My Precious

One smart phone to rule them all,

One smart phone to find them,

One smart phone to bring them all and in the darkness bind them

I left my house this morning to head in to my office to hold office hours as I do (or am supposed to do every Monday and Wednesday). At the first four-way stop—one block from my house—my mind wandered to my precious…and I was gripped with anxiety as I realized I didn’t know where it was! Had I left it at home? How could I do that? How could I make it through office hours and Indian Cultures of North America without it? I considered turning around and heading home to get it. I was conflicted. Part of me really wanted it and couldn’t face even a few hours without it. Yet another part recognized that I was being ridiculous and that of course I could live without it. Before this internal conflict caused me to run the next four-way I realized (with great relief) that I had put my phone in my briefcase. My precious had been with me the entire time and my anxiety was all for naught.

Seriously, I have a problem. My daughter calls me “Phone Boy,” as in “stop looking at your email on the trampoline, Phone Boy,” or “put down your phone and skate before you knock someone down, Phone Boy,” or “don’t drop your precious in the toilet, Phone Boy.” My son wants me to sit on the couch with him and watch Charlie Brown right now. Do you know how he’s trying to get me there? He stole my phone and is sitting on it. My phone has traveled every mile I've ever ridden on my bike. and I won't ride without it. I use my phone as an alarm clock and set it each night before bed and awake to it each morning. It rests on the night stand or sometimes I put it under my pillow so my alarm doesn’t wake anyone else. My daughter has taken my old IPhone and now keeps it by her bed and sometimes sticks it under her pillow. I’ve transmitted my sickness to my kids. (In a hoarse, whispered voice) The horror, the horror…

It is only a matter of time until some dark person with a dark purpose turns my precious upon my sick, broken mind. One day I’ll find myself an enslaved minion. I'll find myself wasting ridiculous amounts of money to keep it near me, ignoring the real world to bathe in its glorious glow, eschewing human contact to keep it's precious attention...gads I'm already there...in the land of Apple where the Shadows lie.

Fat Pants

Yes, I said fat pants—the keystone to a well-worn dilemma. The details might be different, but the story is the same. It is getting cooler here in SC and it has now become necessary for me to wear pants. I mean it’s just not becoming for me to show up to teach class looking like Bill Belichick at an early fall practice (you know, shorts and ratty hoodie). I’ve got exactly one pair of jeans and one pair of khakis in my fashion arsenal…and neither fit me particularly well. Sure, they technically fit me. I don’t look like a sausage stuffed into them or anything. But…and there is a big but here…they are snug around my expanding waistline. Snug enough that they are uncomfortable to wear. Whenever I wear them, I am constantly reminded that I have put on about 20 lbs since I bought them last winter.

That brings me to the dilemma. Do I go ahead and buy some new pants that are bigger around the waist and give in to my expansion? I’ll call this the fat pants route. Or, do I keep wearing the old pants and let the low-level torment of discomfort motivate me to stop the expansion? I’ll call this the resistance route. The fat pants route will give me temporary comfort (and improve my fashion arsenal) and is the rational route to follow. However, it pisses me off to go that route—it feels like I am giving in. I feel like I should go the resistance route and torment myself with discomfort so that I’ll get off my butt and do something. This is obviously the stupid, cut-off-my-nose-to-spite-my-face route…and it is the route I am choosing to take.

I rode my trainer for about 50 minutes tonight—in my dark, cold attic—and will alternate riding with some basic push-ups and abs work. And I’ve revived my old mantra…hunger is the path to enlightenment. And I’m getting enlightened right now because I am hungry, damn it.

Thanksgiving

The first Thanksgiving lives in our popular memory as the get together that started our ancestors on the path to creating the greatest country in the history of the earth. It represents the best that we want to think of ourselves and our history—the pilgrims and the Indians getting together to celebrate the gifts of God. Like our country, the true story of the first Thanksgiving is a lot more complicated, filled with a lot more complexity, and not as admirable as we want to remember or admit. The Pilgrims actually were a bunch of religious extremists who had worn out their welcome everywhere else and this was their last chance to find a place to live. They were in rough shape when they got here and almost half of them died during their first winter. The reason they weren’t immediately wiped out by the Indian people who lived in coastal Massachusetts is because they needed some friends—any friends.

