The Aerie
So... that was spring, 2003. What little I saw of it.
Summer begins tomorrow, and if it's like most of my other recent
summers it will consist of hours working in frigid offices, punctuated
by brief periods of broiling heat in my un-air-conditioned Metro. And
of course THIS summer I'm trying to increase business over last
year...
We DID finally get a pair of air conditioners. We had planned on
installing central air (deleted from our home remodelling project four
years ago in order to save costs), but then we looked at our finances
and discovered that our financial jet was spiraling in over the oceans
of debt. So we started looking for window mounted room air
conditioners. My friend Speedy even forwarded notice of a couple of
free air conditioners that she saw posted on the Web, but free stuff
goes fast and even immediate calls resulted in "sorry, they're gone."
Really, why post a free air conditioner on the web? Why not just set
the thing out at the curb and write "works
TITLE:free
TITLE:take" on the box. It'll be gone before you reach your front
door.
Finally we broke down and purchased a pair at Home Depot for $99
apiece. One we'll put upstairs in the master bedroom, the other
downstairs for the kids, which should cool both their rooms provided
we arrange the doors properly.
Now of course I have to install the air conditioners.
I also have almost no clothes to wear. This is not meant as
titillation or as a plea for donations, it's just an indication of how
out of hand my schedule has been lately. I do all my own laundry, and
I haven't had time to run a load for weeks. Fortunately I've been
running network cable at a client site all week, giving me an excuse
to show up in my paint pants and my rattiest old Dockers. But I'm even
out of those!
So I'm gonna have to do some laundry and get ready for the big shindig
tonight: the family is heading out to the Mall of America for the
Harry Potter debut party. Yes, yes, how commercial, how pedestrian,
how droll. Thank you. Just what I need is self-righteous condemnation
to go with an evening of pre-teens hyped up on sugar. I could point
out that this is a crowd of kids excited about books and reading, but
that's not important. The important thing is that it's heavily
marketed, so it must be bad.
Sorry, man am I cranky. Seven hours of hand-blasting cable-pulling
will do that I guess. I had to delete a whole entry before where I
went off on the whiny conservatives who run this country and blithely
treat anyone who doubts anything as some combination of moron and
Fifth Columnist. I just don't get how these people can be so powerful
and yet so good at playing the victim.
"Ooh! Look! Someone published something that might have a conscience!
I'm so victimized by their opinion! It's a liberal plot against me! Oh
no! Now they're questioning our government! Oh, when will this
conspiracy be ended?!?"
*Phew*, there I go again! Yes, that was less vitriolic than what I'd
written before. I'd best leave the politics to Lileks: he's a born-
again conservative, so he MUST be right. No, I mean, he's a funny guy,
but I don't understand the appeal of being reactionary.
Anyway, getting back to the main point before I pass out from
exhaustion or poison myself with terminal crankiness, yes, we're off
to pick up the nine-hundred-freakin'-page fifth books in the Harry
Potter series (yes, I used "books" deliberately. How the heck are kids
going to read a 900 page novel? Is this some twisted exercise program?
"We'll get those kids to lift weights!" We've got to throw together
some sort of costumes in the next four hours, and I have to take a nap
and get a bath, and then off we go. If I bring the camera, I'll try to
post some pictures.
Finally, I got the last necessary piece in order to begin building the
battle robot -- a spare tire to use as armor. Pictures and news as the
summer progresses!
Now, off to get some rest. Hopefully my next entry will be somewhat
less cranky and somewhat more coherent!
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Oh, look, it's a week later!
Sorry, but you know how it is. It's not like I haven't complained
before that each of my years is 52 days long. So here it is a week
later. Oy.
Last week's highlight was a work-binge at a client site Friday and
Saturday. Worked from 3 p.m. Friday to 7 p.m. Saturday, with eight
short hours off for sleep. Cry me a river, I know, but I'm getting too
old for such nonsense.
Immediately thereafter we went over Rachels apartment for turkey and
another vieweing of "The Matrix". It's interesting that so many of the
people I've urged to watch this film need and want to watch it a
couple of times through. When I point out that the movie starts and
ends in the same room, they start to catch the clues. Point out that
Neo sticks his finger through a looking glass.. and that the looking
glass then goes down HIM, and they start to catch there are hidden
levels to this movies.
Which is why I'm giving "Matrix Reloaded" the benefit of the doubt.
Critics who just want to watch the movie one time and "get it" may ( I
said "may") be falling into a trap. I'm not sure. Certainly on the
surface it is not as good as the original. Too many cliche's, to much
juvenile humor, too many plot hiccoughs. For example, why would an AI
computer program be interested in creating a dessert that gives human
women orgasms? Why would the AI want a hummer? And why would another
AI program be jealous of the first? If the point is to establish that
AI's are people too, well, so far I'm not convinced.
We're planning on going to see "Matrix Reloaded" again tonight so that
we can then discuss and analyze it.
