Let it all go

I made no plans for Halloween this year. Not that I normally do, being costume-impaired at the best of times. When I dare to venture down that path, it's usually something too high concept/awkward (an oversized picture frame around my neck--"I'm homoerotic art") or offensive ("Bermuda shorts, brogans, dark socks, Banlon shirt, stupid haircut and mustache--imagine Hitler on the beach in Brazil circa 1946") or worse, much, much worse, as certain friends could attest.

Nonetheless, it was a more active than passive decision to skip Halloween this year. Again, too much and too many requiring my attention. I needed an escape, an outlet, not mindless escapism.

So I walked home. That's it. In and of itself, nothing out of the ordinary, which is no doubt why the doing was so enjoyable. I took the long way around from Homewood down Braddock Avenue, past Forbes, and into Regent Square, more than my usual mile or so to work. On the last evening before the end of daylight savings time, the sun was still out when I left work but sinking, sinking. The air was crisp, the sky clear, and the leaves, still on the trees--despite the snow and wind from earlier in the week--and just slightly past peak color. I needed a sweater, but I didn't have to wear a jacket, hat, scarf, or gloves. I felt unencumbered, by clothes and by life.

The sky became duskier as I made my way home. Kids in costume, accompanied by protective parents, appeared on the streets, trick-or-treating. They wandered where directed, too young to do otherwise, or maybe too addled from all the sugar.

Who knew they still did this, trick-or-treating, especially in cities, where, if one believes the old urban legends, there must be a ratio of 1 razor blade per every 10 apples. But still they do, whole orderly gangs moving from house to house, block to block, for harmless fright and safe, sweet sugar.

I greeted everyone I met, and I think everyone responded in kind, happily, friendly, not gruffly, as too often happens here. I spent last winter, I recalled, not really knowing anyone here, new in town, new to my job, and kind of hungry for someone to talk to. A year later, and I'm full up for the moment on in-depth conversation and ready, despite my general geniality, for some time to myself.

I plugged in my iPod--oops, I almost wrote Walkman--and put on rotation two albums I've been enjoying of late: My Morning Jacket's Evil Urges and Sufjan Stevens's Illinois. Both are fairly quiet albums, especially the latter, at least compared to the stuff I normally listen to on my iPod at the gym. Perfect for a silent, not-quite-twilight night.

* * *

Neither record is what I thought I would be listening to at this point in my life. Me, a guy who thought metrosexual-in-training Martin Fry, the lead singer of '80s New Romantic band ABC, was the epitome of modern manhood at one time, now listening to a grizzled, alt-country gang of long hairs from Kentucky, my Dad's home state. My Morning Jacket is still keeping the alt-country thang going somewhat, but the lead singer also has a fondness for Prince, an appreciation I rarely share, but for which, nonetheless, I've made an exception for this album. Jim James's reaching-for-the-lower-stratosphere falsetto in songs like "Evil Urges" and "Highly Suspicious"--apt titles for Halloween!--makes for a very fun, even kind of sexy record. However, My Morning Jacket can just as easily turn all moody and trippy, such as on tunes like "Touch Me I'm Going to Scream." Below is the video for the abbreviated version of "Touch Me," which underscores the trippy but gives something of a short shrift to the moody, in my opinion.





But, still, those fireflies . . . .

Sufjan Stevens' Illinois keeps the melancholy flowing. It is the second in his "state" series (the first focusing on his home state of Michigan) and takes a mix of musical cues from Steven Reich- and Phillip Glass-styled minimalism, along with alt-pop and traditional, on-the-banks-of-the-Mississippi-and-the-O-hi-o instrumentation. Think banjoes. Think songs with references to Andrew Jackson. Along with songs about John Wayne Gacy, Jr., and a friend who died of bone cancer.

Frightening stuff perhaps, not your standard pop fluff (and guaranteed to make me regret spending so much time, money, and effort on my Kylie Minogue collection over the years), but the album isn't morose or gruesome. At least no more so than everyday American life is--chants of "Kill him, kill him!" and "He's a socialist!" in the background. Perhaps that's part of Stevens's plan, conveying all 50 states through music and song, pride and pain, comedy and tragedy. If anything, the record feels equally joyful (how can you not chuckle over a song title like "Come on Feel the Illinoise"?) and melancholic, the exact musical need for an early autumn evening.

