Moving Up

Valentine's Day

2007-02-16T20:25:00.000-06:00

Okay, so it's a couple days late, but I'd like to point out that I'm guest-blogging again at Amy's blog, alog. The theme this month is Hallmark moments, so my post is especially treacly.

You may remember, by the way, that alog used to be a joint effort between Annie and Amy. Well, then Annie had to go and attempt to acquire nuclear weapons, and Amy had no choice but to impose sanctions. What followed were alternating periods of cold war and saber-rattling, followed by a drawn-out period of disengagement, leading eventually to a denouement of rapprochement.

Or something. Actually, I think they both just liked the idea of having her own blogs and not having to worry about accommodating the other's style.

Jamie's First Document

2007-02-13T22:21:00.000-06:00

You have to hand it to Bill Gates - Windows has become more and more user-friendly over the years. Exhibit A - this document, created by my 13-month-old son. He navigated around Internet Explorer, opened Notepad, typed a document, hit CRTL+S, and named the file, all on his own. The only help I provided was clicking "save" (he doesn't know how to use the mouse yet). Now, granted, it's not exactly Shakespeare, but it's a start. Now, given a thousand typewriters and a thousand years ...

Moving Up, Part Seven

2007-02-03T19:24:00.000-06:00

In the last installment of Moving Up, Avery began his planning for his street fair, enlisting the aid of Cecilia Chavez, a local baker, Kevin Butler, a former baseball player and owner of a neighborhood barbershop, and Henri Ferdinand, the owner/editor of a local weekly newspaper. He also befriended Jerome Williams, the father of one of his employees and an amateur historian, offering him a chance to present a lecture in the library.

*****

The next few weeks were intense ones at work. One of the student workers who Avery had hired had to quit due to a combination of family issues and school work, which left the department short-handed, at the same time that a large new delivery of books arrived. Sorting, tagging, and shelving those books consumed many man-hours of labor over those weeks, and Avery found himself putting in overtime almost every night. On the one hand, this left him frustrated with work and overly tired in the evenings. But on the other hand, it gave him something to occupy his time, since Kate had gone to Washington D.C. for a long research trip. She was staying with an old family friend. And though she called Avery daily, she was far too busy to talk at length. Avery's heavy workload thus helped to allay his boredom and loneliness.

Despite all of the work at the library, preparations for the festival were proceeding apace. Avery now had four food vendors, a ballfield for the softball game, three musical acts, and two major confirmed sponsors (as well as a handful of smaller ones). What he still didn't have was a permit for the fair. He had visited City Hall one afternoon to discuss a permit with the Commissioner of Parks and Recreation, but the Commissioner was out of town at a meeting. His secretary, trying to be helpful, had provided Avery with the full six-page permit application, as well as the seventeen-page instructions that went with it. The application was filled with questions about the event's impact on traffic, sanitation, crime, and almost every other facet of urban living, and it had to be signed off on by the heads of six different departments. Avery, overwhelmed, had put it to the side, hoping to be able to devote more time to it once things calmed down at work.

The first week of April, Avery was having a particularly rough day at work, and so he stepped out onto the dock to have a cigarette and get some fresh air. The weather that week was typical for Wisconsin in April - fluctuating between the last gasps of winter and the first hints of spring. That particular afternoon tended more towards the latter, as it was sunny and the temperature was inching up towards 60 degrees. As he smoked, Avery tilted his head back and felt the warm rays of sunlight on his face. The calming effects of the pleasant weather allowed Avery to organize his thoughts a bit. He realized that the only way to handle the onslaught at work was simply to slog through it, slow and steady. He decided that he wasn't going to work any more overtime, even if that meant that the work would end up taking a few more weeks to complete.

Having decided that he wasn't going to let work at the library dominate his time, Avery felt better about devoting time again to planning the festival. Finally giving serious though to the fair after all this time, he decided that he needed a strategy for approaching the permit. Up till he actually saw the application, Avery figured that his handful of contacts at City Hall would be sufficient to obtain the permit. But now he knew that he was going to need someone not just with the contacts, but with experience in obtaining the permit. Mulling it over, he suddenly realized that he hadn't ever called Martin Price, one of the organizers from the old festival who Kevin Butler had recommended.

Finishing his cigarette, Avery headed back to his office to search for Price's phone number. When Butler had called about having reserved the ballfield, he had given Avery Price's number. Now Avery just had to remember which little scrap of paper it was written on. After a short search, he found the number, and decided to call Price once he got home.

*****

Arriving at home that night, Avery found Rob in the living room with his girlfriend, Melinda.

"Hi, Avery."

"Hey, Rob."

"Hey, there was something that I wanted to talk to you about."

"Yeah, sure, no problem," Avery answered, walking into the kitchen. Rob followed.

"Hey, I spend a lot of time over at Melinda's place, and so, um ... Melinda and I decided that it's finally time to take the plunge and officially move in together."

Avery was a little surprised to here this. Not because it didn't make sense, but mostly because he never figured Rob would be decisive enough to actually move in with Melinda. "Oh, I see."

"Yeah, so ... I realize that this could make things hard for you guys, so I just wanted to give you some time to figure things out."

"When were you planning to move?"

"I was thinking I'd move out at the end of May."

Avery thought about it. Between his promotion (and raise) and Kate's grant money, money wasn't near so tight. Losing Rob's $300 a month wouldn't be fun, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, either. "Yeah, Rob, that's fine. I mean, we never had a proper lease anyhow, so two month's notice is more than fair."

"Good, good. I didn't want to make things hard for you and Kate. Anyway, Melinda and I are headed out. I'll see you tomorrow or whatever."

"Okay, see ya," Avery replied, as Rob and Melinda were already halfway out the frontdoor.

Avery started some water boiling for spaghetti. His eating habits had been pretty bad with Kate out of town - frozen pizza and fast food, mostly - so even something as basic as spaghetti seemed like a nice change. As the water boiled, Avery grabbed the cordless phone off the wall, fished Martin Price's number from his pocket, and dialed.

After five rings, Avery was about to hang up when he finally heard an answer.

"Marty Price's office!"

"Oh, hello, Mr. Price. My name is Avery Key."

"How can I help you, Mr. Key? Are you looking to buy or sell a house?" Price asked. Avery had forgotten that Price was a real estate agent.

"Oh, um ... neither, actually."

"Oh ... I see ..."

"Actually, I'm looking for some of your expertise regarding street fairs."

"Street fairs? I'm after that you must have the wrong person."

"Oh, really? I'm sorry." Avery felt slightly silly. "Kevin Butler had told me that you were one of the organizers of the Holton Street Festival and that you might be able to offer me some help."

"Oh ... Holton Street, hey? What makes you bring that up?"

"Well, I'm trying to revive the fair. I've already organized several sponsors and vendors, and recruited some friends to help."

"Really? Wow ..." There was a pause. "Wow, I never thought anyone would try to restart our fair."

"So you are one of the former organizers?"

"Yes, I am. But, boy, I haven't thought about that fair in about - oh, I don't know - eight years or so."

"Yeah, that sounds about right."

"So, what did you say you've done so far?"

"Well, I've got a couple big sponsors, a few food vendors, some live music, and a ballfield for the softball game."

"You don't have a permit yet?"

"Uh, no. I only just got the application. That's part of why I called you."

"I see. Well, first of all, you'd better get that application filed ASAP. It can take months to approve one of those things, so you don't want to get struck with you event scheduled and the permit still not approved."

"What about all the impact statements for traffic, crime, etc."

"Well, those look hard, but they're really not bad at all. Really, you just need to make it sound like you've put a little thought into these things and that you have some sort of plan to help. It doesn't even have to be a good plan. Just anything."

"See, but I wouldn't even know where to start."

"Hmm, well ... how did you say you knew of me?"

"Kevin Butler gave me your number."

"Huh." There was a pause. "Is he a good friend of yours?"

"Well ... I mean, I wouldn't say a good friend, but we are working together on this fair."

"Well, okay. Kevin and I go way back. If he's involved, I'd be happy to help you out with the application. Are you free evenings?"

"Yeah, definitely."

"Okay, I'll come by your place tomorrow and we'll got over the ins and outs of the form. I know what they're looking for on these things, and I still have some friends at City Hall to smooth over any problems."

"Wow, that would be great."

*****

The next evening, Price came by Avery's house. With Kate still out of town, Avery had asked Price to come over at 7 o'clock so that he'd have a little time to put together a decent dinner. Unfortunately, Avery's cooking skills left much to be desired, so instead, Price found a meal of Iranian take-out when he arrived promptly at 7.

"It's really good of you to come by."

"No problem, really. I'm a real estate broker, so I'm pretty used to working evenings and weekends with my clients. This isn't too different."

"So does that mean you'll be expecting a 6% cut?"

Price laughed, by didn't respond to Avery's joke. "Anyway, let's sit down and go over the details of this application."

Over a dinner of khoresht and lamb kebabs, Avery and Price discussed the precise details of the fair planning as it stood at that stage. Price took copious notes, even of details that Avery had barely remembered to mention. After an hour or so, Price seemed satisfied.

"Okay, it sounds like you've got most of the major issues ironed out. I think we'll be able to get this approved by Park & Rec." Price skimmed over his notes as he spoke. "I'll fill out the application in my office tomorrow and then I'll take it down to City Hall tomorrow afternoon. I have a couple condo showings in the Third Ward at 1pm, so that should work out well."

"Excellent. Thank you so much, Mr. Price."

"No problem. I have to admit that I was pretty skeptical when I first heard about that, but the more I hear, the more excited I get about it."

"Well, I'm glad that I have your blessing ... and your help."

"Sure," Price said, pausing. "Hey, there's one thing that you hadn't mentioned. What are you using as you staging area for the festival?"

"Staging area?"

"Yeah, you know - the place where you have ovens for the food vendors, prep and storage area for the musicians, and various and sundry other things like garbage cans, first aid kits, and the like."

"Oh ... boy, I hadn't really thought about that."

Price had already half gotten out of his chair preparing to leave, but now he sat back down. "Really? Wow ... um, a staging area is very important to a good festival. It's basically your headquarters."

"Yeah, I see ... I don't know how that never occurred to my before."

"Well, good thing that I'm here to help."

"Yeah." Avery was thinking. "Problem is that of the various shopkeepers who are participating, none of them have big enough store to accommodate anything like that. And my house is too far away to serve as a headquarters."

"Hmm." Price seemed deep in thought. He opened up and started flipping through his binder. "Let's see ... oh, here it is! Are you familiar with that large vacant storefront on the east side of Holton, near Center?"

"The one on the same block as The Hot Corner?"

"Yeah, that's the one. That place has been for sale for months now - close to a year, actually. I'm thinking that they might be interested in renting to you for a month or two just to get some income from the property. That place would be a great stage area."

"How much do you think something like that would run?"

"Well, with the place empty and unsold, it's costing them a ton of money. If you were able to put up enough to cover the taxes and utilities for the time you had it, I bet they'd go for it."

"With our sponsorships, I think we could swing that."

"Excellent. I'll give the listing agent a call tomorrow, and have her see if he clients would be interested in a short-term rental."

"Wow, thank you so much, Mr. Price."

"Alright, now I need to be running. Thank you for the dinner. I'll be in touch with you tomorrow afternoon."

*****

Price was good to his word. Avery received a call the following afternoon at ten past four. Price had filled out the permit application and already had the approval of four of the six necessary officials. And he hadn't been able to talk to the final two only because they were at an out-of-town conference. Price assured Avery that he'd have the entire application signed and the final approval granted by the middle of the next week. Avery, frankly, wasn't terribly concerned now that Price was handling this part of the process, and so told him to take his time.

With the permit nearly in-hand, Avery decided to go back to the Riverwest Beat's offices to meet with Henry Ferdinand and discuss the advertising for the festival. They had already picked the last Saturday in August (the weekend before Labor Day) as the date for the festival, because, Milwaukee being the City of Festivals, every other weekend was packed with at least one, and sometimes two, festivals. And though word-of-mouth had already spread the news of the impending return of the Holton Street Festival, Avery and Henry decided that serious advertising in the Beat and participation from local businesses was the only way to ensure a good turnout.
When Avery arrived at the Beat, it was already a quarter past six. All of the lights were out, but Avery noticed a newsboy leaving the building.

"Excuse me! Hold the door!"

"Oh, sure."

"Thank you. I'm here for a meeting with Mr. Ferdinand."

"Sure, no problem. Are you Avery?"

"Yes."

"Sure, he's back in his office, waiting for you."

"Hey, wait! Don't I know you?"

"Uh ... I don't think so."

"Yeah, you look familiar ... do you also work at a place on Holton?"

"Yeah, I work at the stationary station on Holton and Center."

"Right! Right, you're in Flamesnake."

"Oh, no. Not anymore. We broke up weeks ago."

"Oh, sorry to here that."

"Yeah, but we put together a new band with a new singer and drummer."

"What're you called now?"

"Good Behavior."

Avery chuckled. "Trying go more mainstream?"

"It's short for 'time off for good behavior.'"

"Oh, I see. What kind of music do you play now?"

"Y'know, alternative rock or whatever. Indie."

"Huh. Like who do you sound like."

"Oh, I don't know ... like, New Pornographers or whatever - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, the Smiths, R.E.M."

"Are you as good as them?" Avery asked.

"Well, we don't have a record or whatever, but yeah, I think we're pretty good."

"Cool. You still looking for a gig?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Cool. Here, give me a call," Avery said, handing the kid a business card, "and I'll give you more details."

"Awesome, man."

"Hey, what's your name?"

"Carlos de los Santos."

"Okay, Carlos, like I said, give me a call and I'll see about getting your band a chance to play at the street fair. Assuming you're still together at that point."

"Cool, man, thanks."

Avery headed inside and back into Henry's office. Henry was sitting with a cup of tea, reading over copy from several articles destined for the next issue. Other that Henry's office, all of the lights were out and the rest of the staff had left for the night

"Evening, Henry."

"Hello, Avery."

"So, I've got good news. I met Martin Price, and he's been helping with the planning."

"Marty? Hey, how's he doing?"

"Very well. He's a realtor now and appears to be doing pretty well for himself."

"Oh, good. He was really instrumental in organizing the original festival. I would have told you to look him up earlier, but I had heard that he moved to Minneapolis. I guess I heard wrong."

"Yeah, he's been really great was the whole process for getting the permit approved."

