Travelogue 298 – September 25
Doused

The leaves are starting to turn along the Mississippi River. The sumac is holding up flags of cardinal. The youthful green of the maples is spotted with yellow. The squirrels are making a lot of noise, scampering among the fallen leaves. Weather men have been threatening a dip in temperatures, but we haven't seen it. It's been very pleasant, though today there are dark clouds in the south. And that's the direction I'm headed in.

I'm having a hard time waking up this week. My work schedule is getting the better of me. The semester began almost six weeks ago. I'm planning lessons and grading papers for six college courses at two colleges. I'm training. I'm part-time jefe for the foundation. More part than time. Waking up and arising are separated by expanding intervals now. Sleep is bewitching. Dreams are overpowering.

At eight in the morning on weekdays, the walkways along the river are quiet. They belong almost exclusively to the runners. The runners are solitary and somehow arrange for half a mile of buffer between themselves. The water is still. The water is conspiratorially still. Nature keeps too many secrets. The end of summer feels like the Cold War: secrets are dangerous.

Friday mornings I go out and log long miles. I'm training for the half marathon in March. That's a long way off, but I have to build up a strong base before I go back to Ethiopia. I'll be there for two months before the race. I'm making great progress. This morning, I feel strong. Before I know it, I'm past Lake Street. I'm nearly to 40th Street.

That's when the rain starts. It has exquisite timing I've just stopped for the half-time stretch. I'm at the furthest point from home. The rain comes with a gust of wind. It sprinkles for one minute. Then it pours for ten. I'm soaked. I've been experimenting with new running gear. My shirt is dry wick fabric, designed to wick the sweat away. It doesn't do so well with rain. After the first soak, it has adhered to my skin with frightening suction power. I pull at it like I'm pulling leeches off me.

After a mile or two, the shower has diminished to a light drizzle. I'm able to ease the grip of my shirt, and I spend a few miles wringing the wicking shirt dry. To the fabric's credit, it does dry faster than cotton would have. By my last mile, I'm comfortable again.

I'm arguing with yesterday's freshman class. How many other runners do this, I wonder, translating the fatigue and the low-level pain of long-distance running into an internal rant? This classroom of eighteen-somethings have gotten on my nerves. They talk back. They don't just talk back, but they compulsively talk back, questioning the lecture, questioning the assignment, answering back to the command to be silent, talking back to the talking back, talking back to teacher, textbook, college, and the Creator that bore them into a world of work. An hour with them is like an hour jailed in the mind of Raskolnikov on Red Bull.

By the end of my nine-mile rant, I have to admit that classes like this one are usually the ones I end up liking. Our battles come early in the semester. I find ways to work with them. By the end of the semester, I'm thinking that I'll miss them. The key is divining the tricky pathways from whining to constructive critical thought. They like to argue; ergo, they like to critique. Okay, let's channel that. (I say with an evil chuckle.)

The run is over. The high grass in Craig's backyard is drenched. My shoes soak in new moisture. It's not too late in the season for mosquitoes. They rise from the grass around my ankles and calves while I stretch. I climb the old wooden stairway to the back door of the second floor. It's time for another shower.

Travelogue 297 – September 22
I Met a Couple Girls ...

There's a blogger at the New York Times who wants to hear about my experience with girls. To be precise, this columnist wants experiences with disadvantaged girls and women abroad. There are a few prizes at stake. I might win a copy of his latest book!

Suddenly, even my considerable powers of irony are stretched. I think of Meseret and Amsal, and I weigh their suffering against the frivolous impetus to write. It's undeserving,. But the hint leads inexorably on. I miss them. Even here and now, as I steep in comfort on an afternoon off, enjoying a coffee among the young and the culpable, my double life stalks me. It pulls off surprise attacks, unannounced hauntings. Suddenly, I'm a ghost in Ethiopia, and this place is transparent. The scene ruffles in the breeze. The truth of that other place aches inside me.

So here's my little story, (publishing it is probably against the rules of the NYT game, alas,) embellished with a taste of more than 500-word facts.

“When I met Meseret and Amsal, they were sixteen. They were working in a bar and living together in a room built of corrugated iron, about 25 square feet in size. I had been volunteering in Ethiopia for a few years on behalf of the Tesfa Foundation, which supports local communities in providing early childhood education for disadvantaged children.”

They're shy. They look down at their hands in their laps; they look at the ceiling. They smile sweetly, and answer in whispers. Diffidence is the Ethiopian way. We have to piece together the facts about their lives from several interviews. When we tell Amsal she will start school now, she can't stop crying.

“I've been a long-distance runner all my life. When I found myself in Ethiopia, I was drawn to learn more about the famous running community. It's a huge and very dedicated community, very informal in their routines and associations. Many see each other training in the mountains above Addis Ababa, the capital city.”

They pass you like deer, dashing single-file along tracks in the woods. There's no show of effort. Their work is focused and natural.

“I had struck up a friendship with a marathoner named Ijigu, (a name which means the Best). He introduced me to Meseret and Amsal. Like many teenage girls raised in the countryside, they had a lot of incentives to get out of their villages. They might be escaping arranged marriages; they might be escaping households with too many mouths to feed. They might simply want a chance at education. They might be sent to work in the city as house servants. In any case, many find themselves in Addis Ababa, either on the street or virtual slaves for extended family.”

Asqual is not allowed to eat with her extended family. On whims, she is forbidden to train and forced to do household chores instead. If we give her spending money, the family demands it, but still won't feed her.

“Some come to Addis Ababa with a dream to make it as long-distance runners. In Ethiopia, runners are heroes. The elite athletes are famous and successful. These girls have a talent, and they think they will be able to break free from the desperation of their lives.”

They run with intensity and purpose. Sometimes it seems like you can read their dreams in their eyes when you watch them run.

“In reality, they find themselves vulnerable in ways hard to imagine. They are friendless and unprotected. Survival will mean some sort of menial labor that will prohibit any training or school. Many will become victims of sexual violence, working or living in environments in which they have no real rights.”

One sixteen year-old we interviewed was repeatedly raped at her workplace, at an injera factory. She would be called in for night shifts. She couldn't quit.

“Meseret and Amsal were among the lucky ones: they had jobs. But shifts were twelve hours long, often keeping them until midnight or so. Drunken men would follow them home. Several times they were assaulted. They made about $10 per month, just enough to eat and to rent the room they shared – a structure originally intended as shelter for the security guard of the compound owned by their landlord.”

Because it was built for a security guard, one wall of the room is the wall of the compound, and there is a window that doesn't close securely. Men try to break in. There is little floor space that is not covered by a terribly old mattress. Standing, you need to stoop. Your face is hidden in shadow.

“I was so moved by their plight that we immediately took them under our wing, providing housing and funds for school. As we realized the extent of the problem, the Tesfa Foundation considered funding a program for these vulnerable girls. The result has been 'Team Tesfa', a team registered with the Addis Ababa Athletics Federation, and a venue for teenage girl athletes at risk to receive help with safe housing and education, while they get an opportunity to train and compete at a professional level. The team's latest project is a cooperative cafe that will teach girls business skills and provide nutrition. Meseret and Amsal are now eighteen and team leaders. They are in fifth grade."

The three girls lean in to read the page of the book. I'm quizzing them in English. Their heads almost touch as they read, moving their lips. They pull back and smile with embarrassment. I ask them to read aloud, and they giggle, looking at each other helplessly. Worke is always the bravest with English and she sounds out the words in a voice that's just a breath. The other two watch me apprehensively, with big eyes. All I can think is, 'they're safe. They're happy.' All I can say is, 'Very good!'

Travelogue 296 – September 11
The Anatomy of a Bad Day

It starts in the back and it ends in the rear.

I'm up early, and that's a story unto itself. This fall, seven runners are competing in the Twin Cities Marathon and raising money for the foundation. It has been really fun, especially for the guy on the sidelines-- me. But then, in a feverish moment of enthusiasm and caffeine overdose I decided I would commit to running the Bath Half Marathon with our regular fundraisers there in March. So I started training. Only a month ago, I was asserting myself in the company of some of the Twin Cities team: 'I am NOT a morning runner.' But somehow it happened. I ran once at dawn because I was awake. It was a beautiful morning. In the next week, I did it again. I do it twice in a row, then I'm sleepy and going to bed early. And so on. It's an awful addiction.

