Sigh

The parish I serve has a Facebook account, which is more or less expected of parishes these days.  A lot of people view it, as I know from the statistics that FB shares with the page's administrators.  In fact, many of the postings receive between 100 and 200 views, which is pleasantly surprising.

The other day I posted something on the page about needing volunteers for our food ministry.  It isn't the most ambitious or elaborate of ministries; it was something we inherited from the local senior center when they were no longer able to store as much as was needed by members of the community, especially near the end of the month when government benefits run thin.

It's just a collection of shelves that hold canned and boxed foodstuff, and all we need is someone to sit in the room to make sure that people can reach the top shelves, or that we can strive to keep in stock the items that are the most popular.

The posting has, after 48 hours, received seven views.  Not 200, not 100, just 7.  I have no new volunteers for this ministry, either.  Ah, well.  We'll keep trying.

More About That Mysterious "P" in EPA

Such are the unpleasant contours of a public health emergency that is playing out in Hoosick Falls, a quiet river-bend village near the New York-Vermont border that has been upended by disclosures that the public water supply was tainted with high levels of perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, a toxic chemical linked in some studies to an increased risk for cancer, thyroid disease and serious complications during pregnancy.

Again, I lived there and worked not only at a nearby school, but also at two parishes in the area.  I still know people who live there and are nervous about the health of their children and grandchildren.  The gross indifference of our "post-religious" society is de-moralizing, to say the least.

What's the "P" in EPA Stand For, Again?

Take a drive upstate in rural Rensselaer County and you'll miss Hoosick Falls or Petersburgh if you blink. 

 Perhaps blinking will be the excuse we will next hear from state Health officials who appear to have had their eyes closed when it comes to monitoring the drinking water for these two small towns.

This bugs me more than most stories of our government's homicidal indifference to those who fund its insatiable maw, as I lived in Hoosick Falls for five years.

You Can't Use Facebook to Sell Weapons, Until You Can

eBay for jihadis: Al-Qaeda fighters using FACEBOOK to buy and sell 'CIA weapons' 

Facebook protects you from people like me.  Terrorists, on the other hand....

More Photo File Clean-Out [Click to Enlarge the Photo]

Three guesses in which building I stored a surfboard.

The Transylvania, bringing my mother and grandparents to this brave, new world in 1926.

Incorrect use of a tree stand.

The snapper that hangs out at the water discharge tubes at the Millstone nuclear power plant.  [True].

I just like the photo.

Monday mornings.

As I Deal With Matches A Lot On the Job [Clergy, Not Pyro], I Found This Interesting

Stand Tall, Connecticut

Study: Hartford Is The Worst State Capital

Well, at least our gun control laws save lives.

After Two Killings In 8 Hours, Hartford Has Most Homicides In New England

Friday's Music and Groups of Which You've Never Heard

Harvey Pekar

"As a matter of fact, I deliberately look for the mundane, because I feel these stories are ignored. The most influential things that happen to virtually all of us are the things that happen on a daily basis. Not the traumas."

__________________________________________________________________

Maybe you have to be from Cleveland to understand the kind of power an underdog can have.  It certainly helps to be from a place perpetually associated with misery, bad luck, unemployment, provincialism, and really bad pro sports.  I could waste your time and mine with remedial observations such as that Cleveland has the world's greatest orchestra, one of the best art museums anywhere, and a terribly advanced collection of medical facilities; not to mention the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  But most people just reply by asking, "Isn't that where the river was so polluted that it caught fire?"

Yeah, let's just talk about what it is to be an underdog, shall we?

In the years when I was teaching English at one of Cleveland's high schools there was an artistic renaissance occurring within our modest city's bohemian community.  New voices in poetry were being heard and published in a variety of quarterly pamphlets, tactile art was being explored with never-before-seen combinations of media, independent rock music was everywhere [I mean that almost literally], my friend Stephanie had started a theater for urban youth that was becoming an established part of the city's culture, and half the people in my apartment building were writers of some sort.

Then there was this nebbish, this schlemiel; a homunculus who wrote reviews of obscure jazz records for equally obscure free neighborhood newspapers and supported himself as a file clerk at the Veterans Administration.  He was, without question, the walking, talking embodiment of ordinariness.  Despite his status as a quintessential underdog, he became the rallying voice for what is now called in college textbooks the "New Bohemian Movement".  Just as unlikely, the NBM began in...Cleveland, Ohio. Take that, New York and Los Angeles!

Harvey Pekar's literary efforts were aided considerably by one of the other great originals of the era. Fortunately for him and for the NBM, one of his close friends was Robert "R" Crumb, who became the most recognizable artist of the counter-culture in the late '60's and early '70's.  His characters of Fritz the Cat and Mr. Natural were commonly found not only in free newspapers but on t-shirts and album covers.  [An aside: At last weekend's ComicCon in New York, a four panel collection of original Crumb art sold for $65,000.]

                                                   

Pekar was interested in creating stories for the cinema, but did not have the knowledge, wherewithal, sophistication or looks to mount a production. Instead, he imagined using Crumb's art to illustrate stories in the same manner that a cinematographer frames images on the screen.  With art, especially comic art, imagination could be indulged in a manner both creative and inexpensive.  This idea appealed to Crumb, as did Pekar's notion that their comic stories involve the mundane instead of the spectacular.  After all, they lived and created in Cleveland, where the mundane was splendid.  As he noted:

 When I was a little kid, and I was reading these comics in the '40s, I kind of got sick of them because after a while, they were just formulaic. I figured there was some kind of a flaw that keeps them from getting better than they are, and then when I saw Robert Crumb's work in the early '60s, when he moved from Philadelphia to Cleveland, and he moved around the corner from me, I thought 'Man, comics are where it's at'.

1976 is considered the high-water mark of the New Bohemian Movement, as that was the year the 37-year-old Pekar's comic, illustrated by R Crumb, was published.  Its title was American Splendor, subtitled "From off the streets of Cleveland".  The comic, self-published and self-distributed, became the most desired and elusive volume of literature in northeastern Ohio.  In fact, it was 1980 before I was able to secure my own copy.  In it, Pekar chronicled his magnificently ordinary life and celebrated the mundane in a way never quite seen before.

While only seventeen issues were published from 1976 to 1993, Pekar's comic book was read by the literati of both coasts, making the file clerk famous enough to be a regular guest on David Letterman's NBC show, and even more famous for reducing Letterman to a stuttering rage on what became Pekar's last appearance on the show.

It really didn't matter to Pekar as he wasn't desirous of fame, and certainly not interested in appeasing the perpetually prickly Letterman.  Underdogs don't receive their power from impressing the wealthy and powerful; quite the opposite.  Besides, Pekar's creativity maintained its very original course long after Letterman's shtick had become stale.  American Splendor continued to chart the ups and downs of his very average life, including the dorkily charming relationship with his wife and muse, Joyce, with his co-workers at the VA, and his uber-nerd friend, Toby.

The verite quality of the comic book realized its prime when Pekar wrote of his diagnosis with lymphoma and his long, touching, yet successful, battle to survive it.  In 2003, a film version of his life was nominated for an Academy Award for best screenplay, winning a variety of critics' awards along the way, including the Sundance Film Festival's.



Pekar would eventually retire from the VA and continue to write comic books and music reviews, occasionally appearing in public, although with some reluctance.  While he could be found on a near daily basis at the public library in Cleveland Heights, the cognoscenti knew to leave him be, and the staff was always solicitous towards him.  His last major effort was when he wrote the book for the jazz opera Leave Me Alone!, which premiered at Oberlin College's Finney Chapel in 2009.

Illnesses of various sorts began to take their toll and, while effective fodder for his stories, Pekar was often in great discomfort.  In 2010, his wife Joyce found him dead in his bed of an accidental overdose of his various medications.  In a marvelous...no, splendid...juxtaposition, he is buried in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery right next to Eliot Ness of "Untouchables" fame.  His headstone reads, "Life is about women, gigs, and bein' creative."

Harvey Pekar is now recognized as the poet laureate of Cleveland, an absurd title for a comic book writer but somehow fitting.  After all, this is Cleveland that we're talking about, and the city follows its own rules of propriety.  Two years ago this month, the Cleveland Heights Library celebrated the installation of a statue to Pekar, an act that he would have found a bit odd, I'm sure, but certainly one that would have found its place in the pages of American Splendor.

For those of us like this blogger, who spent his early twenties writing music reviews for the same free newspapers, playing bass for terrible bands in stale, smokey clubs in Pekar's neighborhood, and occasionally getting poems published in journals so crude the print would rub off on your fingers before you could read it, he enabled us to own a small shard of the New Bohemian Movement.  For that alone, he's earned his status as a laureate beyond definition.

For those interested, I offer the following:

The New American Splendor Anthology: From Off the Streets of Cleveland

American Splendor: The Movie

 Originally published on October 17, 2014

Gender Really is Fluid, I Guess

Well, it is at Time magazine:

Time Magazine Put Evelyn Waugh on a List of Female Authors

I would laugh about this, but it makes me a bit sad.

Oh, a bonus.  This media member is a graduate of Harvard:

Confession time: Until today I thought Evelyn Waugh was a woman, because his name is “Evelyn” and that is typically a woman’s name.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 25, 2016

It's Not Those Tiny Cookies That're Making Kids Fat, It's Following the Government's Dull-Witted, Corrupt, and Inaccurate Dietary Guidelines

The Food Police is Coming for your Girl Scout Cookies

Hey, There's a Political Debate on TV Tonight

The "Eddie Would Go" Competition is Currently Being Held in Hawaii. This is a Small Wave.

Dude #EddieWouldGo https://t.co/bnzdjCJHA0

— Jon Passantino (@passantino) February 25, 2016

I'm happy to say that this guy rode that wave as well as I would have.

Anything Despised by The NYT/NPR Set is Worthy of Re-Appraisal

Mainly because, as the 21st century unfolds, their values are being revealed as empty.  The antidote, of course, is "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives":

Most spots getting the DDD treatment have Mariana-Trench depth. They’ve been part of their communities’ fabrics for decades. Patrons revere them, and, with their children in tow, often tell stories of their own childhood experiences at these places. They are the culinary components of civil society. Somewhere, Alexis de Tocqueville is smilingly ordering a potpie.

I've probably horked half a dozen recipes from this show and, unlike the New York Times and National Public Radio, they never disappoint. 

Weird Archaeology: Curse Tablets

I don't know about you, but I really enjoy stories that begin this way:

In 1976 laying of a water main in a field...above the village of Uley, Gloucestershire, brought to light Roman period artifacts and structures. Subsequent excavation over three seasons (1977-1979) revealed a sanctuary that existed from the late Iron Age through the Roman period into the early medieval era, when it perhaps became a Christian church.

Please glance at the entire site, as the history and content of "curse tablets" is a fascinating window into the historic human psyche.

I Don't Know, Are "Thought Leaders" Mentally Ill?

Is Your Bacon Sandwich Oppressing Women?

The main argument you will likely hear in favour of feminist vegetarianism is that of linked oppression. Basically the idea is that women are consistently objectified in a morally problematic way that is very similar to the way animals are objectified.

It's remarkable how quickly jargon can become gibberish.  Between my academic career and that in The Episcopal Church, where the jargon/gibberish is as thick as Yucatan jungle "rain forest" undergrowth, I greatly prefer the company of monosyllabic surfers and musicians.

Either Archaeological or Fund-Raising News, Not Sure Which

Mysterious artifact discovered at Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity

Given that no photo of it is displayed, I'm thinking it's a fund-raising ploy.

Everything You Know is Wrong

Forget What You’ve Heard: Organic Food Is Not Food Grown Without Pesticides

Photo File Clean Out, Part III [As Ever, Click to Enlarge]

Nat and Frank just hanging out.

When we were kids, the top of the main mast still protruded from the sand and we would play on it.  Marine archaeologists and treasure hunters have been trying to get to the rest buried under the 17th St. beach for over 100 years.

Self-explanatory, really.

My great [+ 5 or 6] grandfather, one of the scouts for General Francis Marion, the Swamp Fox.  Marion's men were particularly known for their bloody disregard for the conventions of war and were the first guerrilla unit of the American army.  Apparently, it did Old Corny little harm, as he lived for 103 years.

Director and actor in consultation.

It's that time of year when I long for the beach and the after-surf breakfast at this place.

Thank Goodness Chicago has the Strictest Gun Control of Any City in the USA

Can you imagine what it would be like otherwise?

Homicides in Chicago this year double same period last year

Since gun laws only control the law-abiding, there may be another issue at play.

Oh, look.  Another gun law paradise:

Elderly siblings shot outside West Baltimore carryout

Gun laws only effect the law-abiding; lunatics and criminals are not controlled by laws.  That's why they are called "outlaws".  As William S. Burroughs once said, "Every time there's a shooting, they want to punish the people who had nothing to do with it."

Create jobs, reinforce families, evenly punish criminals, and limit public assistance to rational levels, and more will be done to save lives than a whole collection of politically cynical gun laws.