There's a line in his song, "Chicago," that sticks with, maybe even haunts me a little:

I drove to New York/
in the van, with my friend /
we slept in parking lots/
I don't mind, I don't mind/
I was in love with the place/
in my mind, in my mind/
I made a lot of mistakes/
in my mind, in my mind.

It's the last two lines in particular, and the way they are delivered, that shakes me everytime. Such a simple lyric in a song that's about what, exactly? Runaways? It's hard to say. But the simplicity of the realization, "I made a lot of mistakes," and the painfulness of it, it's hard not to relate. Tonight or any night.

As I walk, another song comes to mind, this one not on my iPod yet and more in keeping, at least on the surface, with my dodgy tastes. It's a seemingly innocuous pop ditty called "Romeo" by Basement Jaxx:



Ignore the Bollywood shenanigans for a mo' and, instead, pay attention to the lyrics:

Cos you left me laying there/
With a broken heart/
Staring through a deep cold void/
Alone in the dark/
And I miss the warmth in the morning/
And the laughter when I can't stop yawning/
But the tears on the pillow've dried, my dear/
Gonna let it all go cos I have no fear/

Let it all go/
Let it all go/
Let it all go/

A minor classic, that one. On the surface, one of the most buoyant pop tunes of the last decade or so, I would argue. On top, it's all catchiness and cheekiness, danceable and frothy. But that lyric . . . "staring through a deep, cold void" . . . "I miss the warmth in the morning" . . . we're saved only from utter despair by the singer's admonition to "let it all go." Cry it out, maybe, or just walk away and wash your hands of it all.

All those mistakes. In my mind, in my mind.

A year of change, and, hopefully, of growth. I learned some, and I yearned for more, as well. And some I got, and some I didn't.

But for tonight, I'll heed the latter lyrics, give into the music, and do just as instructed: Let it all go.

Unholy crap

The election is almost upon us, so let's not waste time dawdling through my verbosity, getting mired down in my overwritten prose. Let's cut to the point. Let's get to the chase.

And my point is . . .

Since when does America take instruction on political and economic theory from a man who's not even qualified to snake out your toilet in Ohio?

Socialism, bah. Joe the Plumber, et al., you wouldn't know socialism if it jumped out of the toilet water and bit you on the ass while you were straining through your morning poo.

Still, I guess if Joe is qualified to pronounce (or, as the case may be, denounce) centrist politicians as "socialists," then I'm completely justified to label him and his ignorant, spoiled, and highly opinionated ilk as "steaming piles of unholy crap."

Elizabeth Hasselbeck--Daddy's little steaming pile of unholy crap! Rush Limbaugh--a pill-popping steaming pile of unholy crap! Kelsey Grammer--an underage-sex-engaging, coke-snorting, steaming pile of unholy crap!

My list could go on and on and on, but there's only so many days until the election.

But, ahhh, I feel better already. Name-calling and fear-mongering are indeed cathartic. No wonder the American right wing doesn't bother anymore with cogent arguments or altruistic policy-making. It's much more fun to divide and conquer instead of uniting and leading.

Bottoms up, citizens!

A new Argentina

From this week's headlines:

"GOP spends $150,000 for Palin's wardrobe"

And hair and makeup as well.

A hundred and fifty thou. Really. Golly, just how ugly is this woman anyway?

Truth be told, I don't know if I have strong feelings--or much energy--to get too worked up about this news item. I mean, yes, $150,000 on clothes, makeup, and the like is obscene and ridiculous.

As my Canadian friend Smidgen, a native of British Columbia ("I can see Alaska from my house in Vancouver"), put it, "Does this woman really need to wear this kind of clothing tramping around Alaska, of all places?" Well, Manolo Blahnik mukluks are pricey, apparently. Still, surely, Cindy McCain could lend her a few things until Sarah's allowance kicks in and she can buy some nice schmata (on discount, of course) on her own.

