray’s Anatomy, Dr. Henry Gray (my one concession to vanity; besides, I might need it for my biology class)
• Spanish<->English, Spanish->Spanish, and English->English dictionaries
• Bible, multiple authors
• Liturgy of the Hours, multiple authors (I’ve tried before, and I might try again!)
• On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Charles Darwin (didn’t know the title was that long, did you?) (could double as a supplementary textbook for my evolution class)
• One Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn
• Day by Day, multiple authors
• The Essential Erasmus, ed. John P. Dolan
• Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
• All the President’s Men, Carl Bernstein & Bob Woodward
• The Dark Night of the Soul, St. John of the Cross

^That only takes up HALF the milk crate. I feel much better now about the prospects of my back, and my car's gas mileage.

Two roads converged in a yellow wood (which meant that I COULD travel both!)

I’m talking, of course, about two influences in my childhood, funneled together by two best friends from that same childhood. (It wasn't in a yellow wood, just in my basement. But that doesn't matter.)

I hung out with Dave at his house Friday night during the Colts game. We didn’t watch much of the game (they lost to the Vikings 13-3, and Walk the Line was on), so I pulled out my laptop that I brought with me so I could work with some photos I was posting to Facebook that evening. I had forgotten to bring the photos, so I resigned myself to writing down Springboards for this very blog. (Springboards are the small capsules of thought I write down when I can’t spend the time writing them out completely. When I have the time and space, I pull a Springboard out of either my pocket or a Word-document list, and hopefully it brings me back to the frame of mind I was in when I wrote it.)

Dave asked me what I was writing. I told him at first that it was a to-do list (because it WAS a to-do list, of sorts), and he said to put on the list, “Give David a billion dollars.” I politely said, “No,” and explained that I was really writing down Springboards. He said, “Then write about giving me a billion dollars,” and some day, when that writing gets me a billion dollars, “give me half a billion.” I said, “Okay, I will.”

There, Dave, I wrote it.

Anyway, one of the Springboards was this:

Reading Bob Spitz’s Beatles biography like a Harry Potter novel (you know roughly how it will end, but the details are fascinating & the writing style is too quick to stop)

Those are the two elements of my childhood that have converged: the Beatles and Harry Potter. They hadn’t completely converged yet, though, which is one reason why I had written the idea down but not expanded on it yet. For the moment, I left it on the page and continued watching TV.

Only after mentioning the book to my friend Luke at dinner after Mass yesterday did the parallel re-enter my head. Thanks to that mention, I decided to explore it again. I put off all other things I planned to do that evening (watch the first season of House, organize my stuff for IU) until after I read some more of the book. I had stopped at the end of a chapter earlier in the day (the Quarry Men now consisted of John, Paul, George, and Colin Hanton!), so I could pick it up easily and continue reading.

I settled myself on the couch in the basement, piling three pillows against the armrest and lying across the length of what had comfortably framed my body from head to toe five years ago but which now only went down to the ankles. Eventually I turned from lying on my back to sitting, to lying on my stomach, to lying on the floor. It takes some effort to recall those movements now, because I was so enthralled with reading about finding a drummer, John & Paul’s songwriting process, and the Liverpool rock ‘n’ roll scene that I blocked out everything else. The other things I could do, the more comfortable places I could sit, even the stomach rumblings from the Mexican restaurant could not pull me away from the trance I was in, scanning my eyes back & forth across the page like a copy machine and mouthing the more revelatory passages. Sometimes, I even forgot where I was and I read passages out loud, although I don’t think anyone heard because I was in the basement. I felt like I was eight again, when I absorbed those tracks from the Anthology CDs over and over, when I discovered what a truly awesome sound the Beatles created at the expense of hearing any other sounds from any other bands of the day.

And then I realized, “This is exactly how I felt reading The Half-Blood Prince.” In that instance, I ignored the need to apply for scholarships as I raced through its pages during Christmas break of my senior year of high school. (I was late in reading the summer release, I admit, but I caught up quickly. I read it in two days!) I brought that book to the dinner table, to the bathroom, on errands with Mom, and to bed, all of which (besides the errands, because I’m driving now) I have done with the Beatles biography. The cliffhangers, the fast pace, and the characters of each book all have the same rapturous appeal to me, and they all result in lost time, both then and now.

It’s not really lost time, though. Like any good book, it’s just time spent differently.

God, I haven’t been this excited about reading a book for a long time. Of course, I’ve read gems recently (The Things They Carried, The Godfather, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), but not since growing up at the same pace as Harry Potter have I wanted to devour a book so quickly. Of course, I’ll probably end up with the same problem I had with those books: asking myself, “Why did I read that so quickly? I didn’t stop to savor it!” But that’s okay; satisfaction, wholeness, and a sense of accomplishment are meant only for the end of philosophy and theology books, anyway.

There’s no time to harp, though. I’m only on page 160 of 858!

A Self-Contained Conversation

There’s not much else to do when you’re mowing the lawn. You have to make sure you don’t mow too far from the last row, lest you leave some tall grass behind; and if you’re on a riding lawnmower, you have to make sure you don’t spin the tires when you’re going uphill. Other than that, your mind is free to wander, much like mine did. And boy, did my mind wander.

See, I’ve mentioned before, but I talk to myself sometimes. I did it a lot more when I was younger and ::cue the false pity:: didn’t have social skills, but I still sometimes let my brain go somewhere else, do, something else and talk with someone else. Maybe I’m having a debate with someone about health care reform, or replaying a conversation I had with someone, or meeting famous people on a photo assignment, or creating a fail-safe situation where OF COURSE I get the girl. Whatever it is, the sequence starts almost automatically, and it makes sure I stay inventive and not brain-dead when I’m doing a thought-deficient task like mowing the lawn.

It’s nothing crazy. It’s not like I think they’re real or anything. Sometimes I don't even make it up, in cases where I'm replaying a stand-up routine or scenes from a movie.

Anyway, this happened in my head today. It’s not an exact transcription, of course; even if I taped it, no one would be able to hear it over the lawnmower.

***

SETUP:

Imagine, if you will, a world where everything is as simple as your mind thinks it is. The groups, the stereotypes, the rash generalizations you make in your head are, indeed, true. Or at least some of them. The Vatican got out of that business during the Reformation, when the Illuminati replaced it.

...and right here is the person you’re looking for. She doesn't usually talk to reporters, but she's feeling open right now. It's your luck day. Enjoy the Capitol Building.

Thank you.

Hi! Nice to see you!

Wait... I don’t think I know you. I didn’t ask for you.

Oh, don’t worry about that. We’re all the same.

We?

Don’t you know?

Know what?

I’m a member of the most exclusive and ::quote marks, fake-drama voice, etc.:: oppressive club in the country: The Liberals in Washington.

The Liberals in Washington?

Yep. We’re the people that would have you believe anything that would make us better off and the American people worse off.

Wow! I’ve never met one of you before! Or should I call you one of Them?

::points finger:: I like the way you think. Do you wanna join?

I don’t know how much I would fit in. I don’t consider myself either a liberal or a conservative. I’ve grown ::blech:: with both sides.

Oh, don’t worry; that’s our fault, anyway. Besides, we’ll get you a lifetime pass so you don’t have to switch out when the next wave of ideology hits.

...That doesn’t make any sense.

Oh, you didn’t know? Our name and membership change with the national debate. Makes collecting dues hard as hell, but that’s the way it’s always been.

Oh, so you’re not always the Liberals in Washington?

Right. Depending on what people are arguing about and who they’re arguing with, we could be the Liberals in Washington today and the Conservatives in Washington tomorrow. The membership just switches out.

That’s a lot of switching.

Oh, not really. If we changed for every person and every debate, we might as well just keep everyone in the group and call ourselves the Elitists in Washington. ::winks aside:: But then we’d have to switch between that and the Rabid Populists, and we’d be back where we started...

When DO you switch?

It’s actually not very complicated. We only switch when there’s a change in the NATIONAL debate as it’s portrayed in the national media. Take health-care reform. The reporters who cover the “mobs” show people using different names like “the government,” “bureaucrats,” “death panels,” but everyone knows they’re only talking about the Liberals in Washington. And it’s not the Liberals in New York, or the Liberals in Los Angeles, or the Liberals in Their Hometown. No, it has to be the Liberals in Washington, because it is a far-away place where important national decisions are made without their constitutionally-protected objections heard. There’s enough distance between them and Washington that they can Loom Large, but this town is important enough for the claim to be credible...

But you digress.

But I digress. You’re right. So anyway, we pick up on that cue that we get from the MainStream Media, and we adjust our membership accordingly.

When was the last time you were the Conservatives in Washington?

Me, personally? I’ve NEVER been a Conservative in Washington. Those guys are too backwards, hickish, God-fearing and gun-toting for my taste. I prefer the collective guilt, irrational idealism, and poorly-applied smarts of the Liberals. But we changed very recently. You remember the Blue Dogs?

Conservative Democrats?

That’s them! They and their Republican partners were crushing everything that was good about the proposed health-care overhaul, and the national outlets were all abuzz about the Conservatives in Washington creating that opposition. That was about two weeks ago, back when I wasn’t just an object to swing a bat at…

Huh. That’s interesting. Wait, would that explain Obama’s public lamentation of journalism at the correspondents' dinner?

Exactly! Both the Liberal members and the Conservative members want to keep The New York Times, the network & cable news, and Rush Limbaugh as the best media sources. We couldn’t hope to stay on top of things if we had to follow the blogosphere. ::aside:: Eat THAT, conspiracy theorists!

Wow. I just gained five levels of cynicism.

So, what was it you were here for?

Nothing. Don’t worry about it. I’m just gonna head home. ::heads out, but turns around quickly:: One thing, though. Why did you offer me a lifetime membership? I thought you were the most exclusive club in the country.

Oh, that? Yeah, I was just kidding. Only one person has ever earned a lifetime pass.

Oh, yeah? Who?

George Washington.

Right. Friend of the Federalists AND the Anti-Federalists.

Have a good day!

You, too.

Hey, um... You're not gonna write this up, are you?

Are you kidding? Of course not. This is old news.

***

PLEASE don’t read into this. Even I can't read into this.

Squirrel!

I yell ^that in my head every time I see one. ...I say “in my head” because you wouldn’t want to hear that every time I see a squirrel. I wouldn’t want to hear myself yell that.) But I did hear it all the time in high school, and that’s where all this came from.

The grounds of my high school had a lot of squirrels, and it was hard not to notice them at all times of the day. During class, they would scamper up the trees and park outside the windows, prompting at least one student to either yell, “Squirrel!” in the middle of a lesson or, in an attempt to not cause a scene, turn toward the back of the room where the windows were to watch it scurry. (If the student were sitting in the front of the room, it wouldn’t matter which one he chose. And yes, it was always “he.”) For those of us who ran around the neighborhood as part of practice for a sport, the afternoons were even better. They were Prime Time for Furry Interruptions from Nature.

As a (by no means stellar) member of the cross country and distance track teams, I found myself almost looking for squirrels as we ran along the streets near our high school. We worked squirrels into our informal points system, where points were “awarded” and “taken away” in the same spirit as Whose Line Is It Anyway?, as in they didn’t really matter, but we still paid attention to it because they were tied to social cues and team harmony. Jokes sometimes got you a point, good PRACTICAL jokes could get you ten points, falling embarrassingly might have lost you five points, and being a poopy-head could take away a point a minute. We didn’t keep track of points because it was THAT informal, but they did tie the practices together and make for good conversation during our runs.

Squirrels, because of their speed, their furry tails, and their generally comical nature, were worth a significant number of points if caught. (“Significant number of points” = ONE MILLION POINTS) We never caught any squirrels, though, because a) it would have taken too much effort while we were running and b) would YOU like to be grabbed & picked up & removed from your play area just for a bigger animal’s enjoyment? (I didn’t think so!) We never expected to give anyone a million points for catching a squirrel, but we enjoyed them so much that we couldn’t let our informal points system exist without it.

My love of squirrels... Love? Nah, I don’t LOVE squirrels. They can’t love you back. Let’s look for a better word…

My interest in squirrels continues to this day. (That's better!) In fact, it might have grown since high school for two reasons:

1) The squirrels at IU are intense! They’re bigger and more willing to get in your way than other squirrels I’m used to. Nowhere else have I seen a squirrel outside of a dining hall holding breadsticks as nunchucks.

2) I have my own camera! During my freshman year I had a Canon PowerShot A560, and this year I upgraded to a Nikon D80 with a wide lens and a long lens. Over those two years, I’ve snapped a few photos whenever I come across one and have my camera. (I don’t go out and find photogenic squirrels. I don’t have to; they aren’t scared to get close.)

...Don’t tell anybody this, but when no one’s around, and I see a squirrel, my eyes get big and I yell, “Squirrel!” It doesn’t always stay in my head.

***

I See What You Did There

I’ve developed my sense of humor from six sources of varying influence: my dad, Comedy Central, Boy’s Life jokes, Dave Barry, Garrison Keillor, and newspaper comics. The last one supplies today’s installment of I See What She Said There. Since it’s in a family-friendly newspaper, the following joke, which appeared in Crankshaft this morning, isn’t of the “that’s what she said” kind. I wouldn’t stoop to that level of jokes, anyway. That would be immature. ;D


(from The Seattle Times)

Disaster Me!

It's (a)live!

Denis, the designer of NetDisaster, e-mailed me last night to say that everything works, including the "remove disaster" button. So, the God Almighty disaster is now fully operational, and I've added a disaster to this blog so you can shoot it down with the second deadliest weapons next to the wrath of God: WMDs! I'll switch the disaster out every once in a while and maybe even give you a choice of disasters, but I'll take it down sometimes so it doesn't get too annoying.

Please, have WAY too much fun with this.

What'chu Talkin' 'Bout, Chris Martin?

I was going to write something about Coldplay’s single “Viva la Vida.” I was going to say that I love the almost orchestral feeling and the historical & religious references in a pop song (of all things!); that outside of the Beatles discography, it is the only song I don’t mind getting stuck in my head; and that this is the best Coldplay song since “Clocks.” Unfortunately, all of that has already been said (well, not so specifically with the third claim), so I wouldn’t be adding anything really new with that kind of stuff. So, in keeping with Reuters editor-in-chief David Schlesinger’s musing about the chain of knowledge, let’s add some value to this!

***

Who the hell is Chris Martin singing about?

That’s what I thought the first time I listened closely to the song. My brother and I were driving back from vacation in southwestern Michigan, and we were listening to the album on the way. Unfortunately, my sleep schedule was still moving from London time to Indiana time, so I accidentally took my nap right when it was playing. I think I woke up once the next song started, so I just missed it. However, we both still wondered aloud who was the king/revolutionary/other historical figure he was talking about. I suggested John the Baptist because of the “head on a silver plate” part, but then I thought of Constantine. With his Edict of Milan and adoption of Christianity, and the “Roman cavalry,” and the prayer to “be my mirror, my sword and shield” echoing (in my mind) the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, I thought it had to be him. I also mentioned Alexander the Great (“missionaries (of a Hellenic kind) in a foreign field”), Jesus (see previous lyric & the Commissioning), and Julius Caesar, but Constantine remained stuck in my head…

...until I kept thinking about why I thought specifically of Caesar: “One minute I held the key / Next the walls were closed on me.” Constantine never really fell from grace, as far as I know, whereas Julius had to beware the ides of March because in a few people’s eyes, he had already fallen. (That is, if the characters from Shakespeare’s play are to be believed.) All that, added with the sweep to power implied in the crowd shouting, “The old king is dead! Long live the king!” made me question whether it was Constantine.

(Curiously, Napoleon never popped into my head. It’s funny the associations you do (John the Baptist) and don’t (Napoleon) make while simply listening to a song.)

This subject was brought up about a month later, and my friend Arec said that maybe it isn’t about some historical person. I thought, “Of course!” That sounded MUCH more likely. Maybe the song simply describes a universal feeling and cloaks it in historical references to get people to pay more attention. (It certainly grabbed MY attention. That, and the naked strings throughout.) But what is that feeling?

I’d almost liken it to bipolar behavior. You’re on a high, confident that you’re the best you could possibly be, so sure of yourself as you “roll the dice” and “feel the fear in [your] enemy’s eyes.” Then you realize that you only think that way because you’ve built yourself up mentally, or you’ve ignored what could stop you, or you’ve only been doing easy stuff so far. All the castles of awesomeness you’ve built were on “pillars of salt and pillars of sand.” Indeed, you might say there was “never an honest word” because your false confidence made you think you ruled the world. Suddenly, you feel walls closing in, people can’t believe what you’ve become, and you begin to refer to your domination in the past tense. You think that something other than work & inherent skill got you where you went, and you begin to call those self-told confidence-boosters “the wicked and wild wind” and blame them for the sorry state you’ve gotten yourself into. But as you “sweep the streets (you) used to own,” fixing everything you did wrong before, you realize that you indeed did have some skill, and with the right application of that skill, you could try to earn St. Peter’s attention again and get back to the place where you heard Jerusalem’s bells and your cavalry choirs. Then, when you ask yourself, “Who would ever want to be king?” you’d say, “Me!” And you’re on a high, confident that you’re the best you could possibly be, so sure of yourself as you “roll the dice”...

I would ALMOST liken it to acting bipolar. ::stuffs high school back into its box:: However, there are experiences much more well-known and universal than that: getting fired, getting dumped, resigning effective at noon tomorrow, obtaining false fame for fame’s sake and losing that fame.

The point is, the song is widely applicable and yet highly personal. The human journey from the top to the bottom is as old and as far-reaching as The Epic of Gilgamesh and the biblical story of the Flood. It would be almost perfect poetic justice if, once Coldplay becomes less popular and fades into the lore of epic bands of the past, they re-record “Viva la Vida” for their final album. I say “almost” because it would by no means be unique. (Then again, if poetry tries for the universal, then acknowledging that the band went through a universal experience would, indeed, be perfectly poetic.)

So, who the hell is Chris Martin singing about? In my reckoning, he’s singing about everyone. And everyTHING, too: ideas, philosophies, governments, and even species (if you want to bring the dinosaurs and/or climate change into this). Sometimes, a wicked wind brings in a powerful regime that eventually loses out; sometimes, an ideology that seemed popular for a while turns out to be built on shaky ground; sometimes, a person gets drunk off the thrill that came with feeling the enemy’s fear and forgets why he/she beat the enemy in the first place.

“Viva la Vida” is a powerful reminder that nothing lasts forever. (It’s also a clever oxymoron, given the title’s translation of, “Long Live Life.”) It’s always good to watch out for the fall from grace, whether you’re a government that wants to stay true to the people, a proponent of an idea with flaws, or simply someone who thinks he’s all that. Realizing that you can be brought down, and thereby staying true to reality, can paradoxically keep you up, because you’re not building your power on sand.

Bits of the Media, Part Two

Part One

True to the lessons of this summer, I continue reading international news sources. I'm not being consistent with it by any means (all of this stuff comes from what I read on Monday DURING LUNCH), but I'm doing more of it than I did before May, so I've progressed a little bit, at least.

1) I'm completely new to this news source. This is Xinhua News Agency, an official media outlet of the Chinese government. It's like the BBC in that way, in that public money supports it. It's quite different, however, in that it reports directly to the Communist Party of China's publicity department, so some say it will always favor the party line (as in this article discussing China's partnerships with Latin America and this one reporting a protest of a "separatist"'s visit to Australia). (So, it really isn't much like the BBC.) You should not ignore what it reports, though. Because China is becoming more important in the world, I'd say it's near-required to pay at least some attention to it. You can learn a little about how the party thinks and acts, you can read & watch relatively independent reports of sports & natural disasters, and you'll get the chance to read about things like Shenzhen's experiment in "the separation of powers". (Although I can't stop thinking about The Onion's riff on this aspect of Chinese media.)

2) This one scared the bejeebus out of me.

My J110 professor sent this Nation article to my science writing professor over Facebook. (The wall-to-wall post showed up in my news feed.) Although I've seen everything in the article before (whether in both professors' classes, in my internship, or even in the international reporting class), but to see it again, all synthesized into a Nation article, made me cry a little inside. By what my limited experience can tell, all of it is true, and by what my limited experience can feel, all of it is terrifying as I try to enter the field. It ends with a little bit of cheeriness, and as I read it I thought of the Science Media Centre's work in this regard; but nothing can end well enough when the penultimate paragraph sounds like this:

In light of the media upheaval, scientists can no longer assume that a responsible, high-minded press will treat their ideas with the seriousness they deserve, delivering them to policy-makers and the public for sober consideration. Instead, partisan media will convey diametrically opposed versions of where science actually stands on any contentious subject--consider, for example, the difference between how Fox News and NPR cover climate change--even as most of the public (and many policy-makers) will tune out science more or less completely, besieged by other information options.

3) Okay, now for something funny. We need a bit of that every now and then. (Not too much of it, but at least a little.)

My favorite on-the-scene reporting to watch is in inclement weather, and nothing provides inclement weather like a hurricane. And nothing is more fun than to watch reporters try to play cool (or give up the charade!). Time collected the ten best.

That’s a wrap of what I’ve read on the Internet recently. Enjoy your own reading.

Kill the Blog!!!1!1

Check out the London blog. There should be something new there, namely THE HAND OF GOD smiting the page at your command!

It's a NetDisaster. I posted a link to it on my Facebook account a while back, back when you could puke on, worm, zap, or nuke any Web page you wanted. Unfortunately, some major Web sites mistook the most clever application of JavaScript ever as a phishing scam and asked its take-a-chainsaw-to-Paris-Hilton functionality to be taken down. (Phishers: This is why we can't have nice things.) The developer, however, has found a way to let people disasterize their own Web pages by allowing them to plug some of his script into their page's code. I, being a fun-loving and slightly nerdy person, decided to try it. I loved it!

I'm e-mailing the developer back & forth (his name is Denis) about parts of it that don't work so well. (For example, a viewer can't remove the disaster in Firefox or Safari on a Mac, which makes clicking on links a bit difficult. When you scroll down & away from the disaster, though, everything works fine.) I sent him a link to the London blog with the God Almighty disaster plugged into it so he can take a look and see what can be done. If everything works out, it should be widely available, and I can put it there, here, and on an upcoming portfolio Web site. In the meantime, have fun shooting lightning bolts at my writing!

Some Old Writing of Mine

There's this thing I do every once in a while. It's called a FreeWrite, and it's my version of journaling. (I guess. I've never really had a definition for it.) I take out my laptop, open Microsoft Word, and type whatever is in my head, full and unadulterated.

I started doing it in January of my freshman year at IU after reading A Writer's Coach by Jack Hart for class. He said Roy Peter Clark (another important guy in my writing development) is a "plunger;" he writes a "vomit draft" of anything that comes to his head about a topic, and after about fifteen minutes he's found something to do a story about. "In more polite circles," Hart adds, "that's called freewriting," and it's a good way to "muzzle your internal critic and start writing, as fast as you can."

I did it a lot of FreeWrites in the early days, writing about anything that came to my mind in both public and private spheres. In that way, I separated it from its role as a method of finding a topic to write about, and I turned it into something to separate my thoughts from myself so I could look at them objectively and see if I was right or just crazy. Once my writing load increased throughout the year and into my sophomore year, I regrettably wrote less of them. I still write them every now and then, though, especially if I need to empty my head of some issue or look from a distance at a problem. Most of them won't ever see the light of day unless 1) I become famous enough that historians, etc. want to analyze everything I write (Ha!) or 2) the contents apply directly to a current situation (MUCH more likely).

The following falls into the latter category. It's a FreeWrite from 5 March 2008, after a Sunday of shorts weather was followed by three days of crap. Even before today, I had planned to post this because it was enlightening about my thought process and, more importantly, not embarrassing (!). When I was talking with a family friend after Mass today, though, I immediately thought of this, because it pretty much confirmed that there's some substance to what I was thinking that day in March 2008. He didn't use the same analogy (no analogy at all, in fact), but the message was the same: You can't stay satisfied.

(Warning: I talk to myself. Also, I still haven't thought of a better name for the analogy. Also, the explanatory hyperlinks weren't in the original FreeWrite. :-P)

***

I think God’s toying with us.

Or at least with me. It’s this weather, this changing between “OMG, it’s spring!” and “Damn, I forgot my umbrella” and “I never thought I’d say this, but I don’t like snow,” that He’s using to mess with my mind. That, combined with the close proximity to spring break and the light workload I have right now, is making me a little crazy.

However, this may be a good thing. I’m referring to the Life According to a Cell analogy I developed in AP Biology. You know the one (at least, if you’re Me from a later date, you know the one), but I’ll refresh your memory.

The Life According to a Cell analogy (I’ll try to think of a better name if at some point I decide I need a better name) applies the workings of a cell and its organelles to the workings of a person’s life. I’ll start on the level of the cell. There are many processes in a cell (movement across membranes, making ATP, etc.) that are working toward equilibrium, that hallowed state where a cell may say, “I’ve achieved the goal.” That goal remains perpetually elusive, as its surrounding environment supplies new particles and moves existing ones around so that equilibrium cannot be reached.

Though this “hallowed state” is one toward which a cell continuously works, it is dangerous for a cell to reach equilibrium. In fact, if the cell ever has the exact-right concentration of all substances with no movement across membranes and thus reaches said equilibrium, the cell dies. It dies because there is no impetus to continue the processes necessary not only to attain equilibrium, but also to maintain life. There is no polar difference between the surrounding environment and the cell cytoplasm, potentially sending the gradient-dependent cell membrane out of whack; there is no concentration difference between the separate areas of mitochondria, preventing the machinery that makes ATP, a cell’s primary energy source, from working; without the possibility of a controlled environment, a cell cannot provide the necessary conditions that allow peptide strands to fold into necessary proteins. In a state of “comfort,” the cell does nothing and dies.

I’ve noticed myself working in the same way. Just as cell processes function when there is a difference between its present state and equilibrium, so also I function when there is a feeling of dissatisfaction with something. That dissatisfaction can come from many sources: internal uncertainty or just being antsy, a busy schedule, competition, or something missing in a social environment. Whatever the source, I feel compelled to do something by the imperfection of a situation. And just as a cell would die if it ever attained equilibrium, so I find myself “dead” to the world when I seem satisfied with what I have done or when I do not feel the need to do anything. If I feel no pressing need to do anything, and there isn’t any “imperfection” with something that garners my attention, I don’t do anything.

I found evidence of this analogy working in other people. In one example, a story I read in The Indianapolis Star, I believe, examined kids’ workloads with camps, extracurricular activities, music lessons, sports teams, and homework. One of the people quoted, a parent of such a kid, said that he did better in college when he had a busy schedule compared to a lax one, because he was more primed to do work and to do work well. This was not long after reading ahead in AP Bio had revealed to me the aforementioned analogy, and I thought as I read it, “Hey, that jives with my metaphor.”

In light of the Life According to a Cell analogy, I’m starting to question whether this crazy weather is actually God messing with my head. (Oooooo, I should have left it at “me head.” I would have sounded so much like a pirate!) Maybe, in that mysterious way he seems to have trademarked, He’s helping me make the most of my time. If he is, then “Thank you!”; if not, then it doesn’t change the fact that I feel like working now, which is always a good thing.

701 words in 30 minutes

***

Specifications? Directives? Regulations?

I know I said at the beginning that this would be quite a free-form blog with little inherent structure mixed with some unpredictability. As with any human endeavor, however, it needs at least a little stability to stay alive. (“Human endeavor?” I’ve got delusions of grandeur!) As such, I have a few things to say about the operation of this blog. Call them technical points, suggestions, rules of the road, or “they’re more like guidelines, anyway.”

1) At the bottom of each post are three things you can click & check: Like, More of this, and Less of this. The latter two came out of a desire inherent in this blog’s creation to keep up my writing skills, especially after a full semester of visual journalism. If you think I should write like I did in the applicable post more often, you can check “More of this.” If you don’t (because I skipped a logical step, because I used the wrong word, because I was too formal/informal, I’m using too many parentheses), you can check “Less of this” and tell me in a comment or e-mail what you think should change. I’m putting myself out on a limb here, so if you decide to do this, I’ll greatly appreciate constructive criticism but go :p- pbbbbbbbbbt if you’re just annoying.

As for the first check box: it came from here. A commenter (that sounds so formal!) wanted a button like they have on Facebook, and I thought it was a good idea.

Feel free to use or not use them. It’s a good informal feedback mechanism (keyword: informal).

2) If you want to leave a comment, but you don’t have a Google or similar account, you can comment as Anonymous and leave your name at the end of the note so I know who it’s from. If you REALLY want to remain anonymous, though, then I guess you can. ::rolls eyes:: You can always comment on the Facebook link, of course.

3) I like having conversations in the comments on each post. I won’t start them (outside of writing the post), but if you do, I’ll probably respond fairly quickly. (Almost certainly within the day, and sometimes within the hour if I’m watching closely enough.) Unfortunately, I haven’t found if Blogger can do the notifications thing that Facebook does, so some of the conversations may turn into dead ends. I’m okay with that. I don’t expect people to follow my blog as much as I do. They have more to their lives than that. ...Right? ;D

4) The content remains random. I could post something that just happened, a memory from tons of years ago, some newspaper articles, a short observation on life, a book, a joke, a song, a photo, or anything (ANYTHING) that comes up in my head. Eventually I might form a pattern where a day of the week corresponds to a theme, but it will only come out of what has already been established naturally. I won’t try to force it.

...Given that, I might start a series. This blog is officially called, “Wandering Eyes (with a FREE wandering brain)” in reference to my interest in photography and in homage to Billy Mays. (“Call now, and you’ll get another tube of Mighty Putty ABSOLUTELY FREE.” Rest in peace, Billy, rest in peace.) The URL, though, is iseewhatshesaidthere.blogspot.com. It combines an acknowledgement of a joke that’s a bit clever, but not universally LOL-worthy, with the injection (mostly unintentional) of innuendo into a conversation. So, to acknowledge that URL, I’ll end some/most/all posts with either a clever quip (it could be funny, or it could be a case of trying too hard) or an innocent-turned-dirty quote (it could be funny, or it could be a case of trying too hard).

The first one, of the latter kind (so you've been forewarned), is self-referential. I didn't mean to type it as a "that's what she said," but when I read it over I made the connection:

I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

Automatically making crude connections. This is what you learn in college... along with important life skills. Apologies if that was a bit much.

Not what I asked for...

When I was figuring out how fast I could theoretically run down Tower Hill, I forgot some of the formulas I had to use. I hadn’t done that type of problem since my junior year of high school, so I needed a little refresher. Not wanting to find my Physics notebook in my room because 1) it might not be up there and 2) I was lazy, I googled “velocity formulas.” This came up.

I should have searched for “velocity formulae.”

The Sand Makes It Taller: Part 3

(This is the What NOT to Do part.)

...I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

After taking the nifty panoramas, it was time to go back down. My brother told me it’s best not to run, but to stride, taking big steps each time and letting gravity work. He then showed me by striding down to the bottom. It looked like a good idea. (He’s the runner, of course.)

I also thought something else was a good idea: taking photos while I strode down the dune. I steadied the camera (Nikon D80 with a 17-55mm Nikkor lens on it) vertically in both hands, took the first big step, and let gravity work its magic while I snapped blurry picture after blurry picture. (With some crisp ones!)

Just for fun, let’s figure out how fast I was going. The figures are estimates, of course (I didn’t record EVERYTHING about the experience, and it’s by no means a frictionless descent), but it still should give a good idea of how fast I would be going by the time I got to the bottom:

[You can click on it to make it bigger.]

Take the sine, divide by 5.86, multiply by 32.2, ignore resistance due to sand because I’m not that good, and...

What??! 901 miles an hour?! That can’t be right! I must have done something wrong... Oh, right! I can’t use t=d/v to find the amount of time it took to get to the bottom. It’s not a constant velocity! Duh!

Okay, try again.



There! That’s more realistic, given that I ignored air and sand resistance. I would have been going 124.3 ft/s, or 85 mph, at the bottom of the hill.

Notice the verb tense, though: “would have been going.” Conditional perfect progressive tense. Conditional on the assumptions that 1) I am superhuman and 2) I made it to the bottom without stopping.

Those, of course, are flawed assumptions. ...There’s still doubt on the first one, but the second one is definitely false. Let me tell you why.

As I continued down the dune, I got steadier and more confident in my ability to not fall or drop my camera. So, I took my left hand off the camera and started to do the “swimming” motion you could do to help maximize your effort in going downhill. I didn’t have my other arm to match with it, though, so it started out like the normal pumping that runners do in flat-ground running.

My brother, looking up from the bottom, later said it looked like I was a frickin’ madman (especially the swimming part), and I have to admit, it felt like that at first. Eventually, though, I got it to look less ridiculous, and before I knew it I had my left arm doing the swimming motion normally. I kept my right hand (with the camera) in front of me, still taking shots of the ever-nearing shore, and I started to envision, nay dream deliriously of my triumphant run past my brother and through the beach and onto (not in, onto!) the water.

But that’s just like a wide receiver seeing the touchdown before he drops the catch in the end zone. Three-quarters of the way down, the most nefarious property of sand reared its ugly head: the aforementioned “Your feet also get buried a little bit” Tripping Property.

The front of my right foot dug in a bit too deep at the end of a stride. My left foot carried forward, but when my right foot tried to do the same thing the dune said, “Not today!” The swimming motion turned back into a flailing motion, and in the next instant I fell face-first into the sand.

Fortunately, sand also has the property of giving, so in a great act of charity it didn’t act like asphalt when I fell face-first. Unfortunately, I didn’t really fall face-first. I fell camera-first.

Lens-first, really.


::slight breeze as I open my eyes and look out at the desolation::

I spat out some of the sand in my mouth, saw the camera with the buried lens attached lying down in front of me, and immediately thought, “Before I get up, let’s take a picture. I know it’s ridiculous, but it’s just so I can remember the humiliation and maybe not do it again.” I aimed it towards me, and to my everlasting joy it took, so the photo served as an affirmative test of whether the camera still worked.

I heard my brother in the distance. He was laughing, of course. I realized for the first time that the whole charade probably looked hilarious. After I pictured it in my head, I started laughing, too. Through the sand, of course.

I spent the rest of the day spitting sand out of my mouth, shaking sand out of my hair, emptying sand out of my pockets, and hoping that I didn’t have to drop too much money out of my account to pay for repairs. Fortunately, sand only got into the zoom mechanism of the lens, making it harder to zoom in & out but still enabling me to take pictures. There was no sand in the body or in the actual lens, and the fall didn’t cause any damage.

I sent in the lens last Tuesday to be cleaned for $78.50. It should be good as new soon. Until then, I promise never to run downhill uncontrollably while taking pictures. And I’ll never (NEVER!) again underestimate the downhill of Tower Hill.

Or, you know, the uphill. There’s no shame in walking it.

P.S.: Please, someone check my math on that speed problem. Challenge my assumptions, redo the calculations, or even add in air & sand resistance if you want. (It’s been three semesters since Calculus II and three YEARS since Physics. I’m a bit rusty.) If you can be the first to find a realistic answer, I’ll give you a cookie. Seriously.

The Sand Makes It Taller: Part 2

I last visited Warren Dunes State Park on Lake Michigan when I was 11 years old or thereabouts. I remember it, not for the huge freshwater lake next to it (the beach doesn’t even figure into my memory), but for the mountains of sand behind the beach. ...To me, at least, they were mountains. When you’re that young, even the living room ceiling seems ungodly tall.

Despite the difficulty in walking up 240 feet of sand at a 25-degree incline when you’re 11, I climbed all the way to the top. I climbed it slowly, but I made it. I regard it as one of the greatest achievements of my young life, right behind earning the Eagle Scout award and appearing on the Brain Game. Near the top, I played around with extended family, and I got buried in the sand along with my brother and cousin.

After nine years I took another family trip up there, this time with my mom, dad, and brother. It was three days after I had returned from London, and it was the last leg of my Michigan vacation before I had to return to my stateside job. We drove to the park in the typical family minivan (Chrysler Town & Country, first bought when I was in seventh grade, full of picnic food, lawn chairs, and a Frisbee), and I saw the beach first. I said to myself, “That’s weird. I know I’ve been here, but I don’t remember any of—aha! There we go,” as I turned to see my old nemesis, Tower Hill. It (He? For indeed, I had personified it) was different than I remembered. Yes, there was still a lot of trees at the top, which gave the impression of a mountain capped with green snow, but two essential things were different:

1) The weather was brilliant! No overcast or drizzle today; the sun shone brighter, the clouds were puffier, and the sky burned bluer than any other time I’d been to a beach.

2) Tower Hill was... smaller. Of course, it wasn’t really smaller, at least not significantly. (When something’s made of sand, it’s bound to lose a few particles at the top.) However, I had grown significantly taller. It was like the feeling that the drinking fountains at your old elementary school had shrunk since you were last there. Once a seventh of its height seemed chopped off due to my own growth, it didn’t seem so intimidating.

After parking the car, we got out and set up the lawn chairs. Mom & Dad sat on the beach while my brother & I threw the Frisbee around. Eventually we got tired of that and decided to ::dramatic head turn & close-up:: climb Tower Hill. ::ba-ba-BUUUUUUUUUM::

[runninghistory]My brother runs cross-country in college. He’s been in organized running since fourth grade and knows how to run up hills. I haven’t “run for fun” since the fall semester of my senior year of high school. The last hill I climbed was on a bike three months ago.[/runninghistory]

When we got to the foot of Tower Hill, I looked up and thought, “This won’t be too hard.” With camera in hand to take killer panoramas at the top, I started to run up the hill. My brother started to walk.

About a quarter of the way up I looked back and saw that I had climbed up double what my brother had climbed. I felt pretty good about myself: [madden]”Here’s a guy who doesn’t let his tendinitis get in the way of beating his brother in something!”[/madden]. I kept climbing without stopping...

...until I felt the tendinitis. And the heat. And the heavy breathing. I started running more slowly to make sure I could reach the top without stopping. Eventually the slow running turned into walking, which turned into stepping, which turned into just a small break, I’ll start back up in two seconds, okay here we go for another fifteen-second climb, oh hey Kenny go ahead and pass me, now for another two-second break, OH GOD let’s just stand here and enjoy the scenery from two-thirds of the way up.

In my decision to run up the dune, I forgot that it was a DUNE. It’s made of sand. Sand gives way when you step on it. When you push off it to make the next step, your foot slides back a little and you lose some of the progress you made. Your feet also get buried a little bit, which only adds to the redundant work you have to do. I swear, taking two steps up Tower Hill is like taking five steps on land or three steps in water. To me, at least. You might figure that differently.

But I made it to the top again. Dead tired, but on top. And probably faster than last time.

Part 3 on Tuesday.

The Sand Makes It Taller

[or What NOT to Do Once You're Atop Tower Hill]

I typed out this whole story, and it got to about 2,000 words. I can't stand blog posts that long. (Only one post in my London blog was that long, and that's because it was about a trip with a lot of family significance.) I'm sure you can't stand long posts, either, especially from me. So, this story will come in three parts.

Part 1: Facts & Figures

My height at age 11: 4’ 11” OR 59”

My height now: 5’ 10” OR 70”

Height of Tower Hill in Warren Dunes: 240’ OR 2,880”

Angle of elevation: about 25°

Ratio of 11-year-old height to Tower Hill: 1:49

Ratio of current height to Tower Hill: 1:41

Acceleration due to gravity: -32.2 ft/s²

Starting speed running down Tower Hill: 4 mph OR 5.87 f/s

I'll let you chew on that a bit. I'm going camping this weekend, so the next part will come on Sunday.

I Felt Old and Young at the Same Time

So, my brother had locked the shed keys in the shed on Monday, and we had called over a neighbor to cut the lock on the door so I could trim the weeds in the backyard basin. The neighbor brought a kid with him. His name was Joel, he was two years old, I'm guessing he was the neighbor's nephew, and he was one of the cutest kids ever. Curly blond hair, with the start-stop walking of a toddler and maybe the most perfect cheeks when he smiled.

Moving away from the cuteness...

While the door lock fought with the neighbor's saw (the lock was so strong, he had to get a new saw bit!), Joel & I started talking. Of course, it was a short conversation, because most of his words weren't fully formed, but it was also short because he saw our playground. I encouraged him to climb on it, remembering how big it felt to me when I started playing on it in kindergarten. (And he was two!) I brought him over to the drawbridge, showed him how to climb the ladder, and put him on one of the swings.

The swings proved to be the harsh separation between my childhood and my adulthood. I had never noticed before that the plastic coverings around the swing chains had holes, exposing the rusted links. I did now. So, when he started to swing, my first thought was not, "I wish I were that short again so I could enjoy this swing as much as he is." Instead it was, "Tetanus."

When he continued climbing on the playground, my first thought was, "Splinters."

When he wanted to slide down the slide, my first thought was, "Bird poop all over it."

Fortunately, my second thought in each instance was, "Shut up! He's fine." Also fortunately, that second thought came very quickly, and I was able to throw the first thought out just as quickly. (Well, not the first thought on the slide. I wouldn't want him to have bird-poop stains on his pants. That's just gross.)

Those first thoughts scared me, though, no matter how fast I disregarded them. For the first time, I thought as a worried father would. Or at least, what I imagine a worried father would. I wouldn't know for sure outside of depictions on TV, because my father was all for me playing on the playground. (He BUILT the playground!) Because of that worry, I thought in those above moments, "If I had to act like a worried father in a snap, I could." Of course, I don't have that chance right now (no "brown chicken brown cow"), but if I had to, I could. I wouldn't want to (because I'd take out the "worried" part), but I could.

Eventually the neighbor sawed off the lock (after partly wearing down the second fiberglass bit) and left, bringing Joel back home with him. I said, "'Bye, Joel!" knowing that I had taken another step away from my younger days. That step is part of a long journey to full adulthood, and that journey is a lot of fun (and not just some of the time), but every now and then I wish, and maybe you wish, too, that a backyard playground seemed like Mt. Everest. (Or that the mulch around it was actually hot molten lava. I've entertained that thought recently on the paint lines of a parking lot.)