The Indians, the Wampanoag, sought the friendship of the Pilgrims out of necessity—a necessity created by previous, sporadic visits by European fishermen. Those fishermen brought European diseases to the Wampanoag, diseases to which they had no immunity. In the decades before the coming of the Pilgrims, the Wampanoag villages had been so decimated that they had lost their sovereignty to the nearby Narragansett. Forced to pay steep tribute, the Wampanoag chief Massasoit feared his people would be annihilated at any time. The Pilgrims looked so pathetic and they came with women and children, so Massasoit saw them as no threat. He eventually came to see them as an opportunity, and by the Spring an alliance between the two people was formed.

In the short term that gamble paid off for the Wampanoag and Massasoit as their relationship with the growing colony brought them protection from surrounding groups and favored trading status with the English. Unfortunately in the longer term the Wampanoag’s friends turned against them. As the English settlers became more numerous and their place on the new continent grew more stable their respect for their deal with the Wampanoag waned. Massasoit’s son Metacom saw his people converted to Christianity, something Massasoit managed to forestall for 40 years, and their land taken over. In an effort to turn the tide Metacom (also known as Phillip) enlisted the help of surrounding groups like the Narragansett to push back against the English. This rebellion was known as King Phillip’s War. It was bloody and protracted and didn’t end well for the Wampanoag. Most of the remaining Wampanoag were killed. Metacom’s head was chopped off, stuck on a pike and put on display, while his wife and children were sold into slavery in the Caribbean.

So as we stuff ourselves silly on Thanksgiving, let’s remember that our current glory is not necessarily built on a past filled with goodness and light. We can't change the past nor are we necessarily responsible for what happened so long ago. Still, I'm thinking that looking back to that past might not be the best way to celebrate what we are and what we can be. And I'm thinking we might even have a responsibility to do better in the future.

As I stuff myself silly on Thanksgiving I also will be thinking about something else. The fat archaeologist is back, fat as ever! I've gained a bulky 20 lbs over my weight last year around this time. And so I start all over again.

Olympic Mania

Sport was always a big deal in my house when I was growing up. We played it, we watched it, we talked about it. My poor mom had to join in or get left out…and she almost always joined in. Sure my brother and I played football, basketball, and track in school but we played it all in our front yard—baseball to badminton to volleyball to football, horseshoes, and bocce ball. I had my own goal post set up so I could practice kicking field goals for football. For a while we even set up our own pole vault pit in a dirt lot next to our house. It had burlap sacks filled with sawdust for a mat, a wooden cross bar lashed into place, and saplings for poles. It was a rough business because we really didn’t have a box to stabilize the pole as we tried to vault. It wasn’t uncommon for the pole to slide and to end up on you back on the rocky lot. It also wasn’t uncommon to overshoot the sawdust bags and hit the dirt hard. I remember how addicting it was and I also remember really getting hurt. Such was our sport mania.

As sports nuts, we watched a lot on TV. Now when I was a kid, TV was a pair of rabbit ears and the three networks…and that was it. And sometimes the interference “snow” made watching difficult. So we consumed whatever sport the networks served up. We were regular watchers of Wide World of Sports (“Spanning the globe to bring a constant variety of sports…:”, which aired on the weekends and showed everything from gymnastics to ski jumping to Indy car racing…and we watched it all and got into it all.

The Olympics were always an especially big deal because not only was it two weeks of sports; it also involved national pride. We got a good dose of American pride from my dad and it always played out during the Olympics. Remember also that I was a kid during the Cold War—you know when the great democracies were aligned against the Communists (don’t get me started on the fact that it was really about control of capital, labor, natural resources and ultimately profit). So the Olympics were a chance to compete against those stinkin’ commies without actually shooting anyone. It seemed really important then.