"Oh, that's really a bear. I once tried to throw a party for my staff and some of the neighbors - a small thing really, though it would have required closing down the alleyway. But God, City Hall was not having any of it. I spent weeks trying to get the application approved, and they just kept throwing up new roadblocks. I finally just gave up and held the party in the offices here."

"Yeah, I think without Marty's help I would be stuck that way too."

"So has the application actually been approved yet?"

"Not quite. But Marty said the middle of next week at the latest."

"Okay." Henry paused. "Well, if you've got the approval by Wednesday afternoon, I think we'll be able to get the advertisement into next week's issue - it goes to print Thursday morning. But if you don't have the approval, we'll have to bump it - it's illegal to advertise street fairs that don't have permits."

"Okay, then we should probably go over the wording and the layout for the ad."

"One step ahead of you." Henry pulled out several 12" x 14" full-page sheets, with possible wording and graphics. All of the sheets featured a rough sketch of people dancing. "I threw these together this afternoon."

"Did you do this art yourself?"

"Yeah, but these are just rough sketches. The final ones would look a lot better than this."

"Oh, no. Don't sell yourself short. These are really good." Avery examined the sheets carefully. "I especially like this one," he said, gesturing at the third of the four designs.

"What makes you pick that one?"

"I don't know." Avery perused the sheet. "The lettering is bold, but also fun. And the graphics are fun, too. It just says 'party' more than the others."

"Great. Good. Then we'll go with that one. I'll just finish the picture - make it a bit more polished."

"Actually, I don't think we need to change it a bit. I like the rough look of it - I wouldn't want it looking too slick," Avery explained. "Where'd you learn to draw like that?"

"When you're self-publishing a weekly newspaper, you learn to do a bit of everything."

Avery laughed. "Yeah, I guess so, huh?"

On his way out of the office, Avery's cell phone rang. It was an unfamiliar number, but the out-of-state area code gave him an idea of who it might be.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Ave. It's me."

"Hey, Kate. How are you tonight?"

"Good, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Well, the research isn't going quite as well as I had hoped. I'm having problems getting a hold of some of the documents that I need."

"Are they top-secret or something?"

"No, not at all - they should be public record. And I have all of my Freedom of Information Act forms completed. The Defense Department just won't turn them over."

"Hmm."

"Yeah, I just don't know who to talk to. My friend Sara works for Homeland Security, but she doesn't have any contacts at the Pentagon to help out." Kate paused. "Whatever happens, I think I'm going to be in D.C. for a while - longer than I expected. I already canceled my flight back."

"Yeah, I kinda figured," Avery said. He was already halfway home. "But, hey, have you considered our Congressman?"

"What about him?"

"Well, I don't know - I mean, you always hear stuff on the news about people getting their Congressman to solve this problem or that problem."

"What am I supposed to do, just call Gary Hofstra's office and say 'Hey, I'm one of your constituents - please help me out?'"

"Sure, why not?"

"You're so retarded," Kate said, deadpan.

"You are," Avery replied, laughing.

*****

Two weeks later, Avery found himself in the vacant storefront on Holton Street, along with Marty Price, Sheldon Herbert - the building's owner - and Cecilia Chavez - Esmerelda's daughter. Avery had brought Cecilia along because he needed her to verify if the building's kitchen was sufficient for her uses. The other food vendors for the festival were all businesses along Holton Street, and so had easy access to their own kitchens. The festival headquarters, therefore, would have to serve as the kitchen for Esmerelda's baked goods tent.

The building consisted of a large open room in the front and a spacious kitchen in the rear, accessible by two sets of double-doors. There was a bar along one side of the room, and in a corner near the kitchen was a counter that divided off a small area of the room where there were several electrical outlets and phone jacks. The building clearly had been a restaurant of some sort, and the corner area was likely where the cash register had been located. Avery surveyed the room and, doing some quick mental calculations, figured that it would be sufficient for their purposes. Assuming, of course, that the kitchen was up to the task.

"What sort of restaurant did you say this had been, Mr. Herbert?"

"It was an Italian Restaurant - Famiglia Rosselli's - so the ovens in the kitchen are all sufficient for making pizza, bread, lasagna, whatever. The works!"

Avery shot a glance at Cecilia, who was listening to the conversation quietly. He was trying to read from her face if Herbert's claims about the kitchen were even relevant to their needs. "Can we take a look at the kitchen, Mr. Herbert?"

"Sure, I'd be happy to show you."

"Actually, um ... actually, can Cecilia and I look at it alone?"

"Oh," Herbert paused. "Ah, sure, okay. I guess."

Avery nodded at Cecilia and they walked across the room into the kitchen. Immediately, Avery noticed that there was a rather foul smell coming from the sinks.

"Oh, god."

"It smells like there's something rancid down there," Cecilia said, pointing at one sink in particular. "They probably dumped grease down the drains after the restaurant was shut down."

"Is that a problem?" Avery asked.

"Well, yes."

"Well, I mean - big or small?"

"Depends. You ought to have Mr. Herbert get Roto-Rooter in here. It could be bad."

"Hmm." Avery surveyed the room further. "What about the refrigerators?"

"Well, they look pretty old. But otherwise ... well, I see no reason why they wouldn't work. I mean, there's nothing obviously wrong with them."

"Okay, that's good." Avery turned towards the ovens. "What about these? Do they live up to the billing?"

Cecilia examined them carefully. From what Avery could tell, they were fairly new. After a once-over, Cecilia looked back at Avery. "Only one way to find out how well they work." She turned the dial on the first oven to 500 degrees. There was a hiss of gas, and then a whoosh of flame. Opening the door, they could see the burners were all operating correctly. "Looks good."

Cecilia turned off the oven and walked with Avery back into the main room.

"Well, Mr. Key, how do you and your wife like the place?"

"Oh ... um ... she's not my wife."

"Sorry, sorry. Girlfriend, or, uh ... whatever."

"No, no. She's just a, um, business partner." Avery looked at Cecilia. She was blushing, and he felt his own face turning red, though he wasn't quite sure why. Maybe it was that Cecilia was his friend's daughter, and though he couldn't help but notice that she was quite pretty, there were so many things wrong with the thought of them being together. First and foremost, Avery was married, of course. But Cecilia was also twelve years younger than he was, and he had known her since she was fifteen. "No, I'm married. My wife is out of town."

"Oh, my apologies. Just thought it was a May-December thing." Avery glared back at Herbert. "May-October. May-June." Avery couldn't believe that Herbert was still digging this hole.

"Okay!" Marty Price suddenly interjected. "What sort of terms are we look at on this place?"

Herbert looked relieved. "Terms! Right. Um ... I'm just looking to cover my costs for the time you're here. So, I figured you pick up all the utility bills as well as the tax bill. So, we're looking at roughly $1,000 for the month."

"Okay. Does that sound good to you Avery?"

"Yes, I think that fits our budget just fine."

"About the sink?" Cecilia chimed in.

"Yes?"

"Well, you realize of course that the sink in the kitchen is going to need to be un-clogged. In its current condition, it's very likely to back-up as soon as we try to use it."

"Oh." Herbert was clearly caught off-guard by the question. He was likely not aware of the problem. "Well, we'll have to have that checked out. So, we'll include that in the bill as well."

"Mr. Herbert, you are the landlord, and we have not signed any lease as of yet, so I believe that is your responsibility to take care of," Cecilia said, sternly. Avery was surprised. "Such an obvious defect needs to be remedied before we even think about renting this building."

"Of course, Miss ..."

"Chavez."

"Right. Yes, of course, I'll take care of it."

"Then it's decided," Avery said. He was very glad that he had brought Cecilia along.

"I'll draw up the papers and send them along to Mr. Price here," Herbert said.

There were handshakes all over before Avery, Cecilia, and Marty left, Herbert staying behind to lock-up.

"I'm got a good feeling about this," Avery said. "I've really gotta thank you both for your help. I think this festival is going to be a real good thing for the community," Avery said, staring out at Holton Street and mentally picturing the street teeming with people from the neighborhood, listening to music, dancing, eating, and drinking.

Moving Up, Part Six

2007-01-26T22:06:00.000-06:00

When last we saw brave Mr. Key, he was embarking on a most quixotic task - to revive a long-dead street fair in his neighborhood. Will he be crowned with the laurels of success? Or will he be dashed on the rocks of failure? Will I use more overblown metaphors? You can only find out by reading on in Part Six of Moving Up.

*****

The following Monday morning, Avery woke up an hour and a half early, and walked over to Holton to catch the Number 14 bus. As he stood on the corner of Holton and Center, he surveyed the street in both directions. He could see what Henry had been talking about. This part of the neighborhood was far from run-down, and there were several business - a beauty parlor, two bars, a Persian restaurant - within sight. But there was also one large, vacant storefront, and another smaller one that was boarded up. This section of Holton could certainly use a little love.

After a few minutes, the bus arrived and Avery hopped on. It was about a twenty minute ride from Riverwest through Downtown and then down to Mitchell Street, where Avery was planning to pay a visit to his friend Esmerelda. Sebastian's comment the previous day about the pastries at the Holton Street Festival had gotten Avery thinking.

When he arrived at Esmerelda's, it was already mid-morning for Esmé, even though it was barely seven o'clock.

"Avery! Good morning!"

"Morning, Esmé!"

"What brings you here before work?"

"Well, I had to talk to you about something, and I couldn't do it on city time."

"Hmm, I don't remember that ever stopping you before," Esmerelda quipped.

"Yes, well, I've changed. I'm a manager now - I've gotta set a good example."

"Yeah, I heard about that - your name was in the paper and everything. Congratulations, Ave."

"Yeah, it's nice, mostly because I don't have to work for a horrible boss anymore. But the work is more interesting. Plus, more money." Avery smiled. "Oh! Which reminds me - I still owe you three dollars!" Avery reached into his wallet and pulled out a ten dollar bill. "Why don't you give me a dozen of whatever's fresh for my staff."

"Cecilia!" Esmé yelled to her daughter in the kitchen. "Grab a dozen of whatever's freshest for Avery!"

"Sí, mámá!"

Within a few seconds, Cecilia emerged from the back with a baker's dozen of some sort of Mexican pastry that Avery couldn't identify.

"These are a specialty from back home in Juarez," Esmé explained. "You'll like them."

Avery was so excited about the pastries that he nearly forgot the purpose of his visit. He was halfway to the door when something reminded him. "Oh, Jeez. Esmé, I nearly forgot why I came here in the first place."

"You mean my wonderful baking isn't enough?"

"No, your wonderful baking is the exact reason for my visit! Do you remember back when there used to be an annual street fair in Riverwest, on Holton?"

"Vaguely, I guess. Those neighborhood festivals come and go so often."

"Well, I thinking about trying to revive it. The problem is that most of the businesses that used to be involved aren't there anymore."

"Are you looking for me to sponsor this thing? Cause Ave, I don't have that kind of extra money."

"No, no, no. I'll hit up big, rich companies for sponsorships," he said with a smile. "No, what I'm looking for now are vendors. Did you ever hear of Ma Cherie?"

"Heard of it? Ave, that place was only the best bakery in town for years."

"Well, they used to be the vendor for baked goods at the festival - and they were one of the highlights of the fair."

"Are you asking me to replace Ma Cherie? Talk about a hard act to follow!" Avery could tell that Esmé was very skeptical. "Besides, who's going to run a vendor's tent? I've barely got the staff to run this one location as it is."

Avery noticed that Cecilia was listening intently. "Well, Esmé, I really think that it would be worth trying to work something out. I mean, if this thing is a success, you'd probably sell more in a single day at the fair than you'd sell in a typical weekend."

"Mámá, I think you should do it," Cecilia said, her voice barely a whisper.

"And who is going to run the tent, hija?"

"I will, mámá. I can do it, with some help from Carlos and Juan," she said, referring to her younger brothers. Esmé looked unconvinced. "Mámá, I can't work in your bakery forever. You know that I want to run my own bakery one day. This could be a chance to gain some great experience."

Esmerelda shot Avery a look. "Did you two cook-up this conspiracy together?" He wasn't sure if she was kidding or not.

"On my mother's grave, Esmé - no."

"Avery, I've met your mother. She's alive and well." Esmé was smiling now.

"Oh, my mistake."

"So, mámá, does that mean that I can do it?"

"Well ... I guess you're right. It would be a good experience."

"This is all assuming this thing comes together," Avery added, trying not to get Cecilia's hopes up.

"Okay, Cecilia. Okay, Avery. I'll do it."

"You're a wise woman, Esmé."

"We'll see about that."

Pastries in hand, Avery walked a block over to catch the Number 19 bus, which would get him back downtown closer to the library than the Number 14. As he walked in the thirty degree weather, he realized that the once piping hot pastries were rapidly cooling. Figuring it would be a waste to let them cool without know what a fresh one tasted like, Avery pulled one out and took a bite. "Oh my god this is good!" he said far too loudly to no one in particular. He was so enamored of the pastry that he nearly missed his bus.

*****

Later that week, Avery was sitting in his office pouring over some budget numbers (it was things like this that made middle management less bearable) when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hello. Is this Avery Key?"

"It is."

"This is Clay Shaw from Carver, Briggs & Henderson. Your wife gave me your number."

"Oh, okay. You know Kate?"

"Well, no. But I spoke to her this morning. She apparently is acquainted with one of our attorneys, Randall Weber."

Avery was confused. "I'm sorry, what is this about?"

"Your wife didn't tell you?"

"Uh, I guess not."

"Oh, I'm sorry. Let me explain. I work in the marketing department at Carver Briggs. Randy Weber told me that you were looking to organize a community festival this summer and that you were looking for sponsors."

"Oh, yes. That's correct."

"Well, my firm is always interested in sponsoring events in the community. We're looking for a festival where we could set up a booth, to try to makes some ties in the community, especially local businesses."

"Oh, okay. I think that would certainly be possible."

"Excellent. What other sort of sponsorship do you have at this point?"

Avery wasn't sure if he should try to fib a bit about the planning or not. As it was, he couldn't quite think up a plausible lie, so he decided that it was just best to go with honesty "Well, actually, you're the first." There was a pause at the other end. Avery started getting worried that he had blown a big chance.

"Mr. Key ... how far are you in the planning for this event?"

"Well, honestly ... I've, um ... well, I've talked to a few local businesses about being involved as vendors. And I've got a deal with the Riverwest Beat to publicize the event and to produce signs and flyers. But that's about it so far."