I can't claim, however, that I was particularly surprised by this turn of events. You want Suzanne Sugarbaker as Veep? All big-ass Holiness hair, moose-shooting, and mouth-misfiring? Then you're gonna have to expect some requests for something other than what's on sale in the Land's End catalog.

I don't like to brag too much, but I picked up on this early on--really, it all started with that image of La Diva Palin, arm extended, waving to the masses (thank you, once again, Wikipedia) at the Republican National Convention. Since then, I've had this text from the original cast recording of Evita stuck in my head:

I am only a simple woman who lives to serve Perón in his noble crusade to rescue his people! I was once as you are now! And I promise you this: We will take the riches from the oligarchs only for you--for all of you! And one day you will inherit these treasures! Descamisados! When they fire those cannons, when the crowds sing of glory, it is not just for Perón, but for all of us! All of us!

I am gay; I know my showtunes, folks.

Oh, my dear, dear shirtless ones. What hath Evita Palin wrought--other than a big line of credit at Nordstrom's?

A new Argentina--alas, the old one has gone sadly wrong.

Well, maybe at least she's pretty on the inside. All I can say is that at least my $100 donation to the Obama campaign isn't going for a beauty bailout of Joe Biden.

The railroad less traveled

A couple of weeks ago, I was staring down the double barrels of the 4-lane Pennsylvania Turnpike, facing cross-state journeys for meetings on a rough-and-tumble freeway I've traveled so much--too much--over the last year-and-a-half.

This in and of itself is nothing unusual, particularly in the fall, when the academic calendar kicks in, and, as part of my job, I have conferences to attend, meetings to conduct, people to visit, and places to be, mainly along the old Main Line and its offshoots between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. I generally like this part of my job, actually--meeting people, talking up cooperative projects, seeing where colleagues work, and how people live in different parts of the region. But it does mean hours on the road and in airports, days in meeting rooms, and nights in hotels. Very little downtime. Very little me time. And all during autumn, my favorite of the four seasons.

This week was looking especially challenging and grim. As originally planned, my only activity was a conference in Cincinnati at the end of the week, returning to Pittsburgh today and back to work on Monday. But then a "vital" meeting came up in Philadelphia on Wednesday, an early-morning-and-all-day meeting, which meant, if I and everyone who had to spend time with me that day knew what was good for them, I'd have to travel over on the Tuesday before, so as not to be wrung-out and extremely crabby.

It is possible to fly from Pittsburgh to Philly for a morning meeting and back in the same day. However, given the distance of the Pittsburgh airport from home and work (a cool 25 miles through two tunnels and one downtown), the vagaries of contemporary air travel, and the luck-of-the-draw scheduling of SEPTA trains once in Philly, it can make for a very long, very fraught day. I've done it before, and I'll do it again, but if I have my druthers, I'll always fly over early for a good night's rest before the day of meet-and-greet begins.

So add Philly to the Cincy mix. And then add Harrisburg. The vital meeting in Philly was joined by an equally important meeting in the state capital--100 miles or so to the west of Philly--on Thursday. Thus, at one point this week, it was looking as though I would need to fly to Philly on Tuesday, somehow get to Harrisburg (car, plane, train?) by Thursday morning, return to Pittsburgh no latter than Thursday evening, only to head out to Cincinnati by Friday morning, returning to Pittsburgh on Sunday, and then starting it up all over again the following week. Talk about wrung-out and crabby.

I'm game, and I like to be a good little trooper in the workplace, but this just sounded insane and destined to make me (more) insane along the way.

So I canceled Cincy--even though it was the trip I was most looking forward to, as I've never been to Cincinnati before, and I have a peculiar sense of what constitutes an exotic getaway. Instead, I focused on getting from Pittsburgh to Philly to Harrisburg, then back to Philly for my plane trip back to Pittsburgh. Yes, you can fly between Philly and Harrisburg and Harrisburg and Pittsburgh--just not cheaply at the last minute ($500 or a pop, one-way). My employer is generous with travel expenses, but this seemed, morally, an airplane ticket too far. Thus my convoluted west-to-east-to-central-to-east-to-west approach was the only viable option, at least if I wanted to keep costs down and avoid driving.