Even after I went to college, I remained an Olympics fanatic. I remember being totally into the 1984 Winter Olympics. Back then we didn’t have TVs in our dorm rooms; there was one TV lounge in the basement of the dorm that everyone used. I spent two weeks in that TV lounge watching all the events I could. It lead to the only D I ever got on an exam…in Biological Sciences. I still pulled a B in the class. I was a nerd—it took a long time to develop the cool I am now.

2012 may be the first Olympic year I can remember where I didn’t have cable TV to watch every televised minute possible. A few years back we gave up cable and have since consumed most of our media from the internet. I am a bit of a cycling fanatic too and I have managed to watch most of the big races and grand tours on the internet for free. NBC did not make that possible with these olympics. Sure every event is streamed live on the internet, but you can only consume that content if you already have a cable subscription. If I had a friggin’ cable subscription I wouldn’t care about watching on the internet!

I have found some sites on the internet that stream live coverage broadcast from other countries, including England. Of course that means that they are up and running when I would like to be down and sleeping. That has limited my Olympics viewing. For the most part, I have been OK with that. That is until I visited my dad last week. He has cable and we watched the Olympics during my entire visit. I returned home bitten by the Olympic bug and jonsing for that continuous coverage. Fortunately, my dad also reminded me that I should be able to get the local network channels on my fancy, non-cable-enhanced TV with some good old-fashioned rabbit ears.

Yesterday I finally went to Target and got a $16 pair of rabbit ears (I splurged and got the more expensive ones because the $10 set looked a little shaky.) And now we have one channel—NBC—covering the Olympics. It’s not continuous coverage for sure, but it’ll do.

And guess what? My kids are completely and utterly sucked into the Olympics now. They are obsessed. And I love it. There are lots of cynics out there who can rightly say that the Olympics are just an extension of Western imperialism and their results reflect the consequences of the spread of capitalism, colonialism, and the resulting under-development. In other words, rich and developed countries win most of the medals because they have the resources to support national sports programs. While that is true, I still believe in the ideal that sport can bring out the best in people and international sport played out on the Olympic stage can bring people together, bridge cultural and even political differences, and create connections that counter the divisions perpetuated by nationality, class, ethnicity, and religion. Plus I am just a total sucker for the drama of human competition, struggle, and achievement. To me there is something very good about seeing someone overcome by the joy of their achievement. I’m not so much concerned about nationalities and political battles for economic dominion anymore so I can and do enjoy any athlete’s success. I hope my kids eventually get that too.

So for one more glorious week we’ll sit glued to the TV to watch sports we won’t see again for another four years like equestrian, rowing, gymnastics, diving, swimming, and track and field. And maybe my kids will find a sport they’d like to try and find that they love. And maybe my kids will fall in love with the idea that working hard and trying can bring great rewards.

On the road to Gotham

Well, we made it back from our trip last night and I failed to keep updating as we went along. I’ll pick up the story where I left off.

We celebrated the 4^th of July by driving to the Monroeville Mall to see fireworks in the parking lot. If it sounds strange, it kind of was. It was a great idea because there is a lot of open space, plenty of parking, and lots of ways to leave after the show is over. Still it was a weird spot to watch fireworks. I am used to a big open field or a baseball stadium. Ultimately, it was probably the most appropriate way to celebrate the birth of our nation—a nation now inextricably wedded to mass consumerism. I watched fireworks come up between Don Pablo’s Mexican restaurant and K-Mart surrounded by cars in a parking lot for a big mall. The only thing lacking was fireworks with corporate logos to remind us that our great capitalistic experiment was founded on liberty and justice for all corporate persons. After our national rite of intensification, we returned to Irwin where the kids shot off their own fireworks.