I'm up early. On some of these mornings I'm out before the sun rises, and by the end of the run I can't even remember waking up or dressing. It's like a nightmare that has vanished but that took over my limbs and muscles and propelled me out onto the street. Yesterday, I awake and I'm really awake because there's a kink in my back. The running clothes slither across the floor and climb up my legs and entwine themselves around my body. Before the glimmer of a thought has dawned, I'm stumbling down the back stairs of Craig's house.

I should take this chance to remind my kindly readers that the last week of August began with my first classes at the college and ended with another grueling move. I'm going to blame the stress of the move, and the change from mattress to futon for my back ache.

In any case, I find myself AGAIN stomping along the silent sidewalks of Dinktown at an ungodly hour, heading toward the river, when suddenly, somehow I wrench that complaining muscle. The minor morning complaint turns into the sensation of a baseball bat across the back. My breath is taken away, and I'm paralyzed in an awkward half-running position.

'Okay,' I groan to myself and the neighbors, 'Breathe!' And I do that, slowly inhaling the burn and exhaling the frozen posture. I pace a little, and then I know the decision has to be made. Do I continue on for five miles, or do I accept this wonderful excuse to turn back? I know it's the strange truth in this world, this world fabricated from cinder blocks of pain, that hurt can only be deferred, and there's usually accruing interest. There's a chance that I can run the ache out. If I don't try, I'll be the bent and hobbling man for a day. I run. I find a position for my back, ramrod straight, that works. There's the occasional pang, but after a mile, I'm relaxed.

From the knot in my back, the bad day migrates into the old blood pump. I sit down to some work at my computer, but today is update day, and I stare at the screen for long minutes in between every jab at the 'Enter' key. I get nothing done. My blood pressure simmers. I run off to work, stopping for coffee on the way. There I discover I have no money. My blood pressure rockets. My students dither and make a half-class out of a full curriculum. My blood pressure boils.

But a truly bad day rises above 'annoying' only when the gods bestow it with a touch of the sublime. The day rises to the status of art in the evening. A few of us go to see 'The Baader-Meinhof Complex' at the Oak Street Cinema. It's an appropriate film for the eve of 9-11, chronicling vividly the progress of the Red Army Faction in Germany along their bloody path through the late 60s and 70s. It's well-done, but it will not lift one from the floor of a bad day.

What it does well is portray rage, the rage of idealistic youth. When that rage finds sanction in ideology, watch out! The logic is irrefutable: violence is necessary. Worth seeing – but take your Xanax and attend in a neighborhood in which your chances of crossing the path of policemen are near nil.

Obama is coming to town. There are police everywhere. Democrat or Republican, populist or fascist, it all looks the same when a president comes to town. We the people must be cowed.

Craig and I are cycling home from the film when we're pulled over by the University police! We have run a red light … on our bikes … crossing an empty intersection. Each and every bombing in the film flashes across my mind's eye, highlighted in crimson, as the cop checks our IDs and lectures us about bicycle safety. I perform admirably, I believe, tamping down all violent impulses neatly into a section of psychological steel pipe and filed away for distillation into epic poetry or opera in my old age.

And finally I, with a red-striped $100 ticket in my pocket, can call it a day. While outside, Dinkytown erupts into its swirling ritual dance to the idiots, I crawl into bed.

Travelogue 295 – September 4
Half a Million Strong

When is culture just a party? When does a party become an 'event'? When does that event enter history? What IS cultural history? And where's the line between culture and business?

It was movie-night last night, and the obvious choice was to wade into the stream of nostalgia, tributary to the deeper tide of dubious history. Is the young man named Tiber worth more than a footnote? Does the story in which he figures merit telling in 2009? If so, why were there exactly four people in the theater last night?

Elliot Tiber was the young man who connected entrepreneurs to Max Yasgur, owner of the famous farm in White Lake, New York, now a monument. If the film is an accurate chronicle of events, young Tiber never made it to the 'Woodstock' concert itself, distracted by what may be described as the larger cultural event: free youth, free love, free drugs, free mud, etc. We, the movie audience, therefore, never hear from the artists. Has Woodstock, the cultural event, transcended its music? Is that what the film implies? Or should we deduce that the music has become a liability, being so dated? How would the hippies have felt about being portrayed in a world devoid of their music, in which their antics take place in a kind of silent pantomime?

Then again, music is business. Maybe the filmmakers were blocked from getting rights to the 'soundtrack'. Let's not forget Woodstock's humble beginnings as a business venture, born of an ad in the New York Times: 'Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions.' The beginnings of any enterprise are forever encoded into its realization.

I moved on the first of this month. I'm renting Craig's upstairs apartment, deep in Dinkytown, the university's student slum. I've moved in just as the students have converged for fall semester. Last night, cycling home after the film, round about midnight, I'm passing through the streets of Dinkytown, alive with aimless couples and clusters of youth looking for parties. It happens that the biggest party is right next door to Craig's. Bodies dark as shadows mill restlessly about the lawn of the party house, streaming up the steps to the porch and the front door, streaming back out. All bodies feature one bent elbow, an unvarying gesture to honor the Bacchus of hops. The crowd buzzes, roars, and lets out random whoops.

Craig has owned this house for years, and it's fascinating to me how little this little scene changes, in kind, in detail, in substance. One would find it impossible to judge, visiting this corner year after year, that universities were centers of fashion, experimentation, or unorthodoxy. The vignette is constant: buff boys in T-shirts or sweat-jackets, bent elbows, random whoops, occasional brawls, and circles of characterless but buxom females smoking cigarettes and issuing brassy laughter. Nothing of the moment, political or cultural, seems to touch them. What music escapes the house attaches itself to an anonymous rap beat.

In an interesting twist, the owners of the party don't seem happy with the guests. One senior bruiser with a baseball bat is shooing people away. There's a ripple in the crowd, somewhat belligerent in tone. Then a cop car appears and parks at the curb. The cops send an announcement over their broadcast system, something lost in radio noise. The bodies swirl, and the bubble is burst. Lines of bodies grudgingly stream away. Individual movements within the streams seem confused and sluggish. The cops stay for a half hour to discourage the lost ones from doubling back. The event dies on the vine.

Travelogue 294 – August 29
Wake and Shine

I've got about an hour and a half to spare, so I stop in at my new favorite pub, Merlin's Rest. See my earlier entry about this delightful spot on Lake Street. My ultimate destination is all the way down Lake Street the other way – from the river-end of Lake Street here to the lake-end Lake Street to the west.

I'm on my bike, and the skies are ominous. We barely broke sixty degrees today, and it's been cloudy. In Minnesota, one pays close attention to the skies, especially in late August. Is this it, one asks. Is this the end of summer?

With time to spare, it's an easy enough detour, a left instead of a right. I need a place to grade papers. This pleasant British/Irish pub leaps to mind: quiet and comfortable. It's not as quiet as usual this afternoon. The reason, as it turns out: there's a wake.

'That's how I would want it,' says a man at the bar. “Bring some beer, some herb, laugh and tell stories.' Makes sense. 'Just don't invite this guy,' he cracks, jerking a thumb at the bartender. 'I'll be working,' says the bartender.

Oddly, it was just this morning that I was catching some clips of Teddy's funeral on YouTube. There's an odd silent segment from BBC, following celebs as they enter the church. Schwarzenegger is slapping people on the back. I catch a sound bite from Barack. I read up on some stories about Teddy's high spirits and his sense of humor. I surprise myself by choking up a bit. I think there's something about the fighters and the dreamers of the world. One truly feels their loss.

So I find an innocuous table across the pub from the wake, and I set about grading my first papers of the term. Every, and I mean every, minute is about work these days. The semester has started with a bang. Enrollments are 10% up. But a load of drudgery doesn't mean I can't at least enjoy the setting. Who says I can't grade papers at a wake?

Here's what it's like being an adjunct instructor at a community college: my specific classes weren't ironed out until the Friday before term. I have no office; they're still constructing it. Some of my classes are still not available to me online. Attendance goes like this: 'Bill, please tear a page from your notebook. Good man. Now write the date, sign your name, and pass along.' My texts are not available in the bookstore yet. Confused students trickle in late.

