Baltimore Diary

More Atrocities, Please

[Stupid "draft" setting. This shoulda been published yesterday.]

Yesterday, GF and I went to the National Museum of the American Indian, located in Washington DC on the mall.

(Sidebar to You Kids: "mall" has more than one meaning.)

We went with her mother, which in this case isn't a terrible thing because she (and therefore GF) have some Cherokee heritage in them, so they were especially motivated to go and find out what the folks at the Smithsonian know. We parked near the Phoenix Park Hotel, which is a pretty nice place, by the bye. I've spent a little time there. From there it was a couple of blocks' walk to the Capitol and then across the Mall to the museum itself.

Let me tell ya, this stuff looks a lot closer together than it really is.

So we get to the museum, swearing that we're going to cab it back, and in we go. Now, in our post-9/11 world, when you go to many of the museums along the Mall, you're put through a pretty extensive search. You have to empty your pockets and put the stuff on a tray, handbags get searched (they use a stick to poke around) and you have to walk through a metal detector. At this museum they did the stick search and the detector, but you didn't have to do the pockets thing. Okay, whatever.

The building itself is pretty cool (go click on the link and check it out; I'll wait here). It's meant to emulate the cliff-dwelling pueblos that some Southwestern Indians lived in (and still do, in many cases). Inside, there's a lot of empty space, though, since the atrium goes straight to the top.

One thing that I noticed was that there are not a lot of tribes represented by the museum. Some of the Southwest tribes, a few of the Pacific Northwest tribes (including those in Canada, eh), and a bunch of the South American tribes. The Seminoles of Florida got a section. A few others who I've forgotten off the top of my head.

But there was no mention of the Powhatan Tribe of Virginia, which was on-hand in Williamsburg and Jamestown. No mention of the Iroquois Indians, composed of five tribes across the Upstate New York region. No mention of the Wampanoag Indians, who greeted the Pilgrims in the 1620s. Very little mention of the Cherokees. Nothing of the Apaches, the Sioux, the Shoshones, the Hopis, the Kickapoos, Chippewas and so many others.

No mention of the Trail of Tears. No Sand Creek Massacre. No Bear River. No Chief Joseph's "I will fight no more forever." No Crazy Horse. Smallpox got a brief mention, so hurray for that, I guess.

I was disappointed. GFMom was philosophical. GF was furious. She actually went over to the Information Desk looking for a comment card so that she could complain in writing while she still had a mad going on. Apparently she met up with someone inside who told her that participation by the individual tribes is voluntary, so if you don't see a tribe represented, it's because they chose not to be represented. Furthermore, the reason that some tribes didn't participate is because they felt that the museum is a sanitized version of events, that the building is a shrine to what some have called "the lie of Manifest Destiny" and others have referred to as "the American Holocaust." Both of these are correct but the latter is more colorful.

At any rate, what's there is interesting but the whole thing really falls short. I've never been disappointed by a Smithsonian museum before this visit, and it's a real pity. GF has already stated that, as a teacher, she can't in good conscience, bring her students there for a field trip.

Claim To Fame

I took Keiko out to Patapsco Valley State Park today to visit with a friend and her dog. This is one of the area's better-kept secrets. At least, I knew nothing about it until today, but that's not saying a lot. Anyway, I met her at the "Daniels Area", which is just above the Daniels Dam and is supposedly a very good place to go canoeing. (My friend told me that because she recently acquired a canoe, but that's a very different story).

As you approach the Daniels Area of the park, if you go by a certain route you pass the Rockland United Methodist Church. Apparently they have a Fall Festival coming up. This was the sign that they had near the road (as usual, click to embiggen):

I may have to go to this thing. I'm actually a fan of Survivor and I wouldn't mind meeting Mr. Skupin, but if I do, now the first thing out of my mouth will probably be to ask him for his reaction to that sign.

Speaking of Survivor, we're seeing way too much of the Stephenie and Bobby Jon interviews with this edition. I still don't know who the other people are.

Decisions, Decisions

I've started the planning for my annual Holiday party. It sounds a little early, but it's my one big party of the year and at this point it's kind of expected (i.e. I can't not do it, now). I don't make any major effort to outdo myself each year but I do like to try doing different stuff, and that's where the advance planning comes in.

GF and I start with some of the basics, like the food and the guest list. The two pretty much evolve together: as the guest list grows, so does the food list, but its overall complexity will lessen. Hey, I don't want to spend the entire night in the kitchen.

