inbetween

The Ides of March

2012-01-28T09:43:00.002-05:00

This political drama mashes together a rather stock recipe of political scandals, a posh roster of A-list Hollywood-Indie actors and sets the timer of an Ohio state primary for an Obama/Clinton-esque candidate and conjures a satisfyingly tragic view of contemporary politics. Gosling is typically perfect in his ability to channel soulish depth, which, in this case, mirrors the viewers own experience of being alternately woo'd and stabbed-in-the-back by the Hope and Promise of political newcomers, and while the pacing, the performances, the music and the loving lens make the film a delightful cinematic experience, the soulish depth is what ultimately makes the film satisfying.

+++1/2

crosspost from movietalk (which I may be trying to revive? but I've got about a year of backposts to catch up on....albeit a low-movie-watching year...we'll see....as you, dear regular reader know...my impulses are swayed by unpredictable and unstable urges in these matters....)

Wednesday Window

2012-01-25T21:26:00.000-05:00

It was a busy-but-not-bad Wednesday: all the normal meetings, pressed in together, kids to lessons, and then a surprise: Bampa(!) (my dad) arrived to take us to dinner at Mulligans. It was a nice long dinner and then he kept driving across Ohio and we headed back for an evening of Monopoly, homework and early bedtimes.

After the Bridge

2012-01-21T08:38:00.000-05:00

It's been too many years since our friends Marcaus & Kel Muller crossed an ocean to visit us, but those days were a whirlwind of memories, mostly small domestic happinesses sharing the little joys of our lives in a living room over all kinds of drinks, at a table with all kinds of delicious food. One day we ventured forth to try to find Small Town Americana here in Northeast Ohio. It took a few hours before we started to find something that felt genuine and whole and truly, starkly Americana, but this moment and this vista just on the far side of a covered bridge in Holmes County was pretty stunning and for me has remained an emblem of good friendship, happy shared quests and great memories.

Wednesday Window

2012-01-18T10:46:00.000-05:00

Wednesdays this semester are going to be packed to the gills. My photos used to be snapped around nine am, but this semester, I'm rarely going to be in my office at that time. So the light is a little earlier. Closer to eight am. But the day is packed with good things - a collaborative teaching meeting with Jay, a reelate internship supervisory meeting with Kayla, an honors thesis meeting with Taylor, a meeting with the General Education committee (an unfortunate topic, but enjoyable colleagues), and then meetings with students who are making films. Then, of course, there's cello lessons and drum lessons and dinner to cook, but a life filled with helping people do good things? Is a fortunate life.

All in the Span of a Week.

2012-01-16T07:59:00.001-05:00

not that i'm complaining.

unlike most of the world, (it seems)

i love winter and am always happy when she returns.

Summertime Memories

2012-01-15T18:52:00.001-05:00

In the first week of August of this year, I went to Boston for a conference. I stayed in a dorm room to save money. Some people think that university professors make lots of money. It's not true. We spend our summers staying in dorm rooms at other universities. Not quite like flashing the corporate card and zipping up the elevators to accrue more hilton points.

But I must say that this trip to Boston was full of unexpected pleasures. My dorm room overlooked Boston Commons (this is the view). I had long delightful runs. I ran into my sister and her family (almost accidentally) as they were also visiting Boston. I had a long lunch with a friend of many years who I rarely get to see. I saw lots and lots of movies, a few good ones, but all earnestly made. I made new friends and laughed. I had great times with other new friends.

I have a stronghappyplace inside of me for Boston.

The Impermanence of Particular Happinesses.

2012-01-14T10:44:00.000-05:00

This cell phone snap is, I'm pretty sure from our friends' (Jeff & Linda) 40th Birthday Party. They threw it simultaneously for themselves and there always-hospitable house was filled with the many friends that they've made and sustained. I happened to capture with this cell phone snap the delightful moment of Christina and Lynn laughing together. Christina has one of the most infectious laughs you've ever heard, and Lynn only laughs this freely when she's really enjoying herself and feels really at home and comfortable with good friends around.

Jeff and Linda are (of course) the kinds of friends like this -- as are Christina and Scott -- who are leaving. We still have a lot of laughing to do with them before they go, so this post is not just solemn. And their leaving Ohio is definitely an occasion to both mourn and celebrate. Christina and Lynn have been finishing their doctoral programs together and spent a great deal of time supporting each other through the gauntlet. So we're celebrating that not only is Christina finishing up her PhD, but she's also gotten a nice tenure line job.

But we're mourning because we know that Scott and Christina leaving the area will mean a great loss for us. They are insightful, bright, dedicated, altruistic, talented people -- in a happy partnership with each other -- who have been sharing their lives with us for five years? Seven years? Beyond all those talents and qualities they embody? The reason you decide to really share life with people is because they make you laugh, because they are generous and because you trust them. Our times with Scott and Christina have been full of laughter, hilarity, honesty and trust.

These happy qualities of friendship don't dissolve with distance, but the experience of them changes significantly.

We talked about this with some of our long-distance friends over Christmas break. In a strange way it is the very impermanence of particular happinesses that makes them deeper and more felt than other mundane happinesses.

Not that mundane happiness is bad. The thing about mundane happiness is that it registers low on the pleasure-richter-scale and its almost always braided closely with obligation, labor and complications.

If given the choice, of course, I'd choose to have both. mundane happiness and Surprising! Whelming! Happiness!

But a photograph like this, and reading it in the light of our friends leaving us, and thinking of the unique happiness of a Birthday Party, a good laugh, and shared times with unique outstanding friends, makes me glad for these Particular Happinesses and a little sad about their Impermanence.

Morning Coffee

2012-01-14T10:15:00.000-05:00

I'm holding my coffee mug, a new bit of art made by our good friend Monica, and sipping my coffee from it as the fierce light of the snow and reflected sun pours in the window over my bedhead self. Saturday mornings are amazing. Sometimes.

Here's To Interesting Lives

2012-01-13T08:00:00.000-05:00

My daughter is a fashionista with new glasses frames. And yes. She wore that outfit to middle school. I couldn't be prouder.

Once Upon A Time

2012-01-12T20:01:00.000-05:00

I love these pictures from the summer. I was waiting with Lynn, Addison and Jaelyn at Russ's Restaurant in Muskegon, Michigan. When I was a teenager, and we were broke and out late, we would sometimes go to Russ's, to the telendine room (you ordered with a telephone at your booth, which seemed, at the time, tres chic) and then we would pool the change that we had been able to scrounge from our pockets, car cup holders and occasionally a dollar bill or two. Then we would order as many fried mushrooms and fried cheese sticks as we could afford, carefully then dividing them amongst us. In my memory at least we were perfectly communist about it -- everyone got equal regardless our station in the economy of pocket-change-poor adolescence.

But I couldn't stop taking pictures of Lynn because she was looking hot -- carefree and summertime in the looseness of her hair and limbs. And everything about her I love so there: Practical purse, clothes that are flattering, stylish, yet not at all extravagant. Just a quick hint of extravagance in the handcrafted necklace. And in the background the retro lines of Russ's and the wide open sky of summertime, fierce with sunlight. I remember even as I was madly snapping photos with my terrible phone camera, I was aware that these photographs, as inspired as they felt to me, were awfully awfully idiosyncratic in their inspiration and focus. But even now as I look back at the moment: I feel happily nostalgic.

Isn't it funny how these moments creep up on us and make us happy with the buzz of memories that we didn't even realize we remembered or valued?

Wednesday Window Ledge

2012-01-11T08:21:00.000-05:00

A slightly more contextualized view of the Wednesday Window today.

It's bright and sunny and the light was making me really notice all the bare-branched trees this morning after I dropped the kids off to school. You know what I'd like to do? Make a major art project that just included endless photography of wintry trees where I'd meticulously photoshop out every hint of civilization and just let their interesting branches and trunks be bare-assed against the stark contrast of fierce blue skies.

Today is full full full of meetings and the stack of papers on my floor that needs filing is astonishingly tall despite my best efforts to get to the bottom of it. Yesterday was the first day of classes and it was promising, but then again, beginnings are always my forte.

New Years Resolve

2012-01-09T08:24:00.004-05:00

It's the first day of classes -- which is like a New Year for we in the teacher set. The sky is streaked with all kinds of beautiful clouds and sunrise colors. A harvest moon was setting magnificently in the West as I dropped the kids off at school, and now I have the good fortune to be meeting a friend at starbucks for a business-related meeting. Could there be a better way to start the semester? (Yes, I agree, Muggswigz or another local coffee shop would be a baby step better, but still, given the constraints? You have to agree that my life is filled with good fortune right now.)

I am a New Years Resolutions guy. Except after years that have been full of disappointments, struggles and failures. I'm happy to report that while last year had its share of disappointments, struggles and failures? The successes, renewals, possibilities and happinesses far outweighed.

So as a result? I resolve (building on fortune to add more?).