[01als12.l.jpg] Father's Day was a hit. The family put together "Al's
Breakfast". Al Bergstrom, founder of one of my favorite dives, Al's
Breakfast", died last week at 97 years of age The family knew that
Al's is one of my fave joints, so they whipped up my usual order
(Eggs, Ugly Bacon, Whole Wheat Toast, Coffee, and Whole Wheat
Blueberry Pancakes), and the kids made me a menu and took turns
calling everybody's "orders". Theresa taught them to say "I want two
shortwheatblues on a round with sun on a shingle!" just the way the
folks at Al's do.
Afterwards I sat out in the couch swing and read the paper, and then
my daughter gave me a 20 minute massage. And when I logged into the
computer, my birthmother had sent me a B&N certificate that I used to
pre-order The Two Towers on DVD.
The rest of the day I did absolutely nothing. We took the kids to the
lake, I read a book, took it easy. All in all, a great Father's Day.
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So... how do you tell your eight-year-old that his former first grade
teacher has committed suicide?
He was exactly who my youngest needed, a teacher with both spine and
heart willing to go the extra mile to help an "active and alert" child
fit in to the expectations of his first grade year. And with a name
like "Mr. Littlebear," well, who could ask for any thing more?
Maybe you couldn't ask for more, but he gave more anyway. He was
willing to work with our "active and alert" youngest boy, giving slack
where needed, and being firm where necessary. Guiding him, rather than
breaking him. He probably made a complete difference in how our
youngest approached school. And it was clear how much he cared for his
children.
He was a gentle man with a quiet smile and wavy blond hair. Despite
having grown up on an Indian reservation he looked like a white man,
and maybe that made life a little harder for him. It certainly
startled the homeless men he accosted drinking on the railroad tracks
behind the school. When they ignored his request to leave off drinking
where the children could see them, he repeated his request in their
native Ojibwe: startled, they apologized and complied.
His life might have been unlivable due to cancer. After fighting to
get his job back after being laid off last year, he missed the last
three months of school in the hospital with an unspecified cancer.
And maybe it was because he was a gay teacher. Oh, I don't know that
he was, but he set off my gaydar something fierce, and he shares...
ugh, shared... an address with another man. So maybe that made his
life harder. It's not like you can be very 'out' as a teacher, when
any homophobic nitwit can lodge a complaint and get you fired.
Or it may have been that he had AIDS. Again, I don't know this, I'm
just speculating. When my wife took my kids to visit him in the
hospital he explained the caps, goggles, gloves and gowns on his
nurses by saying that the chemotherapy treatments had "made his blood
toxic." And maybe it had. Regardless whether he had AIDS or just plain
cancer, he was very ill.
Whatever his reasons, I guess they don't matter. I guess I'm just
trying to understand. But he waited until the final day of school and
ended his life out in the woods near his home. He was found today, the
first day of summer vacation, by the departing vice principal of the
school. At the behest of Mr. Littlebear's roommate, the vice-principal
had travelled half an hour out to his house to find out why Mr.
Littlebear was missing last night.
It will be hard on so many people. My neighbors were even closer to
him. They had visited him multiple times in the hospital, and had
videotaped a greeting from him to his class. Recently he tried to call
them, but they did not return his call immediately. They didn't know
it would be too late.
So what do I do? Do I tell the kids before someone else does, or do I
wait? What do I tell an eight year old about death?
I remember last year, we had stopped by the school playground before
the end of summer vacation, and there was Mr. Littlebear in the
parking lot. We were so excited to see him! In its usual the dumbass
fashion, the Minnesota school system had had laid him off in the
spring, with no guarantee that he would be re-hired in the autumn, so
both he and we were relieved to see him back.
At that time he mentioned that the school's deaf/hard-of-hearing
teacher would not be returning, and I asked why. Grimacing and
gesturing at the children, he shook his head. After I'd bid the
children go and play on the equipment he confided, "She killed
herself." with a sad shake of his head.
Suicide isn't painless. And he knew it. He must have been in terrible
agony to allow himself to forget all the pain we would feel when he
was gone. Suicide is always the ultimate act of selfishness, but it's
hard to be angry at Mr. Littlebear. I'll never know what pain he felt,
and while I resent his abrupt departure I can't judge him.
I had a friend-turned-lover many years ago who was severely manic
depressive. On her "up" days she could charm the wings off an angel.
On her down days she repeatedly threatened suicide. Over time I
crossed the spectrum from scared and responsive to angry and
challenging. "Everytime you threaten to kill yourself, you threaten
the life of someone I love," I once snarled at her.
Fortunately she got the help she needed, even if it involved
electroshock therapy and powerful drugs: today she's a wife and
mother. She found a way to move forward.
I have another dear friend of twenty years who is valiantly fighting
her way back from the same darkness. The jury is not in yet, but I'd
say things are looking good for her. Knock wood. Did I say "I hate
cancer"? I'm sorry, I guess I meant "I hate cancer and depression."
I can't judge Mr. Littlebear. I don't know what horrible burdens he
may have been carrying which he needed to put aside. But I guess it's
fair to say that I wish it hadn't turned out this way. I wish he could
have somehow tolerated his experience. This way, he may have had to
take it, but I can can't approve of this kind of shortcut to destiny.
And now I have to figure out what to say to my children.
I think that I will say that Mr. Littlebear was very sick. I think
that I will say that sometimes when people are very, very sick,
sometimes they don't get better. But you have to be so very sick that
you're in the hospital, and even then most of the time you get better.
But in some rare cases, I'll say, a person can be so sick that they
die. Mr. Littlebear had an illness. It started in his body, but by the
end, maybe, it got into his mind. It made him so sick and sad that he
couldn't live anymore.
I don't think I want to use the word 'suicide'. I think I'll say that
they may hear stories and words used to describe Mr. Littlebear's
death. And some of those stories and words may sound scary. But the
truth is, nobody really knows in the end what made him so sick that he
died. Sometimes, though, people try to understand by telling each
other stories of what they THINK happened, in order to see if those
stories feel better. Some may be more true than others, but what's
important, in the end, is that Mr. Littlebear died of a very serious
illness. It's not something that anyone else you know is likely to
get, because it's so very rare, and it's nothing you can catch.
But the most important thing to remember about Mr. Littlebear is that
he was a very good, very kind man. The sickness hurt his body, and it
may have confused his mind, but his heart and his soul remained the
same. And in his heart he cared about all his students.
I think that's what I'll tell them.
*phew*
This year has had entirely too much death.
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I've been feeling pretty glum lately about my friends. Two of them are
moving away: one is a friend of several years, off to find a new
career in California; the other s a brand new acquaintance who
unexpectedly announced her intention to head to New York.
I won't go into my misgivings about their plans: I can't separate my
own distress at their departure from a reasoned analysis of their
strategies. But having friends move away just plain sucks.
But I life hands out as many ups as downs, and last night I got a big
"up":
An e-mail from Bonnie!
Bonnie was a senior when I was a freshman in high school, and I'd only
been living in Minnesota 18 months. We had study hall together and
rode the late bus home after activities. She was brilliant and pretty
and had lustrous red hair... but most of all, she was kind to me.
A senior in this strange town who treated me kindly. I remembered her
fondly for years.
And using my mad Internet skilz I tried to find her many times. But
women are so hard to track, they move and marry and change their
names. So I kept an eye on Classmates.com and periodically threw a
Google search, but never came up with anything.
And so she found me!
In a long message, which she addressed to several of us from St.
Francis, she recounted memories, mostly with the others: she'd had a
crush on my friend Tim (Hey, I never said she had TASTE ;-> ) She
never got to go to prom. And a self-described good-girl, her first
date with Richie, a long-haired rock-n-roller.
Then at the end of this long message, she wrote:
"I'll bet you thought I forgot about you Bob. Nope, I saved the best
for last! It is nice to see you still have your great sense of humor!
You have always been so talented and funny! You are so good with the
camera and have turned into a web site guru too, neat! I sure laughed
a lot when you were around!"
Stop it! I'm blushing!
Seriously though, it was quite a lift getting that message. It means a
lot to me to learn that other people have been thinking of me. I
suppose I believe that when people aren't around me they don't ever
think about me.
But I'm going to have to reconsider that self-pitying notion. When I
re-contacted my friends from grade school in Queens, I discovered that
stories about our shared childhood adventures had become family
legend. During their extended-family get-together, their spouses would
say, "So YOU'RE the kid from across the street."
And last year my old girlfriend took the initiative to reach out and
bridge the gap that had resulted from our breakup. Since then she was
very supportive during my father's decline and death. Not to mention
offering to employ her cool computerized embroidery machine!
Maybe one of these days I'll come to understand that I've been as
important to some of the people in my life as they have been to me.
Meanwhile, well, the lessons are fairly pleasant, like Bonnie's
e-mail.
In it she mentioned that she's hoping we can all get together over the
4th of July weekend for a mini reunion. I hope it happens, I wouldn't
miss it for the world!
Can't wait!
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One of my neighbors who moved in last year owns this cafe I'm sitting
at. I had talked with her about whether she wanted to get wireless
Internet access for the cafe, but it wasn't a priority for her.
So I stop by her cafe for the first time today, and guess what?
There's a wireless node ("Frantz") that covers the cafe. I have no
idea where it is, but it may be across the street because I seem to
lose signal whenever a large truck goes by.
So I finally have a(n involuntary) cybercafe I can work at if I want
to. Of course, who knows when Frantz will get disabled or encrypted.
Actually if I can track it down, I could help them do just that -- in
exchange for permission to keep the encryption key and remain able to
access from the cafe!
It's a funny cafe, too. It's right across from the Aveda Institute,
ensuring a constant flow of chattering young girls in their
nonconformist uniforms: black clothing, hair dyed black, sometimes
with stripes of purple, and of course Numerous and Random Piercings.
It is in this fashion that they establish their common uniqueness,
their shared individual creativity, and mutually declare their freedom
from conformity.
It's also a bit of a lesbian hangout: like my fave spot, the Blue Moon
cafe, this place is lesbian owned and operated. Friends tell friends
and soon the local community starts hanging out there. Of course, I
suspect it doesn't hurt that the place is frequented by lots of
chattering young girls (see above).
So now I have a place where I can actually sit in a cafe, look at
girls, AND be on the Internet. It can hardly get better!
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