Originally I was thinking about a larger group than we're used to inviting, for several reasons. One of the biggest is that by the time the invitations go out, I'll be working a different job. This means a different crowd of people to invite, in both number and relative importance. My new job as King of the Average Schmucks will make me visible to principals and Area Supervisory types, plus my coworkers will change a little bit. Add to that the greater visiblity that GF and I have both been working on in the community and now you start thinking about inviting local elected officials and community representatives in general. Plus there are the people who came last year. So we take the invite list from last year (yeah, I saved it and have been looking at it daily for a year), weed out the repeat no-shows and start there. Add in a few new names and without trying we're up to the same size list as last year (about 45). And we haven't even gotten to new obligations yet.

With a crowd this big, we also have to start thinking about venue. My place is pretty small. So I have two issues: Starting with a "weeded" list means that I've got a lower percentage of no-shows in the first place, so I can't depend (if that's the word) on a percentage of those people not coming. I may have to actually move this thing to a local hotel meeting room/suite/some fricken thing or some other, slightly larger location. I'm gonna need something like 500 square feet for us to play in. More on this story as it develops.

Foul Weather Friends

I heard a cool story on the radio this morning.

I was listening to the local NPR station and, when they switched to the local block, they presented a story about a husband and wife who live in Baltimore. About seven years ago they visited New Orleans and, while in the French Quarter, ran into another, locally-based couple. They chatted for awhile, one thing led to another and they became good friends.

There were joint vacations (including one to Ocean City), cards and phone calls exchanged, the usual bit. These were two couples who, prior to the Baltimoreans' trip, had nothing whatsoever in common. If they'd met in Baltimore they probably wouldn't have been friends. But it worked out differently.

When Hurricane Katrina hit, of course the locals started making calls to New Orleans looking for their friends and making sure that they were OK. They didn't realize that the phone lines went out early on, so they called every few hours and left messages. A couple of days later, they got a call. "When I saw 'Mississippi' on the caller ID, I knew it was them," said the husband.

Had the NO couple stayed in their house, they'd certainly be dead. The house was destroyed. Not flooded, erased. Gone. It broke apart and nothing remains. The husband worked for UPS. Their operations in that area probably won't be back up to speed for months. He was told his job probably wouldn't resume until late next year.

So when he called his friends in Baltimore, he and his wife were alive and healthy, but they had pretty much nothing. So our Local Hero suggested that they come to Baltimore to stay and get back on their feet, a suggestion that they accepted.

Because they had little more than the clothes on their backs and the $2000 from FEMA, it took them a couple of days to get up here. In the meantime, the husband at this end called the local UPS, which was able to re-hire their employee as soon as he got here. He also arranged for them to get housing, and they've been able to move straight into an apartment in the Lauraville neighborhood.

If these couples hadn't bumped into each other several years ago, if they hadn't gotten to chatting, if they hadn't turned into good long-distance friends, if if if if a hundred little things hadn't happened, these people would still be homeless somewhere in Mississippi.

The power of random chance.

School Daze

Last night was my first night of attending school as a student since 1995. I'm overwhelmed.

Okay, it's not quite that bad. But there will be a lot of work to get done this semester. And because the class is so long each week (four hours and this guy says he doesn't do breaks), there aren't that many classes to begin with (and I'll be missing one of them). Our last class is on October 27.

The course is Legal Issues for Teachers and Administrators. Between now and the 27th I have to complete four briefs, do a presentation on some legal topic facing educators, and write and present a Position Paper of perhaps 2500 words. Ain't we got fun. This is NOT what I was hoping to deal with, my first time back in so long. But on the other hand, maybe it'll make everything else seem like playing in the sandbox.

And here's a beauty detail: early in the class, as the professor discussed the syllabus, he started talking about how the presentation was going to be a "small group" project; that we'd pair up and present as partners.

Group projects? They give me hives. I hate 'em. I'd rather earn my grade by myself. Sink or swim, it's all me.

So there was one person who wasn't in the room but they're friends with someone who was, and they're paired up. But that meant that there was an odd number of people in the class and so there was going to have to be one group of three. That trio formed quickly. I just sat there highlighting legal terms I wanted to look up later on. Finally, the professor asked the class "Who doesn't have a partner?"

This was going to be the moment: either he's going to let it slide or he's going to force someone on me. If that's the case, so be it. I held up my hand.

