:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 ::

Go Killer D's!

You may recall that several weeks ago (I wrote about it in mid-May), the Democrats in the Texas House fled the state to deny a quorum, thus thwarting a plan spearheaded by US House Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-Texas) to redistrict the state in favor of the Republicans. Never mind that they just redistricted a couple of years ago, as is customary, after the census, and that the only reason to do so now is because the Republicans control the legislature and governorship and they want more US House seats.

The House Democrats prevailed that first time. Then Texas Governer Rick Perry called a special session to pass the measure. It passed immediately in the House, but failed in the Senate because of a two-thirds rule.

Yesterday I received a "Killer D's" t-shirt from friends in Austin, TX, printed during the debacle. I am proudly wearing today to celebrate the latest chapter in this odyssey. After the defeat of the last session, Texas' Senate Majority Leader suspended the two-thirds rule. Now Governer Perry has called a second special session, and this time Senate Democrats have fled the state to deny a quorum.

The Dems are holed up in New Mexico, where Democratic Governer Bill Richardson made this statement about them, in good humor: "New Mexico has a long history of helping people on the run." Read the full story in the Albuquerque Tribune.

Republicans are stoking a political war in Texas and in this country, pushing policies that combine greed and idiocy. I have a feeling all of this is going to get a lot uglier before it gets any better.
:: Ray 1:46 PM [+] ::
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Brave New World and Dinette Progress

Is Aldous Huxley around to see this? His Brave New World describes a society of people who suppress their untidy emotions with a drug called Soma. The last time I checked, this was still a fictional drug, yet now I am receiving spam offering online prescriptions for it along with overnight shipment. What does anyone have to gain from offering a blatantly fictional product? This is either a really cynical scam, or a ploy to collect info on people who are both ignorant and stupid.

Whatever it is, I am currently looking into spam filtering options, because the amount that I receive has become intolerable.

Saturday, my friend Tom Pope came over to help me start on the dinette project in Betty. Woohoo! The digital camera is acting up, but I will attempt to document progress.
:: Ray 3:45 PM [+] ::
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AdoptaPlatoon and Tour de France

Yesterday I signed up at AdoptaPlatoon to be pen pals with a US soldier serving abroad. I did it because I really feel for our men and women in Iraq. They have been put into the intractable position of occupying a still-hostile country with inadequate manpower, with people taking potshots at them. As many have died since President Bush's big victory celebration as died before it in combat. In my own small way, I want them to know that we haven't forgotten about them, we care about them, and we want to see them all come home safely. Which is more than I can say for old "Bring 'em on" George. I won't be political when I get a soldier assigned to me to write to, only supportive. And I send darned fun care packages.

I stayed up late last night watching Tour de France coverage on OLN. The Tour is one of few very sports events capable of gluing me to my TV. I have always thought it was cool, but even more so since I rode an Aids Ride a few years ago. I know what it feels like to ride 60-100 miles a day, for several days in a row. It took me all day, and I barely finished. These guys do it in four hours or less, with astonishing speed and power, for three weeks. And as a friend of mine once said, anyone can ride fast when it is flat -- the Tour spends several days in both the Alps and Pyrenees, with some insanely difficult climbs. As far as I am concerned, the Tour makes most other athletic events look like a Sunday afternoon stroll. Go Lance!
:: Ray 4:06 PM [+] ::
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Woohoo!

For a long time after Mary died, I was a four car family. I had her Explorer, Barney (the old Suburban we had bought to tow Betty), Bam Bam (the Bronco I bought to replace Barney), and my VW Golf. As a result, I had gridlock in my own driveway.

A couple of months ago I sold the Explorer, but I had been dreading selling the Suburban, because it is a piece of junk that burns oil and won't pass the emission test. I don't want to cheat anybody, but of course I wanted to get as much for it as I could. I procrastinated about it, and was still procrastinating, but had at least emptied it out and put a sign in the window.

