08/10/09

Today was a good day.

Spent most of the morning listening to Joy Division and converting tests for online delivery. Made a couple phone calls with no luck. Hoping to hear back from the "out and about" servicemen in the next couple of days.

For lunch I had a hearty bowl of homemade minestrone and read some more of Ty Cobb's My Life in Baseball while sitting in the backyard. Lucy chomped sticks into oblivion, and Idgie tried to stay away from the bugs and dirt and other outdoor stuff. I've spent most of the summer reading books about late 19th Century and early 20th Century baseball, and this is one of my favorites. I can't put it down. Great read. Ty Cobb is such an interesting figure, and so much of what he and others of their time stood for is gone from baseball today. It's just a different business today.

After lunch, I returned to the test conversions, this time listening to some Dead Kennedys and Gang of Four.

Spoke with Micah this afternoon about the likelihood of combining our Just Two Guys forces for the State Fair parade. We decided we just don't have the time this summer to do it. Sad, really, because we haven't done the show in awhile, and I think it's over. I just think we've both sort of moved on from the show. It was fun while it lasted, and I look forward to getting back into public access again at some point in the future. Maybe I'll do a puppet show.

Aubrey is doing a police ride-along today for work. I'm jealous. I've always wanted to do a police ride-along. It sure in hell beats converting tests, I'm sure.

Spent a little time after work putting away laundry, picking up the house, and getting the recycling ready for tomorrow's pick-up.

Experiences

This last chunk of my life, I've been pretty down in the dumps. There are a lot of little contributing factors, and I won't bore you with the details of them all. Needless to say, I've felt a lot like Gulliver strapped down by tiny little Lilliputians and their gossamer threads. Individually, I could overcome, but when assembled en masse, I stand no chance. I've been overcome. Just no energy to write or blog or socialize or really do much of anything beyond survive the day.

Today I'm working on my second blog post in two days. That's a big step forward for me. Since I'm feeling a little emotionally and spiritually better, I thought it might be a nice time for me to reflect on a few experiences that mean a lot to me.

1) My trip to Europe in '04 with Aubrey. Nobody likes to hear other people spout cliches about how awesome their trip to Europe was, so I won't spend any time dwelling on details. Instead, I'll just say that the time Aubrey and I spent together in Europe reflects so many of the things I love about our relationship. The love and adventure and curiosity and humor that makes us who we are. I think about this trip every day.

2) The day our dogs came home. I'll never forget the day we got Idgie and Lucy. Aubrey brought them home from the pound, and we both thought at 8 weeks that they'd be soft and slow and cute and cuddly. As soon as they touched foot in the yard, they were a tornado of white and dog puppy, all bounce and yip and growl. We fell in love immediately. The girls have grown up over the last three years, and I've enjoyed every day of their maturity. Sometimes we'll come home from a trip, and we'll have to wait overnight to get them out of boarding, and the house feels so bleak and empty. They fill up our house, and they fill up our lives. I can't imagine life without dogs.

3) The day we got married. So, we didn't go the traditional route to get married. We moved to Richmond, Virginia together and out of the blue decided to get married by a justice of the peace. Once upon a time, we'd tried to go the traditional route, but felt like it just wasn't us. So, we got a marriage license, got married on a Saturday morning by this nice middle-aged justice of the peace in her apartment, and spent the day smiling from ear to ear. We went to Byrd Park in Richmond and enjoyed the beautiful, blustery fall day. It was perfect for us. It was the best day of my life. I'd marry Aubrey again every day. Every single day.

There are tons more, but I'm running out of time tonight. These are the big three for me. Three big moments in my life, that I think have contributed a great deal to the person I am. They're not in any particular order. I just kind of wrote them out as the words came to me.

Public Library Bathroom Blues

I hate using the bathroom on the second floor at Lincoln Library. Every time I go in there, the toilets are funky (still not as filthy as Barnes and Nobles' bathrooms at Wabash and Veterans), and there's usually a disoriented person walking around like a zombie from a George C. Romero flick. One afternoon I went in there to find a guy half naked, shaving his stomach with a disposable razor. I stood at the urinal, a little nervous about this swaying, bearded man directly behind me who was mumbling something about beehives and wielding a disposable razor. I mean, at any time he could have sprung on me and nicked me about my neck and face!

That night I came home, and promptly had a dream about being shanked in the back while urinating at Lincoln Library. Fun.

I try to avoid using the bathroom unless I really don't have a choice. The bathroom on the first floor is much nicer and cleaner, and I've never had any strange encounters in there, but I'm also incredibly lazy about switching floors just to pee. Today, I thought, "It's been awhile since I've used this one. I'll just duck in. I don't have time to go downstairs right now."

I walked in, and other than the guy apparently passing a stone on the commode, everything seemed fine. Until, I stepped up to the urinal and saw DUM DUM DUM . . . a used condom floating next to the urinal cake.

What choice did I have? I had to go. So, I did my business, careful to direct the stream away from the disposed condom so as to avoid splashing any unwanted wiener goo* onto my pants. I mean, it's one thing to get splashback from "clean" urinal water. It's an entirely different thing to splashback wiener goo from someone else's wiener.




*wiener goo: yeah, I think that's a scientific term

Rabies Shot

It's Salman Rushdie's
birthday
today.

And the U.S. Open
is on the
air.

Iran's lips are still
being zipped.

And there are
tent cities
in America.

And the weather
here,
here in Illinois,
is
hot and humid,
thick,
"sultry" as an
old friend would say.

I am tired,
I am tired,
and unwired,
racing with my pedal
to the
floor,
(to the floor)
and my
transmission
in neutral.

But I can't
help feeling
good that
I
mailed
the last
payment
for my
rabies shot
today.

Belly Rub

Cleaning dog poop
off the floor is a rarity these days.

She knows better,
an exercise in anxiety more
than a need,
but it was the thunder and the rain,
those mystery entities of dark
night sky that had her barking out the
window at 5 AM.

I knew
she was having a hard morning
by the way she was curled up on my slippers
this morning instead of on her fluffy blue bed,
like usual
and by the way she clung to me,
as I
made breakfast,
watching me with her big, sad eyes,
and that little bit of tremble around
her ears.

Finding her mess,
I lowered my voice,
deep,
she came to me,
and I asked her,
"Did you do this?"
and she slinked away
like a scolded child,
watched me working
with plastic bag and
spray cleaner.

Disposing of the mess,
I called her to me,
and we made friends
with a "gimme five" and a
"shake"
and a little bit of a
belly rub.

Lincoln Library

Working from home is great, but it's so nice to have a reason to get out one day a week and do something different. Today is a beautiful day, and I can't wait to get out and ride my bike to the library.

I have a standing appointment every Wednesday afternoon at Lincoln Library. I tutor after work on those days, and I find myself really looking forward to my time in the library. The guy I tutor is always a lot of fun to be around. He has a great, optimistic attitude, and he's curious about everything. One week we're reading about the solar system and the next week we're reading about the history of Afghanistan. He is really interested in everything, which makes my job easy. He picks something he wants to read, and we start working on it.

I love being in the library. Maybe it's because I grew up without a library, but I just love having all those rows and rows of books all around. I usually arrive a few minutes early so I can return books, browse the stacks, look at movies, or any of the other super-awesome things there are to do in the library. This week I'm returning Bukowski's Come on In, Gregory Corso's Mindfield, and a great book of historical poetry by George Keithley called Song in a Strange Land. I've really enjoyed all three, and I may renew the Keithley book. I loved his The Donner Party.

Exploring Cahokia Mounds

This past Saturday, Aubrey and I made the drive to Collinsville, Illinois to explore Cahokia Mounds. For those of you who don't know, Cahokia Mounds is the site of a once-thriving Native American city. From 650 to 1400 CE, Cahokia Mounds boasted a population at its peak of between 20,000 and 40,000 people. The city was massive and spread out over an area rivaling that of modern day metropolitan St. Louis. Not only that, but there is archaeological evidence that the Mississipians who populated the site used city planning techniques to lay out the city and to deal with "urban" problems like overcrowding, disease, and waste removal.

An artist's depiction of the Cahokia Mounds site circa 1000 CE

Additionally, the major metropolitan site located near modern day Collinsville, was a first-tier site. There were other second and third-tier sites associated to this city center, which equate to modern suburbs. These second and third-tier sites were important for trade, crop production, and communication. At one time the entire Mississipian culture spread from the Mississippi River east to the Atlantic Ocean and as far South as the Gulf of Mexico.

I remember going to Cahokia Mounds as a kid, but I really didn't appreciate it back then. I think my family squeezed a walk to the top of Monk's Mound in between breakfast at the Waffle House in Collinsville and an afternoon at the racetrack down the road. I remember walking to the top of the mound, and not really knowing what it was, just thinking it was a hill.

This time around, I went in with a deeper appreciation of the cultural and historical significance of the site. So often, we read or see television programs about the great cultures of the ancient world. We are hammered ad nauseum with shows and stories about Egyptians, Aztecs, Mayans, ancient Indians, and ancient Chinese, but rarely do we see any coverage of the mound-building people of what is today the United States.

Maybe the earthen structures at Cahokia Mounds are not as magnificent as the limestone blocks used to build the Great Pyramid of Khufu, or of the dry stone construction used at Macchu Picchu, but the Mississippians showed true problem-solving and ingenuity in their ability to utilize the resources of the Mississippi River valley to build epic structures. The Mississippians made due with what they had, which was a variety of soil types, including clay. They were craftspeople, who leveled the surfaces of their mounds with absolute precision. They even leveled acres and acres of flat land so they would have flat plazas upon which to trade, celebrate, worship, and play games.

The people of "Cahokia," also practiced astronomy, as evidenced by the ring of wooden posts, today called Woodhenge. Woodhenge was used to mark solstices, equinoxes, and to monitor other astronomical events.

view from the top of Monk's Mound, see St. Louis in the background

There is so much evidence in Cahokia Mounds of a civilized and flourishing community. In fact, the first urban center in "modern" North America to reach the population of Cahokia Mounds at its height was Philadelphia when Philadelphia crossed the 40,000 mark around 1800. Think about that for a minute.

The only problem we found in Cahokia Mounds is that it appears there's very little money going to the site, which is a problem I don't see being solved anytime soon. The "state of the art" interpretation center feels often outdated, and occasionally just old. Despite the fact that Cahokia Mounds is only one of 20 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the United States, it doesn't seem to have much of a budget at all. Entry is a voluntary donation of $4 per person or $10 per family, which we gladly paid.

Essentially, the entire historical site is a do-it-yourself affair. This wasn't a big deal to us. We bought one of the $1 tour guide books and walked the trails by ourselves. It was a beautiful day, and Aubrey took a ton of pictures. In order to get from site to site, you are advised to get in your car and drive. This seemed silly to us. We enjoy walking, and it was a nice day. Walking from the interpretive center and the Twin Mounds self-guided tour to Monk's Mound wasn't a big deal. But walking a mile on the shoulder of the highway to reach Woodhenge was less than ideal. There were not many sidewalks or walking trails that were convenient to all locations. Additionally, there only seemed to be a small number of staff people at the interpretive center, and none on our around the rest of the site to answer questions or to give information. The site does offer twice-daily one-hour guided tours, but I think these tours are strictly around the twin mounds area and not the entire site.

I don't mean to complain. We did have a great day, and I think the folks working at the site are doing the best they possibly can with the resources available to them. I'd just love to see the situation improve for them and for the viewing public.

I'd highly recommend Cahokia Mounds for anyone looking for something to do in the St. Louis area. Have a picnic, walk around the site, learn some sweet ancient history.

I leave you with a short video I found at Veoh. It's a pretty cool overview of the area.

Watch Stonehenge - Southern Illinois style in News | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com