1,013 People Have Died From Guns Since Newtown
11 years ago
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Texting: Her’s wot I want 2 say abt that
Car doors open with a smooth metal click and heavy plastic clunk; pull and close with a thunk and we’re in. Seatbelts slide on and I back out looking over my shoulder, and in my bottom vision I see the phones come out. The girls might wait politely to ask for the staticky radio station that will sync with the Itrip signal for their Ipods, but the phones are already open and the same sound my fingers are making now on these keys comes out double time with tinier clicks in the back seat. We might chat above the music and enough might even get said, but all the while the clicking goes on and the car is filled with five or six or more invisible people in staccato conversation, a chittering sidebar of chat and quick response, many hahahas and lols, yet withal a constant communication, a parallel virtual sign languaging, rapid fire and coincident with the car ride, long or short. So then, :( but <3. Click send.
Freecycle: Find Out What Your Fellow Americans Have and Now Think You Might Want
There is a world around us we don’t see, but we can get a look at by email. A virtual curbside giveaway called Freecycle has claimed my inbox, each email a peephole into the life and times of my proximate America. I’m signed up for a regional list serve that serves up roughly fifty or more emails a day offering, for free, unwanted items around members’ houses to whomever first replies to claim them. It’s a kind of guerilla free trade that is more reality show than shopping channel, but it’s also a de facto underground community that calls to and binds up folks who are doing more than cleaning out their cupboards – each email says something about the sender and the receiver. What makes Freecycle magnetic is that each email tells you what your neighbors have, what they are now willing to part with, and what they believe is worth your while to get – even if it means driving several towns over to pick it up. That cost-benefit calculus is often dumfounding, depending on what is up for grabs.
Some will offer unwanted, unopened presents for re-gifting. Others genuinely want to recycle the plastic egg holder insert from the refrigerator. Some seek the outdated electronics another discards, and some use Freecycle as a daily discipline to declutter just about anything, but also to signal something of themselves by doing so. For others it is simply to know the joy of giving what someone else might genuinely use. Reading the emails is daily diverting and often poignant. The flurry of messages creates a kind of kinship among its fervent users, and inevitably among others who just observe the bazaar from the inbox, perhaps waiting for that one remarkable discard. Others, maybe me, are loathe to stop wetting their feet in the personal flotsam and jetsam of life that washes up with such riveting regularity.
Actually getting something from Freecycle is much more challenging than an EBay auction. With no stated end time for claiming an item, warp speed is of the eerie essence. I did try, respectively, for the four buckets of stone dust (bring your own buckets), and the doghouse-shaped boxed set of Peanuts books (for my brother), within the hour each was posted, only to find they were both taken within the minute, and that I was low down an already long waiting list. Freecyclers are voracious, and attentive, birds watching from the wire. Need, greed, and speed make this cast-off meta-market bafflingly successful and fascinating to monitor.
Some of my favorite freebies by any of the above criteria have been the One Large Bar of Ivory Soap (unopened), the Half Bag of Bouillon Cubes (chicken and beef assortment), and the Partially Used Tub of Pet Wipes. I would have had to spend more in gas to go get them than perhaps they were worth, but maybe someone else was closer. But the giveaway that seems destined to top anything noted or yet to be offered is something that came through yesterday, and I am not making this up. This was in America’s closet, not far from my house.
[FreecycleAct] Offer: Two adult size cryogenic freezer bags
These are high quality bags. We recently had my mom and my in-laws cryogenically frozen and you have to buy your own freezer bags so we bought the box of six thinking that it would be cheaper because they keep so long we could save the extras for ourselves eventually but we only ended up using three and now our EPSAs (Everlasting Preservation Savings Account) are in the tank with the rest of the economy and I don't think there's any way we'll be able to afford anything but the usual dirt hole. So we don't need these bags anymore. Actually I am using one of them to keep my suits in down in the basement because they are really airtight and keep the musty smell out. They have the high quality green seal on the ziplock closure, one side is blue and the other is yellow and if you make a good seal then it turns green. Also they are clear so I can still see my suits. Maybe they are translucent, I don't know the difference. They were clear enough to still see granny's face but not so clear that you could tell if the pennies on her eyes were heads or tails.
Anyway if you are thinking about cryogenic preservation you will need these and they are the good ones.
And they must have been the good ones, because they were gone within the hour.
Some will offer unwanted, unopened presents for re-gifting. Others genuinely want to recycle the plastic egg holder insert from the refrigerator. Some seek the outdated electronics another discards, and some use Freecycle as a daily discipline to declutter just about anything, but also to signal something of themselves by doing so. For others it is simply to know the joy of giving what someone else might genuinely use. Reading the emails is daily diverting and often poignant. The flurry of messages creates a kind of kinship among its fervent users, and inevitably among others who just observe the bazaar from the inbox, perhaps waiting for that one remarkable discard. Others, maybe me, are loathe to stop wetting their feet in the personal flotsam and jetsam of life that washes up with such riveting regularity.