And yet, we're all in good spirits. Monday was still summer, glaring and humid, but even without the autumnal chill and that autumnal scent to the air, the start of the school year triggers a gut response of pleasure and excitement.

And so many young innocents! There's the skinny boy with shaggy hair who says he'll be studying law enforcement, though he hates cops. There are the twins, two wide-eyed beauties with brilliant smiles and ghetto names, who answer questions in unison. There is the street-smart and smirking boy of color who is also going into law enforcement, though he has gathered a few certificates in cooking. There's the Latino boy who wants to go into business to make money. He argues with the girl from the alternative high school who says happiness is not about money. 'Who's going to pay your bills, girl? Who's going to take you out to dinner?' She doesn't have a very satisfying answer to that, though I'm rooting for her. She says she wants to be a social worker.

And so, life and work continues, in the lee of wakes, in the shadow of our losses, as cold winter approaches. Chin up, we fight and we dream, God love us.

Travelogue 293 – August 22
It Ain't Pink

Route 131 runs north and south in Western Michigan. It connects Grand Rapids with Petoskey, and other points up and down the map.

But that's the thing about Western Michigan: what exactly are those points in the connection? All one sees are road signs announcing McDonald's and petrol stations, but peering up those dark exits, into the wooded hills, one shudders and wonders what might lay along these mysterious roads.

There's something about Michigan. I'm approaching the same latitudes as Minnesota, but there's something more ominous about the upper reaches of this state. North of Grand Rapids, this highway slices through unceasing woods. It slices through shallow hills and dales that put one in mind, after a few hours of driving, of Druidic magic circles. Down one of those intersecting roads might just be a stand of monolithic stones arranged to mark the gloomy northern solstice.

One passes occasional fields and beat barns, but otherwise, there are only forests. The woods are made of short trees that seem to lean into the next squall. They project a darker, meaner shade of green. The sky is overflowing with huge, low clouds like granite boulders rolling over us. Light rains come and go from minute to minute. I might even have overshot the time of the Druids. I'm charting primeval wilderness. Mammals have only just begun their long march toward sentience.

And then I reach my destination. I have to swallow my terror of Druidic sacrifice and catch one of those anonymous exits. After a few miles there does indeed appear a town. It's a small one. The main drag is an unremarkable hybrid of modern convenience stops and early twentieth century brick that makes it to within a hair's breadth of 'cute'. But this town has its name: Cadillac. That is worth miles of quaint storefronts, in my book.

The town of Cadillac is set on the shores of Lake Cadillac. As much as we might wish it were so, neither lake nor town is named after the model of automobile, nor is either the inspiration for the car's name. No, the name is bequeathed by a French explorer from the eighteenth century – so many names in this part of the world were gifts of those intrepid souls, (and they were not Druids) – Antoine Laumet de La Mothe, sieur de Cadillac, who settled Mo-town in 1701. In fact, the original names of both town and body of water were 'Clam Lake'. Thank God for the revision.

While on the subject of automobiles, I think it fitting to mention that I was in Grand Rapids for the grand entrance of Marc's 1956 Jaguar XK 140. I should say reunion rather than entrance, since the car was Marc's father's, and Marc himself spent some glorious hours in the convertible as a youth. Along with the car came Mark Lambert, a college friend of Marc's, and currently famous restorer of classic autos in Nashville. As we all admired the beautiful, cream-colored convertible, designed from gentle curves like you might find among the Druid hills of Michigan, Mark delivered a brief history of the classic automobile company.

Jaguar was the brainchild of Sir William Lyons, who founded a company to produce motorcycle sidecars, though it wasn't long before he expanded into automobiles. The company was called Swallow Sidecar Company, which was shortened to SS with time. As the Nazis rose to power and then terror in nearby Germany, Sir William thought twice about producing SS cars. He added Jaguar to the name.

It seems that during the Second World War, Sir William was called upon to do his duty by patria, but he managed to have members of his research team assigned with him. During the war years, they worked on design after design on paper, coming up with what would be the fundamentals of the X-type model engine that would power Jaguar cars for decades to come – according to Mark a creation years ahead of its time.

In any case, it sure is pretty. And it looks right at home among the verdure of the Motor State.

Travelogue 292 – August 20
Real Gore

Few things can make one feel older than a bad film. Bad is often bad in a bid for currency. I didn't grow up with video games. The last time I played a video game it was standing in front of a big box in a pizza parlor. It would have been 'Centipede' or 'PacMan'. If I had logged hundreds of hours at home destroying civilizations like modern boys do, I might have been able to make more sense of 'GI Joe'. Odd that I would have to admit to being out of date with GI Joe, since I played with him as a boy, when he was a little, green plastic man, (manufactured by Hasbro, partner in this dismal movie. It should be pointed out that Hasbro is also behind the Transformer phenomenon. Beware plastic creatures converted into film, quite possibly destroying civilizations without real explosives.)

I don't regret the occasional bad movie. There's always something to learn from bad art. Whether it is good or bad, I ask myself why it was so. In this movie's case – if it IS bad, – then it's an astounding feat of sloppiness. But maybe, after all, it's too early to declare it bad. Truthfully I was stumped by this show. I can't make heads or tails of the intentions of the film makers. I have no means of guessing the goals of the writers or director. It might actually be a work of genius.

Perhaps the attempt here is analogous to a painter's preference for abstraction. It's a way to explore the pure essences of the medium. So an 'action movie' should be pure action: a mad blur of motion and violence. There should be none of the resting points that we conventionally call 'plot'. Emotion can be denoted by abbreviated tags: capture a few stills of recognizable facial expressions, ejaculate phrases that sum up human relationships. Avoid specific reference to dates or location. If you need the Great Pyramids for atmosphere (a popular tag lately) plant them in a featureless desert, utterly divorced from Cairo, Egypt, or the nasty Middle East.

If we go for the genius argument, then the state of the special effects must be key evidence. Conventional action movies rely on CGI polish. What happened here? It must be that the sensations of motion and violence take precedence. Good special effects become distraction. So in GI Joe, whether we're looking at ships, weapons, slaughter, or monsters, all dissolves into smears of color. Well, bravo, Hasbro: if abstraction can speak to the reptilian brain, then this is a formidable creation.

The old-fashioned among us – those looking for conventional pleasures at the cinema, luxuries like plot and special effects, character and actors that haven't transcended our four dimensions – will find a lot more enjoyment out of 'District 9'. The special effects are amazing: far better than in 'GI Joe'. The writing is mature and thoughtful. The acting, particularly that of the lead, is masterful, leading you forward with deceptive simplicity. The writers have the courage for a specific setting. And there's plenty of gore. If dozens of humans are released from the mortal coil in bright haloes of blood, the effect isn't so admirably 'bloodless' as in GI Joe, but they persist in the story's short-term memory as disturbing shadows. Pshaw: so conventional!

But good writing and acting doesn't make violence real. Apparently I feel compelled to prove that point when I get home from GI Joe. It's very late at night. I'm packing for a trip to Michigan. I'm trying to cut through the thick plastic cover of a new flash drive. I drive one blade of my scissors completely through my finger. And I mean through: I'm talking about separate entry and exit wounds. Instantly, there's blood all over my kitchen. Running water only seems to encourage the blood flow. Paper towels, soaking red through multiple layers. A trip to the emergency room, hours in the green flickering light of the county hospital, hideous stitches by an intern from India before the anesthetic has taken effect.

No, real gore is more than a splash of bright color. It's not thrilling. It's tedious. One endures it. I get home at 4:30am, bandaged, drugged, and dazed. I have to be on a plane in a few hours. Ah, the romantic life of a soldier!

Travelogue 291 – August 17
La Baie Verte

Jean Nicolet discovered Green Bay for the French and established a trading post there in 1634, making this little town the 13th oldest permanent settlement in America. Lucky 13: little did Fr. Nicolet know what he was setting in motion.