While there are a few resolutions that are better left off of a blog and put only in a private journal and shared with a few friends? I'm increasingly convinced that the only way to really change your life is to a.) do it together with others, b.) find ways to align your new direction with some existing momentum already in progress c.) change it incrementally, making peace with failure, slow growth, and incremental success.

Do I sound like a life coach? I'm only saying things that I feel like I know to be true. Bearing Witness as it were.

So in the interest of (a.) doing it together with others: here's what I'm doing this year. Let me know if you're doing something similar so that we can do it together:

1.) saying thank you at least once a day. intentionally, memorably & formally.

2.) journaling most days (often at 750words.com, but often just in my little books)

3.) NOT starting any new film production projects but YES finishing a few that have been languishing far too long.

4.) under 185 pounds for 150 days.

5.) watching more movies than last year, reading more books than last year, and having more conversations with friends than I did last year.

Hope your resolve is strong, too whether or not this is your first day back in the new year.

Peace.

A Good Morning.

2012-01-08T09:59:00.002-05:00

This morning the sun is bold and delicious and my coffee is strong and beautiful. I am feeling: grateful, content & zen.

Winter Vacation Wedneday Window (posted on Thursday)

2012-01-05T19:46:00.000-05:00

So I stopped by the office to snap this wintry picture, but I spent most of the day working on preparations for the semester. Got to see a few friends and spend enjoyable time watching some short films and having a great talk deep into the night. This winter vacation has been pretty great.

Developing Policy

2012-01-04T14:43:00.001-05:00

Whaddya' think? Too much?

End of the Year

2012-01-02T12:20:00.001-05:00

Just uploaded our annual Holiday Missive to the Family Blog.

Critics Corner

2011-12-31T10:08:00.000-05:00

Addison's review of THE SMURF MOVIE made my heart happy; I asked him how it was after we returned from Lynn's Birthday Date. He said:

"It was one of those cheesy movies where you know what will happen, but I still liked it alot."

Such hermeutic insight! And the ability to hold together the tensions of mass culture and personal taste in a way that leaves room for subversive ironic consumption. A postmodern father's heart could not be warmed more.

Walking on Stones in Dress Shoes

2011-12-26T21:22:00.000-05:00

After my grandmother died, we drove to the Upper Peninsula where she had lived all but three of the years of her life. There was a graveside service at the cemetery in Cedarville, right around the corner on Four Mile Block road. She was buried amongst all the Rudds, even though the larger lot of them hadn't been that hospitable to her at first, quiet allusions to her embarrassing finnish roots, a mother-in-law, Bertha, who was sure that non of her children's suitors were good enough for her children, but all the same they mostly ended up buried close to her. Afterward we went to the cottage that she had turned into a retreat. Wearing our suits, we skipped stones and walked on the rocky shoreline.

Terry and I are the oldest of her grandchildren and it seems like maybe the ones most influenced by her stories and this picture feels precisely magical because it captures all of her nostalgia for times gone by and a place of peace and quiet. It was chilly, but not too chilly and it felt like a fitting way for all of us to be together and say goodbye.

Annual Holiday Bowling Outing

2011-12-23T21:22:00.002-05:00

If you haven't received your holiday card from us yet...it's because we've been waiting for this moment -- the moment that didn't include a posed moment from a professional but did include a moment of genuine togetherness. Such photographs are hard to come by. Since our moment came so late in the year, we're taking that as a signal that we should forego the annual Christmas Card, instead opting for a Festive Holiday Blog Posting.

(...and no, there is actually no annual bowing outing, but it was a big event this year...)

It's My Siblings!

2011-12-22T22:25:00.000-05:00

This is one of the more peaceful moments of our chaotic Rudd Christmas. And one of the few photos that include all four of the original siblings....

Wednesday Window

2011-12-21T22:40:00.000-05:00

Wednesday was so full of packing the car, wrapping presents and a few other odds and ends -- that I barely had time to snap the Wednesday Window photo -- let alone post it on facebook. We'll spend the next three and a half days in Michigan and then return to Lynn's mom's farm on Christmas day. I'm so glad to be done, and very glad to be going North. I'm a northern boy deep down.

Things That Mix Well

2011-12-17T17:56:00.000-05:00

A glass of Apothic Red.

An Adam Baker borrowed from playlist, lending some Anathello,

Scott's delicious recipe,

Saturday night after exams are over (even though grading is *far from* over....). Happy happy moment.

Wednesday Window

2011-12-15T07:31:00.000-05:00

I snapped this picture minutes after I finished administering my last exam. The next four days will be non-stop grading for me and then? Relative freedom! I cannot describe how eager I am for that feeling.

We are always saying goodbye because...

2011-12-13T20:04:00.001-05:00

Everything is always happening.

Jordan did not shoot Willie. But Willie and Jordan are somewhere teasing someone else. Performing a little bit. Using a dry sense of humor. Humble and hardworking but in the most laid back way you could imagine.

I am always saying goodbye to them now. Because that has already happened. I said goodbye to Jordan last year, and somewhere in California, Jordan's life is thriving and more interesting than I could imagine. And yet in one way this picture is still happening, he is still in my office: funny, honest, eager, real. And in another way I am meeting his parents at graduation and giving him a hug and saying goodbye and feeling bad that he is leaving.

Because that is what is beautiful about being human, all our history is always happening to us again and again. Right now. And not right now.

And there's Matt, sitting across from the table from them. While Jordan doesn't shoot Willie and they're both laughing. And in a minute, Jordan and Willie will take turns with my camera and next year (now it's this year!) Matt will come back to this same seat in my same office by himself and we will talk together about his script. We will hash out the details and figure out the best way to squeeze an epic story into 90 minutes. And the next moment, he will be stopping by my office to say goodbye and I will not be there and he'll write a handwritten note that says nice things, and I'll keep it.

And he'll always be the new guy with the deep voice coming in as a junior transfer student and gives good solid presentations in my history and theory of film class even though nobody knows him before this moment, and no one expects him to give good presentations, and the next moment everyone will ask him to read their script during the workshop. Over and over he'll get cast as the male lead or the villain. One minute the new guy the next minute the go-to guy.

One minute I am in college, the next minute, I am shepherding all these people through college. They sit at my table and we talk, we dream, we plan, we hurry.

Everything is always happening.

From the Archives

2011-12-13T19:37:00.000-05:00

The picture is not recent, but my love for the people in the picture, and the feeling of a long leisurely post-dinner conversation -- is strong.

Leftover Mashed Potatoes For Lunch.

2011-12-08T13:41:00.001-05:00

I'm a very lucky guy today.

The End of the Shoulds.

2011-12-07T18:52:00.001-05:00

Up at 4:50 to swim a mile, a successful delivery of two perfect pre-adolescent children to middle school (seriously! today at least...), a little filing, a little grading, a little prep work, four classes in a row, a delicious risotto and center cut pork loin on the grill. Then I crashed for a 15 minute nap. I woke feeling great, but have decided to renounce all "shoulds" in my life. Stay tuned for further developments.

Happy Birthday, Cliff.

2011-12-05T09:02:00.001-05:00

My mom told me that a person was fortunate if they found one friend in their life that they could depend on and any more than one made them a wealthy person. I am, by these standards, very wealthy. But the wealth isn't about the number of friends, it is about the quality of people who I know and trust as my friends.

I first met Cliff Vaughn fifteen years ago as we were both entering PhD programs at Bowling Green State University together. Our casual conversation between orientation sessions revealed some surprising commonalities: we both wrote screenplays, we came from families with four siblings, we grew up in Baptist Churches and we were both interested in studying culture and communication.

At that point, honestly, I had no idea if I had just found my "tribe" and everyone I met would have this many remarkable connections? or if my meeting with Cliff was as fortuitous as it seemed.

Lucky indeed, Cliff is a one of a kind. Over the next two years we scheduled regular times where we did nothing but sat together and told stories -- the thing we love in common probably more than anything else -- story. All these years later, those moments still seem as sacred as any I've had in my life.

Since then? We've had the great privilege to share road trips, his marriage, our children, great happiness, great disappointment.

Cliff is the kind of friend who is not only a great friend to me, but he's a great human being. He makes documentary films about important justice issues. He gathers, tells and distributes stories about complicated contemporary issues to deeply vested audiences, he teaches classes, he fathers two bright hilarious children. I love this photograph of him from their visit to our home this past summer. I love his casual smile -- his normal way of being. I love that he's reviewing footage on a camera, reflecting both his artistic sensibilities *and* his interest in reflection and attentiveness. I love that he's on my couch, relaxing. Cliff is excellent at being with.

Today is his birthday and all day today, I'm celebrating how much his life has shaped my own story for better. Happy Birthday, Cliff!

Tis the Season?

2011-12-04T09:54:00.001-05:00

We put up the Christmas Tree last night -- but this morning I was struck by the contradictions posed by this picture -- bright sunlight and green grass and summer furniture still out on the deck (!) versus a Christmas tree and bare wintry branches outside.

Can I really complain about the inbetween-ness of these seasons?

Feeling Zen

2011-12-03T08:16:00.001-05:00

The sunlight this saturday morning is shining off of the frost that blankets the low-mowed grass blades in the common area behind our house, reflecting against the frost wrapped branches of the wintry looking trees and melting the frost that has inverted the color of shingles from black to white, on every perfectly matched angle of every 1977 built house as far as I can see from the couch. The light and the cold feel open and free to me now, as the kids sleep and Lynn I work on our projects in silence after a nice quiet chatty breakfast.

I'm sipping coffee from the handmade coffee mug that Dave and Linda gave me for my 40th birthday and taking a break from responding to the really good writing that my students have done in this year's scriptwriting class. Writing these moments down feels like it makes them more real. More lasting. I know that that feeling goes away once the moment ends, but for me at least writing is the way to lean into it.

I hope your day offers such zen moments and I hope you find whatever way you can to lean into it...

Summertime

2011-12-01T06:23:00.001-05:00

Marshall McLuhan said that we live watching the rear view mirror. And it's true. I snapped this photo at the end of my anniversary getaway this past summer with Lynn We were at the Grand Haven Beach and it was so fiercely hot out that the cool concrete and lake breezes through this big shelter seemed almost as beautiful as the contrast of it's hollow darkness against the insistent brightness of the sun and it's reflections on the lake outside. Even when I'm in Ohio I feel very connected to the Great Lakes, like a part of me needs to be staring at the wide expanse of water, so fluid and alive.

Wednesday Window

2011-11-30T08:02:00.000-05:00

Wednesdays this semester are increasingly intense. I go from class to meeting to class to class to class to class to meeting to pickup kids to ferry kids to lessons to cook dinner to help with homework to grading to go-to-bed. This Wednesday is no exception, but the grey days are making it feel even less palatable. I accidentally skipped coffee on Monday (also an intense day) so today I've loaded up and we'll see how that buoys me through the craziness....

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T09:02:00.000-05:00

Thankful to be in Michigan with the Rudds celebrating -- we're missing one brother, one sister-in-law and two-much-favored-cousins -- but still managing (surprise?) to be loud, expressive and fun. Hope your thanksgiving was great too.

Wednesday Window

2011-11-23T12:21:00.001-05:00

It's the week of thanksgiving so I have a day off of classes. It's been extraordinarily filled with meetings with potential collaborators, old students, mentees and friends. AND with returning, preparing, cleaning, filing, checking out, calendering and grading. We'll leave long before dawn tomorrow to return to Michigan where my family will celebrate together. It's grey and dark out, but the possibility of rest and a break in the rhythms seems like a gift as great as sunshine.

Booths & Bodies

2011-11-22T18:49:00.001-05:00

I think that this micro documentary is great. It's great on almost every level I could think a thing is great. It's about nostalgia and images and archiving and vocation and uniqueness. And its a short documentary with some unexpected moments that make it resonate at another level.

It fits right in with what I'm trying to do on reelate.org and I found about it because my great friend Cliff Vaughn told me about it. (you can find out about some of Cliff's documentaries here and some of them here.)

For A Prize....

2011-11-22T07:25:00.000-05:00

This one's for a prize, folks. First correct answer in the comments wins!!!

2011-11-21T19:20:00.000-05:00

This sign is so like Matt. He's one of my favorite people. Dedicated to sincere vigorous dialogue and committed to building institutional culture. His polite paper command was not only free of offensive font faces, but it's also signed, lying on the table (not taped up anywhere), and it offers a pen to the respondent. How humble, civil and engaging, eh? If only the world were full of Matts.

(it would be a strange world, mind you, too many Mennonite Cognitive Scientists in one room may be too much to handle...but it would be full of eager, polite, civil and humble dialogue. That's for sure.)

"Home" For The Holidays

2011-11-20T14:54:00.001-05:00

The strange thing about getting older is that Dorothy's old adage: "there's no place like home" becomes true in a strange way -- there's no place like the home [you remember] because home changes. And you do too. And those memories that anchor you in your past even alter in their proportion and meaning -- while you move farther from then and toward a something that they couldn't have predicted.

We went to Coshocton over the weekend, for Lynn's family's Early Thanksgiving celebration.

One of the things we did was tour Grandma Erman's house, empty now of her memorable carpet and mixed - match heirloom furniture, and between renters. It was strangely empty and in a way unfamiliar, but in another way profoundly evocative. Not unlike this view from the back of the house. I've always loved this tree and the clothesline was ALWAYS full of Grandma's things. Summer, Winter, Spring & Fall. The clothespins seem like vestiges of memories now.

I wandered up to the barn for awhile too, and snapped photographs of time's ruthless march forward....you can see the collection of my obsessive archival work on flickr if you're interested...

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Andy!

2011-11-18T09:33:00.000-05:00

It's an interesting thing to be named for someone. I'm named for three someones: my Grandpa Andy, my Grandpa Ed and my Uncle Andy. Uncle Andy actually bore my name precisely -- Andrew Edward. I presume that his untimely death (long before I was born) only cemented the idea that I would be named for my two grandfathers.

So while my name has always felt like it bore a great deal of meaning, the most apparent meaning to me has always been that I shared a name -- Andy -- with my grandfather.

My grandfather is a remarkable man. In many ways he embodies the American Dream. The course of his life parallels (so closely) the Horatio Alger formula, that it's almost eerie. The son of a greek immigrant, who died young, my grandfather was forced to drop out of school and support his family by working after 8th grade. He kept up the family business of a fruit and vegetable distributor on the south side of Chicago and then eventually diverged from fruit sales and ran a construction company and a cement company.

He was recruited by a minor league baseball team. Fought in the South Pacific, and then returned and wooed a farm girl from the Upper Peninsula who played piano at the local USO. When they returned to Chicago he stayed in the sidewalk business, but also got into the print business. When they moved back to the Upper Peninsula to raise their kids away from the urban sprawl they got into the motel business. And in the meantime, he bought and sold at flea markets his whole life. He built all kinds of structures. Was a boater, a fisherman, a golfer. Joined a church, raised three children and lived through the death of his teenage son. Moved to Florida, bought a motorhome travelled the continent, took up painting, survived heart attacks and multiple bypasses and -- though I've just related an epic tale -- I've also managed to not even tell any of the most interesting stories.

My grandfather loves people. He's a trickster. He loves to laugh and to smile. He loves a good joke and time with family. He makes a great fish batter and at ninety he repairs old fishing poles and resells them at a flea market. He's a remarkable man.

As a child, he haunted me like a ghost. Anytime I was doing a chore, my mother spoke in his voice. She evoked her work in the motel and said: My daddy always said:

"A job worth doing is worth doing well."

and

"First we work, then we play."

In some ways a person with a tremendous work ethic and a tremendous heart for laughter is the best imaginable kind of Grandfather to have.

When I was a boy visiting him in the Sault Ste Marie my favorite thing in the world was the opportunity to "go on a run" with him. We would run errands all over town. Trade things, pick up things, fix things, barter things, collect things. There was a universe in the back of his red pinto station wagon, and there was nothing better than to be a part of that universe.

Our families invite us to be a part of a unique world, don't they? Sometimes those invitations work well for us and other times they don't, but the world that my Grandpa Andy bequeathed to me has been a great one. One that I'm happy to have inherited.

Happy 93rd Birthday, Grandpa Andy!

Not A Metaphor

2011-11-18T08:31:00.001-05:00

I pulled into the parking lot at school and the birch tree in my courtyard was shining and beautiful. This is not a metaphor for my life right now. My grandmother Linda always sent out letters about her life that were beautifully composed and depicting an idyllic and beautiful life. Her diction often inflects my own voice and I always worry about my blog becoming too much like her "Dearly Beloved" Letters -- too Pollyanna.

Good news everyone! This morning, my life sucks. It doesn't look or feel beautiful like this really beautiful birch tree.

And I know it's equally bad form to rant on the internet, so I won't go into the details, but when I complained about how parenting was going this morning, my friend C. suggested that it might make a good t-shirt.

I think he's right:

It could also be a pretty cool name for a movie. Or a punk/folk band? With a little bit of zydeco influence?

Wednesday Window

2011-11-16T11:22:00.001-05:00

Nothing extraordinary this week, a happily peaceful routine November week. The sky is grey and dark and the weather (they say) is about to change for the worse: cold? snow? more dark? I'm sure that somewhere it's someone's birthday and everyone is celebrating and happy; doesn't it make sense that on days so dark and mundane we would just go ahead and live toward that alternate reality somewhere?

Happy Birthday, Gramma Marge

2011-11-15T17:00:00.001-05:00

My first memory of Gramma Marge was getting lost together in Lansing, Michigan as we tried to find the hospital where my little brother had been born. Why do I remember this episode? The fear? The danger? The sense of unease?

No.

I remember my grandmother laughing. Hysterically. Nonstop.

It's really a wonder we ever found the hospital at all. Because as long as I've known her, Gramma Marge has been three things:

1. An adventurer
2. A storyteller
3. Laughing.

Sure she's a whiz on the organ and makes coconut trix bars like nobody's business, but the real fun with Gramma Marge is that she has always been willing to do something she's never done before (moving from the Upper Peninsula to Chicago as a twentysomething to navigating new cities and new destinations to riding on the back of a four wheeler when I, her 16 year old grandson wanted to take her trail-riding through the woods).

I've spent hours listening to her stories about growing up on the farming plains of the Upper Peninsula, about playing piano on the radio as a girl, about visiting Detroit as a teenager, about discovering startling secrets about her parents, about her the death of my Uncle, her 14 year old son. Her memories feel like they are woven into the fabric of my own memory -- the images, ideas, actions and relationships are so strong.

Last year at Christmas we sat in a quiet corner of my parents' very loud house and she asked me: Why does it seem like yesterday fades before I wake up, but everything that happened to me when I was ten years old feels as fresh as it did right then? I feel so bound to her past in so many ways, but my own choices to break from family tradition and the past give a similar queasy sense of disequilibrium: not too unlike what she describes. We are both far from what is familiar and the familiar seems so strange.

But there is great comfort in the distant familiar and it's something we both treasure together.

It's her birthday today, and I know I'm not only really lucky to have a Gramma Marge, but to have had her for so many years. Happy Birthday Gramma!

A Little Bit Louder Now

2011-11-14T14:52:00.001-05:00

I've always posited that polite paper signs say just as much about the social world where they emerge than they do about the specific requests that they articulate. The more polite paper signs hanging everywhere? The more participative the place. The more polite the signs are? The more cognizant the participants are about the delicacy that being part of a "public sphere" demands.

This sign, hung at my workplace perfectly illustrates what I know to be true about the place. People are very very polite and very participative.

Apparently though....

...the first sign wasn't enough. With a little less refinement and a little less polish, one can see that the message has been re-iterated. Still in barely polite diction, but definitely with more force and insistence.

And...given what we know to be true of ripped corners from other signs in this series....aren't you just dying to know what that ripped off corner used to say? Might have said?

The Eye of the Beholder

2011-11-13T11:11:00.000-05:00

I accidentally arrived at this playground almost precisely three months ago. It was a nice Sunday morning and I was busily filming subjects for my Blind/Sighted project. I was delighted when filming gave me the opportunity to finally photograph this sign which I had been wistfully driving past for years. But I had no idea that at the base of this sign, I'd find another of my favorite treasures to collect: An Old Playground.

Of course, now that I'm posting these photographs, I realize that I should probably start another collection, but for now, hopefully you can revel in the particularities of this frog eye and this frog with as much joy as I did when I found them three months ago.

2011-11-13T10:19:00.001-05:00

It would take too long for me to explain all the things I love about old signs, but this sign and my connections to it allude to many of my affections. This sign towers over Highway 77 just as you leave Canton, driving north toward Akron. It is perched (as you can see) at the edge of a patch of woods, and just beyond the shiny parapets of an old Orthodox church building.

Afterwards, on the highway is a cemetery, rural bliss and then another bunch of developments -- Family Family Mega Church, Timken Corporation Executive Headquarters, Diebold Headquarters and the Akron / Canton Airport. Before it? A homogonized bunch of suburban havens: Old Navy, Starbucks, Caraba's, Five Guys, Sams Club, Harley Davidson, McDonalds and Panera. You know the scene, if you live here, you pass it often, if you don't live here? You still pass it often. Same old same old.

But I'm betting you don't pass a St. George Serbian Orthodox Center everyday? And that's one of the things I love.....the daringly long, un-homogenized name of this center.

I also love (of course) the faded glory of it. The flourish at the top and the rust that's suggesting it's lived through quite alot. The impressive fonts that are starting to fade with all the weather that's beaten against the raised standard.

That Serbian Orthodox folks have been gathering here in Canton, Ohio for this long? Makes me glad for all the stories that have circulated under this sign, and all the ways that their ethnic and religious heritage has loosened the otherwise stranglehold that German immigrant culture & bland catholic and protestant expressions have had on this particular town in Northeast Ohio.

And I love the way that old signs remind you that: Alot has gone on here that you have no idea about. So don't get too sure of yourself. Things are more complex than they seem to you right now.

That kind of humility seems like a helpful human attitude for me to keep cultivating....

Cell Phone Dump Series # 45

2011-11-12T20:18:00.001-05:00

I have no idea why this was on my cell phone. This happened on my desk, I can tell from the furniture, but I do not know who these creatures are, how they got there, or where they've gone. I feel like I may have been abducted at some point.

Into The Light

2011-11-11T15:43:00.001-05:00

A nice review of my newer show at Anderson Creative -- one last performance-walkthrough-time next Thursday night....see you there?

11.11.11

2011-11-11T11:11:00.000-05:00

I wanted to spring it on my class that we were taking this photo together so I just leisurely answered their questions and talked about assignments. Then, at 11:10 insisted that they gathered together for our momentous picture. It was very dramatic as I struggled to get the timer on my camera to work. They were all shouting encouragements and warnings and finally I just decided to take their picture. It's still my life and it was kind of a good moment after all...

What I Had For Lunch

2011-11-11T10:44:00.001-05:00

What sort of wannabe food photographer forgets to take a picture of the awesome curry chicken sandwich he makes for lunch? Apparently the kind that chooses instead to write the recipe out for you on a napkin instead....

Wednesday Window

2011-11-09T18:27:00.000-05:00

A five day run of brilliant sun gives way to grey today. Last night I moderated a forum on popular culture , and today I will teach about the Elaboration Likelihood Model, Fandom and then oversee a Scriptwriting workshop. We will eat Wild Rice & Mushroom Soup (Ray & Pamm's recipe) and I may even get a chance to work out. I am not (for the first time in weeks!) required to be anywhere tonight, and though my presence has been requested several places already, I will decline and indulge in an evening of staying in. I'm not even going to go out to get more bananas, even though we're two days out and I'm barely making it without them.

Moving In.

2011-11-09T07:42:00.000-05:00

This year we moved into a neighborhood that has a walking path, a "covenant," and a pretentious and entirely unnecessary "e" on the end of it's name. I like to think of that "e" as being a flourish not unlike lifting one's pinky finger as one holds a cup of chamomile tea.

This year my employer bought the local synagogue and so the day after I took the picture of Eastpointe, I was scoping out potential shooting locations in the synagogue -- him for his horror-film-with-a-priest-at-the-center-of-the-story -- me for my documentary about an education innovator.

He gamely pretended to be one of the many witnesses who had seen Thelma work her magic -- and was testifying about it in a fabricated classroom setting.

It ends up that I couldn't use the classroom; Kyle did.

The synagogue still sits empty and probably a little haunted by a horror film about a priest. Eastpointe, with all its carefully manicured lawns and well-appointed seventies homes is haunted by the American Dream and a particular vision of urban togetherness that feels pretty nice on most days.

Advising Session.

2011-11-08T14:45:00.000-05:00

One of the most hilarious things that has happened in the last few years? In my estimation? Is the invention of the "Life Coach."

Oh don't get me wrong. I'm not a hater. I'd a.) like to hire a life coach, b.) sometimes refer to myself (albeit slightly tongue in cheek) as a life coach, and, c.) would really really like a life coach to help me out a bit.

I don't think I'm alone in this desire. My friend Craig says that sometimes he just wants someone to tell him what to do. (Which, if you know Craig, is a *little* bit hard to believe. But I *do* believe him.) The life coach industry (I think) is flourishing. Everybody I know has a "Spiritual Director" now, too. (And yes, I want one of those, too.)

But the funny thing to me is that life coaches and spiritual directors are just other people telling people what to do. (or, I know, "teaching them how to listen to themselves....")

And this does happen to me in my job. I "advise" students as they matriculate through the university. Officially I am just supposed to be giving them advice about which classes to take, where to look for an internship, and which office to go to in order to find the form that they have to fill out in triplicate in order to matriculate further into their debt-ridden education. In reality? We always end up talking about more substantive things.

My friend Erin who is no longer my student stopped by for a quick quarter-life-crisis advising session last week. Talking to her is always a delight. She's so creative and honest and relatable. But there came this moment where she decided to start writing down the things I was saying. And I was struck by the absurdity of it all. I was just saying things. And I'm not sure that me saying something makes it worth writing down.

But then again, alot of things get written down that probably aren't worthy of being written down. So....I guess it's okay that she's writing.

Occasionally I get to look at the notes students take in my class and when I read them, I sometimes think: I didn't say that at all! (or) Was I drunk!? (or) Were they?!

Erin's transcription of my life coaching was pretty dead-on, but it also made me laugh.

I was just imagining the anthropologists combing through the rubble of our civilization and emerging with this life-coaching-session-transcript.

Isn't it funny to try to make sense of what we were thinking when we wrote things down a year ago? Or yesterday?

It amuses me anyway.

Polite Paper Commands Gone Wild

2011-11-07T18:55:00.001-05:00

Last Spring I found this Polite Paper Command in a classroom I teach in. This building is the original building that Malone University built for its campus -- and in the 1960s, housed the entire student experience, classrooms, dining hall, meeting rooms, administrative offices: everything.

Now only a few of us are relegated to its warmth. And when I say warmth, I mean quite literally kill-you-with-heating-problems warmth. Apparently, from what I know, you get to turn the heat on one time a year. So in the fall you turn it on, and regardless of how many times Ohio decides to return to summer or winter, the heat stays on. Similarly in the Spring, you get to turn it off one time. If winter comes to visit again? Too bad for you: wear mittens to work.

I am (oddly, I know) relatively impervious to temperature change. Unlike most people I know, the temperature does not cause me distress or elation. I like cold. I like hot. I don't even mind vacillating temperatures. So I was NOT the villain about to be introduced in this story (but it wouldn't be beneath me to participate in this villainy), but I happened to be lucky enough to watch the drama unfold.

Years ago I started noticing these Polite Paper Commands popping up on walls, doors and windows in various institutional settings. The American Egalitarian Ethos has been an undercurrent streaming in this direction for as long as there has been an America. The particularities of team-based workplaces and flatter organizations is a much more recent innovation to corporate culture. But I think that it's the wide accessibility of printing tools that made this phenomena come to fruition. Once everyone in an organization can print out a sign that has a modicum of respetability? Suddenly the "official" voice becomes quite a bit more heterogeneous. Everybody has a say. Of course the politeness of these signs (please, thank you, I'm sorry) suggests that a bit of deferentiality toward the public sphere and the possibility of conflict still exists.

I'd like to write a book with a title like:

NEVER WORK AT AN OFFICE WHERE NOBODY HANGS UP SIGNS

You know that those places are strictly authoriarian, image-obsessed, and highly hierarchical.

So at my very flat, quaker, consensus-driven employer, I wasn't at all surprised to see a sign like the one you see above posted. Particularly in my heat / cool-diseased building. I didn't have my phone or camera to photograph it on day one. No big deal, I thought, I'll get it tomorrow.

I forgot my camera again.

And that's where the real regret sets in. Because someone had written in ink on the bottom corner of the sign. The scribbles were protests about a broken system and arriving in a room so hot that skin had melted. And I had no camera to capture it.

When I remembered my phone/camera the next day? It was too late to capture that message, but not too late to capture a more shocking development. The polite paper sign hanger? Had ripped off the evidence of dissent and disposed of it.

The layers of drama, irony and complexity are so overwhelming that this may indeed be my favorite of the polite paper commands thus far.

A Letter

2011-11-06T22:34:00.000-05:00

Go Pups!

2011-11-06T21:11:00.001-05:00

Our lives this year have been full of high school football. Lynn is writing her dissertation about how football literacies do and do not translate well into the more traditional literacies required at school. Her Ph.D. focuses on urban adolescent literacy and she has published a flurry of articles on various non-school literacies and how they intersect with school literacies.

This means that I have been to more high school football games this fall than I have attended for the rest of my life (and that would include the high school football games I bought tickets for, and pretended to go to, but instead snuck to the movie theatre since we Baptist Fundamentalists didn't believe in the movies. Well, I guess some of us did).

Canton is a football town and I have always known this and appreciated it as an anthropological quirk. I've watched Go Tigers! (the worthwhile documentary about another Stark County high school football team and their quest to defeat Canton's own McKinley bulldogs), I even toyed with writing an academic paper on a huge "political" scandal that erupted a number of years ago when two twirlers (yes, baton twirlers) became ground zero for the a town councilman and a school administrator to square off, accuse each other of racism and drag their daughters across the headlines of the local papers for a week based on how one of the twirlers had not been selected as "head" twirler over the other.

Also in the mix? Our new neighborhood includes the coach of this year's breakout favorite team, Glen Oak High School. This will be the highschool my kids attend and the coach's son is in Addison's grade at the school around the corner.

When McKinley, many-time winner of State Championships squared off against Glen Oak, our kids were suddenly dividing their loyalties and trying to decide who they would root for: the team that Lynn is studying and tells intriguing stories about every night at dinner? Or the team that all their schoolmates are rooting for in the first year that they've attended a traditional public school with an affiliated local high school program?

When the family walked into the local grocery store during that Glen Oak / McKinley rivalry week, I had to snap this picture. The warring cookies were set up to greet the customers. Which giant cookie would they buy for the big tailgate?

The kids decided to root for McKinley, but Glen Oak won. This weekend, in the first round of playoffs -- the outcomes were reversed: McKinley advanced. Glen Oak fell.

I'm no more of a fan than I was at the beginning, and I'll be glad when it's all over, but it is a FASCINATING world.

The Path Outside Our House

2011-11-05T10:58:00.000-04:00

It's the first Saturday in November, and the morning light insists that the colors of the turning leaves be refracted everywhere. I like how the fingered shadows of branches grasp at the earth in all directions, suggesting that the most organic and beautiful patterns can transcend our carefully manicured landscaping. Mirroring transcendence, while insisting on temporality.

Excuse my blathering, please. I'm a little drunk on beauty. (...and it's not even 11 am!)

Vegas, Baby.

2011-11-03T11:41:00.000-04:00

I went to Vegas this past Spring for an academic conference. I know I'm not supposed to tell what happened in Vegas, but I really found my stay to be delightful in non-traditional ways, and because I'm doing this series of Cell Phone Photo Dump / Memories To Live By blogposts....

why not talk about Vegas?

I should preface my story by admitting that I hate gambling. I'm not opposed to it any more than I'm opposed to television, I just find it to be dull. I love risk and games, so it doesn't make sense but it just doesn't do anything for me. Preface Number Two: I hate disnefication. I don't hate people who love Disney and there's many Disney products that I respect, appreciate and even like. But the process whereby everything gets turned into an amusement park -- amplification to the Nth degree? Not my thing. Excess also bores me.

So I was clearly not made for Vegas and so I brought an inordinate amount of work with me to this conference so that my downtime would be productive. I stayed in the low-end Stratosphere (pictured above) and was disappointed when I arrived to find that the windows pictured on the website were not at all the reality in the rooms. It looked like a cellblock with a minor hole that you could peer through on your tiptoes. Since I had brought work with me, I had hoped to at least overlook mountainous vistas while working...

So far disappointment. Right?

Then I started running.

I ran North of the stratosphere. Through the ghetto / arts district and up to the old strip. The weather was amazing. The evening light was long and beautiful. The graffiti was elaborate, unique and specific. And my lungs went on forever. Wonderful runs.

I started eating and walking and running only in the ghetto/arts district and pretending that the big excessive strip didn't even exist.

I found this great Mexican dive from a converted KFC and got cheap delicious burritos every day. I found a great thai barbecue wedged into an unexpected corner right before the ghetto gave way to wedding chapel row. I did it all alone (and quiet, peace and alone time are scarce commodities in middle age).

I think the Vegas experience I had might not fly with their tourist bureau. But it was perfect for me.

Wednesday Window

2011-11-02T15:21:00.001-04:00

Rushing from class to class, from advising appointment to advising appointment, and trying to pull together all the technical dimensions of my film-art-installation pieces for the INTO THE LIGHT show opening this weekend. The light and color outside my window is predictably beautiful, taunting me with inaccessibility.

(cross post from Wednesday Window)

Autumnal Bounty

2011-11-01T18:53:00.000-04:00

My Grandmother Linda had a romantic imagination and a florid vocabulary to match. The title of this post (and some of it's content) is not just an homage to her, but a nod to the fact that the veil between the living and the dead is quite thin these days -- and I'm probably channeling her spirit half the time anyway. Florid vocabulary and all.

The point I'd like to make about this photograph (last night's dinner), is that I *love* cooking during this season. This is a crockpot meal that came mostly from all of the remaining contents of the frig before I went grocery shopping. And it was great. Carrots, Butternut squash, pork loin, green onions, onions, cumin, cinnamon and broth.

And more than anything? Slow cooking in the crockpot.

I once subscribed to a blog called "One Pot Meal" hoping to get all sorts of amazing autumnal one pot cooking ideas, and it turned out to be a witty expressive outlet for a fiction writer that I followed, along with his blogging friends for a few years, but I never gave up the dream.

In a perfect world, I and my Grandmother would be making crockpot meals every night in the delightful year round chill of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and than blogging exaggerative posts about our successes deep into the night.

Autumn Arrives and Certain Signs Go Away.

2011-11-01T08:43:00.004-04:00

not anymore it's not.

Happy Halloween

2011-10-31T08:41:00.002-04:00

Trick or Treat

2011-10-30T15:40:00.001-04:00

Michael Jackson and her ninja brother are out prowling the neighborhood with a scary clown, a fifties poodle skirt girl, a cowboy, a power ranger and an NBA player.

So for the door count here looks like:

1 pirate,

3 princesses,

2 matching ballerina bumblebees

1 little pink unicorn who, after I said, "go ahead and pick out any two." Smiled at me and picked THREE. No wonder her kind are extinct.

Two hobos, one with rotting flesh, came by while I was typing that. Their manners were delightful. "thank you, much." said the rotting flesh hobo.

Peter Pan, A headless Gorilla, A cupcake, Elmo and a slow moving ninja. We still have an hour and a half to go.

Wednesday Window

2011-10-29T10:41:00.002-04:00

The reason I make such a bad archivist, is because I'm erratically drawn to so many varied collections, hobbies and exhibits. All my archival projects, therefore, become inconsistent and idiosyncratic. But if our archives aren't judged upon social science criteria, but upon their ability to represent us well -- then -- I think inconsistent and idiosyncratic may well be impressive badges of success.

I missed the entire summer and most of the fall in my Wednesday Window series, but this is not (by a long shot) my longest "silence" on this blog.

Still. I love the project. The older I get, the more worthwhile it becomes to look for subtle changes, to notice the gradients, the increments, the mundane and the quotidian. I want to catalogue and analyze all ways the dull and the sublime accidentally overlap and mingle.

Things I am Grateful For:

2011-10-28T23:02:00.004-04:00

1. I just got to spend a night with Over The Rhine. I really love them.

2. My sister. And this recipe that she shared. Moroccan Chicken Tangine. In the Crockpot. Mmmm. You can't imagine.

(She's great quite apart from from her recipes too. More on that later.)

3. My partner. I have heard so many unsolicited compliments about Lynn this week. It's strange how suddenly a lot of other people recognize what you have known for awhile. This woman is unusually able to live well in the face of an F'd up world.

4. Jellybeans. The classic ones, not gourmet or specialty versions -- I hate those. The downside? I'll probably eat the entire back in one sitting.

5. Canadians. I know there are exceptions, but generally it seems like they have a good vibe. If given the choice, I know I'd rather be stuck in a cabin with a Canadian than any other nationality. Wouldn't you?

Before / After

2011-10-27T09:02:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago Addison once again shaved off his iconic 'fro. I could tell he felt a little panicked about it on the way to the barbershop. The fierceness of his hand holding mine indicated his ambivalence.

As we left camp this summer 15 - 20 campers, counselors, cooks & teenage girls called out to him as he left: (alternately) Bye, Addison! (and) Bye, Corbin!

(his fro and his easy going, friendly jock vibe linking him quickly to pop culture icon, High School Musical star Corbin Blue)

Within one week at his new school I heard people shouting from the bus windows at dismissal: Bye Corbin!

It's hard to part with such iconicity. And I wondered if he worried that more than iconicity would be lost? Hair and its association with magical powers has a long mythical connection....I wouldn't blame him.

Turned out, though, we found an old school Barbershop downtown. I was the lone white dude there, and Addison enjoyed the banter, the storytelling, the music and the talented cutting we watched and experienced.

And he loved the new cut.

After The Rain

2011-10-27T07:37:00.002-04:00

I love this season.

The Power of a Flat Tire

2011-10-26T07:24:00.000-04:00

The power of a flat tire is to remind you of how all the rhythm, success, flow & achievement that you be experiencing at any given moment? Is premised upon a complex, precipitous infrastructure. Once this infrastructure fails you, not only do you have to attend to rebuilding the structure, but everything you had planned for that time frame also falls apart. Probably? Weakening another joist in a different infrastructure which may or may not fall apart tomorrow.

It's probably very healthy to have these moments of awareness delivered into your everyday life. Reminders that all the order you've surrounded yourself with? May give way to the natural chaos at any moment. It's probably very healthy, but it makes for a complicated day.

The Answer to How Are You?

2011-10-24T11:34:00.000-04:00

It's Monday. I live in BFE Ohio. It's rainy. And I'm inexplicably super tired.

So because it was "Fall Break" this past weekend? Everyone I see asks questions like:

How was your weekend? (or)
How was your break? (or)
How's it going?

And I have a big problem with wanting to be honest in these innocent unimportant interactions. I don't want to say Fine! or Great! when I feel like its Monday; I live in nowheresville; I'm middle aged; and it's Rainy.

The truth is the weekend was full of beautiful moments. An anthropologically interesting outing to the local high school football game and an unexpected entanglement with a local relgious teenage tailgate. (I brought beer. I had the "wrong" idea about what kind of event I was coming to.) A hilarious bowling outing with the kids. A nice night out at a new bar with an old friend. A revitalizing long run through woods, fields, industrial ruin and an interesting downwardly mobile neighborhood. Ate some good food. Laughed with my kids. Bought Halloween costumes.

But I don't FEEL like saying Fine! or Great! or Nice! when it's raining and I'm tired and I really need another cuppa (though I'm denying myself the pleasure.

It's quite a dilemma.

2011-10-24T08:38:00.002-04:00

I have no idea where I found this cheery-please-and-thank-you Polite Paper Command....

but I always like imagining that these commands could be taken out of context and read as being universally applicable (not unlike how many people like to mis-read various sacred texts). Imagine this one as a book title; it could be a part of a series of neatly drawn comics that demonstrated the potentially violent ends your children would meet if you let them be too cavalier around mundane pieces of furniture.

Other titles in this series: Please Do Not Allow Children to Shake Two Liter Pop Bottles (thanks!) or Please Do Not Allow Children to Ride Bikes Without Their Hands (thanks!)

2011-10-23T10:06:00.000-04:00

From the cell phone archive-dump:

The kids and I dropped the car at the shop and decided to let our impulses guide us for the afternoon until the car was ready. We ended up hanging out on Johnny's porch with Amara a little bit, chilling at the library, on a playground, and finding this accidental beauty playing out on the windows of what used to be the hoover vacuum-cleaner plant.

2011-10-22T16:27:00.000-04:00

This is one of my favorite paintings that Marti did for the Blind/Sighted Show. It many ways it captured something really deep and true about Aunt Bea...where my film only sought to follow the broader picture of her (very eventful!) life.

And we'll be doing a talkback this week on the show -- on Thursday night, but just today I read our first (and maybe only!) review of the show. Tom Wachunas runs an impressive blog that reviews a significant majority of the shows (art, theatre, music) that open in Canton and Stark County. He didn't know that I've checked his blog occasionally to see if he reviewed, but I was more than pleased when I finally got to read it today.

Thanks for your good work, Tom! (and thanks for your kind review of the show.)

You can read his review by clicking here or below.

2011-10-21T07:18:00.000-04:00

I just happened to walk by the couch the other night and I saw two curly heads sitting together chatting. When your kids are friends (especially when they're pre-adolescents) there is this enormous moment of relief and hope that emerges. So I pulled my cell phone out to archive the moment and the feeling. It's funny how you have these large emotional responses in life to things that you could have never predicted.

2011-10-20T18:27:00.000-04:00

I love taking pictures of food. I think it's a mild form of synesthesia (a disorder I really really wish I had).

I am sorry to disappoint my good good friends who are vegeterians, and did not know what a carnivore I am. I am very sympathetic and supportive of your position. And work hard to only buy meat that doesn't include the industrial mode of production. But I love meat.

Honestly? I usually only take pictures of food that looks great cooked, but I like raw meat so much that these photos seemed perfect to me.

If you look at my last two posts together, you may start to get worried, but I promise: I'm not a serial killing cannibal.

2011-10-20T12:35:00.000-04:00

I remember being young and reading an article about the serial killer Ted Bundy in Readers Digest. I found him to be quite thrilling. He re-invented the way he looked regularly to stay under the radar as he committed crime. There was this great matrix of all his various unrecognizable incarnations that I thought was cool cool cool.

Crime is bad. Killing is bad. Readers Digest is bad.

But being a chameleon? Let's just say that that part of the article really took for me.

2011-10-20T12:29:00.001-04:00

Finally my film about Thelma Slater -- FROM SIPPO HOLLOW: MANY MANY ANGELS ON MY SHOULDER -- played to a general audience at the Canton Palace Theater this past weekend. It was two crazy weekends in a row since the OTHER nine short documentary films I've been working on for the last year opened the week BEFORE at Anderson Creative Gallery downtown. Both events were really rewarding in unique but meaningful ways.

2011-10-19T05:50:00.000-04:00

A random sunrise that greeted me when I arrived at school one morning. (Many sunrises ago. I'm still cleaning off my cell phone.)

Sunrises seem so symbolic and hopeful to me at this stage in my life. I think I actually like sunrises more than sunsets now. (!?)

I'm surprised to even find that out from my fingers as they typed it. When I was a teenager, I yearned for sunsets, I worked tirelessly to recruit a band of my peers to get to the pier or the sand dunes every night so that we could to watch the beautiful sunsets over Lake Michigan.

Was it because I lived near Lake Michigan? Or was it about the pace of life? (being a night person when young, a morning person when older) Or is it more about treasuring what is eluding your grasp?

(endings versus beginnings....)

2011-10-18T14:34:00.001-04:00

I love, about this Polite Paper Command, that it employs the direct address motif of a letter.

"Dear Audience,"

I only wish that would have opened with one of those self-concious perambulatory sentences like:

"I'm writing you on a rainy afternoon while looking out the window of my tiny office."

Unfortunately, it abandoned the epistolary voice almost immediately. But not too soon to make me happy.

2011-10-18T05:44:00.001-04:00

The Letter

In my dream last night you made this paper airplane that was unbelievably sleek and origami-like. It could fly for unthinkable distances, but then always when it reached the edge of the forest it would turn all the way around and then fly back, all the way back to where we were standing. It wasn't creepy or mechanical it was just in the design. Like a boomerang, but not as eerie. It was, of course, making the kids pretty excited. There were kids and parents, lots of students around. We were at the frisbee golf course but someone was holding class there. It could have been me; I'm rarely a very on-the-ball teacher in my dreams.

Then I glanced into your airplane and saw that you had written a long long handwritten letter to me. That the airplanes were just a kind of ruse for you to get the message to me in a way that no one else would notice. I was delighted of course. Nobody writes letters any more. And I still love them. (Why?! I asked myself, looking down at that folded beautiful missive in the dream, Why don't *I* send letters any more?!) And this letter was clearly pages and pages of neatly handwritten, thoughful verbal perambulation. And all folded into this one super-flying airplane. Secret messages + Long letters? Right up my alley.

But the trick was that I had to read the letter on the sly. Because if it was the kind of letter that I could just read publicly? You wouldn't have gone to all the trouble. And trust me, part of me was looking for that opportunity, but you may not have noticed, because the other part of me? Actor that I am was working hard to make sure that no one else realized that I was trying to read a letter. I was just flying paper airplanes! Just like everybody else! No big deal! How cool are these airplanes!?

The problem is? I woke up before I ever got to unfold it. So....if you think of sending it again....I'll be sure to read it much more quickly. I promise.

2011-10-18T05:20:00.000-04:00

We live in the kind of world where, once a year, everything starts to fall apart and die. And during the process, the dying spreads out across the ground and you walk across it like it's no big deal, and if it is a big deal? It's just because it's so beautiful. In a mundane spectacular way.

2011-10-17T06:37:00.000-04:00

I was waiting outside of Addison's classroom for my first parent/teacher conference at his new school. I felt nervous; was being a parent at a middle school different than being a parent at an elementary school? Were all the soft nurturing tones gone and now I would get a stiff talking to: "Listen here, bud. It's clear you've been something of a libertine in your parenting style. If you don't tighten up, you'll be serving on the PTA board at the juve..."

And is it just me or is all the rigid parsimony, the careful endless squareness a little too much? Even with the beautiful light...

2011-10-16T19:18:00.001-04:00

I like to promise new blog series, but I always have a hard time following through. I've just passed through a really really hectic time period so maybe? Maybe I'll have time to blog? Maybe I'll make time for blogging? So this blog series could be called: FINALLY I HAVE TIME TO BLOG. Or, another reason I'm motivated to blog? Is because midterm grades are due, and I have TONS of grading to do. So: obviously? i should blog. This blog series already has a name it's called THE PROCASTINATION BLOG SERIES. BUT (I know, right? a tri-partite motivation for blogging?) my phone is also dying. Which I couldn't be happier about because my Worser Self is PLANNING on buying an i phone as soon as it dies....but in the meantime, I'm suddenly motivated to move all my photos from my phone to my computer and the web. Because....well, because that's what we do with photos anymore. Publish them? (For good or for ill...) So once I'm moving them all from phone to computer I'm realizing how revelatory they are of three things: (another tripartite schema. I know. It's starting to bore me too.) 1. my hoarders impulse. But I"m not a normal horder who stores stuff. I hoard experience and memory. 2. my archival impulse. I love love love the idea of archives and their counterpart museological display. In another blog series called: ALTERNATIVES IF THIS CAREER DOESN'T WORK OUT? I would definitely place archivist and museologist at the top of my list. 3. my nostalgic impulse. I come by this honestly. I had a wonderful crazy grandmother whose every breath was marked mostly by the sepia tinge that acquired the moment after her next breath occured. She was also a bit of an archivist and museologist and I'm sure I have blogged elsewhere about her DEARLY BELOVED letters were the unquestionable forerunner to my blogging spirit. But here's the plan: This series is also titled: A SCARY LOOK UNDER THE HOOD, because it occurs to me that if I post a picture a day from my cell phone. Some explained, some not? I'll at least have a steady stream of content. And you can rest assured that each of the photos belong without question to one of the aforementioned categories -- if not all three. And who knows? Since it is a "scary look under the hood" (the hood, here referencing the metaphorical noggin of this'ere author) P'r'aps we'll come up with a couple other SERIES TITLES and (solipsistically) revelatory schemas. I guess that's the dramatic question with which I will leave you. Tonight's header picture? The photo that's been on my phone for a long long time: My Sweet Children (and they're sweet because that's how they looked three years ago.). I talked them out of a typical pre-adolescent tiff tonight in order to get them to take a THREE YEAR LATER shot. Which I may or may not post here soon. Observant readers win a prize if they correctly identify promised shot. I've missed you, blog! And you too, readers! And you too, solipsistic blogging voice!

2011-08-27T16:18:00.001-04:00

I'm a lucky guy.

This week Jaelyn and Addison started middle school. Together. And at a new school (Glenwood) in a district where we've been trying to move for over seven years.

This is a picture I snapped as the kids were getting off the bus and Lynn was reaching out to them to give them these big embraces that she gives all the time. If you're lucky enough to be loved by her, you know how warm and genuine and open her love is. And to me, when I have the distance that a photograph provides, I feel a little overwhelmed in a quiet happy way by it.

Toward the Lake

2011-08-27T16:10:00.001-04:00

Toward the Lake, originally uploaded by redbaerd.

What I love about days like this morning, is that the fog makes physicalizes space in the way that time really works.

We never know what's going to happen in the next minute or seconds, but because we can see clearly around us, the world *looks* more settled and predictable than it actually is.

When fog descends over everything, every next step is an adventure. Which isn't a super manageable nor efficient way to live, but it feels like it maybe it forces us to acknowledge a little bit more the way things really are. Murky, hazy, indistinct.

The world was foggy and chilly when I woke up.

2011-08-20T13:38:00.002-04:00

Now it's blistering hot. I took a bunch of photos in the fog though. This one is from the monastery just down the street.

My Life is a Success.

2011-08-19T23:51:00.002-04:00

I tried three different spice rubs on the grilled pork loin tonight. Addison went for the spicy one.

He said: "Dad, I can taste all the spices, and they're good, but I want something that's more spicy, like spicy-hot."

A 10 year old son who is articulate about his palette?! Don't you agree that I've pretty much done my job?

The Procastination Blog Series.

2011-08-19T18:26:00.004-04:00

I'm about to enter an EXTREMELY busy month and a half. I'm finishing a cycle of documentary short subject films -- short portraits really of strangers. I'm beginning the academic year. And my family has typicallly overwhelming commitments constraining our collective lives.

I find that these moments are the ones that I"m MOST drawn to blogging. Partly about procrastination, but more about a little agency and a little non-binding creative connection with people far away that I love.

To say nothing of quelling my never-ending appetite for curatorial and archival work....

Here's an art piece I made today. I call it:

JUST BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP.

(the title is a long story, but these are short blog entries. just go with it.)

Sepia Tinged Pages

2011-03-27T09:54:00.003-04:00

I wonder if Truman Capote would have had a two sentence a day blog? Or Hemmingway? Or Fitzgerald? Did they retain a purity of vision by remaining aloof from bureaucratic institutional life? a mortgage? the suburbs? settled relationships?

The guy across from me at Angel Falls this morning is reading a biography about Capote and when I first saw it I was whelmed by all the sentiment I used to have idealizing / idolizing the modern writers.

The romance hasn't diminished by the distance between where and who I am at 41 seems vastly far from anyplace they'd have been. I mean, they probably would have been here at Angel Falls Coffee had they been in Akron for any good reason, but these moments of pause are strange:

*recollection* is a strange word.

Looking at old collections.

Collections of hopes, ideals, dreams and futures.

Of course they don't look anything like any daily grind, but do they look like the best moments of the now?

Maybe they do. I'll get back to you on that.

A Lot To Be Grateful For (sorry about the dangling preposition)

2011-03-24T21:01:00.004-04:00

I told a friend today that I feel so lucky about my life in so many ways. I work with these great colleagues and we have, together, built the kind of trust and interdependence that feels fortunate and powerful.

Same old same old.

2011-03-23T20:55:00.000-04:00

What kind of Day Was It? The kind of day where one of your children's teacher's implies that you are inaccessible and your child is sub-par over a telephone message while you are in a meeting trying to convince a failing advisee that their blithe plan to "just read more!" (said, cheerily, with a shrug) will not reverse their failing midterm grade. It was the kind of day where great old friends arrive to eat a few jellybeans, tell the story of two years of life, and then disapparate as if they were just a dream, just in time for one of your children to recognize that they had left the book that they had to, absolutely had to return to their classroom at your office. The kind of day when said child then shrugs over the phone and suggests the babysitters car? when you call from the office to say that no, said book is not there. Nor is it in the babysitters car, which is parked outside the library while she coaches you through the parking lot to find it and then to comb through her back seat looking for it. The kind of day when AFTER you've chopped up the green onions for chaing mai noodles and opened the canned coconut milk, you discover you already used the box of chicken broth on Upper East Side Pasta. And so you bag up all the thai food and throw some hamburgers on the grill. The kind of day when you're delighted to collapse into bed and after realizing that one scene is about all you can watch of this movie, opt instead to let CIRCLE SLIDE by the choir lull you to sleep. That kind of day.

There Are Only Two Steps To Becoming An Organized Person.

2011-03-21T21:04:00.000-04:00

1. Make sure that everything has a place.

2. Make time to put everything in its place.

Feeling Less Narrative Today...

2011-03-21T21:03:00.000-04:00

altar from redbaerd on Vimeo.

A Brief History of Our Day

2011-03-20T05:27:00.000-04:00

We read aloud Kenneth Wilbur's BRIEF HISTORY OF EVERYTHING as we drove the four hours to Brighton to meet my parents who were bringing our children back to us. They chattered delightfully most of the way home, though, admittedly, there was one skirmish about adjusting the rules of the alphabet game: if we looked for objects that INCLUDED (but not displayed) the letter of the alphabet, did the object have to INCLUDE the letter or START with the letter? -- ahh the great questions of being.

Peaceful Day

2011-03-19T05:42:00.000-04:00

With J & A in Michigan, the day unfolded with peace and patience, offering us time for walks, errands, dinners, talks, cleaning and sleep. After our date, friends came over and we feasted on Handel's Ice Cream and snarky appreciation of People of Walmart - both of which are fun at the time, but induce guilt later.

Would You Really want to Go In There?

2011-03-18T08:07:00.005-04:00

This is NOT a polite paper sign. Both because there are no pleases or thank yous, and also, frankly, it looks like the sign is partly responsible for soiling itself -- which I find to be impolite -- in any case it's successful: I don't have any desire to go in.

Wearer of the Orange....

2011-03-17T08:09:00.002-04:00

For St. Patty's Day I always wear orange in honor of my delightfully Irish-through-and-through-Great Grandfather, from whom I take my middle name. While I don't accept or embrace his vigorous anti-catholic sentiments nor his Queen and Crown embracing loyalties; his stories, his lumberjack prowess, his win-everyone-in-the-room-as-soon-as-he-entered personality loom across my life like a mythic Paul-Bunyanesque shadow cast from the shores and woods and tiny tourist towns of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he lived after emigrating (twice) from the Isle of Green (and orange!)....Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Average Day: No Perceptible Crises on the Radar (...maybe?)

2011-03-16T06:06:00.001-04:00

My mom and dad came down and took Jaelyn out to a birthday lunch at our favorite El Rincon; later I got to go to Mulligans for a very delightful steak dinner (sorry vegan friends!).

Otherwise the day was enormously full of radically varied ongoing work ranging across - calling funeral homes to find a casket for a student film, advising students about the pros and cons of taking History and Politics of East Asia next semester, wading through intense discussions about future vision and curricular constraints with my capable and committed faculty peers, sorting endless papers through endless folders and piles, building infrastructure for receiving assignments online and responding to them effectively, moving into the next perceptions documentary, while still deciding on tweaks to the last one -- it seems obvious why people have midlife crises -- there are perpetually so many open-ended, on-going projects, demands and issues that any minor crisis in two of them may well overload the system and create a meltdown.

Strangers Together.

2011-03-15T05:52:00.002-04:00

The amiable stranger who had nodded "hi" when he entered this row of lockers couldn't stop glancing at the heap of used sweaty towels in the far corner, so once his running gear was in place, he glanced apologetically at me and the jolly naked seventy year old man down the bench and muttered, "I don't know why I care so much, it's not like it's messing up my house," and gingerly picked up the towels and disposed of them in the towel bin.

I was inspired by his civic virtue, caring for the mess of a departed stranger, investing in a common space not his own, and I was intrigued by his compulsive (and yet ambivalent) need to narrate his actions: his sense of cleanliness a double-edged sword rendering his action both transgressive (touching a stranger's abandoned sweaty towels) and virtuous (investing in our health and peace of mind).

The End of Break.

2011-03-14T21:26:00.006-04:00

We have a candidate on campus today and tomorrow with advising later this week; the idea that there ever was such a thing as a "spring break" already feels like an elaborate fiction that never actually happened, but was a pill-based-illusion fed to us by the industrialists who want us to proceed as if we are well-rested.

In better news, the Spinach Artichoke Dip at Kosmo's in Massillon is a.) amazing, b.) unfortunately way better than the rest of the fare that I ate, making it less likely that I'll return, except for the fact that it was: (may I repeat a.) ?) amazing -- apparently brie is the secret ingredient that all SpinDips (as our waiter insisted on calling it) *really* should feature.

2011-03-13T06:13:00.001-04:00

Spent too much of the day having meltdowns because a conference - submission deadline threw my (ongoing / persistent / boringly repetitive) ambivalent career focus into bold highlighted CAPS - and possibly a little too much coffee didn't help. About halfway through the day, a good talk with my (clear-eyed, zen-when-it-comes-to-insight-about-me) partner, Lynn, clarified my focus, relieved my angst and freed me to hammer away at the projects most poignantly pressing; it is a great privilege to share a life with someone so wise.

Unexpected Goodness

2011-03-12T06:18:00.000-05:00

I made this postcard today, though it wasn't on my to do list, it reflects a larger success by my friend Kim Ann -- made possible through our reelate program (her film and another reelate film got into CIFF - a festival I both respect and enjoy...). The day was full of unexpected "opportunities" -- playing catch with Addison, getting a little bit of garage organization done, ridiculously small but satisfying tasks.

inbetween

The Ides of March

Wednesday Window

After the Bridge

Wednesday Window

All in the Span of a Week.

Summertime Memories

The Impermanence of Particular Happinesses.

Morning Coffee

Here's To Interesting Lives

Once Upon A Time

Wednesday Window Ledge

New Years Resolve

A Good Morning.

Winter Vacation Wedneday Window (posted on Thursday)

Developing Policy

End of the Year

Critics Corner

Walking on Stones in Dress Shoes

Annual Holiday Bowling Outing

It's My Siblings!

Wednesday Window

Things That Mix Well

Wednesday Window

We are always saying goodbye because...

From the Archives

Leftover Mashed Potatoes For Lunch.

The End of the Shoulds.

Happy Birthday, Cliff.

Tis the Season?

Feeling Zen

Summertime

Wednesday Window

Thanksgiving

Wednesday Window

Booths & Bodies

For A Prize....

"Home" For The Holidays

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Andy!

Not A Metaphor

Wednesday Window

Happy Birthday, Gramma Marge

A Little Bit Louder Now

The Eye of the Beholder

Cell Phone Dump Series # 45

Into The Light

11.11.11

What I Had For Lunch

Wednesday Window

Moving In.

Advising Session.

Polite Paper Commands Gone Wild

A Letter

Go Pups!

The Path Outside Our House

Vegas, Baby.

Wednesday Window

Autumnal Bounty

Autumn Arrives and Certain Signs Go Away.

Happy Halloween

Trick or Treat

Wednesday Window

Things I am Grateful For:

Before / After

After The Rain

The Power of a Flat Tire

The Answer to How Are You?

Toward the Lake

The world was foggy and chilly when I woke up.

My Life is a Success.

The Procastination Blog Series.

Sepia Tinged Pages

A Lot To Be Grateful For (sorry about the dangling preposition)

Same old same old.

There Are Only Two Steps To Becoming An Organized Person.

Feeling Less Narrative Today...

A Brief History of Our Day

Peaceful Day

Would You Really *want* to Go In There?

Wearer of the Orange....

Would You Really want to Go In There?