"Do you have permits?" Shaw asked, sounding unsure of how serious Avery was about the festival.

"Um ... no. I actually don't have the cash on hand for that. But I really don't foresee it being a problem - I have connections at City Hall."

"Well, Mr. Key, you'll need more than connections at City Hall to get the Department of Recreation to shut down a major street for a day."

Avery felt chastened, like a schoolteacher was scolding him. "Well, Mr. Shaw, I felt that the appropriate course of action was to first see about rounding up financial backing before committing to a permit. Also, without having vendors lined up, I wouldn't know how large a street closure would be necessary, or even which blocks to request." Avery could swear that he almost hear Shaw start to be convinced through the phone.

"Well, I see. It seems that you're further in your planning than I had realized."

"Yes, I've given this a fair amount of though," Avery said, bluffing a little. "Mr. Shaw, what I'm looking for at this time from your firm isn't a definite commitment of sponsorship, but a provisional one, contingent on my being about to recruit other vendors and sponsors."

The tone in Shaw's very was beginning to change. "Well, that is certainly reasonable. What sort of financial commitment were you looking for?"

Avery paused. He hadn't actually thought about a dollar amount. He tried to do some quick mental math, and arrived at a ballpark figure. "Five thousand dollars."

"Hmm."

Avery wasn't sure what that sound meant. "Mr. Shaw?"

"Oh, I'm sorry. I just wanted to check your request against our other marketing commitments this summer." There was another pause. "Yes, I think five thousand should be fine."

"Excellent," Avery said, breathing a sigh of relief and trying desperately to not let it be audible through the phone line. "I will get in touch with you within the next few weeks to let you know where the preparations stand."

"Sounds good."

"Thank you, Mr. Shaw. Have a good day."

"Thank you. Good-bye."

Avery hung up and practically jumped out of his seat and danced out into the main room. Sebastian was walking by at just that moment.

"Bastian! I've got great news!"

"What's that?"

"I think I've lined up a sponsor for our revival of the Holton Street Festival."

"Oh, that's wonderful. Do you think it will really happen?"

"I think so."

"That is very good. I have some friends who would like to participate, I think. They have a Afro-Caribbean drum band, and they are always looked for gigs around town."

"That sounds perfect." Avery was really starting to impress himself with how quickly this whole plan was coming together. "I'll need to give Henry Ferdinand a call later to let him know how things are progressing."

"Speaking of Henri, I believe that Dante and I have made a lot of progress in sorting through the back issues of the Beat." Sebastian led Avery over to the sorting area, pointing to the stacks of newspapers.

"Yeah? That's great."

"Henri appears to have been mistaken about the number of back issues that he had. Just from the piles we have sorted so far, we have found almost three-quarters of the issues from the last five years, and about half of the issues from the years before that."

"Great work, Sebastian."

"I even found some old articles that I wrote," Sebastian added, smiling and handing Avery an issue from 2001.
Avery took the paper and glanced over the article. It was a about a local businessman who had run for State Senate. Avery didn't recognize the man's name, so he had probably lost, possible even in the primary. But what struck him was the quality of the article. "Sebastian, you're a really good writer. What made you give this up?"

"Well, believe it or not, mon ami, being a reporter/secretary for a free local newspaper isn't the most lucrative position."

Avery laughed. "I guess not." He continued skimming the article a bit. "Still, this is really good, Bastian. You ought to write for the Journal," Avery said, referring to the major local daily, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

"Maybe in another life," Sebastian said. "For now, I think I'm looking for some more stable."

*****

The evening at closing time, Avery was heading out the backdoor onto the dock, when he noticed a man approaching who he didn't recognize. The man looked a bit lost.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I hope so. I'm looking for my son, Dante Williams."

"Oh, you're Dante's father? I've heard so much about you," Avery said, telling a white lie - truth is, Dante was pretty shy and didn't talk much about his family. "I'm Dante's manager, Avery Key." Avery extended his hand.

"Jerome Williams," Dante's father said, shaking Avery's hand.

"So I haven't seen you here before. Do you normally pick Dante up from work?"

"Most days his brother comes by, but he has an evening class at MATC on Wednesdays."

"Oh, okay."

"So is my son behaving himself?" Jerome asked half in jest.

"Yes, he's doing quite excellent. He's really a very thoughtful and hard-working young man. You and his mother can be quite proud."

"Well, thank you. But, actually, Dante's mother passed away when he was quite young."

"Oh ... I'm terribly sorry." Avery felt his face turning red with embarrassment. "I didn't mean ..."

"Really, it's okay. You didn't know."

There was an awkward silence for a moment. "So, Mr. Williams ... what do you do for a living?"

"Oh, I'm a docent - a griot - at the Black Holocaust Museum, and a pastor at the First Abyssinian Baptist Church."

"Oh, really? Do you have a degree in history?"

"Yes, from Tulane - my focus was on the era of the Underground Railroad and the Fugitive Slave Act."

"That's really a fascinating period."

"Did you study history as well?"

"No, I actually was an English major, but I never finished my degree."

"You should go back and finish - it's never too late. And I always teach my sons that education is the spring from which all of life's blessings flow."

"Certainly." Though he had considered it before and rejected the idea, Avery suddenly found himself pondering the idea of going back to school to finish his degree. "Maybe I will."

"That's one thing I love about working at the Museum - it gives me a chance to educate people from all backgrounds and all levels of education. It's surprising - or perhaps not - that even many very well-educated people know very little about the history of slavery and its legacy in the African-American community."

"I agree. It's really quite a ..." Avery paused, thinking.

"Quite a?" Jerome offered, trying to help Avery regain his train of thought.

"Oh, I sorry. I was just thinking." Avery paused again. "Would you be interested in giving a presentation here at the library?"

"A presentation?"

"Sure. Y'know, maybe a lecture with slides or something, covering the history of slavery, or maybe just the era that you're most comfortable with?"

"Well, that certainly could be worthwhile."

"I just ... well, it seems like there might be a lot of community interest in something like that. And we've got several medium-sized reading rooms upstairs that are available for public use."

"That sounds good. And maybe we could spotlight books in the library that pertain to the topic - to encourage people to read further."

Avery nodded. "Yeah ... I'll run this past my boss. He'd need to sign off on the use of a room, but I can't picture any objections."

At that point, Dante emerged from the backdoor. "Hey, Dad. Hey, Mr. Key."

"Hello, son."

"Hey, Dante," Avery said, before turning back to Jerome. "Well, it was certainly nice to meet you, Mr. Williams. I'll talk to my boss and get back to you." Avery pulled out a business card and handed it to Jerome.

"Thank you, Mr. Key. You can reach me at the Museum most days during the week," Jerome replied, handing Avery a card of his own.

"Well, you have a good evening Mr. Williams, Dante." Avery reached out and shook Jerome's hand before heading back inside to see if he could catch McGee before he left for the evening.

*****

Two Saturdays later, Avery found himself back on Holton, scoping out the location for the fair. There was a three-block section of the street where there were primarily businesses, with only a handful of houses. Avery figured that this was the only section of the street that he was likely to be able to secure a permit for - any others would be too big of an inconvenience for the residents. Avery had learned from back issues of the Riverwest Beat that the former Holton Street Festival had been a much larger affair, encompassing a six-block section of Holton, including several of the side streets.

Surveying his proposed festival grounds, Avery foresaw two main problems - first, securing the participation of the local businesses (or, at the least, their blessing to hold a fair that would undoubtedly disturb normal business patterns), and second, finding a location for the festival's Father-Son softball game. Avery considered himself a big baseball fan, so the softball game was, in his mind, an integral ingredient to the festival. It was, after all, the main participatory event that he had planned, since otherwise mostly the fair would consist of food and drink, music, and some basic games for the kids.

Avery decided to tackle these problems head-on, by approaching the various shop owners and trying to convince them to participate or at least not to protest his permit with City Hall. Walking down the east side of the street, the first two buildings contained a bar, which was not yet open, and a small empty storefront. Next was a small stationary store, but the owner wasn't working that day, and the 16-year-old kid behind the counter had no idea of how she might feel about a street fair. He, however, was willing to offer up his band to perform.

"What's your band called?" Avery asked.

"Flamesnake."

"Um ... what, uh, does that mean?"

"Uh, I dunno. Just sounds cool, I guess."

"Well, okay. Is your music family-friendly?"

"Um, well, like ... we're basically a thrash-metal band."

"So that's a no, hey?"

"Come on, man, you outta hear us play!"

"Well look, I might like your band okay, but I'm betting most of the neighbors might feel a little different."

"I guess. Whatever, man."

Avery suddenly felt very old, lecturing a teenager that his band's music was too loud, and not 'family-friendly,' whatever that meant. Still, he had a feeling that the City was unlikely to approve any street fair featuring Flamesnake, so he left and headed down the street to the next business, a barbershop called The Hot Corner. As he walked in, he noticed immediately a sign advertising haircuts for $7.50 - Avery was usually wary of haircuts this inexpensive, but the fact that all four chairs were filled convinced him that this place was different. The walls of the shop were covered in Brewers memorabilia, including several large signed pictures of several Brewers greats from the 1980s - Robin Yount, Cecil Cooper, Gorman Thomas, Paul Molitor - posing with the same young player. Turning his sights to the oldest of the barbers, a well-built middle-aged man, Avery realized that he was the player in the photo.

"Hey, you're Kevin Butler!" Avery shouted, louder than he had intended. "I used to have your rookie card."

"Sure am. What can I do you for? If you're here for a cut, you'll have to wait your turn."

"Oh, no sir."

"Okay, then you won't mind if I finish this young man's cut before I get to you?"

"Oh, no problem. My apologies." Avery was embarrassed at being so star-struck by a guy who had been a back-up third baseman for the Brewers for a couple seasons in the mid-80s. But that was the team he had grown up following, and for years there he had obsessively poured over the box scores in the paper and collected all of the cards for the players, to the point where he felt like he knew all of the members of those teams. Avery often referred to the Brewers loss in the 1982 World Series as the day his "childhood ended."

After a few minutes, Butler finished the haircut. From what Avery could tell, he was a much better barber than ballplayer. Butler meticulously cleaned the hair clippings from the chair and swept the floor before walking over to where Avery was standing.

"So, what can I do for you?"

"First, I wanted to say that it's a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Butler. I've been a Brewers fan my whole life, and you're the first player I've ever had the opportunity to meet." Avery reached out and shook Butler's hand. "I just can't believe I've lived in this neighborhood for years now without realizing that you owned this barbershop."

"Well, I try to keep things relatively low-key. I bought this shop years twenty ago with savings from my ballplaying days. Business has had its ups and downs, but its been steady enough that I've got the mortgage paid off now, so I'm happy. Certainly panned out better than my baseball career." Butler smiled.

"I still remember seeing your first career homerun on TV in my parents' basement."

"Only career homerun," Butler clarified. "Yeah, I remember that day, too. It was a home game at old County Stadium. I actually cried when they tore that place down. I had so many memories of that place - not just playing there myself, but watching Hank Aaron play, too. He was my hero growing up. And I only ended up 754 homers short of his record."

Avery and Butler both laughed. Just then, Avery noticed another man step into the shop.

"I'll be right with you, Doug," Butler said.

"Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Butler. I don't mean to keep you from your business. Let me get to the point of visit quickly. I'm trying to revive the old Holton Street Festival. I think it would be really good for the neighborhood, both for a sense of community, and for bringing some more business into the area. I wanted to see if you would be willing to support my plan, or possibly even participate."

"Oh, young man, I remember the old festival. That used to be a real good time. Are any of the old crew involved?"

"Well, I'm pretty much starting from scratch."

"Okay, hmm ... you should definitely get in touch with Martin Price. He's a real estate agent now, but he used to be a social worker and community activist. He was one of the organizers of the original festival."

"Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Butler."

"Say, are you planning to restart the old softball game, too?"

"I was, in fact."

"What field were you going to use?"

"Uh, I hadn't figured that out yet."

"Well, there's a ballfield over at St. Matthew's on Pierce. I know the athletic director over there, and I'd be happy to talk to him for you."

"Wow, that would be really great."

"I only have one request." Avery paused, a little worried at what it might be. "Can I manage one of the teams?"

Avery smiled. "Yes, yes, of course." He paused. "But I'm not sure we can let you play. I think you might feast on slow-pitch softball pitching."

Butler laughed. "Hehe, you're probably right. Well, it was good to talk to you, young man, but I've got to get back to work."

"Thank you so much, Mr. Butler," Avery said, handing him a business card.

"Sure. I'll let you know how things pan out with the field. And don't forget to give Martin Price a call."

"Sure thing." They shook hands and Avery headed out and back down the street, very pleased at how this meeting had gone. The next business he set his sights on was the Iranian restaurant on the next block, which he had seen two weeks earlier. The restaurant wasn't yet open for lunch, but by chance, Avery caught the owner as he was arriving to start setting up.

"Excuse me, sir?"

"Yes?"

"Do you work here?" Avery asked, feeling a little foolish, since the man was unlocking the door.

"Yes, I'm the owner."

"Oh, excellent. Hi, my name is Avery Key and I'm trying to organize a revival of the Holton Street Festival this summer. I was planning to ..."

"I'm sorry, I'm very busy. What do you want?"

Avery was a little taken aback by the man's brusque retort. "Oh ... of course. I'm trying to revive the fair, and basically I just wanted to know if you would be willing to participate or if you have an objections."

The man seemed slightly angry. "Yes, yes, I have objections! This fair, what will this do to my business? All of these people around, but none of them coming into my restaurant."

"Well, but what about if you were one of the vendors?"

"Oh, and I suppose that you would then want me to pay you a fee to sell food in the street in front of my own restaurant? What do you want? Twenty percent? Thirty percent? Maybe fifty percent?"

"Oh, no, no, Mr., um ..."

"Rahmanian. My name is Fareed Rahmanian."

"Mr. Rahmanian, I have every intention of making sure that the vendors at this fair make money. I was expecting only ten percent - after costs - to help cover the expenses of organizing the fair."

Rahmanian squinted at Avery, sizing him up. Avery was unsure of what his reaction might be. "You sound like a fair man. I will consider your offer."

"Thank you, Mr. Rahmanian. Please, don't let me keep you any longer." Avery reached out to shake his hand and give him a business card. Strangely, Avery was finding a lot more use for the cards in non-official functions.

Heading down the street, Avery was delighted that his efforts so far had been so successful. At this rate, he was beginning to have hope that he might be able to pull this thing off.