It was only 285 years later that a young shipping clerk at the Indian Packing Company named Curly Lambeau, who was taking a semester off from Notre Dame (where he was halfback for a young Knut Rockne), co-founded a professional football team. He solicited $500 from his employer for uniforms and equipment. In the following year, the 'Packers' joined the newly-formed NFL, and destiny sparkled above the cold Wisconsin bay, to which the team would bring home twelve national titles.

The sun has set, and I'm standing beneath a massive statue of Curly Lambeau. I'm shaken. Was it a dream, or was I truly just sitting inside the stadium that Curly built, watching the Green Bay Packers? I thought that those seats were reserved for mythical beings. What beer-drinking goddess has taken me under her wing? That was me, drinking Leinies on the 40-yard line, twenty-five rows up from the hallowed field, while the Packers give the Browns a drubbing. The fans fill seats to the top rings of the sacred bowl, above which shines a perfect summer sky. They deck the stands in green and yellow, and they shake lemon pom-poms, rising out of their seats in countless rounds of 'the Wave'.

I pay homage now to the twin gods outside the stadium, Vince and Curly. Vince doesn't look too happy about standing in bronze for decades. Curly has greater matters on his mind. But always show gratitude, I say, to the higher powers.

In a brilliant move, the founders of Wisconsin's great franchise added a clause in their articles of incorporation that forbid profit from the sale of the team. After expenses were paid, money made from sale were to donated to the American Legion. Ninety years later, the Pack still resides in Nicolet's small outpost, a town of 100,000 or so. And Fr. Nicolet's humble town is owner of the only non-profit, community-owned major league professional sports team in this young, English-speaking nation.

Mike has his stocks in the team in a frame on the wall of his basement, alongside lots of Packer memorabilia. He's one of 112,015 owners of the team. Shareholder meetings are held on the field. I would love to see one of those meetings – but, in actual fact, I was already sitting among the inebriated stockholders. And never did shareholders cheer for their company like these did. This spunky little enterprise put their Cleveland competitor to shame, 17-0!

Travelogue 290 – August 11
Old Time Entertainment

I need a place to sit in front of my computer with a beer. It's late on a Tuesday night, and options are limited. I don't know the neighborhood very well. I'm on my bike at the very end of Lake Street, right where it leaps off the high bank of the Mississippi and tranforms into Marshall Street on the St. Paul side. The cafe is closing. The restaurant is closing. Each guides me to another place.

The final stop is Merlin's Rest on Lake Street at 36th. 'Oh, they'll let you sit there all night,' the waitress down the street had said. I think they just might. I'm at a table in the back, by the kitchen, happily tapping away at tonight's project. It turns out that tonight's project is more work on Chapter Three: Perugia. I'm reliving my home town in Italia. I'm reliving the night I listened to Chicago Blues, the blues strummed and belted out with gusto and funny accents by springtime's friends.

It's 'Folk Tuesday' at Merlin's Rest, ('a pub from the Isles', they call it). So while I write about Chicago blues in Italia, I'm serenaded by over a dozen musicians sitting in a circle with their guitars and fiddles, playing American folk in a British pub. And I'm quite enjoying it, I must say. The musicians are not bad. The English beer is outstanding. The fries hit the spot. The cushion on my stool is blunting the pain of long sitting. And I'm so cheered that I don't mind the greying locals singing in chorus and swaying together.

This afternoon, I found myself in a nutritional funk, led by long, successive meetings into a caffeine overdose. The heat of the day has made me sleepy, and yet the jitters won't let me focus. Solution: break out the bike. I knock off sunny miles in succession, the laptop in my backpack. I stop and work; I ride; I work again.

The early film at the Riverview Theater is 'Star Trek'. It's a perfect match. Though I've seen the movie, I've got to see it at the Riverview. This theater in a quiet southern neighborhood of Minneapolis has been in continuous operation since it opened in 1948. And between its first show ('June Bride' with Bette Davis and Robert Montgomery) and 'Star Trek' (with Spock and Bones), the venue hasn't changed much. The spacious lobby features 50s furnishings, period tile and terrazzo, and a color scheme that will make your cavities ache. The place is an echo from the era of neighborhood theaters, and the neighborhood cherishes it.

It's the film audience makes the experience complete, paying their two bucks and packing the auditorium, middle-aged homeowners the most of them, old enough to be fond of the original series. They break into general applause at every triumph, and at every stock phrase from the Trek repertoire. A quartet of teens sits behind us and snickers throughout at the foolish sentimentality of their elders. Hopefully the profusion of explosions provided sufficient entertainment value for them.

I'm inspired by the miraculous convergence of the 50s, 60s and aughts, the meeting of James Tiberius and Bette Davis, the fusion of summer and caffeine. So I set off in pursuit of the right table and the right cushioned stool. And I'm blessed with more. I find voices in song again. It's kind of like they never stop.

Travelogue 289 – August 8
The Medieval Modernist Romantics

Apropos to my trip to the Thames – I mean the proper Thames, in New London, Connecticut – I must make mention of the arts. We have visited the menacing submarines of Groton. Now make a visit to the mellower, artsy precincts of New London, across the estuary. In a town of 20,000 we have dozens of art studios, but the kingpen is the Hygienic Arts Coop and Gallery. Inside this hallowed complex is where I have the honor to lay my head for four nights, my friend Troy being one of the resident artists.

A block from the river on lively Bank Street, this building stands like a spot of good cheer and genius, a building that dates to the mid-nineteenth century. The Hygienic spent most of the twentieth century as a 24-hour eatery. The gallery inhabits an old restaurant space. In darker times of urban blight, during those dastardly 60s in particular, the building became a center if unwholesome and illicit activities – which history is really a feather in any arts community's cap. In 1979, local artists made the Hygienic Restaurant the locale for its first community show. By the 90s, the artists were organized and ready to take over the failed restaurant and renovate the building. The resident artists are a diverse group. Troy paints and designs beautiful block prints. Kevin is a glass-blower. Downstairs is a busty blonde metal-worker who calls herself the Madagascar.

Rosanne (a pseudonym: she prohibits the use of her real name, which is very, very different than Rosanne) has bought me a ticket for the featured exhibit at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, 'Sin and Salvation: William Holman Hunt and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision'. William Holman Hunt is one of the founders of this quirky and influential movement. Three young men meet in the house of one of their moms. Three young men with grudges meet at mom's house. They mock the establishment. No, this is not Edina, circa 2008. It's Gower Street, London in 1848. The enemy is the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, whom they call 'Sir Sloshua'. Boys, boys...

Seduced by the Romantic movement in literature, these boys have a vision. In the same way that the Romantics challenged the excessive rationalism, formality, and elegance of the eighteenth century, these boys would challenge the prevailing conventions in painting. Raphael, wunderkind of the Renaissance, introduced corruption into the visual arts, they say: his elegant classicism inspired centuries of fuzzy, formulaic composition. So, back to the days … PRE-Raphael. They revive, each in his own way, the vivid colors, detail, and complex composition of the Quattrocento.

The three boys are Hunt, John Everett Millais, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, (who should win awards just for his name). They're debut as a movement would be the exhibition of Millais's painting, 'Christ in the House of His Parents' in 1850, a work raked over the coals by none other than Charles Dickens. 'Blasphemous,' he cries. Why? Because Mary is ugly. Come to the rescue, young John Ruskin.

What emerges over the next few decades is a body of work, vivid and quickly recognized, romantic in subject and tone. The mood is perhaps best captured in Hunt's 'The Lady of Shalott', a web of myth and symbol, a swirl of glowing color, a central figure captured in awkward motion.

And emerges a mythology of the movement, a collection of eccentric characters: the morbid poet-painter Rossetti and his prolific siblings; the hyper-creative William Morris; the adventurous Hunt, who makes four trips to the Levant and eventually builds a house in Jerusalem. Biography was their art as much as poetry or painting. But such is the tradition, Mannerist or Pre-Raphaelite.

From Tems to Thames, the torch is borne. Artists, unite, throw off your chains! See you at Mom's!

Travelogue 288 – August 4
New London

I take a lunch break in Boston. I've arrived by train. I will depart by plane. I have a mid-afternoon spell for relaxing in the city center. It's been years since I've walked around this old town. After four days in New London, Connecticut, downtown Boston seems ostentatiously modern and glossy, populated uniformly by the ambitious. At least, I can say that their pace along the immaculate streets is ambitious.