Somehow that felt closer to what I think we are all about, but that is just me. When I was a kid the 4^th of July started when my dad got up early, lit off a pack of firecrackers, and blasted John Phillips Sousa The Stars and Stripes Forever. We grilled various meats, had a family target practice with our gun collection, and ended the night with our own fireworks. I can remember as a kid my dad even shooting a muzzle loader he had as part of the celebration. The 4^th of July always was really a celebration of our country’s founding ideals. Would you expect anything less from my dad who, during most of my childhood, expected a popular revolution to happen (we actually had packs hanging near our door for a while, ready for the revolution)? We are both still waiting for it.

After celebrating another year of corporate freedom, the next day we all loaded into the minivan and went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. It is a great museum with lots of cool dinosaurs, gems and minerals, and a nice Ancient Egypt display. I was a little disappointed to discover that I really wasn’t that interested in the Egyptian stuff…yawn. What really got my attention was the architecture hall where they had casts of all sorts of architectural bits from the Ancient World. I now understand why someone would get all caught up in cathedrals, gates, and statues in Europe. That was cool stuff and old. And I think I deal with old, cool stuff? The art museum was right next door and had a nice exhibit on Impressionists. They may be passé to most, but the Impressionists are by far my favorites.

I left the Carnegie comforted to know that great private museums can still thrive (in this age where people don’t want to spend money to support the arts and cultural centers) even if those great private museums were funded on the backs of exploited workers during the early days of industrial growth—thank you Mr. Carnegie.

We left our friends and Irwin the next day and traveled to central PA to visit my wife’s family. They live near towns with great names like Gallitzin and Nanty Glo. I’ve driven by those towns a hundred times and wondered how they got their names. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, now I know. Gallitzin was named after Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin. Deme was a Russian aristocrat cradled in the arms of Catherine the Great who, after traveling as part of his education, rebelled against his family (and their Russian Orthodox Church) by coming to America and becoming a Catholic priest. He founded the nearby town of Loretto and was quite a popular guy. He was called the Apostle of the Alleghenies and has been under investigation for canonization since 2005. Honestly, that story is better than I could have made up. How about that moniker? Someday I want to be known as something…or at least have a bridge named after me.

Nanty Glo has a different story. Its original name was Glendale until the postmaster (not sure how he got to do this) changed the name in 1901. Actually his wife gets credit for coming up with the name, which is from a Welsh phrase (nan ty glo) meaning ravine or brook of coal. Apparently there is a town in Wales of the same name and it is not clear whether the name refers to that Welsh town or to the creek that bisects the PA town. That creek is named Blacklick Creek because in its banks you can see seams of coal. Either way, Nanty Glo is fun to say. Someday I’ll send out post cards from Nanty Glo.

It was a hit-and-run on the family. We blew into town, ate at the finest restaurant in Ebensburg, and spent the night at my sister-in-law’s house. The kids got to play with their beloved cousin and we all got to meet Bernard the giant tabby cat. That cat had a head the size of a grapefruit, really. He took a liking to my sandals and spent a lot of time laying on them, hugging them, and mauling them with his back feet. He is also under suspicion for chewing up an IPhone charger cord. I give Bernard the benefit of the doubt.

 
The next day we drove the rest of the way across PA to Quakertown to see my brother and his family. My kids have not seen his daughters for about 6 or 7 years so both sets of kids were excited. I haven’t seen them in that long either and it was fun to see how they had changed from the little kids who called me Uncle Cranky to adults. It was another hit-and-run visit. We stayed a few hours and then spent the night at the Quakertown Hampton Inn. We only stay at Hampton Inns because some in our traveling party refuse to stay anywhere else. And of course they had a pool so after our free hot breakfast the next morning, the kids and I went to the pool. My kids cannot pass within half a mile of a pool without wanting to go swimming. It is not possible to stay at a hotel with a pool and not spend at least an hour swimming in it. Fortunately for me the hotel had free WiFi, the Tour de France is currently running, and I had installed the NBC Tour app on my daughter’s Ipad. I watched the bike race, sweated like a pig (did you know that pigs don’t actually sweat? They wallow.), and timed my kids as they competed against one another in swimming a length of the pool. After a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts (which are everywhere up there), where we ate at least two of everything on the menu, we headed on the next leg of our trip—on to Gotham.

The Great Family Adventure Part 1

There are two things I always forget about Pennsylvania. The first is that it is really green and the second is that the fireflies come out in droves in the summer. I grew up—well, since I was 10—living in Pennsylvania, but I’ve lived in South Carolina for the past 12 years. And I live in the middle of South Carolina right where the Coastal Plain meets the Piedmont. That means it’s pretty flat and vegetation is dominated by scrubby oaks and various pines. Those trees create a different kind of green. It isn’t as deep of a green, and it certainly isn’t as cool of a green. It’s somehow more brown, faded, and dry. And sure, South Carolina has fireflies, but there just aren’t as many somehow. In Pennsylvania it’s like the stars descend each evening to put on a show.

Yesterday we embarked on a grand family adventure. Our plan will take us some 1800 miles from South Carolina, across Pennsylvania west to east, to New York City, and then back to Columbia via rural Virginia. We made the first leg yesterday, starting at 7am. Well, I got up at 5 to load the family truckster, but we didn’t get on the road until 7. Compared to past efforts, we did pretty good this time around. Our first destination was Irwin, PA just east of Pittsburgh (Mark Twain’s hell with the lid off) where some friends live. The drive took us about 10 hours, but it wasn’t that bad at all. I put the back seat down so the kids could sleep and play in the back of the van—probably illegal and immoral because it endangers my kids, but travel rage caused by miserable, bored kids also is a danger to them as well. As a parent, I get to choose the dangers to which I subject my kids…it is in the Constitution somewhere.

We spent a lot of time in West Virginia and I had forgotten that there isn’t a flat stretch of ground to be found anywhere in West Virginia. We drove up and down mountains all afternoon. It is pretty but people must get sick of hiking up and stumbling down hills their entire lives. I wonder how that affects their posture. Anyway, one fun thing we found in West Virginia was that a big chunk of the state was without power (due to storms last week) and so most traffic lights were out. That made driving through areas with lots of cross roads on Highway 19 really exciting. We stopped at a rest stop only to find that we couldn’t use the bathrooms because of the lack of power. I walked my daughter to the woods and we found—from the smell and scatter of used toilet paper— that lots of people had done the same thing. We left the woods with my daughter singing, “Daddy is my human toilet.”

I found the people of West Virginia charming as well. We stopped to get gas and I got to catch the end of a local convenience store conversation that ranged from the weather to gas prices. It ended with a patron informing the clerk that we no longer have a Whitehouse, we have a blackhouse. First of all, I am not sure the President controls the weather—I thought the Russians did that back in the Cold War. Second of all, wasn’t that “joke” played out long ago? I mean, come on. Is that the best you’ve got? This the end of his term and all you’ve got is that? Haven’t you been listening to the talk radio or cable news rants? Can’t you call him a Muslim, a foreigner, a socialist? That’s what you’ve got? Anyway, I am sure not all West Virginians are so clever and erudite and probably have more interesting and less offensive things to say. At least I left the state hoping that is the case.

We entered Pennsylvania near a town I knew only from the lore told by the two guys who lived next door to me on the third floor of Sproul Hall when I was an undergraduate at Penn State—Smokey Mahokey and Bonecrusher Lepore (BC)—two sons of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. It took me back to the days when Smokey used to tell me all he wanted was a job where he could kill people and BC introduced me to the deeper meanings of Bruce Springsteen songs and the importance of labor studies. Those guys were two of the biggest characters and best friends I met in college.

Now I sit in the screened porch of a 150 year old house hidden in a small patch of woods just outside the sprawl of Irwin on the 4^th of July preparing to celebrate the birthday of our great democratic experiment. It is pouring down rain and my kids and their friends are having a proper summer vacation. They are running madly to and fro in the torrent, screaming like maniacs. Later they will have grilled burgers, go see fireworks, come home and make ‘smores and light their own fireworks, and go to sleep happy and secure.