Moving Up, Part Five

2007-01-17T19:47:00.000-06:00

In fictional Milwaukee, yesterday was a big day for Avery - he had to make his first personnel decisions, letting go of half his staff (with some ugliness to go along with it), and thus leaving himself with several positions to fill. Kate, meanwhile, found out that her grant proposal for her dissertation had been accepted, and so she and Avery decided to go out for a night on the town to celebrate.

*****

The next afternoon, Avery found himself walking down Wells St. from the Main Library to City Hall. He ran the idea of the Students-to-Work program by McGee, who liked the plan - "Sounds like your wife's the one with brains, hey?" were his exact words - and told him to talk to the Library Commissioner. At first, Avery figured he'd just call, but Tony convinced him that a face-to-face visit would probably be more effective. Though he hated to leave the department short-staffed, he figured that if he headed over right after lunch, he could be back before the late afternoon rush.

Arriving at City Hall, he negotiated his way around the construction work and scaffolding surrounding the exterior of the building and headed inside and up four flights of stairs to the Office of the Library Commissioner, Lionel Tate.

Inside of the Commissioner's office, Avery noticed several people seated in a small waiting area, including some he recognized as local newscasters. Others, judging from their notebooks and cell phones, he guessed were reporters from various newspapers. Trying hard to be inconspicuous, Avery walked up to the reception desk.

"Excuse me?"

"Yes?" the receptionist answered, a little to loud.

"I'm here to see Commissioner Tate."

"And which newspaper are you from?" she asked brusquely.

"I, um," Avery lowered his voice, "I'm not a reporter. I work at the Main Library, in the Restocking Department." His voice had reduced to a whisper by the end.

"Young man, you're going to have to speak up."

Avery turned to glance at the reporters. At least a couple of them had taken notice of him. "I'm the manager of the Restocking Department at the Main Branch," he said loud enough to be audible to everyone in the small waiting room.

"Oh, I see. You'll have to wait a moment. Mr. Tate will see you next."

Avery turned to sit down, but realized there were no seats. Instead, he found an unclaimed spot of wall to lean against. The man standing next to him eyed him suspiciously.

"Do you mind if I ask you a few questions?"

"I, um ... I don't really think I have time now." Avery chided himself silently for not thinking of a better excuse. Time, of course, was something he had plenty of at the moment. And so for the next few minutes he stood next to the reporter, silently - too busy to speak.

"Young man!" the receptionist yelled. "Mr. Tate will see you now."

Avery headed into Tate's office as a reporter and cameraman from Channel 58 were heading out.

"Afternoon, Mr. ... um ..."

"Key."

"Key. Right. Of course." Tate shuffled some papers around on his desk. "McGee didn't mention that you were stopping by."

"He didn't?"

"No. We were just talking and he didn't mention it. I prefer to conduct most business over the phone, after all," Tate explained as he took a seat behind his desk.

Avery felt himself getting red in the face, embarrassed that he had disturbed Tate with a face-to-face meeting.

"Oh, of course. Um ... so I can't believe that there are still so many reporters covering the whole, uh, scandal." Avery winced a little at the sound of that last word.

"Yes, well ... CNN somehow picked up on the story and it's become national news. You'd think that with the election, this would have been forgotten."

"You'd think, wouldn't you?" Avery echoed.

Tate started looking at some papers impatiently. "Is there something I can do for you, Key?"

"Um, yes sir."

"And ... what would that be?"

"Well, my department, due to the recent incident, is severely short-staffed, and the idea occurred to me of using kids from the Students-to-Work program to help fill the gap. I think their youth and enthusiasm would be ..."

"Yeah, that sounds good. Do it."

"Um, excuse me?"

"I said it sounds like a good idea. Do it."

"Oh, I just figured that you'd want to hear more about ..."

"Boy, you really don't know much about me, do you? Where did McGee find you, anyway?"
Tate asked. Avery wasn't sure if it was a rhetorical question. "Look, kid - I agree that your idea is worth a shot. Try it out, and if it doesn't work, we'll switch to something else."

Chapter 3

"Do you ever get the sensation that you're living the same day over and over and over again?" Tony asked Avery.

"What?"

"Y'know, you wake up every morning to the same thing on the radio, the same weather, the same everything. And you just wanna get out of that loop so badly."

"Tony, what are you talking about? Are you saying things at work are boring?"

"Oh, Jeez, Ave! It's Groundhog Day!" Avery just stared at Tony. "Y'know, the movie? Groundhog Day? Bill Murray? Please tell me you get what I'm talking about."

"What? I don't ... oh! Oh, I get it!" Avery chucked. "That's, uh, that's funny."

"Jokes are a lot better if you don't have to explain them," Tony said, shaking his head.

"Look, sorry! That's a old movie. I didn't remember."

"Morning, gentlemen!" Harriet announced as she arrived. "Looks like another six weeks of winter!"

"Oh, bummer," Tony said. "Ave, if this keeps up, we're going to need to get more snow shovels to keep the dock clear."

"Well, I like the snow, personally," Harriet said. "It's so beautiful and peaceful."

"Yeah, well, then next time you can help us shovel all the beauty and peace," Tony joked.

Avery had now been the manager of the department for two and a half months, and things were beginning to get back into a good working order. The new barcode scanners were working very well, and Avery had invested some of the budget into much needed repairs and upgrades to the vans. There were still some funds remaining, and so he had Annabel looking into other potential technology upgrades. And Tony was taking automotive repair courses at the Milwaukee Area Technical College (a/k/a MATC) so that the department would have someone on hand to handle minor repairs on the van, rather than having to have the work done by outside companies.

As for personnel, Avery had so far hired four students from the Mayor's program - since they could each only work part-time, he was able to get them for the price of two regular full-time employees. So far, he didn't have any complaints. All four of the students were hard working and excited about the experience. The only downside was that two of them had already been excepted to colleges out-of-state, so Avery was already having to think about how to replace them. In addition, Avery had hired two full-time employees, Sebastian and Helen. Sebastian was an acquaintance of Avery's, who had coincidentally applied for the job. He was a refugee from Haiti, where he had worked as a clerk in a government ministry until the overthrow of President Aristide. He eventually ended up in Milwaukee in the mid-1990s, settling in Riverwest. Avery knew him from seeing each other at various events in the neighborhood. He fit right in at the library - he was very organized, and he was trilingual in French, English, and Spanish, which meant that he was able to participate in a lot of community outreach work in the Latino community.

Sebastian had suggested that Avery talk to a man named Henry Ferdinand, who was the editor of the Riverwest Beat, a free weekly community newspaper covering Riverwest and the Eastside. Sebastian had worked at the paper for a time, and thought that a partnership between the paper and the library would be beneficial for both. McGee liked the idea and told Avery to look into it, so this afternoon Avery and Sebastian were headed over to the Beat's office on Holton St. to talk to Ferdinand.

*****

"Great to see you Sebastian!" Ferdinand intoned enthusiastically, taking Sebastian's hand.

"Bonjour, mon ami!"

"And you must be Mr. Key."

"Indeed I am, but you can call me Avery. Good you meet you, Mr. Ferdinand." Avery reached out and shook Ferdinand's hand.

"Henry, please. This is an informal place of business, after all." Henry waved his hand around, gesturing at the hundreds of newspaper clippings posted in his office, which nearly composed newsprint wallpaper. Stacks of papers, some appearing to be rather old, sat around the room, and Henry's desk was a mess of post-its, pens, and discarded chewing gum wrappers. On the corner of the desk sat a dictaphone.

"No computer?" Avery asked.

"Naw, I'm a card-carrying Luddite. I type everything on Emilia here," Henry answered, pointing to a typewriter on a rickety stand in the corner. "Or I just dictate it and hand it off to one of the kids in the office."

"That was me when I first came to Milwaukee," Sebastian explained. Avery looked a little surprised. "Ninety words a minute," Sebastian said, smiling.

"So, to what do I owe the honor of your visit?" Henry asked.

"Well," Avery started, "as you're probably aware of, the Main Library's periodicals department keeps a number of small local papers in the collection. While we've been carrying the Beat regularly for about four years now, our back-issue collection is pretty spotty."

"You two boys came out here just to ask me about some back issues?"

"Well, my wife is a graduate student at UWM, so I've developed an appreciation for primary source materials, and I think it's important that we have as many issues of your paper as possible."

"Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I don't really have much of a back issue collection here - mostly just random issues now and again where we had extra copies at the end of the week."

"Oh, that's too bad. Hmm."

"But you're welcome to take whatever I do have lying around. As you've probably noticed, my archiving skills are a bit lacking."

"Some things never change, non?" Sebastian added.

Avery surveyed the piles of papers. "Well, if you don't mind, we certainly have room in the van for these papers - we could take them today."

"Sure, sure. Help yourself."

Avery walked over to one of the nearest piles. The issue on top was dated August 4th, 1990. The lead story read HOLTON STREET FEST A SUCCESS, and featured a large photo of a jubilant crowd lining Holton, watching a parade of floats. "In Milwaukee, the city of festivals, even a neighborhood block party is a massive undertaking," the article began.

"Boy, I don't even remember there being a Holton Street Festival."

"That's probably because there hasn't been one in, oh, 7 or 8 years now," Henry explained.

"Really? That's a shame."

"Well, with Summerfest and State Fair and all the Ethnic festivals, there really wasn't much call after a while for another neighborhood festival. Plus, several of the shops on Holton that had played a big part in the celebration closed."

"Like which?"

"Oh, Houlihan's used to run the beer tent. And the sporting goods store provided equipment for the Father-and-Son softball game."

"And don't forget Ma Cherie!" Sebastian added. "They had the best French pastries. To die for."

"Yeah, but Ma Cherie eventually went out of business, and Ken Houlihan retired to Florida. People just sorta lost interest," Henry continued.

"What do you think it would take to get something like that up and running again?" Avery asked.

"Sponsors, for one. And vendors, for another," Henry answered. "Why, do you have an idea?"

"Well, not really." Avery was thinking. "Well ... well maybe." Avery turned his attention back to the pile of newspapers. "We really should be getting these back to the library, so that we can start sorting through them."

"Excellent. Just get in touch with me if you have any ideas about the festival."

"Sure thing."

Avery and Sebastian each grabbed a large stack of papers and headed out to the van.

*****

"Kate?"

"I'm in the bathroom!" she answered, her voice muffled. Avery walked into the kitchen and dropped his keys on the counter as Kate emerged dressed in a bathrobe. Her hair was still wet from her shower.

"How was your day?"

"Ugh, not so good," Kate grunted.

"Sounds like it."

"I was working all morning and afternoon trying to reconcile deployment figured from different sources, and they just weren't adding up. Finally, I realized that it was a quarter past five and I hadn't even gotten dressed or showered yet."

"You feel better now?"

"Yeah, a nice hot shower can be so refreshing."

Avery leaned forward and kissed her. "Hey, you know that free local paper?"

"Yeah, the Riverwest Beat, right?"

"Right. I met the editor today - Henry Ferdinand. He's a real friendly guy."

"How'd you meet him?"

"Oh, we had to go by their offices to get some back issues for the library's collection."

"Oh, excellent. Those are great research materials."

Avery smiled. "Oh, I know you so well."

"What?" Kate asked, half-defensively.

"Nothing." Avery was still smiling. "Anyway, we got to talking about the now-defunct Holton Street Festival."

"I didn't even know that existed."

"Yeah, it was apparently big for a while. Anyway, I'm thinking that we could restart it."

"Excuse me?"

"I think we could get it restarted. With a couple sponsors and some vendors, the whole thing could be a success, I think. I mean, it doesn't have to be a huge deal - just something for folks in the neighborhood."

"Okay, but who do you expect to pony up cash for something like that?"

"Well, I was thinking - that attorney you got to help Harriet, he works at one of the big firms, hey?"

"Yeah - Carver, Briggs & Henderson."

"Well, I'm sure the firm gives money to local groups, right?"

"Yeah, probably."

"Well, maybe you can see if he could help out."

"Okay, but don't you need permits and stuff for a street fair?"

"Well, sure. But I've got plenty of contacts in City Hall - I'm sure I could get something like this approved."

"I suppose." Kate paused.

"What?"

"Well ... I don't know. You really think this could work?"

"Sure it could! I mean, if we start canvassing the neighborhood, talking to some of the business people and such, I'm sure we could get this thing off the ground. And Henry would certainly promote it, I'd think."

"Hmm ... look at you. From bookmobile driver to festival promoter in just three short months."

Avery laughed.

Synergy!

2007-01-17T12:57:00.000-06:00

I'm guest-blogging over at alog (the joint blog of Annie and her best friend Amy), answering the Question of the Month "What are you optimistic about?" My answer involves Salma Hayek's hotness, er ... that is, the cultural assimilation of Latin American immigrants.

The Music Project is DEAD!

2007-01-11T22:32:00.000-06:00

Or something. Annie inspired me to start this project, and she basically gave up after about three posts. We both then inspired Adam, and he's currently at twenty posts and counting. Now, you could say that Adam has more stick-to-it-iveness than Annie and I, but I prefer to think of it as him having way too much free time. I mean, if he ever finishes his collection, I'd be mondo-impressed, but sorta mondo-impressed the way you'd be if someone ate fifty eggs in front of you. It's a I-couldn't-have-done-that-but-I'm-not-sure-why-anyone-would-bother kind of impressed.

Anyway, perhaps one day I'll restart the project (unlikely), but for now, I'll devote this blog to the serialized version of Moving Up.

Statis Pro Baseball

2007-01-11T22:24:00.000-06:00

There was no Wikipedia entry for Statis Pro Baseball. I have now remedied this grave injustice. You may gaze upon my mighty work here.

Also, today is my son's first birthday. He is the greatest thing to come into my life since Statis Pro Baseball.

Moving Up, Part Four

2007-01-03T20:49:00.000-06:00

Ack! It's been two weeks since the last installment of Moving Up! And didn't I promised weekly installments? No, actually, I did not. Besides, this is a free online novel, and you get what you pay for. No, I mean, never look a gift horse in the mouth. Or, no ... beggars can't be choosers. Or ... well, dammit, there are lots of clichés appropriate to this situation. Pick one.

Anyway, when we last saw Avery, he went in to interview for the position of manager of the restocking department at the Main Library. The interviewer was his old boss McGee - now the head of the Library - who, after giving Avery a bit of a hard time, hired him on the spot.