New London is a small spot on the map in eastern Connecticut, but its hilly little byways and choppy river waters hold lots of crazy, concentrated history. The river is the Thames, and please pronounce that exactly how it's spelled, resisting the snobby impulse to say, 'Tems'. They say that's how the name was properly pronounced when the town was settled by John Winthrop and his merry band of pilgrims in 1646.

The settlement was located on ground called called Nameaug by the Pequot Indians. Nameaug comes from an ancient inscription on the site that says, 'My Name is Augustus Caesar,' which supports a theory I'm marketing that New England was first settled by the Romans in the third century AD. (See photo for historical re-enactment.) Archaeology is a hobby of mine, though of course I prefer to pursue it without getting dirty. I'm pretty sure I'll find that inscription one day. I begin the search for it in the bars on Bank Street in New London.

Troy and I set out on the Thames one day – after some lovely chowder at Captain Scott's on the wharf – in order to investigate further the history of this place. Or perhaps it was to enjoy the sunshine on a rare clear day. We board the tour boat, the only guests for the 4:30 tour, and take our seats as the captain and tour guide climb into the high cabin that makes the vessel seem as tall as it is long. Though there are only the two of us, the tour guide insists on delivering his comments through the loudspeaker. Put-put we go out into the river/estuary. Yes, the wide-mouthed old Thames is tidal, and it is half seawater: the bottom half, according to our guide. We choose the 'sub' tour, meaning we're going to head upriver toward the Navy base, rather than downriver and into the Long Island Sound.

Here are some history teasers about New London and Groton, which is the city opposite to New London. Did you know that it was right here in this happy port that radar and sonar were developed, in the naval labs? Or that penicillin was developed here in the Pfizer labs? I can't find much 'expert' corroboration on these points. In fact, I keep running into those pesky Brits (and their dirty 'Tems') when I research OUR accomplishments. But our tour guides were quite clear on these points.

One item even the most annoying Brits won't contest is that the first nuclear sub, the USS Nautilus, set sail from this very port in 1954. Our little tour boat chugs by the sub base upriver, and we spot a few black beauties at port there, fueling up for their next pass at St. Petersburg.

Another thing the Brits won't deny is that they just about destroyed New London in 1781. Apparently, General Benedict Arnold, a native of the area (from Norwich), having already switched sides, finding himself woefully idle and undervalued by his new masters, decided that a raid against the privateers of New London might be a good career move. He chased our good soldiers from Fort Trumbull on the New London side and besieged the fort on the Groton side, Fort Griswold. It was a massacre. There's an obelisk on the sight now. Troy and I visit the remains of the fort, wishing a Brit or two would dare to show up now and mispronounce our river's name.

A plaque in the ground commemorates the spot where Colonel William Ledyard was mercillesly cut down by a British officer. According to legend, the redcoat demanded to know who commanded the fort. Ledyard replied "I did, sir, but you do now," and offered his sword. The British officer took the sword and then murdered Ledyard. That's not chivalry.

Just downriver from the sub base, you pass the Coast Guard Academy, looking trim and cheerful. In my high school days, I flirted with the notion of applying there. These days, by some quirk of brain chemistry, that memory is intimately connected to another: a miserable hour of vomiting on the ferry to Cyprus in the mid-90s. Funny how the mind works.

In the evening, Troy and I meet his mother in Ocean Beach, just south of New London, on the Long Island Sound. We sit on a concrete balcony, sipping Long Island iced teas (what else?) and contemplate the fuss over antique cars in the parking lot. We also contemplate the sunset and the rise of the near-full moon. From our privileged spot, it seems as though we can see the fabled lands of Fisher's Island and Orient Point, Long Island. We search the horizon for the famous haunted lighthouse, but can't find it. Alas. Maybe the Brits have stolen that, as well.

Travelogue 287 – July 31
Connections-icut

It's 5am; sunlight is tinting the sky over the highway, over the wooded hills. When is the last time I've seen so many sunrises? 2009 is my Year of Eastern Skies. (A better title than Year of Sleepless Nights.)

We're on the move. We're on obscure, twisting roads among minute-man hamlets and Dunkin-Donut townlets. The ways may be obscure to me, but these are the days of Troy's life. We've taken in three of his childhood homes, nestled in woods that haunt with Sleepy-Hollow shadow and European-import little people, among trees pointing with irrepressible life toward the hope of new light. This is the East, land of the sun, land of beginnings. It's where America, land of liberty, took its first steps. It's also a place of memories. Connecticut is where Troy grew up, but it's also where I spent a few years after college. It's dark with night; it's new and it's old in the dawn – just as I'm innocent and decrepit in the state of sleeplessness.

In the middle of the road of our life, I find myself in an obscure forest. I've was writing about Dante recently – part of the futile project to document my life during the last five years. (Yes, even Dante makes an appearance!) Suddenly echoes of Dante are all too apropos. I've just emerged from a midnight expedition through several circles of hell. I now feel comfortable that I'll be ready for eternal torment when my time comes. I've been there, and it looks a lot like Atlanta.

Specifically, it looks like the Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, Terminal C. Terminal C, my assigned circle, is actually straight as an airliner's aisle, but much less roomy. My circle of hell is very long and very crowded. The ugly tiles of the corridor gleam with artificial lighting, enhanced to glare even more unnaturally than earthly fluorescents. Lost souls from delayed and canceled flights wander up and down the hall without rest because there is nowhere to sit. You pass restaurants and bars that are rammed to capacity with the unhappy dead. There is no rest. There is no exit – except for the connecting flight that seems to suffer delays at a faster rate than the normal progression of time. I spend four and a half hours in Atlanta.

In case you think your circle of hell might be better, I'm here to report that they are identical. I manage the Dantean feat of escape into an adjoining circle. I ride the infernal escalator down into the subterranean tunnel that connects the four terminals, T,A,B, C, and D. I shuffle like a zombie along the bleak wormhole, eschewing the moving walkway, thinking that haste is meaningless in hell. I catch the escalator up to Terminal D. It's as though I had never moved. Rod Serling is the poet of modern hells, not Dante. I stumble back in horror, running back down the wormhole.

With a weary eagle eye, I notice on one of my passes that there's a seat in Popeye's. I order a three-piece Greasy-Meal from minimum wage minions of Beelzebub. They are not like earthly fast food employees because in hell they enjoy their boredom, staring off into the lack of distance and reciting menu options with weird relish. I eat slowly, drawing out my sit-down time and watching with horror the skits of the damned. There's a toothless man in his fifties with a remnant of blonde good lucks. He's chatting up a teenage girl at the table next to him, saying she looks like Julia Roberts. She says she knows she does. She has square-tip manicured nails, painted in an elaborate design. She wears a cardinal red hoodie and very thin, flat flip-flops. He points out that though he wears his wedding ring, he and his wife are separated. At several adjoining tables, massive mamas with arena-sized brassy voices conduct swarms of children like electron clouds. Only Julia and I out of all the guests at Popeye's are eating. I escape, choosing the tortures of aimless fatigue to the terrors of the fried-chicken funhouse.

Somehow it happens that an angel of mercy sponsors me, plucking me from early damnation and depositing me in Boston, in the quiet halls of Logan International. Troy is waiting for me outside Terminal C. I breathe in the fresh, outdoor fumes of Boston with new gratitude and love for life. I will reform, Domine; I will be a better man.

Over hill and dale, we speed through the forests of old Massachusetts, racing toward Connecticut down trails blazed by Puritans. I contemplate our pilgrim's progress in the rays of a new dawn. Lids fall heavily over my eyes, and the sun leaves a scarlet mark. Never forget, my son: Terminal C!

Travelogue 286 – July 18
The Cone of Noise

My neighbor across the hall listens to public radio 24 hours a day. It's not a disturbance particularly, though it is disturbing. Heavy metal would be a disturbance; MPR around the clock is just creepy.

When I pass her door, I picture the ceaseless sentences like the bars of a cage. Each story is time spent, and she scratches the count of her days into the plaster of her wall. The curtains are shut tight against the light of trivial weekdays. What are the bare sidewalks and traffic, the peregrinations of fellow citizens, measured against the titanic struggles of Ms. Sotomayor or the exteeeeeensive debate about healthcare in America? This is Reality.