Yesterday, someone driving by noticed and asked me about it. He made an offer, then came back today to buy it. I got a bit less than I wanted for it, but it is finally gone from my driveway, which I am very excited about. Woohoo! No more musical cars when I want to drive one that is parked in. Woohoo!
:: Ray 11:48 AM [+] ::
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Yuck

Today I ate lunch at a new yuppie sandwich and salad place in the old neighborhood, Wicker Park. I haven't heard of any other locations for this particular place yet, but it was one of these new upscale fast food places that might as well have been a chain. Obviously, I don't like chains. Homogeneity is boring. I want local flavor and atmosphere, and food made and served with a personal touch.

Anyway, I was in a hurry and thought I would try it. It certainly looked like the food was probably good, and they had Sprecher's orange cream soda in the cooler...yum. I ordered a chopped chicken salad, not really reading all the ingredients that were in it, and especially not seeing that it had bleu cheese. So when they handed me my salad, I had to fight the urge to say, "Wait, something is wrong here. Someone has put moldy spoiled milk all over my salad." This is how I felt, and if it weren't specifically listed as an ingredient up there on the menu, I would have sent it back. Instead I picked off as much as I could, and endured the disgusting tanginess it left behind, on what was otherwise a flavorful salad with an adequate amount of suprisingly tender chicken.

The Sprecher's washed it all down, and I will consider trying the place again, next time I am in the 'hood and in a hurry. But I'll be reading that ingredient list like a hawk. I don't consider my self a picky eater, but bleu cheese...yuck.
:: Ray 2:57 PM [+] ::
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Minor crab and gooseberry misadventures

Last night, as promised, I took the kid to Bob Chinn's for his birthday dinner. Bob's is somewhat unique -- a very large, very suburban, independently owned casual seafood restaurant not far from where I live. Despite its suburbanness (acres of parking, etc), I like that it is not a chain. They opened a second location in the city last year, but it is very different from the original, much more formal in atmosphere and menu, and definitely not a clone.

The kid just turned 15. At this age he is far more vulnerable to the coercion of advertising than he admits. Case in point: due to recent radio ads by a chain of crab shack restaurants, he was fixated on ordering snow crab legs. Not any other crab legs, it had to be snow crab legs. So when the server pointed out that he could get king crab legs for the same price, and they would taste pretty much the same, but be easier to eat because they have a softer shell, he stuck to his guns. So they came, and almost immediately he realized it was going to be hard work to get meat out of them. He complained a bit and made quite a show of his struggle, but to his credit, he was a pretty good sport about it, agreeing that perhaps in the future he should consider the server's advice. I laughed a bit, while I ate my pasta with plenty of shell-free crabmeat, and said, "that's why I don't order crab legs...too much work for the amount of food you get." I don't always feel that way, but last night I did.

He did enjoy the meal, and so did I, but this isn't the first time I have seen him want something because it sounded so great on the radio or looked so good on TV. It's kind of sad about our society, but I have a feeling this is only a glimpse of what I will have to endure as a parent someday. Raising kids without TV starts to look better and better, but could I stand not having one? To live without FoodTV and Stargate SG-1? It's a tough call. I don't know the answer.

Back at home for dessert, he tried a piece of my gooseberry pie. The way his face contorted, all I could say was, "that good, huh?" I would have thought that the tartness and sweetness would have worked for him, but it was too much, too intense. Oh well...more for me.

As an aside, I'd like to note that I have enjoyed watching the Bush Administration squirm as it attempts to shake off the growing questions about the bad intelligence regarding Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from Africa, and the use of that intelligence as justification for the war. I don't see this going all that much further, but it has cost Bush and Cheney some credibility, which can only be a good thing, as far as I am concerned. And, as I say, it is fun to watch them dance, changing the story every day, parsing words and playing hot-potato. Could it be that the press has finally begun to wake up to the truth, or lack thereof, about George and company?
:: Ray 1:31 PM [+] ::
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Gooseberries and anniversary

This past weekend, I performed another of my yearly rituals: I made gooseberry pie.

Gooseberries, for the uninitiated, are marble-sized berries roughly the color of green grapes, which taste quite similar to rhubarb. I don't particularly like rhubarb, but I like gooseberries, and there is a bush of them that grows in my backyard. Picking gooseberries is a painful experience. There are pickers on the branches, which are very flexible, so even though you may grab a berry without poking yourself, pulling it free can pull one of the pickers into your fingers. Ouch.