*****

"I never liked that Maxine. I knew from the start that she was no good," McGee intoned, pacing his office and holding a thick manila file. He was even more imposing standing up than he was behind the desk. Avery was sitting in a too-small chair in front of the desk - a different chair than he had sat in the previous morning. Had McGee switched the chair out to make him less comfortable?

"Well, no one on the staff liked her, either."

"No one on my staff, maybe, kid. But after three years she'd filled her cronies in almost every position. And that's the biggest problem we've got. Those people downstairs aren't going to be loyal to you, and they sure as hell ain't gonna be able to work well enough to get this place running the way I want it to."

"What are you getting at?"

"New blood, kid." McGee coughed and wheezed a bit. "The police took care of the first step in clearing this place out, but I'm going to do the second part. We've got far too many people here who floated in on a corrupt cloud, and we gotta do some housecleaning." Avery winced at the mixed metaphor.

"As it is, sir, we're short staffed in restocking. I really can't afford to have my staff reduced any further."

"You can't afford not to, you mean!" McGee bellowed. "Dammit, kid! You'd be better off with one good, honest person than a stadium full of incompetents and thieves!" McGee was pounding on the desk. Avery worried that people in the hall were probably wondering what was going on in the office.

McGee threw the manila folder down on the desk. It was marked Personnel. "Kid, you've got eleven people in your department right now. Wanda, Stacy, and Carl are goners. That leaves you with eight. I want that down to six. From there, we'll rebuild."

"Wait, wait ... six people? I'm telling you, the department can't be run on that."

McGee shook his head. "It doesn't have to be, kid. Dammit, are you even listening?"

Avery stared back at McGee, trying to follow what the old man was saying. This being his first management meeting, things seemed to be going very fast. "Okay, six." He paused. "Who's left?"

"Anthony, Julio, Desmond, Harriet, Chandler, Annabel, and Sean."

"That's only seven."

"You're the eighth, kid. Did you forget your coffee this morning or something?"

Avery chuckled. "No sir."

"Good," McGee said, and then lowered his voice, "cause we've got some work to do."

Avery picked up the department roster sheet from the file and stared at the names. Eight of the names, including Maxine and Leonard, had been crossed out in black already. Wanda, Stacy, and Carl were struck through in red ink. Avery picked up a pencil, and starting chewing on the end while reading through the list. He couldn't very well fire Tony or Harriet - they were his friends. But, of course, that wasn't fair to the others that his friends should get special treatment. Avery mulled it over in his head - no, he couldn't fire Tony or Harriet because they were good workers. He knew them, he knew well how they worked. They deserved to stay. He took the pencil and made a little check mark next to their names.

"Keeping your friends, hey?" McGee asked.

"Yes."

"You sure about that? Sure you're not playing favorites?"

"I'm sure. They're good workers."

"You trust yourself on this?"

"I do. Do you?"

McGee paused, squinting and staring back at Avery. "Yeah, I do."

"Good."

Avery tried to play things cool, but on the inside his stomach was twisted in knots. He had just made his first managerial decision, and old man McGee agreed with him. Of course, that still left five people, of which we could only keep three. His eyes scanned the names over and over, as if hoping that the answer would just jump off the page at him. Instead, the letters all just started to blend together. He was trying to think through this logically, but how do you compare people? This wasn't mathematics, there was no obviously correct answer. He stared harder and harder at the sheet, finally closing his eyes in frustration.

"Chandler," Avery finally said.

"Chandler?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"He's good with the stacks. He's fast and accurate. But his attendance stinks. He's late all the time. I can't be stuck wondering where my employees are when they're supposed to be at work."

"Fair enough."

Avery returned to the sheet. Four names left. "Sean," he said, much faster than last time.

"Really?" McGee said, sounding honestly surprised. "Why?"

"He just isn't dedicated to this job. He's always talking about how he'd rather work someplace else."

"Then I guess this is his chance," McGee snorted.

Avery crossed out Sean and Chandler on the list and checked next to Julio, Desmond, and Annabel. So, this was his department. It seemed tiny (and it was - less than a third of the previous group).

"Alright, kid. I'm going to call Sean, Chandler, and the others up here at the end of the day to let them know what we've decided."

"No."

"No?"

"No, I should be the one to tell them." Avery paused. "It was my decision. I should be the one to tell them."

"That's good, kid. That's good. See, this is what I knew you had," McGee said, pointing a thick finger at Avery's chest. "Now, you've gotta rebuild this department. Here's the bad news - I'm only letting you have twelve people down there. Maxine let that department get bloated with extra people. You need to fix that."

"What's the good news?"

"The good news is that now that the supervisor isn't embezzling funds, you'll actually have enough money to pay these people decently and still have enough for some technology upgrades."

"Barcode scanners. We need new barcode scanners desperately. The old models are clunky and heavy, and the interface sucks."

"Okay."

"Beyond that, I'll need time to see where we can best improve. Can I get back to you in say, a month?"

"Sure, kid. Take your time. The money ain't going anywhere this time." McGee laughed.

"Now, I need to get back downstairs. I need to let me people know what's going on."

"You do that, kid."

Avery stood up to leave, but he paused as he got to the door. "I have to ask. Would you have done the same thing?"

McGee smiled. "Here's the thing, kid - you own this decision. It don't matter what I would have done." Avery started to look a bit ill. "But I'm behind you one hundred percent."
Avery nodded his head and left.

*****

Avery headed down three flights of stairs to the restocking department. He was walking far faster than usual, and nearly slipped on the old marble steps, worn by decades of use. He was nervous about having to fire five people. This was something he had never done before - naturally, since he'd never been in a managerial position before - but more importantly, it was something he didn't realize that he would be expected to do, especially not this soon. With the department already short-staffed, he figured that he'd shortly be adding people, not subtracting. Most importantly, he had no idea how to go about firing people who until the previous day had been his co-workers, not his subordinates. He had a feeling this wasn't going to go well.

When he arrived downstairs, he was immediately met by Sean. "Hey, Key! I need to talk to you. There's a lot of rumors flying around here, and I need to know where I stand."

Well, there it was - Avery had wanted to wait till the end of the day, but now the issue was presenting itself front and center.

"Fine, Sean. Meet me in my office in five minutes," Avery said, trying to buy a little time.

"No, I want to talk about this now," Sean said, positioning himself in Avery's path. "Why can't we discuss this now?"

"Okay, fine. Let's discuss this now." Avery looked Sean straight in the eyes and took a deep breath. He had never realized before just how tall Sean was. "You're fired."

Avery wished that he could have recorded the look on Sean's face for posterity. Not because he thought that someone looking crushed by bad news was funny, but because it was so much better than the reaction that immediately followed.

"What!" Sean barked, much louder than anyone usually spoke in the department (this was a library, after all). "Who the hell do you think you are, Key! Yesterday morning you were just the little pissant who drove the bookmobile, and now you think you're some bigshot, hey?"

"I don't think anything, Sean. I'm the manager now, and I've made this decision."

"Oh, look! The little puppet can talk!" Sean yelled. "Who's pulling your strings, Pinocchio?"

Avery chuckled, which wasn't really the best idea.

"What the hell are you laughing at, huh? You think this is funny? This is my life!"

"Okay, Sean. Just calm down."

"Don't you tell me what to do, asshole!"

A crowd had started to gather. Avery suddenly felt trapped. Sean was yelling, and several of the other employees were shouting questions, trying to figure out what was going on.

"Okay, that's enough," Avery said, his very low but firm. The shouting continued. "I said enough!" His shout caught everyone by surprise. He turned and glared at the crowd and Sean.

"Sean and I are having a private conversation, and we are going to continue it in my office. The rest of you should get back to work."

Avery stalked off towards his office, and no one followed. He strode inside and closed the door. Once inside, he loosened his tie and rolled his sleeves. There was a knock on the door.

"Come in."

It was Sean. He still looked angry.

"Have a seat, Sean," Avery said, motioning towards the chair. Avery sat down. "I don't have good news for you, Sean, but I'd like to discuss this in a more professional manner."

Sean looked a bit chastened. He took the seat Avery had offered.

"Sean, I have made the decision to let you go."

"Why? What the hell ...!" Sean started, but caught himself. There was a silence for several seconds. "Why am I being fired."

"I need people who come to work everyday and want to work here - who see what we do here as important."

"Oh, Jeez, Avery! We restock shelves at the friggin' library!"

"See, that's what I'm talking about!" Avery said with greater force than he intended. "You may see this as just restocking shelves, but I see this as providing an important public service."

Avery could see that Sean wasn't buying it, but he continued anyway, for his sake as much as Sean's. "Without us, the library doesn't work - we're just as crucial to it's functioning as the librarians, the docents, and the archivists. Without us, this place ceases to function. Now, maybe that's not something you care about, but it's something that I care about a great deal. And if you're not going to help me, there's no reason for you to stick around."

Sean was silent for a moment. Avery began to think that maybe he had gotten his point around.

"That's a lot of horseshit." Or perhaps he had not.

Sean stood up and marched out of the room, slamming Avery's door and heading right out the backdoor onto the dock. After a moment, Avery opened the door and looked out at the assembled workers, who were now all standing around the sorting table, waiting for him to say something.

"Chandler, I'd like to see you in my office."

The rest of the firings went far smoother than Sean's. Avery didn't relish the task, but he tried to explain to each person the reasons for their being let go, and to help them understand that it wasn't personal. He explained to each their severance compensation (Sean would have to wait to hear about that through the mail), and even offered Chandler and Stacy that he would be willing to be a character reference. Even so, it was a grueling process. Carl reminded Avery that he had three kids, one of them in college. Wanda cried, and Avery felt like he was being a phony in trying to comfort her.

By the time he was done meeting with each person, it was nearly four o'clock. Avery emerged from his office. The remaining employees were sitting around the sorting table, chatting and not really working. Avery realized that, of course, they were all expecting him to drop the ax them next. When they saw him, they turned tense and went quiet.

"It's over," Avery said, flatly. The collective sigh was audible.

"What's going on, Ave?" Tony asked, somewhat forcefully.

"McGee and I both believe that this department is vitally important to this library," Avery started, "and therefore, we need the best people available. The only way to accomplish that was to whittle the staff down to the core." Avery looked at each of the five remaining employees - Tony, Julio, Desmond, Harriet, and Annabel. "You're the core. You all have the experience and the dedication to make this place run efficiently, like it should. This department had become a mess over the last two and a half years, and it's now our job to fix it - because when this place runs efficiently, the whole library system runs efficiently.

"And remember, we're not just some invisible cog on the machine anymore. After the way Maxine ran this place, people are going to be watching us - the Mayor, the media, the public - so every mistake will be magnified. No one here wants to end up on the evening news again."

"Yeah, cause that went so well for you last time, hey?" Tony quipped. Avery started to laugh, breaking the tension.

"Look, everyone. I really care about this place. I know you all care about it, too. That's why you're here." Avery paused.

"So, how are we supposed to run this department with five people?" Julio asked.

"Six."

"Uh, no. There's only five of us now."

"Six - I'm counting myself. I may be the manager now, but I'm still capable of sorting books, driving the bookmobile, stocking shelves. I'm going to be working alongside all of you."

"Maxine never did that," Desmond noted.

"Well, I'm not Maxine. Not unless you find a couple hundred grand in the lining of my coat." Avery smiled.

"Seriously, though - we're going to need more than just six people," Annabel said. "How soon can we expect help?"

"Soon. Very soon," Avery replied. "I'm going to start looking for new candidates immediately. But don't expect me to find new people instantly. It's a lot more important that we hire the right people than that we hire them quickly. In the meantime ... well, there's going to be a backlog, I'm sure. But nothing that can't be fixed later."

"You sound suspiciously confident," Harriet noted.

"I am. I expect great things from this group."

*****

The ride home on the bus that night was a roller-coaster for Avery. On the one hand was the gut-wrenching memories of the people he had to fire. In his head, he kept going over the words he used - Avery could hear his voice over and over again as he said "we have to let you go." He chided himself for using such a wimpy euphemism - you let too-small fish go after you catch them, but people just get fired. Maybe it would have been better to do things short and quick - you're fired, here's you severance, see you never. But Avery had felt the need to explain his decision, almost as if he was trying to convince the people being fired that they deserved it. Really, he realized, he was trying to convince himself that it was the right decision. Is this what being a manager is like - constantly second-guessing yourself?

On the other hand, Avery was pleased with the group of people he was left with. As wrenching as those firings were, it was the only way to pare the staff down to the core group. And everyone who was left was someone that Avery trusted - as a friend, as an employee, as a person. And he felt confident that his little pep-rally at the end of the day had convinced them of that trust. Good morale was the only way he could see out of the situation that he found himself in - understaffed and over-scrutinized.

More than anything, Avery was itching to get home and talk to Kate. She always had a way of reassuring him - making him confident in his decisions, or convincing him of a path that he hadn't yet chosen.

As he came in the door, he saw that Kate was on the telephone. He smiled, and she gave him a half-wave and then turned her back, walking into the back room off the kitchen. Avery figured she was talking to her mother about her father's health - he had been diagnosed with cancer five years earlier, and despite constant treatments, the cancer kept returning. Kate's mom sometimes thought that her husband should cease treatment and let the cancer run its course - allowing him to die with dignity. But Kate's dad was not the kind of guy who would ever cease treatment - he was a fighter through and through, and he didn't seem to think there was any dignity in death as long as any chance of survival remained. Avery frankly didn't know how Kate dealt with talking her mom through such hard times. His own instinct was to fight as long as possible, but to quit once the outcome was clear. But Kate respected her father too much to be that pragmatic about it, and so she spent a lot of time talking her mother through some of the harder decisions that her dad had made.

All of this thinking about his father-in-law's illness started to get Avery down, and he found himself staring at a piece of artwork on the wall that he had never thought much about before. Kate's friend Susanna had made the piece - a half-collage, half-painting - and Avery just now realized it was a man being literally pulled in two directions. The aptness of this artwork to his father-in-law's condition was readily apparent, and Avery suddenly felt himself overcome by a bittersweet feeling of loss.

At that moment, he turned to see Kate walking back into the kitchen. She was no longer on the phone. Avery was mentally preparing himself to console her when he realized the she didn't look sad. In fact, she was grinning from ear to ear.

"I got it!"

"What? Got what?"

"I got a research fellowship and a $10,000 grant!"

Avery was dumb-struck. He just stood staring at Kate, his jaw hanging open. Kate ran forward, arms outstretched and jumped into his arms.