Is it?Is it information or is it living? I should knock on my neighbor's door. Maybe there's been a half-hour segment on the subtle border between the two. Maybe Ira Glass has a show on file: 'Where Reality Falls Short'.

Myself, I could use a break from reality. The emails and phone calls keep coming in. Please, people, work it up into a pithy interview piece or a droll presentation with sound effects. Even better if I can download and pause when I like. And please tag it with a thinking-person's rhetorical question at the end, so I can feel engaged – in that gosh-times-are-tough, glass-of-milk-and-off-to-bed kind of way.

No, Reality is at my door, relentless and messy. The assault has been merciless since I first went to Ethiopia. Now, Saba is feeling short-changed by the role of Leeza's sister. When the bank balance is low, accountability rising, staff needs and children's problems spiking, she thinks there should be more rewards. 'Give me more' is her slogan. What annoys her is that it seems to be everyone else's slogan, too. Families at the school are unbearably insistent on this point. Funders are all about the children and families. They are not concerned about her. When her work is unsatisfactory, the funding is threatened. Her response is to threaten the funders. She invents crimes and lawsuits. She sends the lizard men after my staff, has them dragged to the lizard station in the middle of the night.

Too much Reality, Ira. I want to cocoon with a discussion panel. I want to drink cocoa and participate in American democracy remotely, absorbing issues of moment between cups of coffee.

It's 4am. I can't sleep for worrying. I pause at my neighbor's door. The debate goes on, wonderfully responsible, wonderfully lulling. I'm thinking my neighbor is peacefully slumbering, Bless her, and bless Ms. Sotomayor. Me, I'm kept up by the faces of children who might not have a school to attend this fall. I'm going to see what this day looks like as it comes up over the Mississippi. They keep coming, the days, sunrise after sunrise.

Travelogue 285 – July 11
That Heaveny ittle L-word

Today it's six years since we lost Leeza. I've seen the whole day, from its first dark blue glimmerings outside my apartment window. I haven't been sleeping.

The dawn brightens and the sun appears unimpeded. It's a perfectly cloudless sky that greets me. Before the sun sends first fire over the horizon, I'm out for a jog. It's a dream-like run on no sleep; the world meets my fragmented thoughts in a shimmering no-man's land.

Yesterday I'm on my bike charting some long miles on a muggier day of pachydermic clouds. I'm just topping the crest of the new pedestrian bridge over Hiawatha and reviewing a dream while I'm scanning the horizon.

The dream is the briefest of narratives, profound only in the feeling and recollection, rather than in stories: languidly, I reach the top of a staircase, or I come to the end of the riverside promenade. Sadly, but with a smile, I say, ‘That’s it?’ The stroll ends suddenly. But sometimes, I think dreams are encoded software updates. You wake up, and the silly dream seems significant. The world looks different.

The pedestrian bridge commands a wide prospect, encompassing the downtown skyline, the Seward and West Bank neighborhoods, and the old silos along the river and along Hiawatha. I happen to catch sight of Leeza’s apartment building on Franklin, and it comes home to me again that the next day is the anniversary of her passing. I’m sad.

This world looks different today because the after-world looks different. I’ve never lacked occasion in this life for contemplating the next. Death began stalking me and my family and loved ones early. And even when our grim friend has taken breaks, I’ve dabbled in religious meditations and childish speculation about things occult and divine, and never – surprise! – come up with anything very original or plausible.

The central issue raised by death and dying is loss. Today’s update, still booting up, informs me that somehow we don’t lose. Even with sad eyes on the old landmark, my dream sings a soothing song. I don’t ask where she is anymore; she doesn’t ask where I am. I’m insomnia on a bike; I’m coasting through sunlight.

The 11th has dawned, and the sun has risen quickly. By the time I jog across the Stone Arch Bridge on my way home, the sun’s gotten a good inch or two free from the eastern fringe of trees. It’s bright in my bloodshot eye. There’s a man slumped against the railing of the bridge, muttering to himself. He seems to have no shape among his tattered clothes. I’m sure the only difference between us is that I’m moving. What keeps me from sliding down to the ground and indulging in dreams?

The funny thing about yesterday’s cycle ride is the mission. A few keys have popped off my laptop’s keyboard, among them the L. I’m on my way to Todd’s to borrow a keyboard. Can I recover my L? The answer for now: just keep moving.

Travelogue 284 – July 10
13 Points

Was that poetry, Tom? If so, it was the type that almost slips by you, especially after a few margaritas. He’s leaning in the doorway of the Terminal Bar with a drink in his hand. I’m walking my bike beside Roxana. Tom says, ‘Oh no, Dana’s bike is drunk again.’ He's smiling like peace's eternal reign, and his voice is like a wall of granite in the forest.

Tom is a neighborhood guy. You can see him just about any day of the week, wandering up East Hennepin. He might be coasting on his bike, or measuring melancholy steps. Many mornings you can see him at Taraccino Coffee Shop. Many nights you’ll find him at the Terminal Bar. He’s the guy who looks like a graying and haggard (and yet still better-preserved than the original) Nick Nolte with a beard.

The Terminal Bar is where I met him first. It was during that summer after my first trip to Ethiopia. A friend’s band was playing at the bar. We struck up a conversation at the bar. He had hit on hard times … about forty years ago. He still worries over it. You see the anxiety on his face during the day. But at night, with a beer in hand, he is easy-going and kind. I tell him about Leeza and Ethiopia. He rumbles with a lot of sympathy. He tells me he has been meaning to turn his life around. He has his mind on going south, Arizona or Florida – I can’t remember where. I tell him I’ll buy his bus ticket.

Roxana and I have been just down the street at the noisy Bulldog, playing hearts with Todd and Snookie B. That's the card game in which hearts are meant to be discarded. They're worth one point each, and the low score wins. Even worse is the loathsome queen of spades, worth thirteen points. I saw more of this damsel of distress than I would have wished, and ended up losing, but not before one superlative act of cruelty, dumping the queen on Todd when he was saving the rest of us from a desperate moon gambit on Snookie's part. Oh well, just a card game; but if only you could have seen the shock on Todd's face.

Todd had his revenge; he won the game. But he suffered a minor defeat as weatherman. When we arrived at the Bulldog, clouds were gathering, dark and threatening. Todd poo-pooed our fears of rain, and we sat alone at an outside table. He pulled up the radar and showed us. Yep, the skies looked fairly harmless on the computer screen. Sitting outside at the boisterous Bulldog has definite advantages. Sure enough, the clouds proved impotent for a few hours. We started our game. Several parties followed our lead and chose outdoor tables. But halfway through the game, a determined drizzle discovered us, leaving a film of card-deterrent over the tabletop. We had no choice but to move indoors, sitting at a high four-top in that corner between the shuffle board and the bar, and underneath three TV screens.

Tom never took me up on my deal. He stayed in Minnesota. He's still in Minnesota, wrinkling his brow in the morning over life's cruelties. I don't know if he has a home, if he ever had a home. But he has the permanently rumpled look of itinerancy. Sometimes he looks at me with a low fire of pain in his eyes, and I know Florida has occurred to him. He's still in Minnesota, though, smiling like a lord at his hearth in the evenings and uttering crypticisms.

Come to think of it, I believe my bike is drunk again.

Travelogue 283 – July 5
Complex

Yes, back in the States I’m immediately partaking in two of my stateside indulgences with great relish: books and movies. I won’t say ‘film’, like my European mates might, because I acknowledge my addiction to blockbusters.

The latest is Johnny Depp’s Dillinger, a portrayal ‘shot through with wit and intelligence’, according to the local paper. Aesthetically, the movie is graceful and interesting to watch, thanks to Michael Mann’s direction and his little video cameras: sharp pictures, dizzying motion, and the latter mercifully controlled so that one might think there’s conscious choreography behind the jerking and swirling lenses, not a ten year-old’s impulse to make the audience puke.

And, to employ a tired standard to Hollywood, the characters are not one-dimensional. Dillinger makes some bad choices, and the cop in close pursuit, Batman in disguise, makes some ugly compromises. There’s moral tension to match the simpler variety of tension.