Actually getting something from Freecycle is much more challenging than an EBay auction. With no stated end time for claiming an item, warp speed is of the eerie essence. I did try, respectively, for the four buckets of stone dust (bring your own buckets), and the doghouse-shaped boxed set of Peanuts books (for my brother), within the hour each was posted, only to find they were both taken within the minute, and that I was low down an already long waiting list. Freecyclers are voracious, and attentive, birds watching from the wire. Need, greed, and speed make this cast-off meta-market bafflingly successful and fascinating to monitor.
Some of my favorite freebies by any of the above criteria have been the One Large Bar of Ivory Soap (unopened), the Half Bag of Bouillon Cubes (chicken and beef assortment), and the Partially Used Tub of Pet Wipes. I would have had to spend more in gas to go get them than perhaps they were worth, but maybe someone else was closer. But the giveaway that seems destined to top anything noted or yet to be offered is something that came through yesterday, and I am not making this up. This was in America’s closet, not far from my house.
[FreecycleAct] Offer: Two adult size cryogenic freezer bags
These are high quality bags. We recently had my mom and my in-laws cryogenically frozen and you have to buy your own freezer bags so we bought the box of six thinking that it would be cheaper because they keep so long we could save the extras for ourselves eventually but we only ended up using three and now our EPSAs (Everlasting Preservation Savings Account) are in the tank with the rest of the economy and I don't think there's any way we'll be able to afford anything but the usual dirt hole. So we don't need these bags anymore. Actually I am using one of them to keep my suits in down in the basement because they are really airtight and keep the musty smell out. They have the high quality green seal on the ziplock closure, one side is blue and the other is yellow and if you make a good seal then it turns green. Also they are clear so I can still see my suits. Maybe they are translucent, I don't know the difference. They were clear enough to still see granny's face but not so clear that you could tell if the pennies on her eyes were heads or tails.
Anyway if you are thinking about cryogenic preservation you will need these and they are the good ones.
And they must have been the good ones, because they were gone within the hour.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Snow Shrinks
Snow doesn’t always melt. Yesterday the air was full of snow. We moved through the woods in Nordic tracks on our skis, pushing our poles down and our feet forward, the snow icing our hats and collars and shoulders. Snow was the foreground and the background, a soft filter of white atoms we breathed and billowed.
Today the sky is the clear blue of a prayer, and the green and brown pine tree tops are lined with white and it all pops against that blue. The snow on the ground that yesterday was heaps of heavy, fine, soft, cold powder compacted by its weight, weightless in the air, but weighty enough to land and pile, ice dust on ice mote, fairy crystal on frozen bonded hydrogen and oxygen atom, drifts and deeps too high to walk in without effort yesterday – today it is all intact, but somehow all of it smaller. Acres and miles and counties of snow spread out untouched by rain or plow, now simply shallower, reduced in volume and depth. Between then and now the snow simply shrank.
This is a trick of air, something as simple as evaporation, but something as marvelous and undetectable in its transfiguration as a leaf opening. We are used to friction, to our contact and agitation and intervention to make things happen and change. Here, overnight, without fanfare or noise or movement beyond the invisible transfer of atoms, the snow departed. A kind of evanescence, a quiet transference, like a face with a smile you didn’t see appear; it breathes a kind of peace. In its insubstantial yet palpable change, there is an immortal assumption of power and movement very far beyond our human need for noise and impact to make a difference.
Today the sky is the clear blue of a prayer, and the green and brown pine tree tops are lined with white and it all pops against that blue. The snow on the ground that yesterday was heaps of heavy, fine, soft, cold powder compacted by its weight, weightless in the air, but weighty enough to land and pile, ice dust on ice mote, fairy crystal on frozen bonded hydrogen and oxygen atom, drifts and deeps too high to walk in without effort yesterday – today it is all intact, but somehow all of it smaller. Acres and miles and counties of snow spread out untouched by rain or plow, now simply shallower, reduced in volume and depth. Between then and now the snow simply shrank.
This is a trick of air, something as simple as evaporation, but something as marvelous and undetectable in its transfiguration as a leaf opening. We are used to friction, to our contact and agitation and intervention to make things happen and change. Here, overnight, without fanfare or noise or movement beyond the invisible transfer of atoms, the snow departed. A kind of evanescence, a quiet transference, like a face with a smile you didn’t see appear; it breathes a kind of peace. In its insubstantial yet palpable change, there is an immortal assumption of power and movement very far beyond our human need for noise and impact to make a difference.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Today for Lent
TUESDAY, MARCH 3
DEUTERONOMY 9:(1-3) 4-12
“And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly; they have turned aside quickly out of the way
which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molten image.”
Deuteronomy is where we hear of Godly order brought to bear on earthly chaos. Moses has been to the mountain and has brought down the Ten Commandments. He admonishes Israel for its shallow memory and lax attention to God’s will. Moses chides Israel for its pride and willingness to see its path paved by its own righteousness. He castigates Israel for corrupting God’s laws and worshipping a golden calf.
The parallels to our present world are so sharp we can cut ourselves on them. Like ancient Israel, we live in a time of flux. Like ancient Israel, we are full of ourselves, full of our versions of the truth and diversions from it. Like ancient Israel, we require the ordinances of God’s will to be held up in front of us on stone tablets. Like ancient Israel,we need to hear and revere and to obey God’s command, not ours. In our roiling time of governments, societies, and belief systems shifting in expediency, self-absorption, or from purposeless drift, we need God’s laws more than ever to correct us. Moses has thrown down the markers for our modern world.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help us order our lives in accord with your will, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
DEUTERONOMY 9:(1-3) 4-12
“And at the end of forty days and forty nights, the Lord gave me the two tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant. Then the Lord said to me, 'Arise, go down quickly from here; for your people whom you have brought from Egypt have acted corruptly; they have turned aside quickly out of the way
which I commanded them; they have made themselves a molten image.”
Deuteronomy is where we hear of Godly order brought to bear on earthly chaos. Moses has been to the mountain and has brought down the Ten Commandments. He admonishes Israel for its shallow memory and lax attention to God’s will. Moses chides Israel for its pride and willingness to see its path paved by its own righteousness. He castigates Israel for corrupting God’s laws and worshipping a golden calf.
The parallels to our present world are so sharp we can cut ourselves on them. Like ancient Israel, we live in a time of flux. Like ancient Israel, we are full of ourselves, full of our versions of the truth and diversions from it. Like ancient Israel, we require the ordinances of God’s will to be held up in front of us on stone tablets. Like ancient Israel,we need to hear and revere and to obey God’s command, not ours. In our roiling time of governments, societies, and belief systems shifting in expediency, self-absorption, or from purposeless drift, we need God’s laws more than ever to correct us. Moses has thrown down the markers for our modern world.
Prayer: Dear Lord, help us order our lives in accord with your will, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.
Thursday, February 26, 2009
The Sum of a Small Town
The grocery store, the liquor store, the fitness center, the dollar store, the photo and framing shop, the tax preparer, the hair salon, the karate dojo, the dry cleaner, the video store, the pet store, and the pizza restaurant. The post office and the satellite bank office. Across the street there was a restaurant, there was a gas station, there was an employment agency, there were some offices, there was another pizza place, there is yet another pizza place, another hair salon, another dry cleaner, another bank, a tile store, another restaurant that is closed, a dentist, a chiropractor, and some offices that might be open.
This is the swatch of commerce, plain enough workaday material of ordinary stripe. This is the strip heart of the small town. The cross heart is at the intersection with the gas station and the library. There, three churches are up and down the street from each other, more outposts than not. There are three cemeteries, none of them near a church. There is another gas station farther down the road.
There are three schools, divided for grades kindergarten through eight. There is a fire station, a police station, a town hall, and a town building. There are four federal mailboxes, two in front of the post office itself. There is a convenience store and there are six apple farms that I can think of. There are four seasonal flower and produce stands.
There is a main straight road and many right angled intersections, but there are also forks and curves and turns, and many intertwined loops. The interesting streets end at woods or turn on to unpaved roads. Those rough edges mark the town borders. The inside of the town is more opaque than smooth, and its interest is more inherent than evident. There is history and there is contemporaneity. There is longevity and there is transience. There is a middle ground that is sometimes hard to find.
This is the swatch of commerce, plain enough workaday material of ordinary stripe. This is the strip heart of the small town. The cross heart is at the intersection with the gas station and the library. There, three churches are up and down the street from each other, more outposts than not. There are three cemeteries, none of them near a church. There is another gas station farther down the road.
There are three schools, divided for grades kindergarten through eight. There is a fire station, a police station, a town hall, and a town building. There are four federal mailboxes, two in front of the post office itself. There is a convenience store and there are six apple farms that I can think of. There are four seasonal flower and produce stands.
There is a main straight road and many right angled intersections, but there are also forks and curves and turns, and many intertwined loops. The interesting streets end at woods or turn on to unpaved roads. Those rough edges mark the town borders. The inside of the town is more opaque than smooth, and its interest is more inherent than evident. There is history and there is contemporaneity. There is longevity and there is transience. There is a middle ground that is sometimes hard to find.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Air and Simple Gifts
And Yo Yo Ma’s wide smile and the seagulls high in the palest blue around the white Capitol dome, if you were watching on MSNBC. Twelve noon struck during this song, easily the most sublime moment of the inauguration, and one in which Barack Obama became president. This even before the oath so awkwardly offered by a man who surely had not voted for him, and so graciously received by this man who certainly had not voted for him to become Chief Justice. America!
But music carried the moment into time and into the space all around, an aural benediction that captured the power of the course of human events that followed. Words of power, words of pressure, words of grace. Hope and virtue; an air, and simple gifts.
But music carried the moment into time and into the space all around, an aural benediction that captured the power of the course of human events that followed. Words of power, words of pressure, words of grace. Hope and virtue; an air, and simple gifts.
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