So did two other students. TWO! Since I was in the back, I wasn't immediately visible. He paired them up and then it was just me. He looked puzzled for a minute until finally I said "I really don't mind working alone." It turns out that he didn't mind it either, but he still looked confused.

Frankly, I'm still not sure how it happened. But I'm not complaining about it.

Old Joke vs. New Technology

I attended Adephi University, on Long Island, in the early 1980's. I was a Communications student then, which meant that I was taking courses in TV, Radio and Film production. It was radio with which I had the most fun, which pretty much made me a pariah in that department. The radio students were definitely on the low end of the totem pole. By the time I attended, the school radio station, WBAU, was a "club" rather than a department-sponsored activity, meaning that anyone on campus could join.

That wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

Anyway: when I took film production classes, one of the things we had to do was title cards for the films we made. This included a copyright card and a production company card. Since, by this time, I was a radio geek and was taking film production because I had to (as opposed to the Art of Film-type courses that I genuinely enjoyed), I wanted to come up with a production name that reflected my interest.

A few days later, King Kong was on TV. And the first thing you see on that screen is this (click on the picture to embiggen it):

RKO Radio Pictures! OF COURSE! This was a revelation. This was my inspiration! Why not make Radio Pictures?

And so, ccradio (I always wrote it that way) Productions was born.

So a few years later, when the Internet started to grow in popularity and people needed user names for forums and such, I started to use "ccradio" as my handle. Hey, I needed something and it was easier than actually thinking. So I started with that and I use it pretty much whenever I can. If you're on a discussion board somewhere and you see that name, it's likely to be me. (Oddly enough, I've never used that handle in the IRC.)

Around the same time, a company called C. Crane was starting to blossom. Among the products that it offered to customers was something called the CCRadio. I think it was originally designed to be the best AM radio ever (which, even if they'd started that in 1975, would be akin to making the best vinyl record album today). The radio itself has broadened its definition and now does FM and NOAA signals, along with TV audio and a few other bands. So when they got a web presence, of COURSE they took ccradio.com. I don't hold it against them, it's not as though I want the domain. But I do get the occasional email from people who see my nickname here and there and wonder if there's any relation.

I'm here to say: No.

I'm sure it's a fine product, but I'm not spending a hundred and fifty bucks to find out. Now, if they're willing to send me one gratis to review here, I'd be more than happy to talk about it in positively glowing terms. Because when you get down to it, I'm willing to whore myself out.

And that last sentence, it occurs to me, will gather a whole new batch of hits to this site from people looking for something else altogether. Heh.

Real-Life Drama

I'd just left the doctor's office. I have a problem with my left foot, and my doctor spent some time manhandling it as part of the examination. Naturally, this is the foot that's connected to my injured knee, so I'm in a bit of pain now. As I leave the building, I stop for a minute to do some quick standing leg extensions, since this sometimes loosens me up, or at least distracts me from my hurtin' knee.

Sometimes you don't have to know the whole backstory to figure out what's going on:

She's sitting on a bench outside the building, listening on her cellphone. Her eyes are damp and rimmed with red. She's mostly listening, responding mostly with "uh-huh." He comes out, spots her and approaches. He stands there, waiting.

He stands there, waiting some more. Finally he sits down on the bench. Her back is to him as she continues her rather one-sided conversation. He watches her back, then tries to get interested in the stuff around him: a car in the driveway with its radio turned up loud. A young girl exiting a car and limping toward the building. Someone else nearly get knocked over by a car leaving the parking garage.

Shortly thereafter she closes the phone and turns to him. "That's it," she says. "It's gone. It hasn't changed at all in the last several days. It's gone, but my body doesn't know it yet." She leans in toward him. He puts his arm around her and sits there, absorbing the news.

She isn't sobbing, but she still sounds sad. "I'm sorry, honey," she says.

"Why are you apologizing? This isn't your fault."

"I know, but it feels like I'm disappointing you somehow." He shakes his head No. "Aren't you sad about this?"

"It is a letdown," he replies, "but with being sent back here so many times you had to know something wasn't right."

They held each other some more. I gimped back to my car and went home.

Honey, I'm...Here.

I'm not sure if it's just me, if it's this town, or whatever it might be, but I find myself feeling kind of homesick.