It’s odd that we feel comforted by such a bland formula: ‘It isn’t simplistic. It’s complex. There are no easy answers. The characters are multi-dimensional. Etc.’ But isn’t Dillinger most endearing when he says, ‘I like baseball, movies, good clothes, fast cars and you. What else do you need to know?’ But: if we secretly root for simplicity, does it mean that we believe it exists? Isn’t it patronizing to make a moral position out of praising complexity in characters? Don’t we all live in the same tough world?

Maybe my taste in books is a little more sophisticated. Maybe. I cruise around Amazon, looking for titles I’ve picked up here and there in magazines, mostly while in Ethiopia. I have an interest in history lately. I order two recent biographies, one of King Alfred and one of Caesar.

I haven’t started reading the book on Alfred yet, but apparently the author, David Horspool, applies himself like a scientist to the mythology wrapped around the famous king, like cloth around a mummy, untangling each length of it in light of various myth-making agendas, and sets out to discover what one reviewer describes as ‘an altogether more ambiguous and interesting character.’ (Hmm. Again the nod to the dubious god of complexity.)

The Caesar bio, on the other hand, reads to me like Seutonius made mellow, and outfitted with casual paragraphs of historical context, in the lecture voice of an amiable old Classics professor, which is just what the author is. The blurb inside the book jacket says, ‘JC was a complex man (!) … and this author presents Caesar in all his dimensions and contradictions’.

I hear a soft and smug voice behind all this, telling us that only the sophisticated men and women of our era, schooled in Freud and Oprah, can understand and value complexity. And I wonder, did Seutonius think Caesar was a simple man, one-dimensional, unambiguous, lacking in contradictions?
Caesar, of infamous diversity in sexual tastes but so devoted to his first wife that he refused the order of an earlier dictator to divorce her? Caesar, of ancient aristocratic lineage, who championed the plebs? Caesar, who worked his way up the traditional ladder to power and then did more than any man to destroy the same tradition? The politician who out-soldiered the soldiers, and then became scholar? Because Seutonius didn’t state the obvious, ‘Here is an interesting man; he was complex in character,’ does that mean it escaped his notice?

Or have we agreed for the purpose of simplicity on complexity? A character can’t be taken seriously unless there is ambiguity and contradiction. Until he or she has become complex, we are allowed to scoff. I wonder if this is a strategy in Sarah Palin’s mind as she strengthens her bid for the presidency by walking out on the responsibility of governing Alaska, mid-term? Does any contradiction add up the right way: complexity = personality heaven?

Here’s some complexity for you: why did Michael Mann change the famous ‘lady in red’ to the lady in a white blouse and orange skirt? Does that make sense? He must be complex.

Here’s some more. The real Dillinger allowed his dad to talk him into doing the right thing and going to prison for eight years for robbing a local grocery store. Eight years during which he stewed and raged, and plotted doing some real damage. His bank-robbing spree lasted only one year before he was killed. So there is a little more going on than fast cars. Hmm.

Travelogue 282 – June 5
The Dao De Minn

Okay, I’m experiencing a little culture shock this time around. I’m back in Minnesota. It’s the silence of this place. It’s unnerving. It’s like the sky is too big. There’s plenty of activity – cars still buzzing, business still bubbling, (in its subdued post-prime way) – but the sky just swallows it, as if the vast blue were a wool blanket left over from winter.

One is forced to surrender to it, and move like one is in a medieval Chinese poem, pantomiming the ancient art of the shout in a snowstorm.

The street that can be talked aloud on is not the true street;
The voice that can be heard is not the true voice.
It was from the Noiseless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
Noise is but the mother that rears the ten thousand annoyances.

So one retires with a sigh of relief to the normal quiet of an afternoon bar and watches the quiet sport, baseball.

We swing thirty times and call it an inning;
But it is inside the spaces between swings that the game exists.
We spend millions on fifty thousand seats;
But it is on the green space in the middle, where there is nothing, that the usefulness of this vessel depends.
We mold plastic into stacks of cups;
And it is on the empty space inside the beer cup that usefulness of the cup depends.
Therefore just as we cheer the home run, we should cheer for the empty times, during which we visit the bathrooms.

I make it to see Star Trek, one of my primary goals since I have made it back in the country. We watch the aged Spock as he is forced to watch his planet implode in the silence of space. Quietly it obeys its fate, according to the designs of the evil Romulan, collapsing inside the aural pillow of deep vacuum.

Key to the plot is a show of rage by the young Spock. And it can’t take more than a minute from the rest of the script. So the resulting scene pulls the specter of the loss of his mother from a well of convenient imagery, like the tears of the Madonna as shorthand for everything sacred to medieval man, and Spock obliges with pantomimes of rage.

The names that can be named are not true names.

This resonates with what I see among my compatriots, through the goggles of culture shock, a kind of staged, silent opera. In this show, emotions are substituted by a variety of film and TV shorthand for emotion, according to the script. We’re busy; we have a lot on our minds. An inconvenient ‘issue’ arises, and we have a hunch that a reaction is called for. We know the scripts.

The sky re-asserts its pre-eminence, pushing down. Our thoughts jump like water bugs beneath its vastnesses. When the day is done, we’ll hide.

Travelogue 281 – May 27
Leaning

I’m back in medieval Italia – and more convinced than ever that it’s the Middle Ages that remain triumphant in Italia, the birthplace of that era’s antithesis, the Rinascimento, renunciation of everything Gothic and ‘dark’.

I’m led away from the Italian capital, from my tender-hearted city of condottieri, new classicism, corruption, and the Counter Reformation, my humble town of baroque and rococo, Rafaello, Bernini, and Michelangelo, by a quirk of modern, internet travel.The cheapest route between two points in summer is a small line: a light thread held tight by a small airline traveling between two small cities. Rather than join the cattle drive between capitals, I’ve booked a cosy hop from Pisa to Bristol that costs only a few dollars more than the mandatory fees and taxes. (Though, with trains and hotels, I’m probably breaking even.) I’m happily counting my pennies saved on the train ride to Pisa, humming along to the Tuscan landscape, when the conductor informs me that I forgot to stamp my ticket at the station. Forty euro penalta! I’m no longer humming. I’m brooding along with the rain clouds gathering over the Tuscan hills.


I’ve been to Pisa once before, about five years ago. It was another pass-through. I wasn’t drawn by the Leaning Tower. I was drawn by geography: the coast, and the necessity of connecting two trains. I did walk around the Campo dei Miracoli, where the duomo and the famous tower are located, and I was impressed. I was impressed again this time, though the flavor of the place struck me differently, leaving an aftertaste of spice from the Orient. It is beautiful architecture, but kind of bizarre in its prolific detail of design. There is a strong element of Muslim decoration here. In any case, it’s a wonderful park, with lots of space for lots of tourists, and wide, tempting lawns that give employment to guards.

This time, I have a long day in Pisa, and I’m well rested. I decide to tour the sights. Preliminary report: it’s one of my favorite little towns in Italia. Smaller than you would think, comfortable, and scenic. And medieval: seems like the Rinascimento sailed overhead. And what’s more: lots of people on bikes. It’s a university town.

Once you’ve marveled at the Muslim-Gothic architecture of the duomo, and you’ve posed with your hands out, holding up the leaning tower, here are the must-sees of Pisa. Head back to the Arno. It’s a cute little riverfront, and you’re forgiven for taking joy from nothing else but the promenade. But you might as well mix in a little history. If you walk left along the far shore, having come from the duomo, you will have an opportunity to add another jewel to your Knights Templar tour, the church of San Sepolcro. Besides having a cool name, it has a lengthy history, being built some time in the 12th century. It’s an octagonal structure, following the usual Templar plan, simple in design, and inside it consists of little more than an ambulatory around a central apse and altar. My sentimentality for these Templar churches is just these symmetrical blueprints, roughly circular, which echo Middle Eastern and, indeed, Ethiopian, church designs. But, dating back to the earliest days of Templar history as the church does, I’d bet my collection of Atlantean crystals that there’s some mystery in there for Tom Hanks to decipher.

