Setting aside "Tree of Life" for a moment, the most visually exciting movie I've seen in a long time is "Vanishing Point," which is showing as part of a road movies series at the awesome Belcourt Theater.
From the very opening of the film, which provides relatively long takes of roadblock bulldozers inching into place on the highway in a small town, I knew we were in for something special. And that's not why we went to see a presumably fun action movie from 1971.
But the visuals kept on giving, whether showing distant cop cars wavering in the desert heat or a tracking shot -- tightly cropped -- on the face of a blonde riding a motorcycle across a field. There are also abstracted images of the lines on the pavement, color field-like images of flickering landscapes and shot after shot of Kowalski's rear view mirror; each mirror glance shows what pursues him, framed by the landscape ahead.
Perhaps these sound typical for a road movie, but I feel "Vanishing Point" has a different pace, whether lingering on an image a bit longer than expect or allowing a bit of camera shake (not in the modern, trendy way) to add some energy.
Getting there in time for the helicopter landing did not matter and I knew it. And later, with the hours tallied up and the beer cans and wrappers and one black shoe scooped back into the cracked maroon pickup truck, the whirling of those blades fit in the story only by shoehorn.
But when the pilot's voice delivered her estimate of "six minutes to arrival," I didn't want to do the math. Eight miles out, country roads to navigate, and my willingness to "rush" only at 7 over the speed limit didn't bode well.
The medical helicopter was late. Must have been. Because I saw its light beam circling the sky as I entered the rural portion of the pursuit.
254 ... left on 7-0- ... 8? 708 Miss Phillips Lane ... Right on 703. [map]
Less than a mile away; the pilot asking again about wires and structures. My brights show me a steep green embankment to my left and a farm field dropping to the right.
"Final approach," came her voice one last time (I thought), and without a crackle. Then the blades were above me. It didn't sound like a helicopter would sound. Just pounding wind, I thought.
Then I stopped behind a firetruck, near tall grass and a wire fence and jumped from the car to catch the chopper coming down. An ambulance pulled forward. Doctors dismounted the chopper knee-deep in green. They rolled a stretcher to the ambulance and everyone waited.
Without all those other reporters around I felt mean and invasive with the camera around my neck. I wore jeans and yellow T-shirt from when I was 12. Nervous about the darkness and all the whirling reds, I pulled the camera to my eye often to take pictures of the stretcher just sitting there. When a woman in plain shorts and a tank top was handed a reflective vest and stood near to the ambulance I got back in my car, still felt too visible while the interior light remained on, and hoped I wouldn't miss whatever it was that might happen.
Twenty minutes or more and then "requesting permission to cease efforts" came across the scanner.
I drove onward, two miles to find trucks of all sizes and the one that mattered: the one with big wheels flipped to its side. Firefighters in casual T-shirts and dull overalls shared what they could.
I watched misty lines of drizzle sparkle in the sky, yellow white red, snapshots from all the rotating lights and mirrors.
A wrecker driver later jump-started my car, long drained dead by my hazard lights. Home by 4, story by 6, and sleep.
I wondered later that day, at 10 and 12 and 2: If a car crashes and only one reporter covers it, did it happen? But soon others had and we all knew about Danny Alphonso Brown. He sang so well on "She's a Killer," a song with an unfair word in its title.
Driving is one exception to my general laxity toward rules, safety, and preaching.
I grouse about other drivers often: their failure to use cruise control and observe the conventions of the passing lane; inappropriate following distances; and most recently, driving while calling (which I recently swore off) and texting (which I never did from the get-go).
Among my friends, I feel at ease as a passenger with only two.
And despite Tom Vanderbilt's explanation that most of us aren't as good at driving as we think we are, I will really never be able to relinquish the pride that surrounds my A+ in driver's ed. My instructor Cliff made a point to announce to the class that my grade was the first of its kind in all his teaching years. Katie can back this up.
All this considered, my recent reading of Traffic: Why we drive the way we do, only heightened my sense of duty to spread better driving habits; to continue to preach; to continue to openly and vocally wince at what I considered dangerous habits. Facts and figures aside, the logic and insight and observations of the book impressed upon me the need for continued diligence in driving.
"Required reading for anyone applying for a driver's license," reads the New York Times book review tag line on the cover of Traffic. I agree. In addition to cartography or detective-work I now place traffic engineering and driver's education as candidates for any mid-life career change, should it come.
I found myself consuming the book in tiny chunks because of its ability to provoke thoughts.
And Vanderbilt often references Seinfeld.
From the book:
:: Think of language, perhaps the defining human characteristic. Being in a car renders us mostly mute ... the language of traffic is reduced ... to only the simplest of meanings.
:: Many studies have confirmed this: Eye contact greatly increases the chances of gaining cooperation in various experimental games.
:: Late Merge wa srolled out by traffic engineers in Pennsylvania in the 1990s in response to reports of aggressive driving at merge locations. In this system, engineers posted a succession of signs, beginning a mile and a half from the closure. First came USE BOTH LANES TO MERGE POINT, then a ROAD WORK AHEAD or two, and finally, at the lane drop: MERGE HERE TAKE YOUR TURN.
The beauty of the Late Merge system is that it removes the insecurity or anxiety drivers may feel in choosing lanes, as well as their annoyance with a passing "cheating" driver.
The most surprising thing about the Late Merge concept is that is showed a 15 percent improvement in traffic flow over the conventional merge.
:: A bias creeps into news reports, which are often quick to note, when reporting fatal crashes, that "no drugs or alcohol were involved," subtly absolving the driver from full responsibility.
:: Instead of speed bumps, which tell drivers to drive as fast as they can before they hit the next speed bump, Engwicht argues that intrigue and uncertainity -- the things that active cities are filled with -- are the best remedies for traffic problems. Put a child's bike on the side of th eroad instead of a speed bump; hang a weird sculpture instead of a speed-limit sign.
:: Monderman's signless squareabout: Since the conversion, the average time to cross the intersection has dropped by 40 percent, even as traffic has increased. More cyclists were using hand signals when moving in the roundabout. More drivers were using their signals, as well. The responsibility for getting through the intersection was now up to the users, and they responded by communicating among themselves. The result was that the system was safer, even though the majority of users, polled in local surveys, felt that the system was more dangerous!
Vanderbilt's conclusion: On the road, we make our judgments about what's risky and what's safe using our own imperfect human calculus. We think large trucks are dangerous, but then we drive unsafely around them ... We do not let children walk to school even though driving in a car presents a greater hazard ... We used hands-free cell phones to avoid risky dialing and then spend mroe time on risky calls (among other things) ... We drive at a minuscule following distance to the car ahead, exceeding our ability to avoid a crash, with a blind faith that the driver ahead will never have a reason to suddenly stop. We have gotten to the point where cars are safer than ever, yet traffic fatalities cling to stubbornly high levels. We know all this, and act as if we don't.
Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of babies: God damn it, you've got to be kind. - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
We carried 'HELLO' in the left and 'BABIES' in the right; learned a new lingo and laid the good word of Vonnegut in a type with bite.
Mary Mashburn and Steve St. Angelo of Typecast Press in Baltimore helped me create an 11 x 17 letterpressed poster Saturday -- a birthday gift (with a trip) from Chase.
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"I'm upish," went my text message to Chase at 7:15 Saturday morning. He responded, I readied, and by 8 we were rolling for Baltimore -- bound for type and blight as we left blue ridges behind.
Interstate 95 carried us to the harbor town, where smokestacks and stadiums made for our first impressions. We flowed through the heart of downtown -- my navigation of course leading us onto a street of sin (oddly(?) located on the well-traveled namesake street of the city: E. Baltimore Street).
Residential streets meant row after row of rowhouses, differentiated across the city by brick and brightness, by broken windows and embellishments. Block after block, Chase squeezed us through streets piled high with snow. Dozens of chairs -- folding, rolling, plastic, and cracked -- saved shoveled parking spots.
We visited Atomic Books near the happenin' Hampden district (although we didn't know that 36th was the shit. Yet.)
Our first big-ticket destination was an exotic salvage warehouse on the city's southwest side. To get there, we lived out our Wire fantasy by rolling along North Avenue and Monroe Street in the Western District, where tacked teddy bears marked murders and second-floor windows were mostly broken if not already boarded. Hundreds of homes later -- and we're talking dense rowhouses -- the blight had barely subsided. It shocked me. Detroit? Charming place, next to Baltimore.
The booty at the end of our rundown rainbow was Housewerks, which behind gleaming barbed wire, greeted us with one of the largest mirrors ... ever left outdoors in the winter. A teeter totter later, we were inside one of the most arrestingly cool stockup spots we've ever seen. Beside the pirate ship-sized rope was a 40-foot freakshow banner. Stained-glass windows hang from the rafters, old metal letters above a fireplace mantel. A million-pound (or so) money safe lolled its door open. We bought the smallest items possible: a blue "walk" sign from a traffic signal, and a slew of small woodcut images for ink pads.
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Serendipity pushed our wandering toward South Baltimore, where we found at least one location recognizable from The Wire, season two: the mill where the stevedores worry about condominium revitalization. We looped through Locust Point, ate crab at LP Steamers, and watched the unloading of a Domino sugar ship.
Book Thing of Baltimore yielded 12 terrific books that might go toward Katie's projects. The great thing about Book Thing is you can take up to 180,000 books out for free per trip.
The crescendo of our travels came at Typecast Press, where despite a spongy 'K' and an 'N' a bit nicked, our frolicking among printing methods from days gone by led to an exceptional broadsheet.
Five hours can fly by when surrounded by nearly a dozen printing presses and drawers teeming with type. We could have spent days just marveling at the studio space. Instead, we worked diligently to set type, one letter at a time, while Mary shared stories of old pressmen and unbridled geeklove for the language of letterpress.
I've long dealt in picas and kerning, but never knew how literal "leading" could be. Strips of lead are used to separate lines of text. More lead means more space between lines. "Uppercase" and "lowercase" make more sense now too -- the words indicate where your hands should roam to pluck particular letters out of the large "case" that holds them. And I knew it before, but felt it firsthand Saturday when I literally was out of "sorts" (the lowercase 't,' in particular).
We hit it off really well with Mary and Steve -- fellow journalists -- who got the vibe that we are "young journalists who are still into it." We are. And we're into their type thing. We really enjoyed hearing Mary talk about newspapers and letterpress as an art of words.
By 10 p.m. we'd learned about furniture and Scrabble-boosting terms like "quoine key," "reglet," and "tympan" that play into securing our blocks of text into a Vandercook press. We'd also corrected a few backward apostrophes en route to rolling out our limited-edition series of Vonnegut posters.
I think we kept it simple and sincere.
One remains in Baltimore. Ours are signed and framed. And the last is bound for a better place.
Anytime I see a runaway truck ramp, I wonder. Some seem pretty reasonable, long stretches of gravel with ample speed-bumps. But there are some along I-64 in West Virginia...and along I-17 between Flagstaff and Phoenix that look absolutely nuts.
Actually, the grades of different roads interest me, in general. I think I've seen an 8%...for sure a 7%. But apparently those are just peanuts compared to what else is out there.
From what I can tell, there isn't an "official" list about the steepest paved grades in the world, but there has been a bit of controversy. For a long time New Zealand claimed to have the steepest with their staggering 35% Baldwin Street in Dunedin.
At one point the Kiwis claimed Baldwin Street had a 38% grade, but once more precise calculations came out, it put several American streets in contention for the steepest title...particularly the 37% Canton Avenue in Pittsburgh.
That lasted for a bit, however, nothing has come close to Hawaii's Honokaa-Waipo Road (near Waipo). Although it is brief, it boasts 45%. Traffic is apparently restricted to four-wheel-drive vehicles only.
1. Honokaa-Waipio Road, Hawaii - 45% 2. Canton Avenue, Pittsburgh - 37% 3. 28th Street (between Gaffey and Peck), Los Angeles - 33.3% 4. Eldred Street, Los Angeles - 33% 5. Baxter Street, Los Angeles - 32% 6. Fargo Street, Los Angeles - 32% 7. Maria Avenue, San Diego - 32% 8. Dornbush Street, Pittsburgh - 31.98%
Also, some other strange streets:
THE WORLD'S SHORTEST: Ebenezer Place - found in Wick, Caithness in Scotland. It measures only 6 foot 9 inches in length and only has one address: 1 Ebenezer Place. It became an official street in 1887.
THE WORLD'S NARROWEST: Parliament Street - connects Waterbeer Lane to High Streetand in Exeter, England. It was built during the 14th century. The street, which measures 45 inches at its widest point and less than 25 inches at is narrowest, used to be referred to as Small Lane.
WORLD'S CROOKEDEST STREET: Lombard Street - This San Francisco street in has 8 turns in a 1/4 mile stretch. It was designed this way to minimize the steep 27% grade, which most cars couldn’t climb. With the twists and turns, the grade is only 16%. Lombard Street is one way only and the speed limit is 5 mph.
Somehow I ended up reading about melee weapons on Wikipedia. It started with potato guns (not melee) and t-shirt cannons (not weapons) and went from there. The most appealing melee tool I found was the sjambok, a traditional African cattle prod made from the thick hide of the hippopotamus. It bears some resemblance to a street-legal hardwood staff one Zach H. used to carry in Hillsdale, except that the sjambok is flexible, like a whip (sadly, it was also used to oppress humans under apartheid in South Africa.)
On Amazon, I found the Cold Steel Sjambok, a synthetic model available in 42" and 54" varieties. Here's a demonstration:
Surprisingly, this video has not diminished my desire to own a sjambok for home defense.
I should warn you, however, that a Czech product reviewer by the name of Bartok Kinski said his sjambok failed to protect him from a pack of wolves in the wilderness. He posted the same negative review four times. At first I thought he was out of line for posting an identical review multiple times, but maybe he was just bragging about surviving not one, but four wolf attacks?
This summer was the first time since 2006 that I had slept nights in a first-floor bedroom. My bedrooms at the Beat, Sad Bear, and Factory were all second floor lookouts in a formidable fortress of safety. But I spent this June and July in a first-floor bedroom in the State House, a 109-year-old four-bedroom home on a calmer street. This fostered paranoia.
Now I live by the fairgrounds ("Most Popular Fair on Earth"), two blocks from where a 34-year-old neo-nazi allegedly slit another man's throat earlier this month. I saw the victim's body on the sidewalk as police set up barricades. It made me glad to be back on the second floor.
I'm also looking for a helmet to wear on long road trips.
Perhaps deceiving, this image shows the crashwagon in peril, perched at the edge of a ditch better described as a cliff.
It was 9 a.m. when I arrived at a train bridge to photograph volunteers repainting a mural. With the 55 mph highway in mind, I strayed far onto the shoulder before parking. Forty minutes later, my rear-wheel drive was coaxing the back of my wagon over the edge of a 15-foot embankment full of vegetation and trees. I paused, reoriented my wheels and made one more effort. I envisioned a barrel roll into the bush: a foolhardy destruction. And I called it quits and called a tow truck.
Meanwhile ...
The Comedy of Lynchburg Katie's new N-V position (which comes with an office) is not without its share of new never-seen co-workers at the printing press some 60 miles away. But before today -- a day featuring the Comedy of the Cliff and chicken burned by crock pot -- she had never made clear how awesome the faceless pressman might be.
Known only by voice, they are: H.T. Bear, Allen, Larry, and Larry (who goes by Allen).
There's also this one that I didn't bring up before: reading a bit of the sports blog from Tony's paper, I found out that the teams from the 'boro regularly play a team from Rockbridge County School. Funny that a frequent opponent of the teams from the 'ville is Rock Bridge High School in Columbia.
Unfortunately, Rock Bridge is good at basketball but doesn't have as good of a nickname as its crosstown rival, Hickman: the Kewpies.
I was going to have a post about other funny nicknames and sporting things I've come across in Missouri, but it wasn't ready. You'll have to wait.
Until then, another strange similarity of the 'ville and the 'boro (kinda). Tony already talked about going "over the mountain" to go to work. Here's a view from my side of the world: the Ozarks on U.S. Highway 63. Unedited (no Photoshop on the laptop), probabaly a lot shittier, but I get a similar vibe. A preview of what Chase might see on his road trip, even:
People seem to say goodbye in one of three ways. If they meet a person with whom they have almost no connection, they might wave only. If they meet an acquaintance, they'll shake hands. But if they say goodbye to someone meaningful, they generally hug.
Of the three, I like the hand shake least.
The longest (and best) goodbye I ever received from a friend was in the form of a hug. It lasted maybe 37 seconds (though I wasn't counting at the time), and it meant a lot.
I'm finished now with my four years of undergraduate work. My family came to graduation. A friend drove up from the south. I said my fair share of goodbyes...and I gave one distinguishable hug to a friend I've grown up with for the past 10 years.
Now I have a lot of time on my hands. I couldn't be more pleased.
Here's what I'm up to:
- Listening to a lot of Daniel Johnston. So much that everything I notice has lyrics (Tony mentioned this in his last post). - The Meat Puppets new album, Sewn Together. - My brother learning guitar rifts (Modest Mouse, Cake, "Thunderstruck," etc.) - The new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, still. - Google Reader. - Reading Palm Sunday by Kurt Vonnegut. - Picking up Roberto Bolano's2666 soon, a Silliman suggestion. - Mapping my move to Arizona - Finishing a playlist for the drive west...another flung-together list. - Going to juggling club in Louisville. - Getting MLB audio. - Unpacking and re-packing to figure out what I really want to keep.
So on May 31 I'll start my drive to the Southwest United States. Here is the basic map of the journey.
DAY 1: Leave home. Arrive at Jack's apartment. Chill. Sleep. DAY 2: Leave Jack's apartment. Drive. Arrive in Amarillo. DAY 3: Chill in Amarillo with my friend, Brad. DAY 4: Leave Amarillo for Phoenix. Drive. Drive. Drive. Arrive.
Three days later I start working.
The best thing I hear about Arizona, are the wild pigs that run around willy nilly in the streets. I bet someone could make a cool song about them.
Bought a jug of juice, drove toward West Virginia. Stirred a turkey into flight. Saw a cow lick its back hoof. Glimpsed a turtle walking along the highway, south of Chillicothe, Ohio.
I saw steep valleys; a big boat on a trailer. Opened my window in Van Wert just as the town dump came into sight. Found Ohio farms smellier than Virginia's.
I coasted nearly three miles tonight, down the mountain.
I thought ahead to the trips I'll make over that mountain, and how on the other side everyone will say, "just over the mountain," when I tell them where I live.
I wondered why I've always mistakenly thought that the time it takes to travel a given highway will eventually decrease after enough repeat trips.
We live near one of the hundreds of "share the road" signs in Minneapolis at an address easily confused with its eight other versions (SE 8th Street, SE 8th Ave., 8th Ave. SE, S 8th Street, 8th Ave. NE, 8th Street S, N 8th Ave., 8th Ave. N).
Birds tweet and busses rumble down the street. A squirrel, surprised by our arrival at the front door, flipped over a stack of phone books, tried to climb the brick wall and the glass door and finally zipped, legs wide, into the freedom of the parking lot.
We jimmy the key to get into our apartment, which has too many chairs and not enough good art for the walls. But demo derbies, dinos and the Detroit News will suffice for now. We have a rolling chair, a wavy mirror, a futon, a lime green shelf, and a coat rack from our three trips to Ikea. They sell good 50-cent hot dogs there and we ate them once. Everything else we own came from Target. We didn't spend a cent at the Mall of America (but we window shopped at every store).
We've been here for six days and we're already bragging about our library and our radio station. We got our library cards, but our 89.3 The Current shirts are on hold for lack of funds. We almost get to brag about seeing Barack Obama in St. Paul, but this line deterred us (we drove up at 7 p.m., two hours before he spoke, but the line was more than a mile long already).
Music side note: When I visited the office today and met the music critic he asked what I liked. I told him indie rock, Tapes 'n Tapes, Wolf Parade, etc. So he handed me the new Wolf Parade album and offered me the chance to cover a concert in two weeks which features Andrew Bird and The New Pornographers (and I haven't even started working yet). Although I told Katie she would need to sit by the radio and phone to call and win tickets for the sold out show, it looks like we may land a pair as it is.
Katie and I started a budget in a GoogleSpreadsheet, then quickly broke the bank by choosing a recipe which calls for "about five handfuls" of basil. Today we braved a downpour for two tubs of ice cream. We're limiting ourselves to two restaurant meals per week and we're meeting that so far by making simple stuff at home. Basic pastas, salad, and old-fashioned oatmeal. Tonight we made roasted red pepper and leek soup with feta cheese "crostini" on the side. Katie busted out the housewarming champagne, but that bread I made really stole the show.
Music side note #2: Since arriving, Katie and I have really been digging 89.3, the NPR/MPR music station. They mix super new stuff with local music and old classics, for example, new Weezer, new Tapes 'n Tapes, classic Wilco, Ramones, Talking Heads, etc. New finds already: The M's, Sun Kill Moon, new LCD Soundsystem track.
Although Drew called us "purveyors of mass consumer culture" when we went to THE MALL, a few stores deftly avoid that label. First, we had a good time scoffing at poorly designed wedding invitations (while grabbing some good ideas) at Papyrus. Second, I got to see real live juggling equipment in a real-world store at Air Traffic. Third, (although maybe a gimmick or a consumer culture thing) we discovered "the bean bag chair that becomes a bed." Fourth, we found out that Click & Clack put out more than one CD at the Lake Wobegone NPR store. Besides selling The New Kings of of Nonfiction and This American Life CDs, it had a nice pop-up book and a shitton of Garrison Keillor garbage.
Before all this Minneapolis activity, we took a little roadtrip last week starting from Charleston, north through the mountains to Pittsburgh, over to Zygote Press in Cleveland ( where Katie's letterpress professor had an exhibition), through Hillsdale, and eventually stopping off in good ole Lake Zurich for a few days. We took some photos along the way (click here for bigs):
And we store my bike in the bathroom, Youch the Cactus on a frisbee by one of our our three windows, and our monster microwave on the dining table (in front of where Katie sits).
There are plenty of functional bridges in town and it's been especially warm.
Hardees sucks right down to its red, skinny straws. But Hardees fries may be the best in the fast food business. They're a hearty blend of the "revolutionary" Burger King fries (released in 1997, but I could swear it wasn't that long ago) and the somewhat more traditional friesat Checkers. So I've lifted my outright Hardees ban; fries are allowed.
I only stopped once during my final ride from Hillsdale to home. I listened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and Violent Femmes 3 and realized a lot about Beethoven and a little about the Femmes. They didn't peter out after their self-titled debut.
But before all the driving nonsense, which left me with a spilled succulent, I spent my last morning in Hillsdale. I found a way out of my cell phone contract, visited the old Collegian office, ate at the Palace with Jack and asked for a new spoon because the one I had was "kinda funny." The waitress took offense when a long-time patron called her by the wrong name ("Wendy"). She called him "Raul" in return.
I said goodbye to the boys, got some buddy pats, and took two photos, displayed at right, which I'm simultaneously proud of and sad about.
And now I'm home with Magic Secrets Revealed on TV behind me (narrated by Skinner from the X-Files) and tomorrow I'm going to play in my dad's company softball league because he's sick (more than me). Look out slow pitch!
Livia Purdy, 6, who was "not born through the birth canal," knows her multiplication tables up to 5 x 12. She knows that boxes are for playing in and that a 1 is the hardest dice roll to roll, "because you need them the most" in the game of Aggravation.
Livia wishes that Chase didn't have any money so he'd have to stay around the house when he visits. She'll play dolls with you and not tell your friends. The secret treasure under her bed is a green trampoline. She seems to weigh about 20 pounds when clinging to your shoulder.
She faces 90 degrees the wrong way when batting. She has a cat named Gracie (named so because the cat is gray and a girl cat). She thinks her younger brothers are fraidy cats for failing to jump into the cold pool.
Livia lives with Connie, Bruce, Luke, Abe, Gracie, Blackie, Poco (dog), a fourth cat, and sometimes Chase. She lives upon a hill in Kentucky (less hazy and a lot more like heaven than Hiram, Ohio) that seems much farther from Louisville than it is. Their driveway is gravel and leads to a garage full of lawn mowers, hanging bikes, and engine-type things. It takes a series of harrowing country roads to get there. They get water from a cistern (which they used to fill with water on a delivery truck). Abe rides a Rip Stick. Everyone except Livia shoots hoops, but she's comfortable with chocolate on her lips.
"The trip was decided just like that , and it never erred from the basic principle laid down in that moment: improvisation."
For five hours today I found myself behind the wheel of a car. My father passed along fatherly advice on various aspects of the road, my brother complained in the back seat, and I took as much of it in as possible.
I was alone during the ride home. Passing through the land I witnessed a sunset shrouded in clouds and a hawk sitting on an electrical wire. It's still fairly warm in Kentucky and my windows ached to be lowered. Sometimes the best type of thinking takes place while driving, this is the case for me, anyway, I've found. Today was no exception. The cogs of my imagination are still spinning, as I try and piece together what may become one of the more important experiences of my lifetime.
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I listened to NPR for a bit today. Talk of the Nation had an interesting topic on journalism. They discussed 'what would happen if the media stopped identifying murderers — particularly those who kill with the primary goal of becoming famous.'
Nothing in the conversation surprised me, but it still might be of interest. I enjoyed it. Check it out here. Listen to the show broadcast on 26 December 2007.
Baldwin Street 