"I got it! I got it!"

"But, I ... I ... when? When? What?" Avery was desperately searching for words as Kate kissed him all around his face.

"I apply for this a few months back. The deadline passed and I never heard anything, so I figured my application was rejected."

"What application?"

"I submitted a research proposal on the effects of overseas deployment on the academic performance of children of military personnel."

"When did you do this?" Avery asked as he put her down.

"I told you - a few months ago."

"No ... I mean, when did you start working up this proposal? How did I not know about it?"

"It's something that I've been working on for a while. Y'know, something that I work on between eating bon-bons during the day." She smiled. "But I never thought it had a chance, so I never really told you about it."

"Of course it had a chance! Kate, this is fantastic. You're fantastic!" He kissed her deeply. "We need to celebrate!"

*****

When Avery said they had to celebrate, he meant only one thing - they had to go to ZERO, a punk-rock coffee shop on Center St., a few blocks from their house. Avery had been going there for years, ever since his time at UWM. Years later, he took Kate there on their second date to see a local band perform. After that, it became their go-to place for fun occasions, especially once they bought a house in the neighborhood. For the last couple years, they had gone less and less frequently - money was tight and there just weren't too many things to celebrate. But with Avery's promotion and Kate's fellowship, it seemed like the perfect time to go.

As they walked to ZERO, a light rain fell, making the leaves piled in the street damp. Avery had worn his ratty old boots, and they were soon covered in bits of wet leaves and dirt, though Kate somehow managed to keep her Converse clean. Walking in to the shop, Avery couldn't help but notice how young the other patrons were.

"Jeez. I bet we're the only married couple here," he whispered to Kate. "When did we get so old?"

"Oh, it's just you imagination," she answered, not sounding too sure of herself. "These kids aren't any younger than usual."

"Maybe, but we must be older - you called them kids."

"I did not," Kate corrected, even though she knew he was right.

Still bickering in hushed tones, they approached the counter. "I'll have a double caramel macchiato," Kate said.

"And for you, sir?"

"Sir? Are you talking to me?" Avery asked. The young man at the counter, with a twice-pierced lip, nail polish, and a bicycle-chain necklace just stared back, confused. "How old do you ..." Avery stopped himself. If he had finished the sentence, he was fairly certain that he would age fifteen years on the spot. "I'll have a latte, thanks," he said after a pause.

As they walked over to a booth, Kate looked at Avery with wide eyes. "That guy is totally going to spit in your coffee," she said with a laugh.

"He is not!" Avery insisted, trying to keep his voice low. "Is he? He wouldn't really do that, would he?"

Kate just kept laughing and sat down. After a few minutes, when the same young man brought their drinks to the table, Avery thanked him effusively for the coffee.

"Now he just thinks you're hitting on him."

Avery's face turned red. "Let's change the subject."

"Fair enough."

"Do you notice something wrong in here?"

"Ave, I don't really think he spit in your coffee."

"No, forget about the coffee. Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"Exactly!" Besides the chatter of the dozen or so people sitting around in booths and at a counter that looked out onto the street, there was no sound in the whole shop. "My dear, this is a punk-rock coffee shop, not a library," Avery said in a faux-sophisticated voice. "We need some tunes." From his pocket, he produced a handful of quarters. "Go nuts."

"Oh, hell yeah!" Kate exclaimed, snatching the quarters and dashing across the room to the jukebox. One of the things that made ZERO so much fun was that the jukebox was always stocked with an ever-changing array of quality music - punk, new wave, alternative, indie - culled from the collection of various employees and regular customers. The only song that was always available was the shop's namesake song by the Smashing Pumpkins (the shop had been renamed for the song a number of years back - originally it was called "Hasenpfeffer").

Having made her selection, Kate raced back to the booth and grabbed Avery by the hand. "Come on!"

"What did you choose?"

"Oh, you'll see," said answered, having dragged him to the middle of the room. After a few seconds, The Smiths' Panic came blaring out of the too-loud speakers:

Panic on the streets on London!
Panic on the streets of Birmingham!

"Now let's dance!" Kate shouted as she started moving. Neither she nor Avery were accomplished dancers, but they sure had fun trying.

As they danced, Avery lean in towards Kate "You do realize everyone's looking, right?"

"So what!"

Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that they constantly play
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music they constantly play
...
Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!
Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ! Hang the DJ!

They danced through the length of the song (mercifully short, for the sake of Avery's ego) before returning to their booth to talk while the remainder of Kate's selections played - The Violent Femmes, Tori Amos, Sonic Youth, The Talking Heads, Patti Smith, with some Guns 'N Roses thrown in for irony's sake. Mostly the conversation veered towards the sort of inane topics that Kate and Avery loved to discuss. They could spend literally hours discussing strategies for eating breakfast cereal or how ones sneakers determine their politics (Libertarians wear Adidas, by the way).

Finally, as the night wore on and the music quieted down, they started discussing more adult topics. "So what's the plan for researching your dissertation?"

"I'm thinking that I'm going to try to do everything I can working from home and from campus - there are a lot of primary sources online for my topic. Beyond that, I'll probably have to make a few trips to Madison for National Guard deployment records. And then probably to Washington D.C. for national records at some point."

"To contrast regular Army with National Guard?"

"Exactly."

"So when do you foresee going to Washington?"

"Well, I'm going to wait until I have a better sense of where the research is at before I plan it - obviously, I want to be as prepared as possible, because I only want to go once, if possible. So it's probably a couple years down the line."

Avery paused. "It's a good topic. I'm really proud of you."

Kate smiled.

*****

On the way home, Avery and Kate started talking about Avery's big news - the personnel changes at the library.

"You had to fire people?"

"Yeah, and it got kinda ugly."

"Like what do you mean?"

"Swearing, yelling, crying, door slamming. Y'know, mature adult behavior."

"Ave, I had no idea that you had such a bad day. And here I was going on and on about my good news. We should have been talking about your stuff."

"No, Kate, that's the thing - listening to your news really cheered me up. I mean, you're my wife and I love you, and I love hearing that things are going well for you - that you're finally getting the recognition that you deserve."

"Well, okay. Are you sure you don't want to talk about it?"

"Honestly, yes. Today sucked, and I really don't want to rehash the gory details."

"Okay."

"Besides, I've gotta think about moving ahead with big changes in the department. No time to dwell on the past."

"What kind of changes?"

"Well, I've going to be hiring new people, and there's a lot of money in the budget for technology and stuff. I guess what I don't really know is how I'm going to find good people to hire."

"Well, what are you looking for?"

"Hard workers - honest, dedicated, smart. Y'know, perfect employees," he said with a laugh. "I guess what I really need specifically are people who aren't jaded, who are willing to invest themselves in the job."

"Have you thought about the Mayor's Students-to-Work program?"

"The what?"

"You haven't heard about this?"

"I'm not the one studying education initiatives."

Kate laughed. "It's basically a plan to help gifted high school students get entry level jobs in fields with real opportunity for advancement, instead of working at the McDonald's or whatever. All the participants are minority students with at least a B-average."

"Do you know anyone with experience in this program?"

"Yeah, there's a guy at school who works part-time at a law firm downtown. He said they had a girl there in the program - real smart, real good worker. He said the only problem was that she ended up going off to Michigan State for college."

"Hmm." Avery stopped walking. "That sounds like exactly what I need."

"Yeah, hey?"

Moving Up, Part Three

2006-12-18T22:53:00.000-06:00

With our trip to San Francisco right around the corner, I figured I'd post the next installment of Moving Up a bit early. Also, let me note that due to overwhelming fan response, Target will soon be carrying a line of clothes designed by Isaac Mizrahi and inspired by Avery Key.

Previously, in Part Two, Avery and his friends came face-to-face with the realization that their boss has been arrested for corruption, and that this means big changes. Avery went home to talk things over with his wife, Kate, and she encouraged him to apply for his boss' job.

*****

Chapter Two

The ride to work the next Monday was difficult for Avery. Usually, he liked to take home books from the library and read them on the bus - mostly histories and classic novels (the last book he read was All Quiet on the Western Front). But in all of the hubbub at the library recently, he had been unable to grab a book to read. His mind was reeling anyway, and he probably wouldn't have been able to concentrate on a book. Avery had a habit of running through conversations in his mind, and today was the day that he was scheduled to interview for the supervisory position in the Restocking Department.

The Mayor's press conference had called for changes at the library to bring an end to the corruption. The first order of business was naming a branch manager for the main library, and the Library Commissioner had announced that they were bringing Avery's old boss George McGee out of retirement to fill the position. Avery guessed that George was over 70 years old, but he certainly didn't show it, or, at least not mentally. George limped terribly from a wound suffered during Korean War that had only gotten worse over time, and his voice was raspy from years of heavy smoking, and then subsequent surgery when he developed throat cancer. But the man was not to be messed with when it came to discussing library science. A lot of people think of librarians as reserved and boring, but McGee approached libraries with the discipline and vigor of a Marine. Which, of course, he was.

In the last week, the staff in the department had been trimmed from 19 to 11, and there were rumors of more cuts. Because of the backlog in restocking and the reduction in staff, all of the bookmobile runs had been canceled. Avery was thankful for the change of scenery, especially since he was being kept extra busy. The work helped keep his mind off of the nerves that accompanied his decision to put his hat in the ring for the supervisor's job.

Avery arrived at the library through the main doors, as usual, and headed downstairs, running into Tony, who was already running an errand.

"Morning, Ave."

"Morning. How're you?"

"Fine, fine. Your big day, hey?"

"Heh, yeah," Avery said, laughing a little from nervousness. "I still don't know why you didn't apply, Tony."

"Eh, I got my reasons," he looked around a bit, then lowered his voice. "Look, let's just say I don't really intend to make the library my career, right? Not my thing."

"Yeah, I guess I see."

"Besides, do you really want to be going up for the same job as me? You know you wouldn't stand a chance."

Avery laughed.

"But seriously, man, good luck."

"Thanks, buddy" Avery said as he skipped down the stairs into the restocking department. His nerves were killing him and he wanted to get a cigarette in before his shift started.

As he stepped outside, he saw Harriet on the dock, just standing in the cold, staring out into the distance at the courthouse. Avery had forgotten that today was her first day back at work after the fallout from the scandal.

"Harriet, it's good to see you!" Avery exclaimed, trying hard to sound upbeat.

"Good to see you, Avery. Thank you so much for what you did for me."

"Hey, I was just trying to look out for a friend. It was my wife who did the hard part, really."

"That young man that you recommended was a really fine lawyer. He almost seemed more excited about my case than I did," she said, smiling. "I think Maxine must have dropped my name trying to get herself off the hook, but they didn't have anything else on me."

Avery pulled out a cigarette and lit it.

"Honey, do you mind?" Harriet asked, motioning towards the cigarette.

"Oh, sorry. I'll smoke over there."

"No, no. I meant, can I have one?"

"Harriet, I wouldn't have taken you for a smoker."

"Well," she said, slyly, "I like have one every once in a while. I've earned it."

Avery smiled, handing her a cigarette and a lighter. Harriet took a deep drag, and exhaled a steady stream of smoke.

"It's been quite a week." She turned towards Avery. "I hear that you've applied for Maxine's old job.

"Boy, can no one keep a secret around her?"

"Your friend Tony told me when I got in this morning. Don't you know, Avery? All the best gossip is to be had before nine in the morning." She smiled.

Avery's interview was at 11 o'clock in McGee's new office on the third floor. Albert Richardson's office had been a much larger room at the other end of the floor, but it was closed off as a crime scene. Detectives had combed through the room a half-dozen times already, checking for hidden records or any other clues. McGee had never liked that office anyway, especially the way Richardson had decorated it - it gave off the faux-learned feeling of a man who owned thousands of books but had never read a single one. McGee's office, by contrast, was already over-stuffed with books and papers in a why that made it look like he had occupied it for four decades, not four days - everything in its place, to be sure, but certainly a bit much for the uninitiated. But then, McGee wasn't really trying to impress anyone.

Avery arrived at the office a few minutes to eleven. He wanted to be prompt, but not too early, since he hated the idea of sitting outside in the hall for 15-20 minutes, listening to the muffled voices of the previous candidate. Despite this, McGee didn't call him into the office until a quarter past the hour.

"Sit down, young man," McGee ordered after shaking hands. "Now, now, now ... what's your name?" McGee was flipping through Avery's resume in that way that interviewers do that is guaranteed to make interviewees nervous.

"Avery Emmett Key," Avery answered. He had no idea why he had included his middle name - it sounded so pretentious.

"Okay, Mr. Avery Emmett Key, why do you want this job?" McGee asked, getting right to the point.

"Well, I ... I've worked now in the restocking department, specifically with the bookmobile, for three years, and I ..."

"I didn't ask for your qualifications, son. I've got those right in front of me." He waved the resume. "I asked why you want the job."

Avery froze for a moment, and his eyes met McGee's, but he didn't flinch. After a few seconds, he stated flatly, "Because I'm the right man to do it." The words hung in the air, and Avery expected a response from McGee, but the older man just sat, staring calmly at Avery, so he elaborated. "I care about what happens in this library, and especially in my department. I am not an outsider who doesn't know about this place and what makes it important. I am not going to make unnecessary changes. What I am going to do is to ensure that things run as they are supposed to, and I will demand excellence from everyone in my department at all times."

McGee leaned forward across the desk. "My, my, my. That's a pretty tall order from the kid who drives the bookmobile." Avery froze, not knowing how to respond. After a moment, McGee let out a wheezing laugh. "Did you think I didn't know who you were?"

Avery looked perplexed. "Well, I didn't want to assume ..."

"I hired you the first time, son. And there was a reason, then, too. If I just wanted some bozo to drive the bookmobile, I could have hired any punk with a driver's license. But no, I hired you because I like people with some brains. And people with some guts, which you got, too, apparently."

"Are you saying that I've got the job?"

McGee laughed his wheezy laugh. "Right to the point, hey? The kid from the bookmobile has an attitude."

"Well, Mr. McGee, I'm starting to think that this whole interview is just a pretense before you tell me that the job is mine. Frankly, I was wondering why you even decided to interview me, but I think it's clear that you wanted someone who you knew, and who you knew was honest and hardworking. And that someone is me."

"And suppose that now that you've given your cocky little speech, I don't hire you?"