Backtrack along the river the way you came, passing the bridge you crossed and continue. You will come to the marvelous church of Santa Maria della Spina, built in 1323, right on the banks of the Arno – though it’s been moved across the river to its current site. You can’t miss it because it rests right in the middle of the sidewalk. And yes, it’s that small. It’s a sweet little church, built like a tiny showcase of every high Gothic trick. Very lovely and worth a visit.

Back at the Ponte di Mezzo, you’ll head back into the old town. You’ll want to stroll up and down the Borgo Stretto, a narrow, old street with plenty of outdoor cafes, shops, and covered walkways that might remind you of towns on the Adriatic, like Padova or Ravenna. Close to the river, you’ll discover San Michele in Borgo, a beautiful small church dating back to the 900s.

Have a seat in one of the cafes and partake of the modern town of Pisa. Watch the locals bike by, or eavesdrop on the chatter of the teens at the next table. It doesn’t sound so inane in Italian. Look over the wares of one of the dozens of African street vendors who will approach you. He will be grateful you spoke to him. He’ll proudly tell you about Senegal. He’ll proudly tell you about his lighters and fanny packs until you buy something.

But save yourself for dinner. After 7:30pm, you will want to cut through the alleys branching off from the Borgo Stretto and find the nearby Piazza delle Vettovaglie, a kind of scaled down and mellow version of the Campo dei Fiori in Rome. Visit this square in the morning for its market, in the afternoon for coffee and people-watching, but definitely visit in the evening for food at the wonderful Vineria di Piazza.

Don’t be fooled by its stripped down presentation, broad wooden tables and benches, inside and out, very informal. The food is incredible. At one meal, I have fat pasta with boar meat. At another, pasta and vongole, or clams. I was content as I could be, sitting at a small table behind a group of doctors of philosophy, speaking in English about extensionality and substance, sipping my wine and watching the square outside come to life again.

We were all taken by surprise by a sudden, heavy rain shower. It was cause of much merriment as people dashed under cover on all four sides of the piazza. Within minutes, all that was left in the open square was someone’s forlorn Harley Davidson, popped alone on the cobblestones. Twenty minutes later, the rain had passed and sunset colors were creeping into the piazza. There is something about Italian towns that seems to enhance the beauty of sunsets, as though traditional architecture were designed for nothing else. The brick, the plaster, the tiles all seem to pick up and glory in the hues of day’s end, the time when everyone takes to the streets for their passegiata. There’s nothing like it.

Travelogue 280 – May 26
Spring Therapy

It’s Roma the next day, and my squeezed itinerary only allows half a day and an overnight. I hustle from airport to train to Metro, so that I can catch the day’s landlord, Sr Tallarico, at the apartment that has become my new stopover pad. It’s down the Via Appia Nuova in the area called Colli Albani, as I’ve previously described it: mile upon mile of bland residential high-rises, that still manages a sunny, Italian charm.

Sr Tallarico is sparing with his Italian charm. If anything, he is rather Teutonic in the administration of his bed-and-breakfast. Sr Tallarico is an older gentleman, whose retirement is devoted to the serious business of hospitality. He is a small man with an unyielding scowl on his face, and today the scowl is sterner than usual because I’m late by one day – travel problems: see the previous blog. I did manage to email ahead to assure him that I would still pay for my reservation, but it is all unsettling for him. The whole notion of Addis Ababa is unsettling for him.

Once Sr Tallarico has grumbled off, I am free to engage with my beloved and eternal city … for a few sleep-deprived hours. By the time I’m back down the four flights of stairs to street level, there can be no doubt: this tour will be an abbreviated one, a kind of collection of distilled essences. In fact, I realize, I will be staying right here in Colli Albani. Once the scope of the tour has been settled, the choices are easy.

First come tastes. I have a cornetto and caffe at the Small Cafe across the street. That’s the name of the place, in Italian, the Small Cafe. The baristas recognize me, sort of: in their comfortably disdainful way. I glance through the local paper for the latest shenanigans of the Pope and soccer stars.

Next comes fast internet. I check in at the Bangladeshi phone and internet place around the corner. Checking in is no easy task. The Italian government requires ID on every user, and the Bangladeshis require a user card and passwords that somehow must incorporate every bit of biographical data available. But once in, it’s heaven: responsive internet. I can go wherever I like! I book my hotel for the next night, in Pisa, and it takes five minutes!

Next comes therapy. This will be color and aromatherapy. I take a walk to the Caffarella Park, that expanse of green hills between the old and new Appian Ways. It’s gorgeous out. I catch my first spring scent of lilac. I’m overcome by the scent of grass and wild blossoms in the hills. It’s dizzying. And the spring colors fairly vibrate with life. In fifteen minutes, I’m quite restored: all is right with the world. I hike to the top of my favorite hill, from which you can see the dome of St. Peter’s in the distance, and in the other direction, several high monuments along the old Appian Way.

Back in town, I indulge in pizza and gelato. The day is complete. I’m ready for a long rest, and I’m in bed while the sun is still high in the early evening sky. Tomorrow I have to catch an early train. I’m so successful at resting and at rising early that I’ve showered, mastered the Metro, and boarded my train by 6:30am. Off to Pisa!

Travelogue 279 – May 25
Sun Smiles

It may happen one day that you arrive in Cairo unannounced, on an unplanned stopover. You might, for example, have been forced to extend your business in Addis Ababa. It might be that the combination of making last-minute changes to your travel plans on a weekend, inept customer service, and internet problems have overwhelmed any hope of comfortable travel, and you arrive at Cairo airport at 3am for an eight-hour layover. Don’t fret, because Sameh will be there for you.

You’ll recognize Sameh as the composed and awake, well-dressed and well-groomed (in hirsute and fat tie Arab style) young man waiting for you as you emerge from customs and passport control. Actually, he is the one who will recognize you: as a discerning Dutch businessman on the go. Yes, I’ve had the odd good fortune to arrive from Addis at the same time as a KLM flight from Amsterdam. In a surreal twist, during these days of swine flu, the men with white masks over their mouths and noses who meet us directly as we enter the terminal building, are stopping travelers from Europe and letting those from sub-Saharan Africa go. So I emerge ahead of the brisk Dutch businessman, looking just Dutch enough for Sameh to rush to my service.

Sameh escorts me up the long escalator to the mezzanine level of the terminal, into his little office with comfortable armchairs and brochures. Hotel and taxi? Why, of course. He glances through a notebook full of hotel brochures, and he selects the perfect glossy trifold for me. I’ll be spending the night in the Sun Smiles Hotel in Heliopolis, a short ride from the airport. It’s new; it’s quiet. It has a cool name.

The taxi driver doesn’t find it amusing. This round, grey-faced man engages in long guttural exchanges with the even smoother young travel agent assigned to walking me down to the parking lot. He needs to process the name of the hotel, the directions to the hotel, the voucher for the hotel, his compensation, and the current state of NASA, as far as I make out. While they negotiate in ever higher volume, I watch a grumpy Dutchman grouse and quibble with his handlers beside the next car; he’s obviously irritated at being frisked for farmyard viruses. His taxi takes off well before my driver has exhausted his line of inquiry; the Dutchman stares grievously out the back window as if in one last indictment of all customs people and chiseling travel agents. I don’t know what indignities he may have suffered from the men in the masks, but I find no fault in Sameh’s service. He was there when I needed him, and within the hour I’m snug at Sun Smiles Hotel.

I might have been snug in 30 minutes, but predictably my taxi driver gets hopelessly lost, flying down the wee-hours highway, only to creep in confusion among the side streets of the hotel’s neighborhood. I get a comprehensive 3am tour of some two dozen affluent blocks in Heliopolis. He pulls over to ask at a 24-hour newspaper stand. He engages in more discourses with my smooth handlers on his cell. And eventually, on a block virtually indistinguishable from any other, housed in a building indistinguishable from its neighbors, we discover the Sun Smiles Hotel, resplendent inside if not out, in the splashy (faux) marble and gold style of the Arab world. My bed is sprinkled with ficus leaves, and at its foot is my towel, twisted into the shape of a heart. I am delighted by these touches, as any sensitive traveler would be, but have to confess that sleep came as something even more deliciously luxurious. Four hours later, I have to submit to being rudely awakened for the next leg of travel.