Or so it seemed at the moment. But then Amtrak, of all things, came to the rescue.

It's easy to make the trek from Philly to Harrisburg and back by train--there are something like 10 train trips per day, back and forth, and while the line isn't exactly the TGV, it has been greatly improved over the last couple of years, making for a faster, more reliable journey.

Getting from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh (or Pittsburgh to anywhere) by train is trickier, though, and can require more effort than one should have to put forth. Ask my friend, the Gladman, who traveled by train in August from the Baltimore-Washington area to our own Iron City, via Philadelphia ferchrissakes, at the breezy clip of 8 hours, a trip that, by car is a mere 4 to 5 hours and doesn't require a sidetrip through the City of Brotherly Love. (Not that the Gladman would have objected, if you get my drift.) Despite Harrisburg being the state capital and Pittsburgh the Commonwealth's second largest city, reliable passenger travel in the post-Pennsylvania Railroad age is difficult, with only one train per day in each direction.

Traveling cross-Commonwealth has always been a challenge, though. Turn back the clock to the early 1800s, and you'd have to go by some combination of stagecoach, foot, canal and river barge, and "portage railroad" system--basically, dragging the barges over the Allegheny Mountains, across the Eastern Continental Divide, to westward flowing rivers into Pittsburgh through a series of inclined planes.

Things didn't improve greatly, even with the introduction of rail, as the Alleghenies, at least until the 1850s, proved too great an engineering and geographical conundrum to surmount. Train cars and engines still had to be dragged across the mountains to make connections westward.

In 1854, however, the Pennsylvania Railroad devised the engineering marvel that is Horseshoe Curve, west of Altoona, which created a bridge along the mountains that allowed trains enough of a low-grade path to surmount nature and make it through the Alleghenies to Pittsburgh. Travel across the Commonwealth was suddenly reduced from 1 week to 12 hours. Not only was travel across state facilitated, westward expansion in the U.S. was greatly improved. This is the modern world. And Pennsylvania says you're welcome.

The great era of American rail travel steamed forth and billowed ahead until at least the 1950s. I have heard my mother, Vivien Leigh, tell of taking the train from Eastern North Carolina to south-central Kentucky in the 1950s, to visit with my Dad's relatives while he was away fighting the Cold War fight in Korea. She didn't drive then; air travel was a luxury and not likely to be available anyhow; and rail, even in the South, was a viable form of conveyance. Imagine that--being able to get from one small corner of the U.S. to another without benefit of car or plane.

And then, in the space of twenty years or so, it all quite quickly went away. The Pennsylvania Railroad, once the largest railroad in the U.S. by traffic and revenue, once the largest publicly traded company in the world, posted for the first time a net loss in revenue in 1946. By 1970, due to changing transportation needs and financial mismanagement--as well as the withdrawal of a rescue loan by the U.S. government--the PRR declared bankruptcy, with its lines and resources divided between Conrail and Amtrak.

* * *

I could go all bitter Pennsylvanian on you about the failure of a unified transportation policy in this country, the slavish devotion to the auto, the dismissal of short- and long-range planning, the denial of the needs of the carless and planeless.

Why shouldn't I be able to get from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg or Philadelphia in fewer hours than it takes to drive? Why shouldn't I be able to get to Washington or Baltimore other than via Philadelphia? Why shouldn't those without cars in my town have to rely upon a shaky, constantly retrenching mass transit system that tossed out streetcars in favor of buses? Why should those who live in the suburbs have to catch the last express bus by 6 pm? Why should Pittsburgh--an old industrial giant, simutaneously sprawling and sardine-like; a ramshackle topographical map with an overlay of cities, towns, villages, and neighborhoods; an over-the-river-and-through-the-woods, you-can't-get-there-from-here metropolis, a crazy-quilt conglomeration of rivers, ravines, and rocks--be stuck in some sort of suitable-for-the-Sun Belt transportation nightmare?

But no, I won't go all bitter on you--that would just be too Socialist for Sisterdale, wouldn't it?

Instead, I'll focus on the merits of a very Pennsylvania journey.

Through the impromptu taxi service provided by a colleague, I arrived at the Harrisburg station early in the afternoon. I checked the board and saw that the next train for Philly didn't leave for another two hours and would get me into 30th Street Station at 5:30 or so. If I wanted to make the 7:25 pm flight home, I'd have to cab it during rush hour to Philadelphia International Airport, something I wasn't sure I could do, especially as I was scheduled on the 8:55 pm flight, and the 7:25 is often completely booked. Thus, if I stayed on course, I'd still have to wait for the later flight and probably wouldn't get home from the airport until 11 pm or so. I'd have spent the entire day, from 6 am onward, in motion and in company. And I just didn't think I could face that.

Instead, as luck would have it, the next train out was to Pittsburgh. I had arrived just in time--if I so chose to do so--to switch my Amtrak ticket to head west. I could cancel my Southwest flight from PHL to PIT, saving the fare for another day. When I arrived in Pittsburgh, me and my luggage could take the East Busway home, arriving a little after 8 pm. The next day, I could take the bus to the airport to retrieve my car, safely stationed in long-term parking. And aboard the train, I could be alone and quiet. No sparring for space, no lugging of luggage, no jetting and jostling, being above it all and not enjoying any of it.

Normally, I'm not that spontaneous, too afraid that if I deviate from the plan, some sort of ill-defined chaos will ensue. I'll be stranded and abandoned. I'll get stuck, I'll become lost, I'll look foolish. Fear rules me more than I care to admit, but then it's never been an easy ride (so to speak) for me. Too much can go wrong--and has--and as a result, I've learned to become vigilant, hyper-vigilant, even hyper-hyper-vigilant. Self-reliant, self-possessed, and self-contained, yes, but to the detriment of taking a few risks along the way, even on something as seemingly benign as taking a different path home--in a physical, mental, or metaphysical manner.

However, this time, my need for quiet, solitude, and home, outweighed my devotion to the standard motion. For a few dollars more on Amtrak, I was able to take a slow-but-steady train home, riding the rails for just under five hours, enjoying the private time, sitting in internal if not always external silence with room to spare, despite there being a healthy ridership all aboard.

Along the way, I leafed through Pennsylvania Magazine and The New York Times. I started reading (finally) Barack Obama's The Audacity of Hope, a quick pick I'd made at the snacks-and-mags shop at the Harrisburg station, putting aside for now Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald's dense tome, The Way the Crow Flies. I was entertained by the exuberant, Germanic chatter of Amish travelers sitting around me. I savored the autumn scenery as the train surmounted the Alleghenies, the leaves almost at peak color, the sky, dramatic and intense with the coming of stormy weather. I texted a friend in England, and another in Nevada. I thought about a Mallo-Cup I'd had earlier in the week and the pierogies I'd had for my lunch that day, instead of the semi-healthy snacks I'd assembled for my travels. I saw Altoona and the Horseshoe Curve; Johnstown and its notorious flood plain, along with the inclined plane that takes you--and your car--to higher ground in Westmont; Pittsburgh and its still rumbling and smelting steel works, the Strip District, and dahntahn.

And I wished for a moment that I could stay on this train and in this mindset forever. Out of my normal time and place, above, through, and beyond the day-to-day that gets me down or stresses me out. Yet in a very Pennsylvania space, one that isn't completely lost or abandoned to age and modern foolishness.

Maybe there isn't a Pennsylvania mystique, the same as there is for Texas. There is cold weather, short summers, cloudy skies. Old buildings, a creaky infrastructure, a shaky economy, and faded industrial glory. There are too many billboards, above-ground pools, trailer parks, and adult bookstores. It's tradition-bound, clannish, hardscrabble, and, yes, perhaps even bitter at times.

But there are just as many reasons for why we live here. Spring. Fall. Trees. Snow. The mountains. The rivers. Voices. Food. Culture. People. Home. Pennsylvania.

I won't stay here forever. At least I don't expect that I will. I miss Texas. I'm fond of Kansas. I love Chicago. I fantasize about California. And I still think about Canada, with or without an election looming. There's too much of the world to see, too much of life to experience, to stay in one place for a lifetime.

Be that as it may, my life is pretty good here. Maybe not what everyone would want. Maybe not entirely what I would want, if money were no object and commitments to people and duties no small thing. But good, solid, enjoyable, satisfying. But it's here and it's mine. And here is home. Why would I want to be anywhere else?

Who shot B. F.?

Fact: From 1995 to 2004, I lived and worked in San Antonio, Texas.

If I have any regrets about leaving Texas--and occasionally I do--they are as follows:

• Only visiting Big Bend once
• Not visiting Palo Duro Canyon at all
• Never attending Rodeo in San Antonio
• Never touring South Fork Ranch on one of the few occasions I was in Dallas and had the time to do so
  

There are times that I miss living in Texas. Oh, I hated (and constantly bitched about) the summer--that nine months of hot, sticky heat that resulted in the birth of a mewling, sickly autumn. Plus, that suburban Republican mindset that supported George Dubya through two governorships and now two terms of presidentin'--well, I could definitely live without ever witnessing that again.

But there is a Texas mystique, an exoticism, if you will--equal parts sexiness and sagebrush, cowboy style and country pleasures--that you just don't find in many places in the modern U.S., which seems determined to franchise and homogenize itself into submission to a capitalist master.

For me, the TV show Dallas, at least in its early years, really captured this mystique.




Sigh. Infidelity, hunky cowboys with bad perms and amazing waistlines, spousal abuse, and bitter, bitter loneliness surrounded by ranch-style opulence. They don't make 'em like that anymore, except perhaps today in the suburbs of the real Big D. Tip: Watch Cheaters sometime.

After Texas, I eventually wound up in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State indeed has its charms--a glorious, brightly decorated fall is definitely one of them, along with rowhouses, pierogies, whoopie pies, the Amish and Mennonite communities, and the leftover riches of the 19th century robber-baron class.

But a style? Exoticism? A mystique of its very own? Alas, no.

I think it's safe to conjecture that no one is ever going to make a TV show with Henry Clay Frick's Claymore Mansion in Pittsburgh as the opening shot for every fraught-with-tension family scene. No one's ever going to collapse on their bed, bitterly rueing their trap of a loveless marriage, while in the background, an announcer at the Pennsylvania State Farm Show blares, "Ladies and gentleman, the award for best cowboy goes to Joe Warhola of Altoona." No one's gonna tune in to watch the lives and lusts among the Plain People, even if the show is set in a town called Intercourse.

And ain't no one into the 21st century wondering who shot Ben Franklin. Although I'm pretty sure it wasn't Sue Ellen's baby sister Kristin.

Editor's note: What kind of name is Kristin for a Texas woman in the 1970s anyway? You knew she had to be up to no good with a Yankee name like that.

My kind of town

Just home from a few days in Chicago, where I spent my time wisely . . .

. . . enjoying too much food at Russian Tea Time

. . . admiring the visual masterpiece that is Seurat's La Grande Jatte, as well as Grant Wood's American Gothic, perhaps the quintessential American icon, both on view at the Art Institute

. . . shopping too much at the largest H&M and Filene's Basement I've been to so far

. . . wishing that so many fine examples of Louis Sullivan architecture hadn't been demolished but glad some of the stunning details have been preserved

. . . appreciating being in the land of broad shoulders, if you catch my drift

. . . cheering on Alanis Morissette at the Chicago Theater (although disappointed that she didn't perform "Hands Clean" or a few other favorites from her last three albums

. . . getting mobbed on the Red Line train at Lawrence as the crowd from the Beck and MGMT concert at the Aragon overwhelmed the station

. . . marveling at the return of stripey, peg-legged pants, and Sid Vicious haircuts, among today's youth. Thirty years later and just in time for my birthday.

To celebrate the visit, here's a musical and visual montage culled from YouTube of some of my favorite Chicago moments. Some of the clips featured were overheard around town. Some of the other images are merely popular culture reminders of the significant role Chicago plays in American history and life.



Chicago. My kind of town. And my favorite American city.