"Well, then I'll just go back to being the punk with a driver's license who drives the bookmobile." Avery paused for effect. "Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Avery could hardly believe the words that were coming out of his mouth. But Kate had been giving him pep talks all week. She seemed so confident that Avery was sure that she had some sort of crystal ball or inside information. But he realized now that she was just trying to get him psyched for the interview - and it was paying off. McGee certainly seemed to prefer Avery's straight-talk to the sucking-up that a lot of bosses want.

McGee paused, and leaned across the desk again. Even at his age, McGee was a physically impressive and intimidating man. "Do you know what I never liked about you, Key?"

Avery wasn't sure whether to answer or not - was this a rhetorical question or not?

But before Avery could say anything, McGee started up again. "I never liked that you were content with driving around that rusting heap stuffed with books. Hey, I ain't saying that the bookmobile is worthless - hell, I'm sure we could sell it for scrap." Avery chuckled, though he wasn't quite sure that it was joke. McGee squinted a bit and continued. "You're an underachiever, Key. You don't apply yourself. You're just one of those guys who coasts by, not living up to the potential. But that potential ... well, I ain't gonna make any predictions. But you got stuff inside of you that you need to call on."

Avery wasn't sure what to say. Part of him wanted to protest, but another part of him knew that McGee was right. Hell, Kate had pretty much told him the same thing last week, except with "I love you" appended to the end. "Mr. McGee, sir, you can believe that I'm going to work hard. I want this job. I want to make this place better."

"Good, good. Cause there's no turning back - either you're a good supervisor, or you're out of here. The only way is forward."
Avery smiled nervously.

"But, hey, you're gonna do fine." McGee laughed, and Avery wasn't exactly sure what was so funny. "So I want you back here tomorrow morning. There's a lot to talk about."

Avery stood up to leave, reaching out his hand to shake McGee's. "Thank you, Mr. McGee."

"Now send in the next guy."

"But ... but you just gave me the job."

McGee shrugged. "Hey, you never know. Maybe I'll change my mind." He laughed again. Avery hated that laugh.

"So how'd the interview go?" Kate asked.

"Uh, I don't really know."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I think McGee gave me the job."

"That's great!" She leapt up from the couch and hugged him. "I knew you could do it."

"Well ... well, let's not get carried away," Avery said, pushing his wife away a bit.

"Why not, Ave?"

"Cause, I don't know. I'm not really sure what's going on. McGee, he's ... I don't know. He's crazy."

"Why, cause he hired you?"

"No, not cause of ... well, yeah, maybe. I don't know," Avery said, starting to pace. "Why the hell would he hire me like that, out of the blue? He didn't even really ask any questions!"

"Well, he must have asked something?"

"Yeah, but none of those stupid interview questions, like 'What's you biggest weakness?' or 'Where do you see yourself in five years?' Y'know? The ones that are intended to trip you up and make you say something stupid, like 'In five years, I'll be running this place and you'll be out on the street!' or something stupid like that." Avery had slipped into a series of funny voices to narrate his point. Kate was laughing. "What?"

"You're terrible at doing impressions. It's adorable."

"What? I thought that was pretty good."

"No, no it wasn't." She was giggling harder. "Come here."

Avery walked up closer to her, and took her around the waist. She looked up and kissed him.

Moving Up, Part Two

2006-12-14T22:14:00.000-06:00

Due to the overwhelming reader response (please stop with the emails - my inbox is complete stuffed), here is part two of "Moving Up."

Previously, in Part One, we were introduced to Avery Key, a bookmobile driver in Milwaukee. Avery's having a rough day - he's broke, he just got mugged, and he is, after all, a bookmobile driver. But it's not just any day - returning to the library, he finds that his boss has just been arrested ...

*****

"May I have a word with you, Mister ... um ....?"

"Key," Avery answered, now facing a plain-clothes detective. They were sitting inside one of the media rooms in the basement level of the library. Someone who had been watching The Maltese Falcon had been forced to vacate the room. The video was still running, but the sound was off. Jeez, Avery thought, if the police could figure out how to mute the video, why couldn't they find the damn off switch? Of course, maybe it was part of their plan to throw off his concentration and prep him for questioning. That was ridiculous, of course, but those were the sort of thoughts that were going though Avery's head. He had never been questioned by the police - even as a witness - much less been placed in a dark room with a detective who answered only to the name Horvath - his first name may as well have been Lieutenant.

"How long have you known Maxine Richardson?" Horvath asked, barely skipping a beat.

"Um, I don't know, maybe three years. Basically since I've been here."

"Have you ever seen her engage in suspicious or unusual activity?"

"Other than the fact that she's a library department heard without the ability to sort books?" Avery quipped. But Horvath was dead serious, glaring back at him. "No, no I haven't seen any suspicious activity."

"Have you seen any books go missing?"

"No, I really couldn't have, could I? I mean, they're missing, after all," Avery chuckled nervously. He didn't mean to be such a smart alec, but his nerves were getting to him.

"Have there been any more missing books than usual?"

"Um, I'm not really sure."

"How many books used to go missing before Ms. Richardson took over your department?"

"Um, I don't know ... maybe 30 a month?" Avery though about it. "One or two a day."

"How many books go missing now, with Ms. Richardson in charge?"

"A lot more, I guess."

"How many?"

"Probably upwards of one or two hundred a month, sometimes more."

"Are many of these ever found?"

"Very few."

"Mr. Key, did you ever lose books yourself?"

"Um, yeah, a couple times. I lost track of some books in my van - the bookmobile - a few times."

"And were you disciplined for that?"

"Yeah, they docked my paycheck."

"Who approved that?"

"Uh, Maxine, I guess."

"Not the payroll office?"

"Um, no, I don't think so."

"Okay, thank you Mr. Key. That's all I need." Lt. Horvath stood up and walked out of the room. Avery sat in a daze for a minute and then followed. In the hall, he ran into Tony.

"Tone, do you have any idea what's going down here?"

"Word is that Maxine and Leonard were selling books and skimming money from people's checks and shit - friggin' embezzlement."

"At the library?"

"At the effin' library, man."

Avery just stared around in shock, not sure exactly what was going on.

*****

The rest of the afternoon was surreal. Police officers and detectives were swarming through the entire restocking department, hauling off boxes of files as evidence, rifling through every workstation and office. One by one, all of the employees in the department were questioned in various offices. Most were only in there for a few minutes, but a couple people disappeared for hours, emerging ashen-faced and shaken. Most of those people were part of Maxine's crew - the employees that she had hired herself, rather than those like Avery who had been leftover from when George McGee ran the department.

One exception was Harriet Mills, a sweet middle-aged lady who Avery had always liked. She wasn't that fast at sorting books, but she always insisted on doing things correctly - she was a real stickler for details. In fact, the only time that Avery had ever seen her angry was once when Maxine once tried to transfer books to a different branch without filling out the proper paperwork. Harriet got real mad, even threatening to report Maxine to the library commissioner at City Hall. Had Harriet not been so popular with everyone, she probably would have been fired. But Maxine cared too much for preserving her reputation to make an enemy like Harriet - she knew that everyone would have taken Harriet's side rather than hers. In retrospect, Avery realized that Maxine wasn't actually being sloppy in skimping on paperwork - that must have been part of how she stole books, by arranging fictitious transfers to other branches.
Avery saw Harriet in the hall about ten minutes after the police had finished questioning her. She looked very worried and had obviously been crying.

"Oh, Ave! They think I did something wrong. I think Maxine told them I was part of something. But you know me. I wouldn't ..." her voice trailed off as tears began to well. "Avery, I can't lose my job. I pay for little Etta's school," she said, referring to her granddaughter.
"My daughter can't afford those payments."

"Harriet, I know you wouldn't do anything wrong ..."

"I wouldn't, Ave! Never!"

"Look, the police didn't arrest you or anything. But you should probably talk to a lawyer."

"I can't afford that. I can't afford no fancy lawyer."

"Look, my wife knows some people at Marquette, in the law school. I know she's helped get some people out of some speeding tickets and stuff."

"Avery, that's real nice of you, but I think this is a little more serious than getting some tickets fixed." Harriet almost sounded angry, though Avery wasn't sure at whom.

"Look, let me just look into this for you, okay? Just let me help out, okay?"

Harriet smiled weakly. "Okay, Ave. Okay. I trust you."

Avery smiled back at her, trying to be comforting, but in the back of his mind he was worried that he may have promised more than he could deliver. Fact was that Kate didn't know any real lawyers, just some law students who she had known as undergrads at UWM - the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. Still, he knew that Harriet would never have gotten mixed up in something like embezzlement, especially since the police clearly didn't have enough evidence to even arrest her. But without a lawyer, he was afraid that she might accidentally say things that would get them curious.

Heading back into the main restocking room, Avery grabbed the telephone off of a table and ducked into a little alcove, facing the wall. He started dialing home, but got a recorded message - "Your call cannot be completed as dialed. Please hang up and try again." Avery realized that he'd forgotten to dial 9 before the number. He was more shaken up by all the goings-on than he realized. He redialed and Kate picked up after two rings.

"Hey, are you still at work?"

"Yeah, I'm going to be leaving shortly. Do you have to work tonight?"

"No, it's Monday, remember? The restaurant is closed on Mondays," she said, reminding him of that fact for the hundredth time.

"Oh, yeah. Sorry, I forgot."

"You okay? You sound nervous."

"Um ... yeah. Look, there's a lot going on her at work. I'll tell you more later. But, um, the police are here and stuff."

"Oh shit. What happened?"

Avery lowered his voice to a whisper. "Maxine and Leonard have been arrested for embezzlement, I think. A lot of other people are being questioned."

"Man, I told you that chick was up to something!"

"Yeah, um ... anyway, look, I think the police suspect Harriet of doing something, but there's no way."

"Which one is Harriet?"

"You remember her - she had that little granddaughter who you babysat for a couple years ago."

"Oh, her. Yeah, she was nice. Why do they suspect her?"

"I don't know. But she needs a lawyer. Do you know anyone?"

"I only know law students."

"Yeah, but maybe one of them has a friend or professor who could help? Pro bono, of course."

"Yeah. Okay," she paused, thinking. "Yeah, okay. I'll make some calls, see if I can find someone."

"Thanks, sweetie. Look, I gotta go. I'll see you at home in an hour or so."

"Love you."

"Love you, too." Avery hung up the phone. It was 4:30.

*****

Avery milled around work for another thirty minutes, basically just killing time. When your boss has just been arrested, there's really little incentive to work hard, after all. Mostly, he just didn't know what to do. Clearly, things were in for a major shake-up in the department, and he was worried about the future, but also excited. After all, Maxine had been terrible for the library in many ways, and her replacement couldn't help but be an improvement. On the other hand, there's the old maxim about the devil you know. Avery tried not to be too cynical, but he knew that sometimes change wasn't for the better.

When the clock hit five, Avery started gathering his belongings - his coat, his messenger bag (or "man purse" as Kate so affectionately called it) - and dashed up the stairs towards the main level. Most of the other guys usually left out the back way, because their cars were parked near the loading dock. But Avery took the bus to work - somewhat ironic for someone who drove a vehicle for a living - and so he always left through the main exit on Wisconsin Avenue. Today, that turned out to be the quicker exit - so many squad cars were still parked out back that those who drove ended up having to very patiently negotiate their way out of the lot. Avery's main concern was checking his bag to make sure that he still had his bus pass. He usually kept it in his wallet, but he'd started keeping it in his messenger bag instead a few weeks before. Despite that, he still had that nagging suspicion that today of all days he had put it back in the wallet.
He was still digging through the bag when he got to the main exit, and so barely noticed the uniformed officer standing guard at the door.

"Sir, I'll need to check your bag before you leave."

"Huh?"

"This is a crime scene. I'll have to check your bag to make sure you didn't take anything."

"Sure, okay," Avery answered, opening his bag for the officer to check. All he had in there was an umbrella, a couple granola bars, and the various and sundry objects that accumulate in any bag over time - little slips of paper with phone numbers, a half-used jar of aspirin, an eyeglasses repair kit, a bus map. The cop did little more than a cursory check, but as he rifled through the papers, Avery caught sight of his bus pass. He let out a little sigh of relief, glad that he wasn't going to have to walk the two miles home.

The search completed, Avery stepped out onto the front steps of the library and suddenly realized that his little problem at work was shortly going to be all of Milwaukee's problem. All four of the local television stations had news vans parked outside, with their 30-foot tall antennas out, ready to broadcast. The lady from Channel 6 was interviewing someone who Avery didn't recognize, while the guy from Channel 12 was applying make-up in the van and the Channel 58 reporter appeared to be testing his mike. No sooner than he reached the foot of the steps, though, when Avery was suddenly assaulted by the Channel 4 reporter.

"Excuse me, sir. Lauren Leamanczyk, TMJ-4!" she blurted out. "Do you have a minute?"

"I've gotta go."

"Do you work in the library?"

"Me? I ... oh, no. I mean ..." Avery stuttered.

His denial wasn't quick enough, or forceful enough, and before he knew what had happened, Leamanczyk and her cameraman had surrounded him.

"Can I ask you a few questions?" she asked forcefully, but with a practiced tone.

"Oh, sure," Avery responded, resignedly.

"Do you know Maxine Richardson, the woman allegedly involved in the embezzlement ring?"

"Know? I don't, um ... yeah. She, she ... um, she was, is ... is, was, my boss."

"So you know her personally?"

"No. No. Um ..."

"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"

"What?"

"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"

"I ... no. No, definitely not. I didn't know Maxine."

"But did you ..."

"I mean, yes, I knew Maxine. But ... but, not what said was doing."

"So you ..."

"Or not doing! I mean, I don't know."

"Sir, how long have you worked in the library?"

"Oh, three years now. I, um ... oh shit! That's my bus!" Avery suddenly pushed past Leamanczyk, and broke into a sprint across the street.

"That was a really brilliant interview, genius," he muttered to himself as he ran. He kept going over his interview in his head, realizing that he had come across as a complete idiot. The only consolation was that he had been so incoherent that there was at least no way that they'd air his interview. He hadn't even given his name.

Once across the street, he actually had to wait briefly for his #10 bus, which had gotten stuck at the previous light. He didn't turn around to look, but he could feel Leamanczyk's eyes boring a hole in the back of his head. When the bus pulled up, he jumped onboard, somewhat rudely cutting in front of a young mother. He muttered an apology and very quickly was overcome by the sensation that he just wanted to be home. Luckily, it wasn't a very long bus ride - 20 minutes most days - down Wisconsin and then onto Cass and finally Humboldt.

Avery and Kate's house was in the Riverwest neighborhood, separated by the Milwaukee River from the fashionable East Side and Downtown. Riverwest was a semi-bohemian neighborhood, with lots of artsy types, aging hippies, and grad students, but also plenty of young families and immigrants from the Middle East and East Asia. In short, it was your typical urban neighborhood - a mixture of people from different walks of life and economic strata. And the neighborhood's housing make-up reflected this mixture. Along Humboldt were some massive old homes that had survived from Milwaukee's earliest days. On the side streets were a mix of housing from the early decades of the 20th Century, including a large number of duplexes, some of which had been converted into single family homes and some which had not. The shops in the neighborhood ran the gamut from trendy clubs with live music and hip coffee shops to small corner grocers and immigrant-run dry cleaners.

As the bus lumbered along through East Town and then north into Riverwest, Avery found himself lost in thought, so much so that he barely noticed when the bus blew right past his normal stop. The suddenly unfamiliar houses snapped him out of his reverie, though in the dark he squinted for a bit at the street signs before determining that he really had missed his stop. Again muttering curses at himself, he pulled the cord and hopped off at the next stop. His usual four-block walk home had now been doubled, but he didn't really care. He pulled a knit cap over his short hair and started trudging back south down Humboldt. The wind was bracing against his face, but this was still his favorite season of the year - not yet truly cold, and with the air filled with the smells of drying leaves and fireplaces.

Avery and Kate lived in a converted duplex that dated from the 1920s. The house was filled with lots of little quirks, which Kate especially loved. Some of these were due to the original design of the home, but most were due to the haphazard way in which the duplex had been converted. There were, for instance, no less than four doors into the home - two in the front (one onto the main level, and one with stairs leading to the top level), one on the side (leading to the kitchen), and a backdoor from the small yard into the basement. The house had two functioning kitchens, though the upstairs kitchen had an ancient stove that seemingly predated the house itself. The house originally had three bedrooms - two downstairs and one upstairs - but a fourth had been added rather clumsily above the back porch. Kate hated that extra room, because the floor always seemed horribly unsteady. The house had two bathrooms, one with an original claw-foot tub and lovely black and white tiling, and a second that the previous owners had started to update but stopped when they ran out of money (consequently, the shower and bath didn't work).

When they bought the house, Avery and Kate inherited the appliances as well as a tenant, Rob, who had previously lived there with three other students from UWM. Kate knew him peripherally from some of her Poli-Sci classes, and so they let him stay on. They told themselves that it was just as a favor until he found a new place to live, but the fact was that they needed the extra $300 a month they charged him for the upstairs bedroom. As it was, Rob was rarely home - he spend most of his time either holed up in the UWM library or hanging out at his girlfriend's apartment on the East Side. Avery still always felt a little uncomfortable living as newlyweds but having a roommate, especially given that there was no longer a door separating the upstairs from the main level, and since all three of them had to share a bathroom. On more than one occasion, Avery had been late to work when he had been tardy about jumping into the shower and Rob beat him to it.

After ten minutes of walking, Avery arrived home, walking in to find Rob slouched on the couch, eating cereal. "Hey, Rob."

"Hey."

Rob had his own couch upstairs, but whatever. Kate was sitting on a stool in the kitchen, bent over a book. A small black-and-white TV was on next to her, the volume turned real low. A pot of spaghetti was boiling on the stove, with marinara sauce simmering on the next burner.

"Hey sweetheart," Avery said, leaning in to kiss his wife. "Spaghetti again?"

"Yeah. No meatballs, though. We ran through the last of the meat yesterday and I didn't have time to get to the store."

"That's fine. When will dinner be ready?"

"Pretty soon."

"Okay, cool. Lemme change." Avery slipped into the master bedroom, which was right off the kitchen, closed the door, and tossed his bag on the bed alongside several of Kate's schoolbooks, some dirty clothes, and various unidentified items. Why there was a pile of stuff on the bed and a different but indistinguishable pile of stuff on the floor, Avery had no idea, but it hardly mattered. He pulled off his Milwaukee Public Library sweatshirt, sniffed it, and then threw it in the pile of clean-enough clothes. Emptying his pockets onto the end table, he suddenly remembered that his wallet had been stolen.

Avery threw on a different sweatshirt and emerged from the bedroom. "Hon?"

"Yes, Ave?"

"I forgot to tell you early, but I got robbed this morning. Some punk kid took my wallet."

Kate looked up from her book, momentarily worried. She scanned Avery's face for signs that he'd been roughed up. This wasn't the first time he'd been mugged while at work. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. But they took everything I had on me."

Kate frowned. "How much?"

"I don't know - seventeen dollars, I think."

She smiled weakly and gently rubbed his arm. Seventeen dollars was enough to buy several nights' worth of dinners. "S'okay. I'm just glad they didn't hurt you."

Rob came into the kitchen and dumped his dirty bowl into the sink, not bothering to rinse it. "I'm headed over to Heather's place," he said. On his way out the side door, almost as an afterthought, he added, "Bummer about getting mugged, Ave. See ya!"

Avery was glad that Rob had gone. He turned to Kate, trying to figure out where to start with the whole Maxine-and-Leonard-were-arrested-today story. Kate beat him to the punch. "So, what exactly happened at work today?"

"I, uh ... I don't know. I came back from my morning run with the bookmobile and all of a sudden there's Maxine screaming and yelling about something while being dragged out by the police."

"Huh. Can't say I didn't see that coming."

"Really, you thought Maxine was going to get arrested one day?"

"Well, no, not exactly. But, I don't know, you told me enough about what went on there. It always sounded to me like she was up to something."

"Yeah, I guess so."

"I mean, come on - she was appointed to her job by her cousin," Kate said, closing her book and sitting up straight on the stool. "And all those people she promoted over you."

"Yeah, yeah. True. Plus, pretty much nothing ever seemed to get done around there."

"Exactly. That's what I'm saying."

"I'm just all worried about where this is going, y'know? I don't want to see good people swept up in this - Harriet, Tony. Me."

Kate smiled weakly. "You'll be fine."

"I just never saw this coming, y'know? Who'd ever suspect a damned embezzlement scheme in the library?" Avery paused for a minute. "Funny thing is, the detective asked me about those payroll deductions for those books I lost. He seemed to be hinting that Maxine pocketed that money or something."

"She probably did, Ave. I told you at the time that didn't seem right, y'know?"

"I know, I know. I just didn't want to fight it, y'know? I couldn't afford to lose my job then."

"Like you can afford to lose it now?" Kate said with a smile, trying to lighten Avery's mood.

"Well, yeah!" he shot back, in feigned excitement. "Baby, we got more money than we know what to do with! Man, I had to give away a couple Benjamins to a homeless guy today, cause my wallet was getting too heavy!"

"Stop."

"What? Not funny?"

"No, it's just painful when you try to use slang. Benjamins? I mean, come on. That's like 10 years out of date."

"Really? Aren't all of the kids saying that now?" Avery said, sounding mock-hurt.

"No, no, no," Kate giggled.

Avery sighed and plopped himself down on the stool next to Kate. "I love you sweetheart. You know that, right?"

"Of course," she said, leaning over to kiss him.

"We'll get through all this - the money, this thing at work. Everything!"

"I know."

"I mean, things have been worse, right?" he asked, not terrible confident of the answer.

"Yeah, sure."

Avery racked his brain, trying to time of a worse time. The TV very shortly provided the answer. "Oh shit. Honey, turn that up."

"What? Oh, that's you!" Kate leaned in towards the television and turned up the volume. On the screen was Avery's face, with the caption UNNAMED LIBRARY EMPLOYEE.

"Do you know Maxine Richardson, the woman allegedly involved in the embezzlement ring?"
"Know? I don't, um ... yeah. She, she ... um, she was, is ... is, was, my boss."
"So you know her personally?"
"No. No. Um ..."
"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"
"What?"
"Did you have personal knowledge of the alleged misdeeds?"
"I ... no. No, definitely not. I didn't know Maxine."
"But did you ..."
"I mean, yes, I knew Maxine. But ... but, not what said was doing."
"So you ..."
"Or not doing! I mean, I don't know."

"That was a really sharp interview there, Ace," Kate said with a smirk. Avery shot her a sideways glance but didn't protest.

"That was our own Lauren Leamanczyk just over at hour ago at Milwaukee's Main Library on Wisconsin Avenue," intoned Mike Jacobs, the Channel 4 anchor. "To recap, at this hour, police have announced the arrests of seven city and library employees, including Albert Richardson, branch manager of the Main Library - shown here in a file photo - and his cousin, Maxine Richardson, a manager at the Library. According to police sources, the embezzlement scheme involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in municipal funds ..."

Avery's jaw dropped. "Holy shit."

"... including money intended for children's literacy programs in the Milwaukee Public School District. The Mayor has called a press conference tomorrow at noon in Milwaukee City Hall. Charles Benson interviewed the Mayor in his office at City Hall earlier today, and he had this to say:"

"I have only spoken briefly with Police Chief Haggerty, but she has assured me that these arrests were made only after a lengthy investigation. I can't offer any specifics beyond that, since this is an ongoing investigation, but rest assured that we will not tolerate corruption in city government."

"A spokesman for the City Library Commissioner released a statement this evening, explaining, 'the Library Commission will be reviewing its hiring practices to ensure that this sort of corruption does not effect city services again.' With more on this developing story, let's go to Russ ..."

Avery flipped the TV off. "Wow. This is big."

"Yeah, Jeez. Who knew there was even that much money to steal?" Kate asked, half-jokingly.

"I know that this is a good thing. I mean, obviously, right?" he asked, rhetorically. "But I can't shake the feeling that when all is said and done, this isn't going to end up well."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I don't know ..." his voice trailed off as he started pacing across the kitchen. Kate meanwhile got up to turn off the heat on the spaghetti. She grabbed a colander from the cabinet and started emptying the contents of the pot. Steam poured out of the pot, fogging up the window. Avery stopped pacing and stared at the steam. "It's just, I'm betting they bring in some hard-ass to clean house, and ..."

"Well, isn't that what they need?"

"Well, maybe. Well ..." he paused. "No, I think what they need is someone honest, but someone who knows the place already. They don't need someone to fire half the people there and grind down the other half. That'll just make things worse."

Kate was now stirring in the tomato sauce and some fresh basil from the produce market at the corner. Avery just stared, deep in thought but not saying anything. Kate served up to the spaghetti, in big heaping portions, and handed Avery his bowl and a fork. He immediately started eating, shoveling a massive amount of food into his mouth - he hadn't realized how hungry he was, but this was the first meal he'd eaten since the pastry from Esmerelda's. Kate watched him, and then finally broke the silence.

"You should apply for that job."

Avery stared at her silently, his mouth still half-full of spaghetti. "What?" he finally managed.

"You said they need someone who knows the place, someone honest. That's you."

"But ... but, I can't be a manager. I'm just the guy who drives the bookmobile."

"Listen to yourself. Ave, I love you, but if you've got a fault, it's that you don't apply yourself - you've got no drive," she said, very matter-of-factly. "Hon, you know it. You never push yourself to ..."

Avery cut her off, defensively. "What are you getting at? Are you saying that it's my fault that we're having money problems?"

"No. No, that's not it at all. Jeez, Ave!" she stopped for a second, trying not to get mad. "Dammit, it's just that you're a smart guy. You're organized. You've got seniority. You know those people. There's nothing about that job that you can't do!"

"But ... but ..." Avery was searching for a comeback. He didn't want to admit that he was wrong. "But they don't hire people like me."

"How do you know? Their previous hire didn't exactly work out well. I'm telling you, you should at least apply. I think this could be good for you. For us."

Avery hated arguing with Kate. She was much better at it.

"Avery, you know I'm right. Just apply."

Avery didn't say anything.

"Please, Ave?"

"Fine. Fine," he smiled. "Why do you always have to be right?"

"Just eat your dinner. It's getting cold."

Moving Up, Part One

2006-12-06T19:49:00.000-06:00

So, as promised, here is the first installment of my Nanowrimo novel, entitled Moving Up: The Unlikely Story of Avery Key. The novel is actually not finished yet - having met the 50k word goal in time, I lost the motivation to keep working. In fact, I guess that just proves why Nanowrimo is so brilliant - the idea is to motivate you to write (even if it's lousy writing) because otherwise, perfectionism and procrastination will rule the day. And I think the former of those sins is getting me right now. Somehow I wrote 50k words in 26 days, and managed to keep the quality level up, but having met the goal, I'm crippled by the fear that if I keep going, I'll somehow ruin the novel. Ugh. Anyway, perhaps posting the novel in installments will motivate me to keep going. After all, I can't very well run out of installments to publish without finishing, can I? (I bet I can, actually, but the goal is to do otherwise.)

As you read this, please keep in mind that I wrote this at a very rapid pace, so there are going to be some hackneyed scenes, awkward dialogue, and grammatical and spelling errors (if you notice any, by the way, let me know). So, without further ado ...

Chapter One

"Avery Key was an ordinary man, but he did not lead an ordinary life. In fact, he led the sort of life that few people have ever lived, and that is perhaps why he is considered one of the greatest Americans of all time."

That sentence began Avery Key: A Life, the bestselling biography by historian Benjamin Jackson, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. It became one of the most widely read biographies of an American political figure when it was released in 2060, 4 years after Key's death. Generations of American college freshmen would alternately bemoan and relish having to read this classic, and would take from it important lessons about the political foundations of the American republic.

But, this is a digression. To learn about Avery Key, we must begin, if not quite at the beginning, but certainly on the day when his life took a decisive turn.

*****

Avery sat in his van - well, not really his van, but the city's van - asleep at 11 in the morning. It was Monday, November 6, 2006 and he was back to work after a week off. He still hadn't fully recovered from the weekend. Avery and his wife didn't make much money, but then again, a case of Old Milwaukee didn't cost much. It also didn't taste like much, but then, that was hardly the point. Kate had gone to sleep early on Sunday, so Avery was left to finish off the case by himself. That was mistake number one. Mistake number two was that he stayed up far too late for someone who had to get to work by 8 o'clock in the morning. Mistake number three was that he picked up the checkbook and started flipping through. Kate always balanced the book, and so Avery was surprised to see that not only were they broke - he knew that already - but they were actually dipping into their savings a bit each month.

Drunk and worried about money, he found it impossible to sleep. