The Impossible Journal

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling." -Oscar Wilde

2011-05-20T13:53:00.009-04:00

Perhaps it was the longstanding SouthCoast tradition of miscomprehending the role of the artist in society, but I have always understood writing as a solitary craft.
I was never the type to join writers' groups, so I was fortunate to high school on an autarchic little island of Jesuit erudition. In Fall River, the intellectual backwater where the academy was situated, creative writing is considered a profligate luxury and associated with the lavender silk pillow set.
Elsewhere -- let's say, oh, Newport -- one's pals were perpetually dipping their quills into the community-fostered inkpot and scratching invisible keepsakes into some packsack or other; it's hard to not wring the sighs and cries and forge them into some attempt at beautiful music. I was afforded plenty of opportunities to share my poetry publicly. Which panned out quite well, with a few local literary publications printing a few pieces at no cost to me.
And once, I was actually compensated for it.
In free copies of the magazine.
(The magazine, incidentally, was printed for free by some sucker and offered at artsy establishments without charge.)
But that was last century, when the idea of reading poetry aloud before an audience was an exercise for greybeards to practice before bluehairs.
I practiced my own penchant for performance on professional and amateur proscenia. I could see no reason to muddy the literary waters by conjoining poetry and drama (*coff*Shakespeare*coff), but seeing as how entropy was firmly mucking up every other definition that I had ever learned, "performance art" became the obscenely ubiquitous medium of expression for poetry.
Or what passed, in some quarters, for it.
You may remember the shorthand sitcom stereotype of "poetry reading." Black turtlenecked clove cigarette smokers snapping their fingers at self-impressed berks who think that "melancholy" coordinates metrically with "broken doll" if you frown hard enough. You know the bit.But at poetry slams, similar clichés assaulted.
Poetry slams brought movement and instruments and percussion and recordings into the coffeehouse. Young people (and, dude, twenty-five years ago, I was one) were treated to Schoolhouse Rock versions of Horatian odes -- well, without the Augustan principles and with more pauses and swear words.
At some point in the evolution of the form, merely reading a poem, without mixed media presentations and throbbing basslines, was considered boring. Stuffy. And, um, not really poetry at all.
Since I was playing the museum and library circuit -- where bookish unrhymed iambs of maritime irony played better -- I would not have minded even the evolution of reading events into hip-hop franchises.
If it weren't for some humorless, witless, and charmless participants.
"Irony," as it turns out, requires lots of those sneaky meaning-filled "words," and usually not ones that served in coarser contexts as substitutes for "genitalia."
There was the woman who screamed obscenities while ripping up family photographs. There was the couple who shouted inanities and then full-bodyslammed each other. There were the ones who gave heft to bland words like "stupid" by inserting painfully uncomfortable silences before, during, and after. The ones who would fall to the stage and say, "CRASH!" The ones who spoke in a soft whisper except for the times when they hollered.
I found some of them to be fierce, earnest, mean-spirited, frightened, impolite, unpolished, tattooed, angry, blathering prats who were unaware that the novelty had worn out decades before. I was not familiar with their vocabulary and my more-often technical observations were generally ignored because concerns like metaphor and comprehensibility were oldhat distractions. Because I was neither relentlessly self-absorbed nor sickeningly fawning.
I had a college "advisor" who found fly-fishing not only diverting but uncommon enough to appear hip, and extolled the virtues of freshwater angling while tying lures during our advisory sessions. Turns out that he did this so that when his wife called, he could say that he was tying nymphs in his office. Which he found exceedingly clever. He spent long hours attempting to parse the poetry of Bob Dylan's popular songs, claiming that Dylan was the only songwriter whose work stood up to classical literary analysis. While twisting waxed thread around the shank of a hook, he twisted himself in excogitating convolutions in order to prove Zimmerman's lyrical acumen. I handed him the lyricsheet from Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom.
That's around the time when a new faculty advisor showed up with a bottle of Dewar's and a syllabus filled with Eugene O'Neill.
A poem is not a song. When the words of a song can be effective without performance -- when appreciated first-hand from the page and not blared from a stage -- that is where poetry lives for me. I have been moved by some fine and new poets. Locally, I know of many. They are hard to find, unless you know where to pick up their chapbooks, which says less about the poets' public relations skills than it does about the public's relationship with poets.
But this intrigues me:

NORTH DARTMOUTH, Massachusetts (May 4, 2011) – Baker Books and WhalingCity Review are thrilled to welcome Janet E. Aalfs to the bookstore’s Bean & Leaf Café for a poetry reading on Saturday, May 21st at 7:00PM. Aalfs, who was the poet laureate of Northampton, Massachusetts(2003-2005), weaves poetry and martial arts dance in performing,teaching, and social justice activism locally, nationally and internationally.

"Intrigues me," much more than this:
Because I would rather extrapolate on the meanings of words and their order. Rather than concentrate on the personality or the performer.

O My Lily of Killarney

2011-04-25T09:05:00.005-04:00

I have only ever heard two people in Rhode Island utter the name of the last Hawaiian queen, and they both pronounced that name dramatically differently.
The first -- a Fifth Grade teacher who had our class memorize the locations of Union and Confederate losses as well as the names of the hapless generals whose incompetence he held as cause -- intoned the designation as some variation of "Lily O'Killarney."
The only other person who ever said the name was the breathtaking Sophronia (mentioned here and here) who, while recently visiting her alma mater Brown University and avoiding Emma Watson, exhaled the name of "Leeliwokeelahnay" incidentally, carelessly, and as though she were referring to her mother's great-aunt.
Which she probably was.
And that's what I got for mentioning Sarah Vowell's newest book and that it's about Hawaii.
As I steamed through Unfamiliar Fishes -- Sarah Vowell's gift to us dockbound vicarious history vacationers -- it was the latter's voice that I heard wrestling control from the unmistakably characteristic Sarah Vowell. Whenever I read a rumination of historical events ruminated upon by Sarah Vowell, I invariably hear the veritable voice of Sarah Vowell reading it. And this without the audiobook version.

Blame it on my decades of blade-and-tape audio editing, call screening, or phone center customer servicing, but once I've heard a voice, it's filed in the soggy attaché that I secret behind my eyes. But whenever I see a word that isn't German and possesses numerous neighboring vowels, I can hear Sophronia's luscious mezzo-soprano, casually and fragantly dropping the name of some secluded beach or other on the island where she herself exotically bloomed, moonlight dappling her soft cocoa skin, softly dusted by fine volcanic sand languorously affixed with playful errant splashes of warm salt sea...
You know, like humuhumunukunukuāpua‘a. Or kahlua. Or uhaul.
Although, a weekend running around the former Sandwiches with Sarah Vowell would be a pleasant diversion. She apparently knows everybody and certainly recognizes the best spots for plate lunch. And the bonus is that for every hike to Kealakekua Bay with her precious nephew, we get to hang out in a moldy house museum or library stacks with some ardent and single-minded archivist caricatures.

Although I am sure that we'd argue about whether sugar laborers or American whalers are the root of Hawaiian Portuguese cuisine.
I guess we'd just have to sample lots of it.
Unfamiliar Fishes is a fine sampler of another variety of fare.
One might button down Unfamiliar Fishes as a sequel to The Wordy Shipmates in that once again, Protestant busybodies in their missionary zeal spoil everything. The Wordy Shipmates features spot-on discussions of John "Ronald Reagan Will Misquote Me Often" Winthrop and our local celebrities Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson. These folks and their progeny -- divergent though their intentions were -- sank the hooks pretty deep into New England soil. Deep enough so that a new generation of clumsy genocidists feels compelled to exercise itself even further west and further demonstrate what a bunch of greedy clever prissy selfish hypocrites they were.
Unfamiliar Fishes testifies to a historian's vocation: to introduce us to people who can no longer edit themselves or tweak their own reputations. Sarah Vowell lets the participants tell their stories, usually in their own words, and sometimes repetitively. The still-wordy missionaries ("mikaneles"), Bible-literate haoles, ill-prepared maoli -- and their historical and contemporary mouthpieces. At one point, I found myself immersed in an engaging reminiscence of the Nation of Hawaii before it became clear that I had neglected to return to Sarah Vowell's book after briefly consulting Hawaii's Story by Hawaii's Queen on my Kindle. I don't know if Sarah Vowell was channeling Queen Liliuokalani. Recently, I've found that technology sometimes troubles me.
Pre-ordering a new Sarah Vowell book and awaiting the Kindle upload date, I was put in mind of haunting the college pub, anticipating the presence of some sweet object of schoolboy fascination from History of Literature class.
You spend a lot of the night getting up the nerve, but when you do introduce yourself, you immediately fall in with a welcoming and agreeable companion.
You giggle about Andrew Marvell's time-consuming slampiece, sing along with the Neil Young on the jukebox (who THEHELL played that ?), quote The Brady Bunch and that funny NPR show, try the drink that the bartender has "been working on," and nobody exchanges numbers because you'll be in class Wednesday and Friday.
I was mailed a copy of The Wordy Shipmates, and even though I am a self-impressed gasbag recognized widely for "bombastic pomposity" (I can't let go), I never wrote a review. I understand that when someone sends you a book for free before it is even dropped, you probably should do. No such demands were made on me, but I said nice things anyway. In a brief statement about something else.
And then Sarah Vowell comes to New Bedford, sneaks around the Whaling Historical National Scenic Shopping District, and doesn't even have her people send a note to advise me that I have been officially snubbed.
Sarah Vowell has made some impression on the local Visitor's Center volunteer coterie. Just after the publication of her exchange with a decidedly emblematic New Bedfidgian ("Oh No Not Another Moby-Dickhead"), the Cetacean Holocaust National Paving Blocks Aren't Cobblestones Dammit Park people are actively seeking new volunteers who will gush about Melville's big ole book.
I am sure, however, that the New Bedford Office of Who's In Charge of Tourism This Week appreciates Sarah Vowell's strict observance of the "You can't say 'New Bedford' without saying 'Whaling Museum'" Law (although she missed the opportunity to comment on the "burgeoning arts scene" like everybody else does). I would like to sincerely thank her for not mentioning the name of the sham house museum/banquet facility that she claims to have visited while here, and then admitting that New Beige had some passing something to do with "sailors" in Hawaii. I beg her to not do a book about whaling even though her wit, scholarship, and charm would completely blow Nat Philbrick -- and Rory Nugent for that matter -- off the shelves. And I appreciate that a woman who doesn't drive begins her book at the Rainbow Drive-In in Honolulu.
It should also be noted that, given the opportunity to take on the very same subject matter -- the effects of mikanele on Hawaii -- I would have turned out a novelty pamphlet explaining how Mele Kalikimaka ever happened.
Mahalo to you Sarah Vowell.

Contributions to The War Effort

2011-04-12T04:26:00.002-04:00

The Teams That Meet in Caffs

2011-04-07T11:40:00.007-04:00

Recent distracting local scuttlebutt -- referencing the comic computer casino capers of an immodest, slovenly, malaprop-wielding, aliterate bumpkin who is generally hailed by some voters of Fall River as their heroic representative -- has put me in mind of my own short-lived dependence on "internet cafés" in the past. Actual Internet Cafés, like the ones that real businesspeople use to check their e-mail, communicate with clients and remain au courant with office hijinks; not dingy storefronts filled with unashamed seniors indulging their tawdry gaming proclivities. I patronized the former and repudiate the latter. As does the state Attorney General. For fifteen or so years, I have done my home computing at my home exclusively. Except for various smartphones in various settings. But this was not always my way. At a time low in the mid-Nineteen-Nineties, I delighted in hours at the helm of somebody else's Dad's weekend carousing barge, particularly if the old man wouldn't sail it himself all the way to the holiday nest at Cape Pickatrailer. (This was the below-the-radar work that offered itself whenever I swaggered my braggadocio-laden accounts of TallShips™ adventures: "Boat Delivery.") I grabbed my Army-Navy surplus store Swiss gas mask bag (which held my Sony DiscMan and not much else), heaved myself and the Port-A-Potty 37's bowline onto the dock, and made my way into town, hoping that the walk would ameliorate my three-day sealegs and I would not disconcert others by appearing the proverbial drunken sailor. On the other hand, although it was mid-morning, my shipmates hoved themselves to the nearest bar in order to become just that. They were a nice married couple who spoke their own language. Not an utterly foreign language -- he was from White Plains and she was from Newport -- but another language which consisted of a few common English words which seemed to represent significant terms, but not the ones that we're used to. Cooing and giggling furnished the rest of their vocabulary, grammar, and punctuation.

HE: Teehee gold seams (pause) Norfolk.
SHE: Yep. And Wednesday. Mmmmmm. Ha ha.

Experienced individually, either was a pleasant and sometimes downright clever conversationalist. Together, even my penchant for linguistic vagaries was stretched. I welcomed chatting with them each singularly; I enjoyed their tales of Caribbean ports and deliveries, and I often considered joining their much- and only just-contemplated boat charter company. All that I required was a 100-ton Near Coastal Master's ticket. (And that hadn't been secured during any of the years that I had been sailing, so, well, er...) But dinner theater and office job and steadier friendships on sturdier decks would happen and those waters would just have to wait. And wait. Years before, as over-extended costumed interpreter and crew on a just-as-harebrained wooden ship, I had become unduly -- but discreetly, which is to say, unrequitedly -- enamored of a pierced-tongued Phish Phan who insisted that I procure something called a "HotMail account" so that we could "stay in touch." I failed to see the necessity of using a computer mail gadget for this, since she waited tables near the masts that I labored under and I could ~~stalk~~ ~~ogle~~ SEE her every day. I offered that justification to her, but on the quiet recalled that these internetwork on-line cyber things were rife with rumors of potential for abuse. Plus: "HotMail." Doesn't that sound kind of sordid? As longtime readers of this Journal know, I was living in the Eighteenth Century at the time. As that stupid TallShip™ prepared to cast off docklines and embark on yet another pointless meander up the coast, that enthralling hippie handed me a slip of paper that reeked of patchouli; it displayed her name with random numbers addended plus that @hotmail suffix. That was two years before I found myself wandering, through this particular North Carolina seaport college town, seeking caffeine and a newspaper, I spied a quaint storefront clean but festooned with the usual sort of college town concert, roommate, poetryreading fliers and ... something else. This coffee shop had computers. Four of them. That one could use to access the Internetwork. This was one of those things -- an Internet Café. A thirtysomething in a light linen suit sat clacking away at the keyboard, looking up every so often at the screen of the boxy television before him. A college kid was navigating AOL. And soon, I was sitting between them, searching for a slip of paper that I had hidden in the cover of a Liz Phair CD, fumbling my way through an awful e-mail to that enthralling hippie chick whose address was on that slip of paper, and revealed that I would be pulling into Cape Pickatrailer and since that's, um, well, I was just, you know, letting her know, because, well, you know, I might, um, you know, and uh...

That was the only "gambling" that I ever engaged in at any Internet café.

(This presentation includes photographs of Maureen O'Sullivan, Annette Funicello with some guy, Romy Schneider, and Jan Sterling.)

Sloes'n'Blows

2011-04-01T00:27:00.013-04:00

Fortune magazine recently published another incrimination of suckers who still pay their employees. Awkwardly encumbered with an unnecessary question mark, it's entitled Unpaid jobs: The new normal? and will surely excite profiteers. The upshot is something that non-profits have known all along -- that the work of full-time benefitted workers is a drain on office resources and there are always eager volunteers to do the work required. With or without formal training or actual experience.
This is not to say that eager volunteers are unnecessary burdens to non-profits. Many of them are also entitled busy-bodies with an undeserved, over-developed sense of ownership.
They are not, however, unaware that the reason that they don't get paid to do their "jobs" is that the hole-in-the-ring leadership doesn't bother to do theirs. Which is to effectively raise revenue for the organization.
In my youth last century, the morning jitney ride to school provided a remarkable glimpse into what my first job in broadcasting would be like. That is to say: both were overseen by a cantankerous judgmental old coot who chomped on a cheap cigar during his shift and played mid- to lo-tempo Top Ten Hits on cheap equipment.
If I wasn't rolling my eyes at whatever noises issued forth out of a self-impressed maw, I was trying to drown out the sound by conjugating Latin verbs or rereading some funnybook or other.
I still thank both of these creepy geezers for the opportunities that they gave me to succeed in something other than what I was intending to do at the time. I chose to walk the mile to school on nicer days and eventually swore off toiling in the bitter desolate sham that is local AM Radio.
Local AM radio is still a bitter desolate sham, and still allowing its on-air types the opportunity to misquote and twist even simple pop culture references. Here, we hear one of those buffoons attribute a very famous line from "Cool Hand Luke" to the wrong actor. (Don't listen to the whole rambling "editorial;" the first ten seconds will suffice.) Here's the actual scene, with what the tiresome former newspaper man calls Paul Newman's "iconic wisecrack":
The former "Star Station" is now providing the opportunity to log on to their website and play tacky "sweepstakes" games. As soon as you give them a bunch of personal information. All you need is an ashtray and a styrofoam cup of Cremora, and you're ready to play scratch-off games online!
Just like the ones you could play if the authorities hadn't just shut down the "internet cafes" owned by a pathologically mischief-making city councillor.
Remember when I said that I'd forgive Fall River anything because I believe in the city where I was born? APRIL FOOLS!
Jane Powell was never referred to as "J-Poww."

(This presentation celebrates Jane Powell.)

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...

2011-03-02T14:15:00.002-05:00

I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot..

Debruary 28

2011-02-28T00:45:00.002-05:00

Debbie Reynolds.

Debruary 27

2011-02-27T00:13:00.001-05:00

Debra Messing

Debruary 26

2011-02-26T00:04:00.001-05:00

Debbe Dunning

Debruary 25

2011-02-25T00:19:00.003-05:00

Deborah Gibson

Debruary 24

2011-02-24T00:04:00.002-05:00

Debbie Gibson

Debruary 23

2011-02-23T00:08:00.003-05:00

Debbie Allen

Debruary 22

2011-02-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

Deborah Saint-Vil

Debruary 21

2011-02-21T00:05:00.001-05:00

Deborah Kerr

Debruary 20

2011-02-20T00:13:00.000-05:00

Deborah Kerr

Debruary 19

2011-02-19T00:00:00.001-05:00

Deborah Watling

Debruary 18

2011-02-18T00:02:00.001-05:00

Debbie Harry

Debruary 17

2011-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Debbie Harry

Debruary 16

2011-02-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Debra Winger

Debruary 15

2011-02-15T00:04:00.000-05:00

Debora Iyall

Debruary 14

2011-02-14T00:01:00.001-05:00

Debra Paget

Debruary 13

2011-02-13T00:01:00.001-05:00

Debra Paget

Debruary 12

2011-02-12T00:09:00.001-05:00

Debra Paget

Debruary 11

2011-02-11T00:05:00.003-05:00

Debi Mazar

Debruary 10

2011-02-10T00:07:00.000-05:00

Debi Mazar

The Month of Debruary it is, then...

2011-02-09T12:20:00.002-05:00

Bitterandrew at Armagideon Time, has devoted this -- granted, modest -- month to celebrating the funny paper perturbations of Debbi Anderson. Since the Date With Debbi corner has been taken (it's actually the intersection of Archieclone Lane and Womenslib Groove), I've rooted around the barn and found some old postcards that the workers have tacked up, some of which feature people yclept some-Deb-or-other.Since this Journal is late to the table, I'll have to pile on a bit of Reynolds here. Out of deference (or debference, possibly) to our friend, I share the spirit of Debruary, if not the actuality.

Apponogansett Tommy 2011

2011-02-02T01:57:00.002-05:00

Apponogansett Tommy reminds people that the gig is up. That Pennsylvania marmota monax has been finally widely exposed as a mere woodchuck by newscasters and other fake journalists who can't find anything else to say about the deplorable parading of "Punxawillywhateverthehell." Apponogansett Tommy counts forty-six days from today until the Vernal Equinox. Go ahead and count'em yourself. For yourself. (Roughly six and a half weeks left in the season of Winter.)
Tommy's personal tender admits that the meteorologically-inclined mammal "doesn't hibernate so much as indulge in a felicitous lifestyle that involves lengthy napping periods. That lifestyle also includes eating, staring intently at absolutely nothing on that wall casing, observing the insides of his eyelids, and eating."

2011 APPONOGANSETT TOMMY FUNFACT™ !

Apponogansett Tommy snores.

This Should Be A National Holiday...

2011-01-29T00:03:00.006-05:00

... and "Fields Day" just seems so appropriate a sobriquet for the observance of the birthday of acclaimed vaudeville juggler W.C. Fields.
The one thing that my dear Pére and I shared was an appreciation for the work of William Claude Dukenfield.

We each also could emit, when prevailed upon, a passable "Go away kid, ye bother me."

I suspect, though, that my father's reading of the line was a tad more determined.

Robert Burns, In His Own Words, On The Poet's 252nd Birthday

2011-01-25T00:03:00.003-05:00

"What signifies the life o' man an' 'twere na for the lasses, O?"

Leezie Lindsay (fragment, 1795)
Will ye go to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay,
Will ye go to the Hielands wi' me?
Will ye go to the Hielands, Leezie Lindsay,
My pride and my darling to be.

To The Beautiful Miss Eliza J-N, On her Principles of Liberty and Equality (1794)
How, Liberty! girl, can it be by thee nam'd?
Equality too! hussey, art not asham'd?
Free and Equal indeed,
While mankind thou enchainest,
And over their hearts a proud Despot so reignest.

Beware O' Bonie Ann (1789)
Ye gallants bright, I rede you right,
Beware o' bonie Ann;
Her comely face sae fu' o' grace,
Your heart she will trepan:
Her een sae bright, like stars by night,
Her skin sae like the swan;
Sae jimply lac'd her genty waist,
That sweetly ye might span.
Youth, Grace, and Love attendant move,
And pleasure leads the van:
In a' their charms, and conquering arms
They wait on bonie Ann.
The captive bands may chain the hands,
But love enslaves the man:
Ye gallants braw, I rede you a',
Beware o' bonie Ann(e)!

(This presentation includes photographs of Lindsay Wagner, Eliza Dushku, Anne Francis†, and Anne Hathaway.)

A year later...

2011-01-12T17:49:00.002-05:00

Haiti is still a mess.

At sea, you only hear echoes...
At the helm
I can feel each remark of the rudder:
Tremors and shudders of currents just
as I feel the familiar details of the wheel.
Varnished brightwork trim for cruising
past those very first landfalls of Europeans lost
with their wide-eyed supplications,
the corporate beaches and actors' retreats.

You cannot see my hand upon the wheel.
Yet I am the one that you indict
Of cruising idly by,
engaged in some other pursuit,
morally unaccountable,
merely inattentive,
or
maybe
just not ever there at all.

I do not know, nor can I,
how your home and land has just this minute
been shaken and torn away like the rent mainsail
I had often furled and thanked --
I cannot hear you call out like a child
As a child's teeth crush child's flesh crushed
In hours of horrible darkness.

I am barefoot.
And you have no shoes.

EIGHT BELLS
and I feel that all is well
as my relief appears
Driver ex machina.
I breathe in a cigarette, and I exhale
the last four hours.

The weather deck and the one below
Are Solid
and must not ever sink or tear.
Because then I would be lost too:
The helm gone with the helm
Pintle and gudgeon

(Please continue to provide generous encouragement to those who provide relief in Haiti.)

"crosshairs"

2011-01-08T16:28:00.002-05:00

“We’ll aim for these races and many others. This is just the first salvo in a fight to elect people across the nation who will bring common sense to Washington. Please go to sarahpac.com and join me in the fight."

(attributed to Sarah Palin, March 24, 2010)

Wrong again.

Soles'n'Bowls

2011-01-07T03:01:00.011-05:00

I would have invited folk to stately Goon Manor for a convivial festival commemorating another one of my birthdays, but the valiant hovel remuddlers have given me an early present: SCAFFOLDING! And it's RIGHT IN THE WAY!
Try to celebrate appropriately, however is customary in your burg.
In some markets, this means, of course, wishing Katie Couric a "Happy Birthday."

Here's a picture of Lea Thompson, though. Because it's my birthday.

As I have learned, one cannot constantly grind away at relentless resistance and recuse. Nor should one feel confident about one's legitimacy in broadcasting when leaving uncomfortable dead air, not using the intro to do time/temp/innuendo, and speaking over the vocals.
I do not intend to read Moby-Dick this weekend. For fourteen years, the Old Dartmouth Historical Society has hosted a reading ("Twenty-Five Hours of 'Dick") by a confederacy of Herman Melville fans and scholars and appreciative readers, including your ThirdMate -- for at least five of those years.
All right, once, I got bumped by a heavy hitter museum donator or something and once had to read an entire page in costume, but I was there. Even directed staged readings of Chapter 40 ("Midnight, Forecastle") which they are also doing tomorrow for what some guy said is the first time.
Besides the coffee that tasted like hot dogs that first time I attended, refreshments included "grog" that was some manner of bug juice and pastries that were meant to be evocative of hard tack. It was all very proper since the docents who ran the affair were all very conscientious but were neglectful of the need for huge doses of caffeine by people who breathe anywhere near them. This year's lubberly marketing (despite surely authorizing the spoiler-filled "when to read" article in the S-T that doesn't even mention my favorite chapter while sharing quotes from staffers who seem a little tipsy) features various posters that present conflicting imagery (as if the publicity staff just couldn't decide). But they get the times right for all of the appurtenant fol-de-rol, and it appears to be a swell time for the kids around whom all things must be devised.
The most fun -- for folks watching at home via live streaming technology and Tweeting on Twitter, the most useless of all social media -- will be the erstwhile readers who mispronounce industry jargon like "bowline" and "boatswain" and "forecastle" and "top-gallant sail."
I also already read Moby-Dick this year. On Tuesday January 3, the 170th anniversary of Herman Mellville's leaving of New Bedford on the whaler Acushnet. When you were supposed to.

(This presentation includes pictures of Katherine Anne Couric, Lea Thompson, Jan Sterling, Leslie Brooks, and Lindsay Lohan. Enjoy my birthday!)

Whaler Acushnet, Leaving New Bedford

2011-01-03T00:45:00.004-05:00

That it is a winter morning
means nothing to the outgoing swell.

It is assumed that Envy disembarks
When the last line
Is sopped aboard and
That covetous Regret
Stands on the oil-stained wharf
Inhaling the acrid sourness
Of a barrel gone to waste.

We light the world.

Machinations of the fishery mock
Such chimera --
South Sea
cannibals
Audacious pyrates --
Vain fictions unsuited to the counting
house
Will not be entered into the ledgers.

We light the world.

170 years ago today, Herman Melville left New Bedford on the Acushnet, to harvest whales.

Soles'n'Bowls

2010-12-31T00:01:00.005-05:00

Why are so many online journals, sites, or "blogs" relatively quiet? Once upon a time, folk were nearly hourly keyboard-jockeying their link-filled and .jpg-attached way into the view of millions with Internet access. Now -- except in the case of some superior products -- an infrequent dab of benign personal observations suffice.
Speaking for myself and this Journal, I derive satisfaction from the shortform of social media (see the Facebook widget on the port rail?) and I grew tired of mocking local broadcasters, publications, and websites whose owners and operators neglect standards and spelling and grammar. Pointing out examples of the SouthCoast aversion to quality is, in the admonition of the old saw, like teaching a pig to sing.
It frustrates you and annoys the pig.
Taking swats at the low-hanging fruit of wretched SouthCoastery is a frustrating practice since the stink is uncompromising. For every suggestion of a dictionary, there are three dozen who say that "speling dont mean shit." For each nod to widely-accepted higher principles, there are shuddering intimations of stultifying parochialism.
This year, we discovered that people who Google™ themselves misread, misconstrue, and just misunderstand a post and subsequently connive some narcissistic masquerade. To no positive end.
I made the same mistake in my online journalizing that maddeningly amateur board members and business owners of The SouthCoast make. You don't just make it up as you go, no matter how clever you are at self-invention or diligent you are at self-policing.
Clumsy governance, inept fundraising, and slipshod marketing are not rendered any more legitimate by posting on your portico a smug handbill anouncing "That's the way it's done here." No amount of awkward excuses and contextless explanations will save your doomed idea.
I no longer have the inclination to profile and analyze the individuals who comprise the low-balling, miscalculating, unlettered and unfettered SouthCoast powers that be (or the more widely manifest SouthCoast term, "powers to be").
Putting an over privileged brat on a schooner in order to "instill confidence" only creates a confident overprivileged brat.
I'll address, in the way that I can, the growing poverty rate that effects children in this country, rather than kowtowing to obviously well-fed brats.
DONATE TO SAVE THE CHILDREN.
Or maybe Planned Parenthood.

24

2010-12-24T00:20:00.001-05:00

You've still got time to pick up some treats or food or non-clumping cat litter or something and donate to your local animal shelter.

23

2010-12-23T00:01:00.002-05:00

Longtime readers of The Journal are aware of the tradition of the day before Christmas Eve: Christmas Adam. This year, we start an Impossible Tradition™ and celebrate Christmas Adam with the Christmas episode of Adam-12. Consider it "Christmas Adam-12."

Brought to you as a public service by The War on Festivus.

22

2010-12-22T00:06:00.001-05:00

Colo is the oldest inhabitant of the Columbus (Ohio) Zoo. She was born there on December 22, 1956. She's a great-great-grandmother. Gorillas are not indigenous to Columbus, Ohio.

21

2010-12-21T00:09:00.001-05:00

If you're observing the solstice today......try not to overdo it.

20

2010-12-20T01:08:00.000-05:00

19

2010-12-19T00:06:00.001-05:00

18

2010-12-18T00:11:00.001-05:00

You know what it's like having a birthday around Christmas when you're a kid? My sister and I -- born after Christmas -- were always regaled with "If Santa doesn't bring it, you'll get it on your birthday." Observing that our birthday wishes hadn't been acknowledged, we were accustomed to a rejoinder, "Remember what treasures you were rewarded on Christmas morning!"
I wonder if Betty Grable had to put up with that sort of sophistry in reverse since her birthday was December 18.

17

2010-12-17T01:02:00.000-05:00

16

2010-12-16T00:01:00.001-05:00

15

2010-12-15T00:03:00.002-05:00

Seven years gone. Johnny Cunningham and his brother Phil. Phil is still with us.

14

2010-12-14T00:09:00.003-05:00

Støvledance

13

2010-12-13T00:04:00.002-05:00

Remember December 13, 1941.

12

2010-12-12T00:05:00.002-05:00

Buon Natalie! Natalie Wood points out, once again, that poinsettias are not poisonous to cats.And what are you doing feeding poinsettias to cats, anyway?

11

2010-12-11T00:06:00.001-05:00

Wassail along,,,

10

2010-12-10T00:41:00.001-05:00

I love this bit:

9

2010-12-09T00:05:00.001-05:00

It's a forty year-0ld satire magazine Christmas cover.

8

2010-12-08T00:39:00.001-05:00

It's that T-shirt that Val Kilmer wore in Real Genius, portraying real genius Chris Knight. Val Kilmer portrayed Chris Knight; the shirt portrays a gorilla and writing.

7

2010-12-07T01:34:00.002-05:00

I bet that even Dead End kids know what's behind the haggard 7 because December 7 is Tom Waits' birthday, and tradition demands that we share this:

oh, and

2010-12-06T00:01:00.000-05:00

It's Dave Brubeck's birthday. Here's his (ahem, erm...) take on a seasonal favorite...

AND his take on the season in general...

6

2010-12-06T00:00:00.003-05:00

Why, it's the Fiftieth Anniversary of President Eisenhower's creation of the federally-protected corner of northeastern Alaska known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, so here's ol' honest Ike hisself:

5

2010-12-05T00:00:00.000-05:00

On December 5, 1933, the Twenty-First Amendment ended Prohibition. And, to think that some people don't respect our Constitution.

4

2010-12-04T00:26:00.000-05:00

Look out! Deanna Durbin reminds you to take special care while decorating. Some children may become entangled in garland, cut themselves or choke on small broken shards of... oh, sorry. I thought I was writing for network teevee again.

3

2010-12-03T00:24:00.001-05:00

Why, it's authentic frontier gibberish!

2

2010-12-02T01:13:00.004-05:00

She probably spent more time in New Bedford during the filming of Down to the Sea in Ships than Frederick Law Olmsted.

1

2010-12-01T00:00:00.004-05:00

It's that time of year again. Hell, that time of year actually began about a month and a half ago, as the banausic bean counters rely on guilt-filled and pedestrian consumers to reconcile the corporate fourth quarter accountings.
As with any holiday, traditions abound. There's the turkey on Thanksgiving that we are are still eating remnants of as Advent starts. There's the Fourth of July Fireworks. There's the annual August Seventeenth mime competitions. And there's....

There's also free parking in downtown New Bedford until January 2.

The Impossible Adventure Calendar

2010-11-29T08:09:00.008-05:00

"Advent" -- the first month of the year in some "church" or other -- begins on the fourth Sunday before the day we know as "Christmas" or "The Day Before the Day When We Bring Back Socks." By canon, it must also begin on the Sunday closest to November 30. Shopkeepers will hope that this is the Sunday closest to Thanksgivening so that there will be a minimum of hangtime between two important commercial feedbags. Hanukkah starts on the 25th of of Kislev and Christmas starts sometime in September, but culminates on December 25, when most of the shops have the good taste to quit hustling junk for a few hours, and the radio stations have the good sense to stop inflicting that horrible music on listeners for at least nother nine months, when they play other horrible music that doesn't involve strained rhymes about unexpected snow or celebrating ethnic donkeys.
The last time that Christmas and Hanukkah were coincident was in 1978, a big year for the Red Sox, but not for DC Comics. This year, Hanukkah begins on December First, to get it all out of the way before the Christmas rush.
And that's why The Impossible Adventure Calendar will start ripping open the little windows and doors on the Julekalendar on the first day of December. Besides, that's when it's designed to commence. Traditionally a "countdown to Christmas," Yule Calendars only have capacity for 24 special cells, ignoring Christmas entirely. Thus, during the part of the year when the days get noticeably shorter, Yule or Advent is a surely pleasing celebration that should take your mind off the doom-like darkness and seasonal affective disorder.
I cherish the season because it doesn't over-stay its welcome much after the Solstice. Advent over, the planet is already nudging back to its proper axial tilt and light comes back to the northern hemisphere.
So, applaud that we begin on the first day of Hanukkah, the first Wednesday of Advent, Richard Pryor's birthday, and the First Day of December.
It'll all be over soon.

Thanks

2010-11-24T12:24:00.000-05:00

(This presentation features a photograph of Davenie Johanna Heatherton. And a turkey.)

Soles'n'Bowls

2010-11-21T01:52:00.014-05:00

In the light of yesterday's Standard-Times' Editor's Letter from the Editor About Letters to the Editor, I'm throwing caution to the wind and posting gathered chunks of discarded journal entries about the Buttonwood Park Zoo NONtroversy. Before proceeding, I explicitly profess that the following is presented WITHOUT any demonstrable or conclusive research on my part. As is often the case here since I don't feel obligated to make phone calls or to carefully research my own diary because I happen to know some stuff from in my head already, regardless of you armchair editors and your ~~demands~~ suggestions. You will notice -- and likely ignore -- links that I provide to substantiate my remarks .

The Buttonwood Park Zoo is a popular tourist and educational attraction located within the borders of Buttonwood Park, both of which are owned and operated by the City of New Bedford. The Zoo currently displays local New England wildlife like coyotes, brown bears, ~~mountain lions~~, cougars, and turkey vultures and features a petting zoo-quality historical farm exhibit with heritage domesticated animals like goats, hogs, and horses. It is quaint, if shopworn, but praised by the American Zoological Association as "one of the finest small zoos in the country."

The Zoo has been home to two well-treated superannuated Asian elephants. It is The Zoo's hope to expand Ruth and Emily's quarters in order to better portray the elephants' ancestral domain and add other Asian flora and fauna, including a possible third elephant, in accordance with AZA rules. A new exhibit is understood to renew the Zoo's attendance numbers and likely ensure its continued accreditation.
At this moment, the community's only paper, the Standard-Times is running headlines like:
"SHOCKING ZOO EXPANSION DISRUPTS VERY FABRIC OF REALITY ITSELF!"
It's a pitched -- if one-sided -- battle waged on the limp and porous battlefield of the Op-Ed page, with salvos fired by annoying out-of-town elephant activists (who always act as their Google™Alerts and The Voices dictate) and some residents of the greenest city on the SouthCoast who fear that the "megazoo themepark expansion" will destroy huge swaths of Buttonwood Park's pristine wilderness, displacing thousands of rare and endangered plant and animal species.
There is no point in placing blame for any perceived "controversy." There isn't one. A few clever citizens MicrosoftOfficeWord98™ed up a few incendiary handouts and later backpedalled, admitting that they were "only trying get more people to take part in their city and show up at the meeting." Following the Tea Party playbook, they were excessive and inappropriate and ultimately off-putting.
Because they were wrong. They did not seem to know what the expansion entailed or what the Zoo was actually planning, or how their polite and constructive input would be worked into The Zoo's fully amendable draft plan. None of those passionate people were at the informational meeting that I attended in September, except for the President of the Friends of Buttonwood Park, who politely waited through the entire PowerPoint presentation and then read a letter of obstreperous opposition which had been written before the meeting had ever started.
The Anti-Zooers possess a proud SouthCoast character trait that enables them to admit that they "couldn't find any meeting notice" and "can't read that Zoo Master Plan" because it's "in Adobe and too big" or "hard to find on the city's website" or "you have to be an engineer to understand it." This trait (called "dumb") is related to the common SouthCoast paranoia known as "Suspecting that Something is Going on Behind the Scenes" because one is unaware of conventions, standards, or practices outside of one's ken.
The Friends of Buttonwood Park Incorporated was "founded in 1991" and have an address in Mattapoisett, according to their page on Guidestar, but was "established in 1986 in acordance with a recommendation of the Massachusetts DCA's 1986 Olmsted Master Plan for the Renewal of Buttonwood Park," according to their own website.
The Friends' dedication to maintaining the park grounds, educating, engaging and involving the public, city youth and other area organizations is obvious and sincere, so one can exonerate a few unreasonably disproportionate ownership issues, especially considering that New Bedford has three dozen or more parks, commons, playgrounds, tot lots, and beaches.
Lately, though, somebody has been posting photographs of park greenery on Facebook with arch captions full of inaccuracies, devoting themselves to circulating petitions to preserve untended land for future generations of litterers, and arguing that all of Buttonwood Park is sacred because of...
"The Olmsted Fallacy." Which goes a little something like this:
Nineteenth Century Mount Olympus landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted probably never saw the land now known as Buttonwood Park and was likely familiar with New Bedford because of the city's reputation in abolitionist circles years earlier. Olmsted's associate Charles Eliot -- ~~or someone in Eliot's office since Eliot was dying in 1897~~ I now have it on impeccable authority that Eliot did, indeed draw this. But Olmsted was still senile -- drew this: Which resembles the current configuration only in its roughly quadrilateral appearance.
Note that there is a residential neighborhood in the northeast -- lower right -- corner and that Eliot's central water feature is currently a traffic rotary. Neither detail conforms to Olmsted's vision of a rich natural setting shielding visitors from the stresses of city life. But The Friends of Buttonwood Park have consulted with experts who have written books about Olmsted so that they can protect this resource better.
In the words of their President and former Buttonwood Park Zoo Director (seriously: WTF?) the Friends of Buttonwood Park are "the designated stewards of the Park ... mandated by the 1987 Master Plan to protect the historic vision for the Park which calls for a pastoral, naturalistic, and democratic setting where the urban population can enjoy both passive and active recreation unencumbered by barriers and fences." (from that "obstreperous objection" that I mentioned earlier)
"Active recreation" includes motoring. My automobile was once struck rather forcefully by a speeding hit and run driver blowing through the stop sign at Court Street and Rockdale. I guess the serenity was too bucolic for that particular park visitor.
Charles Eliot died of spinal meningitis in 1897. New Bedford -- although once eager to consider some plan for the land -- cooled its fervor for both whaling and gardening and "shelved" the plan, forgetting about arbors and such.
Until the 1980s, when someone in New Bedford put the names "Olmsted" and "Buttonwood Park" together and state grant money suddenly appeared. Customary inordinate SouthCoast Catholic-style guilt demands that we insist on the fiction loudly at every opportunity. So everyone sort of believes the fanciful story of Olmsted's alleged relationship to The Whaling City that was concocted by someone eager to squeeze a few shekels out of a vague connection. (Although I suspect that I know the individual's identity, largely based on one particular citizen's excessively hysterical reactions at public discussions of the Zoo's master plan.)
In the Nineties when I first enjoyed its convenient pastorality, I was under the impression that Buttonwood Park had been laid out by the guy who designed Central Park. Because everybody else said so. (Unfortunately, I also thought that the landscaper was Andrew Jackson Downing, until I was informed that it was Olmsted. Which it wasn't.)
On a (recently removed) website promoting a New Bedford bed and breakfast, Buttonwood Park was described as "the largest and most visited public park in New Bedford is often referred to as the 'Crown Jewel' of the New Bedford Park System ." The b&b also touted its location as near "the newly renovated Zoo in Buttonwood Park, designed and planted by Frederick Law Olmsted." So it's just treated as common knowledge, and it's on the Internet, so it must be true. (The "largest" park in New Bedford is actually Brooklawn Park.)
"Whaddaya you people want, TREES and ROCKS?" barked a famous local developer a few years back when he proposed some stripmall or other in Tiverton on land that somebody considered green, public, and protected. I was outraged by the developer's neon urban sprawl scheming. "Yes," I smugly retorted, "yes, I DO want trees and rocks." But I also remember his "rocks don't pay taxes" line.
The Buttonwood Park Zoo and its associated Society contribute payroll and sales taxes to the state and federal governments. Although the city of New Bedford subsidizes the Zoo's operational budget, the municipal contribution would be less with a new exhibit raising both membership and attendance.
Because a better-looking, more successful Zoo would make more money.
Because the cursed SouthCoast always sets its sights on the shabby, it matters not that the Zoo lose its signature pachyderm attractions, forfeit its accreditation, sacrifice the substantial funding opportunities that are associated with professional recognition, and emerge finally as a pretty swell petting zoo.

So, of course, The Friends of Buttonwood Park But Not Of The Zoo -- encouraged by the newspaper's manufactured "Zoo versus Park" nonsense -- will further demonize the Zoo in their ill-advised absurd campaign of misinformation and bad sportsmanship.

(This presentation features photographs of Joan Crawford and an elephant, Florence Henderson and Barry Williams, some maps, and Zsa Zsa Gabor.)

Save the Menagerie!

2010-11-06T09:04:00.004-04:00

from The New Bedford Evening Navigator, August 3, 1916...

The members of the Pleasant Companions of The Buttonwood Arboreal Pathways have found themselves at odds with itself over an addition to the Monkey House located in the area specified by the New Bedford Elders and Neighboring Communicators as "the menagerie." The Associated Acquaintances of Native Animals Not Accustomed to Cages charged that the addition, which is a small masonry structure, is forbidden under the Agreeable Expected Recreation Charter of 1903 & Its Amended Appendices, since Freemasonry is forbidden within park grounds.
The Associated Acquaintances of Native Animals Not Accustomed to Cages readers may recognize as having been rebuffed and scourged after its members benefitted monetarily when they arranged a philanthropic ball to bring aid to the area's squirrels. Upon closer inspection of those particular squirrels, it was discovered that the squirrels were actually rats with pinecones attached to their tails.

The Fraternal Coterie of Chimpanzee Orang & Gibbon Attendants has already engaged in protracted deliberations about new monkey standards of care, and what those new rules entail for small monkey houses like our beloved Buttowood Monkey House. One combatant in these discussions held that "the little fellows should be sent back to Africa," but when it was discovered that he wasn't referring to the charges of the menagerie, he was persuaded to leave. A woman from the local Suffrage League, who spoke at length about how the monkey house was already big enough and produced a map of Buttonwood Park on which she had drawn a crude outline of a monkey house [shown below] that appears to occupy eight or so acres, was also asked to leave. Subsequently, another representative of the group used some indiscreet terminology relating to the jettisoning of unmentionable materials. The image is clear to anyone who has ever visited a monkey house.

A new group, The Municipal Partners Attentive to Matters Inconsequential But of Inflated Significance, created at the insistence and also encumbered by the inclusion of former Mayor Brownell Hawthorn Rockdale, has promised to contemplate the matter. It is assumed that they will reconvene as soon as someone can find the end of the sentence which the esteemed Former Mayor had begun three days earlier.

Some things never change.

(This presentation includes photographs of Dolores Del Rio, Debra Paget, and Lupe Vélez.)

"Well, I like how things turned out..."

2010-11-03T12:27:00.004-04:00

To borrow the fundamental empty-headed line of thinking from this season's spoiler third party of bargain-basement sophists, I don't think that the Founding Fathers of Radio had in mind whatever it is that my local broadcasters do.
The newsreaders who employ unsettlingly random phrasing and can't pronounce "posthumously." The host who insists that he is neutral, but whose knee-jerk reactions to comments are so partisan as to embarrass even the most imprudent callers. The ill-timed and always badly-introduced commercial breaks that sometimes include several spots playing at once; spots that defy simple priciples of presentation and confound listeners' skills at perceiving information. If acted out by gifted gymnasts with awe-inspiring delivery -- or produced as a, say, cartoon -- a bemused audience member might be influenced to seek more intelligible details from more lucid sources. For instance, the business itself.Of course, that would be if the contact information weren't obscured by some annoying crapwit's stab at cleverness. Or the obtuse and hamfisted producer's (same guy, usually) choice of music bed and sound effects.
But today, since any benighted twerp with AOL access can "review" a book that he has neither read nor understood and inform other shoppers that "it sux," we are left with the rampant Tyranny of the Amateur, and that's local radio's bulwark against criticism.
So, yes. Since I trained and worked in actual professional broadcasting (oh, sure, yes, that was decades ago, so the "you're old and bitter" argument is somewhat valid, except that I am actually "older and better"), I hate local radio. Even though it was my first love and I shall always hold whatever it is that I remember of it in high esteem -- whatever it was that I thought was sexy way back when.But I cannot avoid the monstrous ether when it broadcasts some semblance of description of our easily-etched ballot numerations each election night.
It dutifully provides muttering time for the more self-important on staff, who mumble numbers from local precincts that were available elsewhere long moments prior and mutter some long-seasoned cant with lyrics including "anti-incumbent sentiment" and "voter apathy/anxiety." Or whatever.
And Massachusetts is relatively unscathed by the ill-disposed Tea Party panic that has warped the national politic and discourse.
Although the brunt of so many jokes from latitudinally-challenged others, Southeastern New England -- the true geographical birthplace of American dissent and revolution -- re-elected the people who should fix things, elected reasonable folk who might fix things, and ignored specious jerks who were of no damn consequence.
Except that the latter are the most fun if you're getting substandard pay at some overlooked waste of broadcast space.
Let's hope for better days.

(This presentation includes photographs of Ava Gardner, Bette Davis, and Lucille Ball.)

Soles'n'Bowls

2010-11-02T07:48:00.002-04:00

ELECTION EDITION!

Come then. You've been given the opportunity to elect characters who are nothing like the careful rhetoricians and statesmen of yesteryear. It's time now to cast your vote for lowbrow morons whose understanding of politics is summed up as: "The other guy's a jerk and is wrong."
Never mind that the hopeful folks on your local ballot are bankrolled by special interests from other states and other countries. These are exciting times, so the guy whom you elect to "represent" you can be from anywhere and be beholden to anyone.
That fellow who's been employed for most of his life by defense contractors? Totally sincere when he says he wants smaller gubmint. As long as he remains employed by it, it can consist of him and the guy who hands him his check and the one who maintains his health insurance and pension.
He wants to work for you. "Work for you" also translates as "get paid by you."
I recall when this Journal's longtime ommentor "Anonymous" insisted that "the amateur campaign works beautifully in the Southcoast."
The Barney Frank campaign should do very well according to that stupefyingly salient marketing insight.
I suspect that "Anonymous" has already congratulated Barney Frank on the success of the latter's half-hearted campaign of awkward mailers filled with unattractive imagery, typographical indolence, grammatical sluggishness, and cacographic fontwork.
Since stereotypes are in vogue these days and minorities are derided with impunity once more, it's probably not a good idea for a gay man to be too particular or fastidious with the layout of his campaign material.
As always, Andrew at Armagideon Time says it best.
As ever, here's coverage of tonight's election results:

Hallow'Ann'e'en

2010-10-31T00:13:00.001-04:00

Hallow'Ann 6

2010-10-30T00:01:00.004-04:00

Them chains of love. (Congratulatory sentiments to Maura and Andrew.)

Hallow'Ann 5

2010-10-29T00:01:00.001-04:00

LOOK OUT !
SHE'S GOT A GUN !!1!

Hallow'Ann 4

2010-10-28T00:07:00.001-04:00

The popular "French maid" Hallowe'en costume.

Hallow'Ann 3

2010-10-27T00:37:00.002-04:00

If you think teevee is scary nowadays with its hackneyed plots, vulgar characterizations, and haphazard scene compositions, get a load of this...

Hallow'Ann 2

2010-10-26T00:02:00.001-04:00

Sometimes a different hair color makes a nifty costume. Or a convenient disguise...

Hallow'Ann 1

2010-10-25T00:18:00.003-04:00

Celebrate this Hallowe'en Week with favorite images of Ann Miller. Never mind the relentless profit-motive nattering and mendacious claptrap of corporate "citizens" and foreign governments demanding that you vote for their lackeys! For any chorus boy who's ever lost an eye because of an errant bobbypin dislodged during a dance bit, ANN MILLER is scary... real scary!

SouthCoast: At Least a Generation Ahead!

2010-10-21T13:41:00.018-04:00

The educated elite ("NYTimes readers," in knuckle-dragger parlance) are all atwitter about Maureen Dowd noticing that politics is full of celebrated dimwits this season, and that these flaming avatars of the absurd appear about to ascend to authority. Well, that's what you get when you've created a political environment that rewards cloddish amateurs who, while appealing to the common folk, appease the indubitable imperators.

You struggle to name Supreme Court cases, newspapers you read and even founding fathers you admire? No problem. You endorse a candidate for the Pennsylvania Senate seat who is the nominee in West Virginia? Oh, well. At least you're not one of those "spineless" elites with an Ivy League education, like President Barack Obama, who can't feel anything.
It's news to Christine O'Donnell that the Constitution guarantees separation of church and state. It's news to Joe Miller, whose security guards handcuffed a journalist, and to Carl Paladino, who threatened The New York Post's Fred Dicker, that the First Amendment exists, even in tea party land. Michele Bachmann calls Smoot-Hawley Hoot-Smalley.
Sharron Angle sank to new lows of obliviousness when she told a classroom of Hispanic kids in Las Vegas: "Some of you look a little more Asian to me."
As Ms. Palin tweeted in July about her own special language: " 'Refudiate,' 'misunderestimate,' 'wee-wee'd up.' English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!"

"Chic" is a funny word. It's French, so not particularly useful in contemporary discussions of American national politics.

"Chic" is a word that is never used in Fall River, where I endured a lot of adolescent ribbing about my bag full of books.
Considered a cumbersome luxury by most SouthCoasters, books were available at three outlets when I was young: The public library, a PaperBack BookSmith at the Harbor Mall, and at some used bookstaores that were filled with tuberculosis and tobacco stains.
At one of the latter establishments, I was asked by the kobold sulking behind the counter, "Whaddaya do with alla them books?"
Ignorance? It's not some new trendy thing around here, Maureen Dowd. We've been doing it for decades!
From the sideways looks that a bowtie earns to the shocking physical violence that accompanied a door held open out of courtesy, the SouthCoast has made manifest this "Ignorance Paradigm." Discourtesy is customary in a borough that rolls its eyes at expressions of gratitude. Rules that are matter of course elsewhere are seen as foreign and incongruous. Language is debased. "Industry standards?"
What's that?
The salesman whose motto in business is "Ignore and avoid." The advertising executive who chirps that "any monkey can write copy." The boss who doesn't provide performance reviews or workplace guidelines but stamps and screams at staff. The winking forced surprise at a woman's accusations of harassment, violence, sexual malfeasance. The business whose doors open only whenever the help decides to shuffle in.
The politician who "don't care nothin about what no paper says."
The guise of populism enables the amateurish, eventually presenting as a demand for the shoddy, and the indignant and often unintelligible extenuation and excuses that come with it. There are board members and trustees and staff who are more skilled at denying failure than at actually succeeding.
And the blue collar folks -- who distrust the suits and ties and fancypants -- will loudly defend those boardroom bugbears. Because the rabble have been brought up to venerate the seatwarmers for their cleverness. And that "cleverness" is primarily the SouthCoast leadership's widespread ignorance of real-world business models and protocols -- starting with mere courtesy.
"No foul," they claim. "We don't need no outsiders tellin us what to do."
As many local politicians will publicly attest, the local voters "do not know how things work." So keeping the reality of juggling compromise ("politics") out of the public eye is key to a lifelong politician's long life in politics.
Unfortunately, any citizen can serve as an elected representative of his or her neighbors, no matter what intellect or skills he or she lacks.
And we've got that.

(This presentation includes pictures of Marilyn Monroe and Diana Dors.)

The First Weak of October

2010-10-07T05:47:00.005-04:00

This week, we reconvened the United States Supreme Court and got down to deciding who dances best with the stars or something. The rest of the government disregards such Constitutional niceties this time of year to indulge in the quibbling and gobbledygook that is election-year campaigning. Whether one believes in the fellow who has overseen much of the economic success and distress of the past thirty years or whether one favors the anti-choice unknown naif who excites the tiresome vulgus, it matters not one whit to the otters and buzzards at the Buttonwood Park Zoo.
Because if wildlife lose the source of their foodstuff, they can fly or swim to another domain.
I stopped by an informative meeting last week at The Zoo, and was assured by Zoo insiders that if I cough up $12 million, we can start immediately sending out RFPs in order to give The Zoo's signature resident ~~Pigeon~~ Elephant Sisters, Ruth and Emily, fresher digs in an Asian-themed exhibit area featuring those Asian elephants and tigers and water features and macaques and red pandas and, I imagine, bamboo.

This above visual and many others were shown at the gathering and as promised, this one almost instantly appeared on the Buttonwood Park Zoo's "Master Plan" drop-down on the "About The Zoo" tab. On their website. Because they don't dick around like some other SouthCoasters who so enthusiastically cherish the half-assed.
The earnest goodwill of the Zoo's representatives and their consultants was palpably sincere. Especially in their exposition that any zoo that doesn't periodically change its exhibits loses visitors, members, and revenue. Most Zoos do so every three years; The Buttonwood Park Zoo hasn't changed anything since the First Gulf War. Ah the sweet smell of sane fiscal sensibility: "financial self-sufficiency," "capital improvements," and "community input." (The term "for the kids" was not over-mentioned.)
For two forthright hours, the people who take care of the animals and the facilities and the maintenance and the planning for the zoo gave a solid presentation to the dozens of us who had assembled.
But, like in so many other positive endeavors in the SouthCoast, a guy from the Buttonwood Park Pessimists' Club or other read a letter that had been penned sometime last century saying, "No" because it would mean buying three acres of real estate in Asia, at least according to the above map. This left a sour pall over the rest of the assembled curious who were worried mostly about traffic and tigers.
I found the objection -- however graciously offered and pragmatically contrived -- distasteful in its timing. Call your own meeting to pooh-pooh The Zoo's hopes and aspirations, won't you.
This knee-jerk opposition reminds me of how some folk ape the current crop of babbling nitwits on the national stage. Without indication of having assessed the situation fully or even anticipating a harmonious accord, they simply forge an animosity which entirely obviates affiliation.
Or at least that's what I got out of it as the cheery PowerPoint show concluded. And because my blood glucose level had hit single digits. (I should remember to eat dinner before these things.)
I do recall, through the delusions of hypoglycemia:

SNOW MONKEYS!

I will be reconsidering the rental of the Asian exhibit facility for that planned "Spring Fling" fundraiser, however.

Otto

2010-10-06T22:28:00.002-04:00

"The less men think, the more they talk." - Charles de Montesquieu

2010-09-29T14:43:00.006-04:00

It is not particularly propitious to title a Journal entry thus. In deference to Baron de Montesquieu -- the Enlightenment inventor of "separation of powers" -- all one need do is to get a little wordy and one's cognitive capacity is called forever into question. Just keep in mind that I didn't write a chunk of it. That part in the middle. In the other font. Not me.
I was curious as to whether the media could yank itself away from the Angry Imbeciles Jamboree that is national politics under the tinpot tyranny of the Tea Party Coup long enough to report the latest proposal to prepare to undertake some sort of future consideration of a "Master Plan" at New Bedford's Buttonwood Park Zoo.
As long-time readers of this Journal know, I have been, on occasion, philanthropically-inclined -- although I could care less about whatever ponyrodeo some busybody concocts to amuse the edacious juvenile demographic. (Any community with residents who have habitually intoned the mantra "I wish we had this we we were kids" for more than two generations should take a long look at its social and intellectual infrastructure.)
Like, uh, its radio station.
I made a colossal misjudgment, and listened for some interesting constituent input concerning the ambitions of the SouthCoast's largest attraction. I could make out on the crystal set some discernible particles of ether from the local noise pollution outlet (the New Bedford one that denies the existence of a Fall River, not the Fall River one that denies the existence of a New Bedford).
As expected, I was treated to the usual unrehearsed monotonal "rip-and-read" from some uncredited source, breathy outrage at some fanciful misapprehension of administration policy, and complaints about the media's left-wing bias -- with no hint of irony. Their internationally-known teevee pundit and Conservative Blogger afternoon and afternoon drive host mispronounced satirist Stephen Colbert's name ("cole burt" instead of "cole-bare") while also making a point of clearly and politically-correctly delivering the Persian enunciation of "Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." Which put me in mind of the horrible Saturday Night Live skit about news announcers' risible use of affected foreign place pronunciations that shocked American ears when Canadian Peter Jennings started doing it in the Eighties. Here's a short transcript. Which I have found on some NBC website and edited for length because SNL skits are mere annoying prattle after the amusing premise is established and then beaten to death within the first thirty seconds.

"NBC News Employees"
Robin Fletcher.....Julia Sweeney
Kathy.....Jan Hooks
Dan.....Phil Hartman
Executive #1.....Dana Carvey
Executive #2.....Mike Myers
Antonio Mendoza.....Jimmy Smits
[ open on live footage of Robin Fletcher delivering news report ]
Robin Fletcher: The fighting, for now, is over. But, for the people of Nicauragua, that is small consideration. This is Robin Fletcher for NBC News, reporting from Managua, Nicaragua. [ TV is turned off, zoom out to reveal NBC News employees watching with interest ]
Kathy: What do you think?
Dan: Well, it's a nice report.. but is this the week to cover.. [ thick-accented ] ..Neek-o-rah-gwa?
Kathy: Well.. I think Neek-o-rah-gwa is important. But not just Neek-o-rah-gwa but, also.. Han-der-us! And, especially.. El Salv-uh-door!
Executive #1: But wasn't the big story the defeat of Hor-tay-ga! And.. the fall of the san-duh-nees-tahs!
Executive #2: Excuse me, everybody, I'd like you to meet our new Economics correspondent.. Han-toe-nee-o Man-dos-ah!
Antonio Mendoza: Or.. Antonio Mendoza.

It goes on and on ... Which is what the radio guy did. He repeated the mispronunciation an uncomfortable number of times. He had "never heard" of this insignificant "Colbert."
SouthCoasters have been mispronouncing names for hundreds of years. At first, settlers mispronounced native Wampanoag words in order to demonstrate settlers' proprietary rights over the land and its quahogs. Then, it was anglicizing one's name so that the other guys on the ship or in the mill wouldn't think that you were a stinking immigrant and deny you a job, raise, promotion, bunk, or meal.
The passive-aggressive discourtesy of not calling someone by their preferred name or by its preferred pronunciation is just one charming tool in the SouthCoast social skillset. It's pretty common around here.
Aks anyone.

(This presentation includes a photograph of Janeane Garofalo.)

Goin' That Extra Fathom...

2010-09-20T09:46:00.009-04:00

Longtime devotees will remember the days when I was all crazy boatniky and whenever anything maritime crossed my bow, I would send up flags and flares and such and you would be treated to exhaustingly forced attempts at pertinance. Since there are so many others who do that -- generally in cloyingly cynical attempts to score more gear for their Port-A-Potty 28 -- The Impossible Journal no longer chases down each online instance of boaty merchandise or coastal cleverness.
On the other hand, I do enjoy dispensing good news about former neighborhood familiars.
Kevin P. O'Connor, of The Fall River The Herald News asssures us that the Borden Flats Lighthouse in the Taunton River has been purchased by a genuine lighthouse restorer who IS NOT the bankrupt self-promoting joker who wanted it to house a gimmicky brewhouse.
What we learn about Nick Korstead of Portland, Oregon, is that...

...Korstead, who lives in Portland, Ore., bought the lighthouse with his parents Craig and Cindy Korstead through the business they operate, US Lighthouse Establishment. The group has bought and renovated lighthouses in the past. It maintains a website chronicling lighthouse renovations and selling commemorative maritime and lighthouse gear.
Korstead said he has never seen the lighthouse or set foot in Fall River. He plans to come to Fall River next month to see his new purchase.

And: “It is a lighthouse,” he said. “That’s what I want it to be.”
Farewell, then, to the fanciful tale of the Nevada lawyer and his delusion of producing "40 barrels" of novelty beer a week from the water collected in the lighthouse's cistern -- and selling those "barrels" in an already saturated indie beer market in order "to pay for the upkeep of the building."
And that website that the Korsteads operate -- U.S. Light House Establishment -- is a great find.(I handled, packed, cataloged, and shlepped maritime artifacts last century, so the site cues my memories of dusty greasy whale oil lamp wicktrimmers and lighthouse lenses that had been used as ashtrays. Plus: when you buy that genuine sou'wester, you help save a lighthouse. Or at least keep the Korsteads busy.)
I'd advise shipmates to go to the Keeper's Locker page (available by clicking on the words "Keeper's Locker").
Oh, and there's this:

Soles'n'Bowls

2010-09-17T04:34:00.002-04:00

On a quiet street where old ghosts meet, I see her walking now away from me...
It's Halfway to Saint Patrick's Day, that utterly commercialized confoundment of ethnic slurs that makes me cringe every Spring. Plastic green bowlers and garish bowties and immense fluorescent lime clovers, impish stereotypes fashioned with no awareness of the brutal racist assaults inflicted upon Irish immigrants in the middle of the Nineteenth Century by American businesses, media, and citizens.
Of course, today's Irish-Americans are past all of that. Or in utter denial. Or completely ignorant of that. As you well know, I can still eat -- and enjoy -- corned beef, without picturing distant relations sloshing around a fetid discarded barrel searching for scraps of brined horseflesh.
I will not be attending the "Halfway to Saint Paddy's Day" festivities at Fall River's Corky Row Club.
I have always had a conflicted remembrance of that neighborhood social establishment. On one hand, my family has been involved from its very founding right up to this very day, and it's an actual commercial business. Once, the Club awarded me a modest academic prize. On the other hand, I have as much in common with today's members as I have in common with any native of Ireland who still speaks Gaelic. And the Club did award me that scholarship, ensuring that I would forever be saddled with the moniker "smartypants."
I hope it's a swell time.
But, it seems that each one of their press releases goes on about the Club's near-death experience. Sure, they mention its Seventy-Fifth Anniversary, but somebody keeps throwing in that "what seemed like certain death" line. Kinda self-defeating, if not downright ghoulish.
All I can say is: "Celebrate the fact that somebody picked up the baton, not that somebody dropped it."
The SouthCoast demonstrates that sort of thing all the time, a kind of bragging without being prideful. Because pride is a sin.
But when you fail altogether, you get to blame something. Like when New Bedford's second Guardian Angels franchise won its big goodbye halo.
The inevitable wrap of the latest local volunteer vigilante attempt reminds me of the one common difficulty that beleaguers all such outfits, commercial and non-profit. You may have read Brian Fraga's bit in the Standard-Times, but here's the part I find most telling: "All three leaders said personal commitments and apathy from the community led them to decide to quit the group. "
The pesky bedeviller that curses so many non-profits is, simply: real life.
In the random haphazard of the SouthCoast -- fertile with well-intentioned dilettantes but also rife with slapdash schemes from self-serving busybodies -- the very forces of society work against the organizers.
According to a recent comment in these very pages, "perhaps the amateur campaign works beautifully in the Southcoast." Yes: The SouthCoast dislikes the painstaking professional, the suit-and-tie. After a century of resenting the wealthy, the Mill Town Class War presents as a middle class filled with resentment. After decades of "rich people are no better than us," it became "rich people are worse than us" which devolved into "rich people go to fancy schools, smart people are bad, books are dumb, fancy clothes are ..."
You get the idea. Too much polishing wrecks the apple, I guess.
The Guardian Angels never stood a chance.
When the angel woos the clay He'll lose his wings at the dawn of day.

(This presentation includes a picture of June Haver.)

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."- Derek Bok

2010-09-10T05:10:00.006-04:00

"Tolerance" is a loaded word, one which I do not wish to further burden with further loaded interpretation. Let's just say that when I have my oratory on, I usually defer to High School Latin class for insight into words' meanings. I've always defined tolerate as "to permit," rather than the more testy "to put up with." "To permit" also looked better in the exam book.
As luck would have it, that Latin class was taught by a jocular Jesuit philosopher whose breezy comfort with reality almost convinced me to surrender the smirks and scowls of my typical bratty teenhood.
Father Foley was the faculty moderator for the "satire magazine" that my chums and I produced. Foley even conferred his name to the pamphlet, Foliage. We kids scoffed at the office overlords' ready capitulation to our smartassery, assuming they presumed that we would tire of producing the fully-sanctioned subversive sheet after about two issues.
They were right.
They were being tolerant.
I quoted the title of a favorite album at the time. Give Em Enough Rope.
Which is how I feel about the frightened people who see every other person's freedom as an infringement upon their own. You know the ones. They are the momentary embarrassing glitch in the arc of American civilization, whose ignorance only serves as an example for the rest of us. Now you know how not to act in our country. Y'see, we have freedoms that are ensured by book-learning, not by book-burning.
Back last century, I took advantage of a company-funded membership in a festering Petri dish of sweat, stink, and pathogens in a metal building known as -- ironically -- a "health club."
In the locker area once, while avoiding the middle-aged wheezer who had apparently stripped his porcine bulk in order to practice his own personal podiatry, I noticed one devout practitioner of Islam.
Behind some rows of rarely used lockers, "Aariz" quietly performed salah.
I was familiar with the ritual because of an animated explanation by an avuncular high school teacher who had taught (I assume) at a private Catholic school in Saudi Arabia back when one could do that. The old Jesuit posited that of all Arab contributions to civilization in mathematics, science, medicine, architecture, and music, his favorite was that "cleanliness is next to godliness." Which was his way of saying that "Arabs" (he meant "Muslims") were fastidious in their prayerfulness as well as in their personal hygiene, which he advised us boys to emulate. Particularly those of us in his class after gym.
He was also quick to advise us to read the books in the library about it. Few of us did, but we enjoyed his reminiscences and occasional sartorial forays into keffiyeh and bisht and thobe.
The idea of whether Muslims were "of the devil" was never discussed. I am fully cognizant of how fortunate I was to have been in that classroom.
But in that dressing room that 1998 day, Piggy McGruntensweat, having noticing that I had courteously moved away from the benediction, said, "Pretty disgusting, that towelhead, huh?"
I stared dumbly at the piles of clippings and toejam left scattered about the floor, shook my head, grabbed my gear, and departed.
I wasn't sure whether I was offended by the "towelhead" rejoinder -- for which I would surely be tagged derisively as that dreadable "PC" -- or was I simply disappointed in my fellow American's lack of simple courtesy?
Years later, Aariz and I exchange pleasantries at gallery openings or other community and cultural events.
I have never seen that other guy anywhere.
I guess we just move in different circles.

Exclusive and Not Inclusive

2010-09-07T18:20:00.004-04:00

To the devoted Historians of The Future -- those prepared with reading comprehension sacks and irony detectors, that is -- I feel obligated to explain a thing. At this moment in time and social upheaval, one is required to navigate a delicate and confrontational tangle in order to say anything without either offending someone or causing someone else to call you "socialist" because you're pussy-footing around with wording.
The carefree and the careless make no attempt at either:

It was enough of a challenge to change the term "whaling" to "whale-hunting." Now, we're back at the "whaleman/whaler" controversy. Assuredly, this new Gallery at the SouthCoast Whale-Hunting Multimedia Gallery and Gift Shop probably won't include any paintings or photographs of Azorean women wielding harpoons or flensing eubalaena glacialis.

Also of revulsive consideration: Members only get an hour without having to rub elbows with the commoners. Good thing that it's after Labor Day; one can wear the tweed with the patches to avoid such.

Happy Labor Day!

2010-09-06T01:03:00.000-04:00

... to anyone who still labors.

Should Be a National Holiday. Also.

2010-09-05T01:43:00.002-04:00

Happy Birthday, Bob.

Earl

2010-09-02T17:26:00.004-04:00

Fiona

2010-08-30T20:51:00.007-04:00

There's this -- and since it's not expected (at the moment) to achieve hurricane status, it affords me the opportunity to post this:

and this:

and this
(This presentation features pictures of Princess Fiona and Gabrielle Anwar.)

Two Events

2010-08-30T17:19:00.001-04:00

One might expect me to display a cynical crinkly-mouthed reaction to two religious events that made the news this past weekend. Well: "No."
And "Yes."
Fall River Massachusetts -- the town where I achieved the bulk of my spiritual instruction -- hosts the Great Feast of the Holy Ghost each year at this time.
It is impossible to express the pride that the Portuguese and Portuguese-Americans and people of Portuguese ancestry exhibit in Fall River. Except in Newark and New Bedford, where they are less old school about it.
I remember "The Feast" from my childhood as an educational buffet. A kid could learn about the culture of an ethnic group that was foreign (since many generations, countries, nationalities lie between me and "The Old Country") yet comfortably familiar. Strictly speaking: the food was deliciously familiar but the clothes looked goofy and I only understood a few words, and I wasn't sure if I was supposed to say them out loud.
As a young person, The Feast gave me the opportunity to see my connection to one set of forbears who had this fascinating history and culture an ocean away. A weekend-long lesson about faith, famiy, and tradition. That's a powerful connector of people with each other, with their heritage, and with their community.
On the other hand, relegate to history's dustbin the confused teevee clown disgracing the memory of a leader who delivered -- without corporate sponsorship or monstrous side acts -- a great and challenging speech about America's real commitment to universal civil rights.And to those people who insist that their god has answers to political problems, economic issues, social concerns, and personal matters, I remind you of the First Amendment, and the words of one of its authors:

"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."

- James Madison, 1774

The Federalist had never been to The Feast.

Its name is "Earl"

2010-08-25T16:43:00.002-04:00

Danielle...

2010-08-25T06:11:00.000-04:00

.. is a hurricane again.

Danielle

2010-08-24T17:50:00.000-04:00

...is a Tropical Storm again.

Danielle...

2010-08-23T17:01:00.001-04:00

...is a hurricane. Just like I said.

Reporter malingers over library director quit reason

2010-08-18T09:08:00.008-04:00

Back last century, when the public notices for jobs in the "classified" section of the local newspaper actually directed seekers to actual jobs, I answered one of those very advertisements. I'd answered a lot of them during my searches for some way to supplement the meager allowance grudgingly doled to me by my "36.5 hrs a wk" employer at the time. I helped myself to other income opportunities as well, including an even less attractive position as "copy editor" for a weekly rag.
For the thankfully brief period when I deigned to contribute to the final throes of their attempt at alternative press, I was required to -- without giving away ancient arcane print layout procedures -- count how many letters (and spaces) I could allot a story and devise a headline according to those specifications. I felt that it was my obligation to understand the gist of the story and craft a succinct and appealing come-on.
For instance: If I were given this particular story (from Curt Brown of the New Bedford Standard-Times)

DARTMOUTH — Four months into her tenure as library director, Jennifer Inglis has abruptly resigned, effective Aug. 27.
"I just have found something else closer to home," the 37-year-old librarian said Tuesday in an interview with The Standard-Times.
She declined to disclose her new position or explain her reasons for leaving the $70,000-a-year job as head of the Dartmouth libraries.
Her formal letter of resignation, which was accepted by the Board of Library Trustees at an emergency meeting late Tuesday afternoon, also didn't shed any light on her reasons for leaving.
The resignation letter, which was shown to The Standard-Times, only stated she was resigning and that she had accepted a position closer to home.

...I italicized what I felt was pertinent. I also would have also assigned the same headline -- without the "abrupt" part, which seems subjective -- that was in the paper:

Dartmouth library director abruptly resigns

Except for the fact that our author seems to be fixated on the former new library director not giving "a reason" for her resignation. He hammers away at this "reason for leaving" thing, never accepting Ms. Inglis' clearly stated reason for the breakup: Because she "found something closer to home."
Which he himself reveals in the secoind paragraph of the story.
Reporters -- and journalism professors -- will tell you "never to trust a fast answer." But really. How much "light" does one need to "shed" about a resignation without violating accepted tenets of professional courtesy?
It is a different world than it was twenty-five years ago when I could work at a "career job" and at any number of concurrent "bills jobs." The jobs aren't there now, and anyone who can find a better position -- closer to home, with better benefits, better pay -- has no obligation to be jealously loyal to one job, one employer, or even one career.
Or to explain "reasons for leaving" to one reporter. A reporter who, it might seem, is the only one in town who's even asking.

Should be a National Holiday

2010-08-16T00:15:00.004-04:00

The middle of August here on the SouthCoast.
In an odd economic irony, just after the Massachusetts Sales Tax-Free Weekend, the public school buses start rolling out to rehearse their routes. Are Back-To-School shoppers already looking for deals on Halloween treats, or are those signs some stab at retail humor? Impetuous Autumn attempts lame swipes at these dog days -- often for an hour at night, or on a dry afternoon -- but not much more than a stray red leaf or unexpected chill wind.
But the more pragmatic climate prevails. One can still expect hot and humid days, steamy nights and the threat of a storm -- either sudden and electric or something more smoldering, of more exotic disposition, and of unpredictable magnitude and effect.
Damn but if that doesn't sound like Julie Newmar.
Whose birthday, August 16, is reminder enough to cherish every warm and pleasant moment.

(The presentation features photographs of Julie Newmar. Because it's her birthday.)

The Journal's Fifth Anniversary and (brief) Return of...

2010-08-13T12:21:00.009-04:00

SOLES'N'BOWLS

I used to do this every Friday. No, not martial arts. Or even Soles'n'Bowls. Just share sometimes random observations that I had made over the preceding week that I didn't bother to further elucidate in the pages of this Journal.
That was when I was obsessively conscientious about providing content for Blogger™ to place between ads. Since I have no agreement with Blogger™ to do so, I'm free to not do so. And since The Impossible Journal has never in any way claimed to be a regular, professional, or journalistic outfit, just like the other 47,832,106 personal online journals, I make my own decisions about content.
At least I'm not a newsblog that must check with people before playing obvious whimsy.
According to my records -- and the "Previously" pin at the end of the port rail -- I've been at this for something like five years.
According to my own recollections however, sometime during the year 2004 I began this as a labored experiment in historical fiction. Members of the crew of the fictitious 18th Century Royal Navy vessel, H.M.S. Impossible wrote in their personal journals or letters home of the goings-on. Which mirror contemporary events.
Little of that original experiment is extant today. And a good thing too.
Where it lacked spontaneity, it relied on forced analogies and some squishy scholarship.
After deleting a crapload of pages -- something that I have recently chosen to never do again, for the sake of future generations -- H.M.S. Impossible returned as a series of bittersweet reminiscences about my time sailing and teaching on TallShips™, and one of those ships in particular although I should have given the others more page time.
That edition of H.M.S. Impossible was not like traditional wooden boat discussion boards or maritime bulletin boards or TallShip™ blogs. Those yachties and Patrick O'Brien fans don't appreciate the realities of power struggles with captains and boatswains on ships held together with duct tape because the lubbbers in charge had no idea how. And I wasn't enamored of those outlets and their relentlessly Pollyanna content about happy entitled rich kids in the Caribbean with their parents' money on 501(c)(3) schooners.
I admit that it's no great shakes visually, but with this unmoderated online journal format with no tremendously entitled or whitebread supervision, I could grouse almost daily about the horrid local radio stations. Oh, and I mused a lot about politics and teevee and waterfront festivals.
I grew tired of the boat mystique and on that day, I morphed the online presence into The Impossible Journal. And until Verizon™ and Google™ force me to pay for the privilege, I shall play incidental whimsy.
And pictures of girls on boats.

Before "thousands upon thousands" of you fill up the comments section below with congratulations -- or brutally deprecating recriminations -- on my Fifth or so anniversary, be aware that I have activated the First Amendment-fudging "Comment Moderation" feature. To demonstrate why I have done so, I have left the "Notes" section to last Thursday's entry intact (except for one later entry by Shamrock. It was welcome and charming, but I had closed the curtain and exited the theater).
And I've learned my lesson about not praising the success of something two days before it happens.
Thanks for all of your everything. Don't ever not.

"Youth is wasted on the young" ...and Youth are inflicted on me.

2010-08-12T04:57:00.011-04:00

With the notable exception of a few very rare and brilliant children (that would be the talented offspring of friends), I don't have any strong desire to have children around me.
This, I am told, is a tremendous flaw in my character, especially given my age. Many men my age are on their second or third set of progeny or whatever they call it. Litters?
Few people avoid the obligation of children anymore, or the personal, property, and psychic damage that the little rascals impose. Gone are the days of the sullen disappointed pair dismayed at their couplings' failure to bear fruit. Now, that very couple can rent children and throw extravagant massively resource-squandering Transformers-themed birthday parties. With real Transformers! Celebrities -- intellectually and emotionally barely mere children themselves -- continually adopt little bundles of joyful magazine cover real estate. Seriously, what good is a $1500 status symbol baby stroller without some brats to toss in it?
Everyone is familiar with the old saw about babies: "They're sticky and they smell bad." This condition only worsens as they mature. Without proper attention, by the time they reach 20 or so, they really are hygienic menaces. I don't even know how Lady Gaga puts up with them.
Children are allowed every occasion to run around willy-nilly in restaurants, irritating patrons, screaming all manner of things and throwing tableware. I understand that some of them are called "waiters."
When I was a child, I was considerably younger and dumber than I am now, thus satisfying two requirements of Childhood. (The third has something to do with height.) I worked for a locally well-known businessman. He was well-known ("Fall River Famous") due to his money and his profitable political connections. As well as for his storied willingness to help children.
He provided his used automobile tires to local families so that they could fashion swings and playground toys. That's what he said as he dropped off tires in poor neighborhoods. He then sold the manufactured tire swings and playthings in suburban subdivisions as "genuine American crafts," and it is rumored that he gave some of the profit back to poor families through a government program that he briefly joined called "taxes." He often donated his outmoded business equipment and office supplies to local grade schools. Some of those mimeograph machines and novelty pens are still in use to this very day. He had his name embroidered on every little league baseball uniform. His own name.
He did these things -- good things -- for the children.
As is usually the case around here with well-heeled successes, many people disliked him. They had their "reasons," but those are allegations still to be proven in court. When these envious curs made their opinions known, someone nearby would quickly respond:

"He does such good for the children!"

As a young person, I felt that I was surely blessed to have the good fortune to work for him. Although, after a while, I felt that my efforts deserved some remuneration. I had worked for him for free, after all, for a few months.
Well, that's not entirely true. He had explained to me -- that first day as I crawled out of the burlap sack and loosened the blindfold -- that he was "dead set against" that "minimum wage" because it wasn't fair to workers like me who had to pay him $6.25 an hour until they finished their internship. Or indenture. He used both words interchangeably. When I said that I felt it would be more fair if he were to pay me for work that I did, he calmly explained to me that feelings had nothing to do with business and that I should just get back down into the pit and keep scraping.
His advice shaped my own business acumen, and I'll never forget him for that. Child labor law violations aside, it was obvious that he was a successful businessman who did a lot for children.
I am glad that he took me under his wing (or whatever that appendage was) and to this day, I stand beside the people who defend him as they compulsively intone that knee-jerk "for the kids" platitude. I stand beside them, but don't actually join in saying anything because I try not to breathe too much around those particular people.
Their kids are usually better conversationalists anyway.

"We don't watch the television machine, Mr. Petrie."

2010-08-09T16:12:00.007-04:00

And glad of it.
This video was shot by one of the people who affixed a long banner which called out into the bay near Homer Alaska "WORST GOVERNOR EVER" during the filming of "Sarah Palin's Alaska," a Discovery Channel thing starring that woman.
Since it's not misspelled, and the lettering appears to be fairly even, I assumed that the sign was not that of a Tea Party patriot. One can never be sure, in these days of rabid distaste for government. I am also cynical enough to believe that this could easily have been what we used to call "a publicity stunt," now referred to as "indeterminate crossbranding" or "transmedia storyboarded eventing" -- a set-up for the YouTubers who would no doubt turn it into the most viral thing since that cat one and everyone will tune in to the actual show to see how it's handled. I'm sure the professionals' cameras were civilly inactive while "the talent" addressed her fans' concerns.I tried cable teevee long before that woman. It was community cable, but I needed to rebuild my CV after a rotten breakup with a dream job, so...
I was required, in some instances, to expound on camera for a minute or two in what were called "flying stand-ups" by the Community College Adult Ed video class dropout who fancied himself "producer." (I fancied myself "talent" so you see how teevee is a snakepit of rank self-delusion.) Evenings and weekends, I was working in dinner theater for actual money, so I brought my theater background to the set, hit my marks, remembered all of the words, delivered them competently. I cannot now remember a single thing that I once said.
When I could keep myself from making snide comments under my breath just off-mike, I got pretty good at ad-libbing these things, "flying" as I often did in those days, "by the seat of my pants."
Once, I was enlisted to "interview" a politician. By "interview," I mean "nod and smile -- or nod and frown when appropriate -- while the guy did his yakkety-yak." I knew the guy, and fed him the proper cues and he hit his mark, remembered his words, delivered them competently. I was impressed that we both seemed to be proficient improv artists.
A few days later, I saw the pol on a real teevee station, saying precisely the same thing that he had said to me: same inflections, same expressive eye motions, same practiced gestures.
To this day, I recognize the expression of those who prepare themselves for performance and I wait for my friends who are actors or politicians to "drop character" before proceeding in honest conversation, which they do. Because they are nice people.
I left broadcasting when my career path took another tack. But I mention all of this reminiscence because I feel a kinship with people who have lived and studied and trained and worked to become actors, newsers, talkers.
I feel sorry for them, as they eke out their livings working two or three jobs to make the rent while spectacularly stupid and unprepared morons take the stage, defacing the entertainment industry with their utter connivance or -- more accurately -- publicly subsidized guesswork at what is or isn't entertaining.
I wonder if "reality teevee stars" have to join the Screen Actors' Guild or the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists?
Is Discovery a union shop?

Hey, Fanboys

2010-08-09T02:52:00.002-04:00

It's Gillian Anderson's birthday. I'm celebrating today by not being quite as smart as the character that I played in the Nineties.

(This presentation includes one photograph of Gillian Anderson.)

It's Summerfest again! Oh, wait...

2010-08-05T23:02:00.012-04:00

Among the conscientious in the event promotion world -- there are a few -- some common sense tenets are etched pretty clearly. One is: "Don't name your event what a neighboring community names theirs."
New Bedford's Summerfest has been entertaining the masses since 1854 or something, when what we now call "folk music" was known as "new wave." But The SouthCoast is an area well-known for its ~~lazy~~ ~~careless~~ determined nature. Crippled by symptoms like short term memory loss, unrelentingly plodding reinvention is what passes for innovation. (cue Chamber of Horrors theme) The Fall River Spirit -- with a totally straight face -- notes that Fall River's

Summerfest was conceived after the Fall River Area Chamber of Commerce in late May canceled FRCA 2010, citing in a statement "challenging" economic conditions such as fewer corporate sponsorships and volunteers and a "substantial" increase in costs The popular event had drawn thousands of people to the city's waterfront every summer for 25 years.

The "FRCA 2010" mentioned actually fell apart under its own staggeringly ungainly self-importance, volunteers finally sussing out three days without pay is indenture, and the public balking at paying for something that they felt "was always supposed to be free." And that explains why Fall River's waterfront festival should have the same name as New Bedford's. Blame the Chamber.This weekend's Summerfest event (the one in Fall River; there are 9,402,871 others, btw) appears to feature something called Kid's World Festival (which breaks the "no punctuation in the title" rule, in this case making it appear to be ONE particular kid's world, sharply diminishing attendance.)
The SouthCoast has always eschewed respected precedent. Consider the moral, legal, and ethical challenges presented on a daily basis in local government; business owners' reliance on outmoded or delusional paradigms; the deep rejection of the terms "industry standards" and "quality requirement." Also, there's a widely pervasive "my kid can do that" mindset.
Which is why watching SouthCoast amateurs try to concoct marketing projects that should be left to actual professionals is so rewardingly hilarious. Of particular note is the use of "new" media by "old" media and how they'll describe "recordings" as "podcasts" or "commenting anonymously at the end of a news article" as "blogging."
There is, however, no website for Heritage State Park's Summerfest. And I'm not sure who the audience for the Kids World Festival website is. And its creators certainly had no idea either. Most special event websites are sharp and active with welcoming animated graphics and quick incidental blurbs of enticing adspeak briefly identifying attractions.
The Kids World Festival's (apparently unedited and mostly unreadable) site seems cobbled together from press releases and distracted musings aimed at adults but illustrated for children. Children who would no doubt find its banal clip art and 1980s fonts insulting. 750 words is a nice grant proposal but not an inducement to a fun-filled family weekend.
Oh, and is this a "501c-3" or "501(c)(3)"?
Are you sure?
I know that a new non has to go through backbreaking paperwork, pay exorbitant fees, and complete that rabies control quarantine program. Most organizations have to wait a couple of years before they even show up on common lists of charitable foundations. But since an important local media operative is in charge at Kids World (and we all know how the media is so exhaustively well-versed in non-profits), I could not be dissuaded from checking on the outfit's self-definition. The I.R.S. is, understandably, succinct:I'm sure, however, that we're soon to see official evidence of the indomitable self-confidence of those brave community-minded SouthCoasters who have started this endeavor in the worst economy in Massachusetts since 1621 and among the least philanthropic sourpuss bastards in the world.
Good luck with that.
And have fun this weekend!

NB: Something for everyone...

2010-07-30T06:22:00.006-04:00

...to puzzle over.
This is another SouthCoast Summer weekend planned without consulting a calendar or calling a colleague. Sure, there are official positions in the community who are contracted to coordinate arts and social events, but they apparently have the Summer off. The tradition of having everything happen on the same day or two adjacent days during the Summer remains unaltered. The positive side to this is that it diffuses the population throughout the municipality (the ones who leave their homes, anyway).
The whole of Ontario knows about the Feast of the Blessed Sacrament. It's held every year to the chagrin of neighbors, in New Bedford's largest asphalt wok, "Madeira Field." Any teevee chef will tell you: "Stay along the sides, where it's cooler."
Also be sure to enjoy the Classic Rock that has become synonymous with this magical Portuguese-American celebration held in order to, acording to their website, "share in the rich Madeiran heritage and family values."

Loosely related but nevertheless co-opted into the Madeiran festivities, The TallShip™ Barquentine Gazela of Philadelphia will toss some lines to the State Pier, giving the tony Trustafarians on board the opportunity to earn "patronize the public" badges as required under the terms of the grant which mandates at least one made-up nautical term ("windsail" or "speckle shot" or "main smiteyard" are examples) and at least one entirely fictional account of a horrible storm. They are then required -- by Maritime Law -- to say that it's "the best experience of my whole life!" Do not suggest that "conditioner might help with that nest;" she'll probably own you some day.
New Bedford has so relentlessly branded Gazela as a "Portuguese TallShip™" that I wonder if I was only asked to work a couple of watches because I appeared to be a dark-haired marujo. I must admit that I did teach the Philadelphian on the crew a few well-delivered Portuguese cuss words.
Thrill to the perceptive commentary on this fine example of why YouTube™ shouldn't have audio:Perhaps the most popular distraction this weekend will be held at the Whale Hunting Museum that is a rapacious repository for Massachusetts Cultural Council monies. "Popular" among those Interneteers who have Google™Alerts for "herman melville," "moby-dick," and "stuff about whales or boats that I can put on my damp blog."
It's Herman Melville Family Day! Which has to be at some weekend date near to Melville's actual Birthday, August 1. And look at that: It's Sunday!
As found on an official NBWM marketing presentation -- or "blog" -- I share this demonstration of the consideration that's afforded the acclaimed author of the most important thing ever that only briefly mentions cannibalism in a racial context:
Does New Bedford know how to party? Or what?

...and I didn't use "stamp your little feet" once!

2010-07-22T21:24:00.001-04:00

As someone who has dealt with food pantries -- not out of need but because of munificent largess -- the tale of the Singing Out Against Hunger brouhaha in Tiverton (there are links to newspaper discussions of the topic at their site) distresses me beyond mere nostalgia for the good old days in the old neighborhood.
I do not adorn my memories of that peninsula in chimerica. The native locals hundreds of years ago named it "The Most Beautiful Spot" and that very same "Nanaquaket" remains quite enticing.
One is never far from the salt water smell of Nanaquaket Pond or the Sakonnet River and a serene rurality still embraces the manicured lawns and sculpted foliage. When I grew up on it, the Neck was a friendly place, full of well-sauced garden tenders, readily-available unminded small sailcraft, and private-school upperclassmen eager with lacrosse tips.
On some Summer nights, a breeze might waft a not unpleasant redolence of fried seafood across the pond... French fries... clam cakes... and fried clams. Have you been to Evelyn's Drive In recently?
Here's The Gluttony Network's Augustus T. Slobberchops:Recently, the owners of Evelyn's have provided their drive-in as one of the venues for "Singing Out Against Hunger," an annual shindig that has raised over $50,000 (some say $60,000) over the past seven years for Rhode Island's East Bay Community Action Program. That outfit provides help to, according to their website...

Head Start and Early Head Start services; family health and dental services; family development case management services including social service information and referral and basic human needs; youth programs; the East Bay Coalition for the Homeless; Heating and Energy Services; the Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Feeding and Nutrition Program (WIC) and senior services including case management, senior employment, the Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP), Foster Grandparents and the Ocean State Senior Dining Program (meals in a social setting).

I know a little about non-profit fundraising (he said with no small degree of ironical litotes). A fundraiser that nets NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS is an exceptional event. That is a remarkable return for even the most complex beg. Considering that sum is raised over a weekend of local and amateur musical performances is precious and laudable.
The Nanaquaket where I grew up would have seen an effort like Singing Out Against Hunger as both a welcome diversion and compelling evidence that compassion, philanthropic duty and creative solutions to common problems still led their neighbors. The bank president across the street would have walked over with a sizable donation (orchestrated of course, to coincide with a visit from a newspaper photographer). Cans and cash collected in a bin at the entrance to the mill would show up, coordinated by the factory owner next door. The lawyer would have likely donated the sound equipment. Simple gestures to them, and the extra noise on a Summer evening?
"What noise?"
But there are those today who cringe at terms like "health and human services," "moral obligation" and "501(c)(3)." A few Tiverton residents have insisted that the event be truncated and toned down, and the Town Council sides with the whiny minority and has curtailed the performance and fundraising hours to a degree, forbidding amplification.
As far as I can tell, the Town Council has not put in place a noise ordinance forbidding amplification every other night. Just the one particular event. September 10, 11, 12.
Because a few people bellyached.
Where else do we see such inordinate fawning to intemperate and vocal self-centeredness?
Besides in undisciplined pre-schools, I mean?

insert your own lame "whale" cliché here

2010-07-21T15:20:00.005-04:00

from msnbc:

A South African couple was out sailing near the country's infamous Robben Island when a 40-ton whale breached and crash-landed on their yacht.
"We were watching the whale flipping its tail for about half an hour," said Cape Town Sailing Academy Administrator Paloma Werner, who was enjoying a Sunday sail with her boyfriend and sailing instructor, Ralph Mothes.
"It reached about 100 to 200 meters from us, then it disappeared under water and reappeared about 10 to 20 meters from the boat, but we didn't think we were on a collision course," she told msnbc.com.

In other news, the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Summer fundraiser is in a couple of weeks.
It's called "Over The Top."

My New BFF

2010-07-16T13:10:00.008-04:00

I have received a great compliment from an unexpected source. Being mentioned in a newspaperographer's online "blog" -- although certainly not a goal of this Journal -- is a very gratifying thing. Primarily, the mention displays admirable journalistic integrity on the part of Jack Spillane, who wiped up the bar remnants of my unlikely admission to a "prank" that involved one of those "best of" lists.
Since I am one of the individuals with a finger on the jugular pulse of Downtown New Bedford who isn't actually trying to suffocate it, I know that few sources of reference can be trusted to supply adequate tidings. I only hope that you reward your particular source proficiently, Shipmate.My initial reaction to your "blog" entry was, as you would expect: "Why does everyone insist upon putting periods in my name? I don't put them there." (I had them surgically removed after a near-tragic print shop accident. Don't get me started on "full stops.")
I next wiped a bead of glistening mock anxiety from my frontispiece, recalling how I had re-edited the piece to correct spelling and grammatical errors only moments after its publication. (One "there" that should have be a "their" and I really would have lost the cred that was already shaky after I had missed Shatner's birthday last week. At least I didn't forget that today is Phoebe Cates' birthday, or I would be really geek credless.)
I then realized that I must dash off some piece of drivel like this, tout de suite, to salute the six who would visit the Journal out of the morbid rubbernecking curiosity that everyone gets when someone online refers to another someone's online presence as "very funny."
Since no one ever clicks on links, I know that the few who tried to The Google™ me were misguided to Doctor Who tribute pages. The rest found that I have been rather reticent of late. That's because I was not doing this anymore. I seriously wasn't regularly tapping away at it. But the temptation was far too great when the 1000 Greatest Places List came out. So...

While I might have the attention of someone who is possibly the only other person who feels a penchant -- monetarily-remunerated or not -- to address local concerns, and since he has access to the powers that be (or "powers to be," according to some City Councillors) maybe, Jack, you could help me to sort some of the other New Bedford mysteries that so puzzle me. Such as, "Why don't any of the bars or independant bartenders stock Cream Soda?" "Why are waitresses so damn sensitive about the pronunciation of scallop?" "Why is there only one of everything? Except art galleries and Chinese restaurants?" "Why does everyone say that they hate sushi, but there's sushi available at every supermarket?" "Why does my spell-check refuse to admit 'Bedford?'" and "Why does all the local radio suck so much?' (As a former employee of local radio, I already know "How" it sucks.)
Your editor will probably tell you that I can be relied upon for almost nothing of journalistic consequence -- what with my disdain for it and all --but this is a swell town full of swell people, with the best musicians who still have day jobs. So feel good about that. When the chips are down, remember that everyone has your back, except for the ones who are trying to come up with some sort of plausible explanation for not.
But you probably already knew that.

(This presentation featured an autographed photograph of Phoebe Cates.)