That, in and of itself, is a bit of a laugh, since I really haven't felt at "home" for a long time. I've been quite the mobile person ever since I first went to college. Since 1981, I've lived:

• In an off-campus apartment (1 year)
• In a friend's basement (3 months)
• In a rented room (8 months)
• At my mom's house again (6 months)
• In a dormitory (2 years)
• At my mom's house yet again (about 1 year)
• In a basement apartment in Floral Park, Long Island with Wife #1(2 years)
• In a second-floor illegal aparment in West Hempstead, LI with Wife #1(2 years)
• In a rented house in Valley Stream, Long Island with Wife #1 (3 years)
• In a rented room in Smithtown, Long Island (about a year and a half)
• In another rented room in Lyndhurst NJ, pay by the week (2 months)
• In Wife #2's house in Rutherford, NJ before and during the time we were married (4 years)
• In a friend's guest bedroom in Deer Park, LI (6 months)
• In a rented duplex in Baltimore (2 years)
• House Ownership Achieved! And here I am in the Morrell Park section of Baltimore. It's been just over two years, now.

But the thing is, I still don't have a feeling of "home" yet. The place is MINE (and the bank's), but I've still got this feeling of impermanence hanging over my head.

You know, when you move around a lot, you get into a habit of triaging your possessions each time you move. You wind up leaving some small piece of yourself behind, which either remains where you left it or goes into the dustbin. How much of this can a person do before nothing remains?

Many times I've compared myself to Dr. Sam Beckett, the lead character from the show Quantum Leap. If you're unfamiliar with the show, the premise is that he's part of a time-travel experiment gone wrong. He "leaps" into people's bodies, basically occupying them for a given period of time. In order to leave that body, he has to effect some change to history, to "put right what once went wrong". Once everything is done, the leap effect takes place. He turns a bright iridescent blue and he disappears, reappearing in the next host body. This is, I sometimes feel, how my life goes. I enter someone's life, make it different somehow, and then I pass out again.

It's a good (if unconventional) way to explain how there are so few people whom I consider to be good friends after more than a couple of years. I need a little more permanence in my life. I need a real home so that I can feel a true homesickness.

Stream O' Consciousness, or: Yeah, I'm a Sick Puppy

Here's the sort of thing that pops into my head when I have too much time on my hands.

I was reading an article about the TV show Lost. (Premiering September 21, by the way--I left that one out the other day). One of the things that they mentioned is that the character Sawyer is played by Josh Holloway.

Here's where my brain starts to spin outta control.

I'd just heard a story on the news about Natalee Holloway. She's the girl, you'll recall, who disappeared from Aruba several weeks ago. The story was about her mother finally giving up the search leaving Aruba. So she was kinda-sorta on my mind. Immediately I linked the two together, wondering if Josh Holloway was somehow related to Natalee Holloway. Because it's SUCH an uncommon name. (eye roll)

Now, remember this started because the ACTOR'S name is Holloway. So I recognize how screwed up this is.

The next mental leap was to wonder if perhaps Natalee's disappearance wasn't a gigantic publicity stunt on ABC's part, and that Natalee was going to appear, as herself, on a future episode of Lost, just wandering onto the beach with no recollection of how she got there. Last thing she remembers, she was in Aruba.

Then I realized how ridiculous that was, because Natalee is a real person, of course, and we oughtn't play with people's lives like that. But then again, I recently saw Wag the Dog and I understand that it isn't so ridiculous after all.

I'm not belittling the whole Natalee Holloway deal; I honest to god believe that a young girl has gone missing and may have suffered a fate that we'd rather not consider. But wouldn't that be all kinds of screwed-up if ABC were to pull exactly that sort of publicity stunt?

By the way, if ABC pulls exactly that sort of publicity stunt, I want them to send me a BOATLOAD of money. 'Cause you saw it here first.

Not So Unique

So I'm walking down the street in Manhattan several years ago, and as I wait for a traffic light I happen to look down at the ground and I see this in the street (click to embiggen):

I actually spent so much time trying to decipher the text that when the light changed, people started moving around me. That's when I woke up and moved along. I spotted them in a few other places in Manhattan and was still puzzled by them, but after all life goes on and maybe it's just an inside joke that I'm not getting. I'm all right with that.

Imagine my surprise when I come down to Baltimore and I start seeing them on the streets here as well.

I did a little research and it turns out that they're all over the country nowadays, and a few have even been spotted in South America. One guy has taken the time to catalogue the sightings and publicly ask for the originator of this mystery to come out. Check it out at www.toynbee.net. The one I saw the first time around was at 34th Street and 8th Avenue, but that intersection has since been repaved and is not on the list.

And once you see the first one, you'll be seeing them everywhere.