Saturday I endured the pain and loss of blood (OK, not that much blood, just a tiny drop, if you don't count the mosquito bites) necessary to obtain 8 cups of the little guys, enough for several tarts and a pie. Then came the trimming -- each berry has a stem that needs to be trimmed off. So that night I parked myself in front of the TV with a cutting board in my lap, and trimmed, and trimmed, and trimmed, for about two and a half hours. I watched Hal Hartley's Simple Men, so it wasn't a total loss.

Sunday I visited with Raul and Carolyn. After brunch, I watched Carolyn work her magic with the pie dough. This is something I haven't mastered yet, but I fully intend to try soon. After the rolling, she cut and I filled and formed, making little Martha Stewartesque tarts. Their oven was on the fritz, so I spirited everything back to my place and threw it in the oven. About an hour later, I had some of the tastiest treats to come out of my oven yet this year (haven't made any pumpkin bread yet). In fact, the tarts came out so good that I may try another batch in a week or two, when there are raspberries to mix with them (I ate the first ripe one of the season yesterday). Yum.

Coming soon: my trouble with pie dough.

Today would have been my third wedding anniversary. It has been on my mind, but it isn't the overwhelming downer that it was last year. In fact, tonight I am taking the kid to Bob Chinn's for a belated 15th birthday dinner, and I find myself looking forward to it. It helps that their food is really, really good.
:: Ray 1:47 PM [+] ::
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Ashes
(a brilliant thunderstorm is approaching as I write this. it hasn't started raining yet, but sky is putting on a nice show)

Saturday I climbed into Bam Bam and towed Betty to Dodgeville, Wisconsin, where Mary and I married two years ago, July 14. I pulled into Bethel Horizons at about 4:30, met up with several friends already there. The surprise of the day was that a red fox had been spotted a bit earlier. Mary's chosen medicine name was Red Fox in Autumn.

After picking a campsite and leveling Betty with some found wood, I set out to prepare dinner as I had promised to everyone camping: cucumber-tomato salad, grilled corn on the cob, and tequila-lime chicken. Dinner turned out pretty well, and we stayed up until 11 or so around a campfire, drinking beer, making s'mores, catching up, and slamming the Republicans.

(here comes the rain, steady, but not absurdly hard)

We awoke to a 6am thunderstorm that was entertaining to watch from inside Betty, nice and dry, sipping coffee. Then it cleared up nicely for an informal not-quite ceremony with several friends and about a dozen of her family. We all sat together in the picnic shelter where our reception dinner had been held, and Chuck, the medicine man, said a few words, then invited people to speak. The distance from Mary's death allowed people to say things that they hadn't been able to at the funeral, and it was cathartic for some.

(now it is letting up, mostly dripping from the trees, thunder in the distance...and there is that wonderful, after-rain fresh smell)

Then we walked a short way into the woods to a bluff where she and I had spent some quiet time during a lull in the reception, and I emptied out the ashes over the edge. I had known this moment would come since hearing from friends and family that she had wanted to be cremated. I kind of coasted through it, almost numb, not able to say anything particularly profound, not even having the presence of mind to invite everyone to come forward in turn to see the view from the edge of the bluff. It is pretty dramatic, but you don't get the full effect from even 20 feet back.

Anyway, Mary had one last little trick up her sleeve. She had been in the urn for a year and a half, and the humidity had caused the ashes to clump. So I didn't pour so much as I broke bits out with my hands, and emptied them. I was kind of amused by it, and decided that there was no point in being squeamish if I believed what I have said all along, that it's not her in that urn, just some ashes.

This is where the contradiction lies, and where the relationship that living people have with the ashes of the deceased can get interesting. Of course it wasn't her in that urn. It was the ashes of the body that used to contain her spirit, but it wasn't her. But that didn't stop me from talking to the urn for a year and a half as if it was her, and that didn't prevent me from treating the urn and its contents with reverence right up to and including placing those contents lovingly in a beautiful, special place that she would have appreciated and that I will go visit again someday to spend a moment with her.

If you'll indulge me, a friend of mine has a really funny ashes story. She and her husband and sister and mom had were placing her dad's ashes in a forest preserve that was special to him, when the wind shifted. Nobody was coated completely or anything, but her mother ended up having to say, "Don't track your father into the house!"

(no more rain, no more drops, just the wind in the trees and that fresh smell)

I will always love and miss Mary, and even though the rain has probably already washed away any visible sign that her ashes were emptied at that bluff, to me it will always be her final resting place. Well, that and the Kenicott River in Alaska, where her friend Maija is taking a small amount of the ashes to deposit them in another place that Mary loved. I'll have to go visit her there someday, too.
:: Ray 11:09 PM [+] ::
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Starlight Express
Tonight I joined the ranks of the relatively few who have seen three different productions of Starlight Express. As I mentioned on Monday, this one was a touring company that played at Chicago's recently renovated Oriental Theater.

One or two of the songs had been changed, and the story had been tweaked a bit, but it was the Starlight Express that I remember from Las Vegas, several years ago. That show was a semi-permanent installation, with skateways that went out into the audience, which made for some pretty wild live race sequences. To make up for the limitations imposed by the stage, this show used pre-filmed race sequences in 3D (the good kind with the polarized glasses, not the old red and blue ones) to good effect. In fact, where the Vegas show used a taped soundtrack, this show had live musical accompaniment that was pretty good, though it would be a stretch to call it an orchestra.

Taking place in the dreams of a sleeping boy, the story chronicles the tribulations of Rusty, a steam locomotive trying to win the World Championship Railroad Race, dominated by the diesel Union Pacific Greaseball and the superstar challenger Electra, each with their own "gang" of sorts. Greaseball is the muscleheaded fifties greaser type. Electra is a disco-inspired guy in sparkles and spandex. This character is interesting, sort of flirting with bisexuality (AC DC, it's OK by me. I can switch and change my frequency.). In all three productions I have seen, he has been played somewhat awkwardly by a white guy. In the original London production, though, he was black ("African American" wouldn't apply, and "African Englishman" doesn't quite work, either). I think his sexuality and sensuality would work much better that way, but I wonder if the American producers aren't ready to risk a black/white romance in a light family show.

Rusty's girlfriend, Pearl, the lounge car, is attracted to steam, but aspires to more impressive locomotives than the constantly-teased Rusty. For the first heat in the big race, she is drawn away to Greaseball, breaking Rusty's heart. Then, treated poorly by Greaseball, later allows herself to be tempted by Electra (who doesn't give her the steam she needs, causing her to question whether he has the equipment). Finally, after Rusty ends up saving her at the end and winning the big race, they kiss and make up. I call the story a dysfunctional love rivalry, because in my world, a girlfriend who leaves me for a more impressive-seeming guy isn't welcome back when she discovers he isn't what she thought he was, and any woman who is constantly being tempted from guy to guy has father issues and should get therapy.

All that said, it is a fun show with catchy songs in a variety of genres sung amazingly by people constantly moving around on rollerskates, good special effects, and that power-within message that makes my eyes tear up a bit when Rusty gets it.

This was the first time I have been in the Oriental Theate, and I have to say wow, they did a great job restoring this palace of a building, from the exterior to the lobby with its promenade and the auditorium itself. I am hard-pressed to name the style. Whereas the more humble movie theater, the Music Box, is sort of Italian Castle, this is more baroque, with an almost absurd amount of ornament. There are far too many motifs and carvings for me to recall and describe.

I have one minor criticism. Coming of age in Eliel Saarinen's world of balance without symmetry as I did, I found the symmetry in the Oriental almost oppressive. Every single element is mirrored or repeated, either within its own segment of the design, or from one side to the other of the whole thing. Old Eliel would have pulled his hair out, as I almost did, wishing for at least some variation in the elements, so that what at first appears to be symmetry turns out to be far more interesting on closer examination. If you ever have occasion to visit the Cranbrook campus in Bloomfield Hills, MI, or run across a copy of the tome, Design in America: The Cranbrook Vision, you will see what I mean.
:: Ray 12:17 AM [+] ::
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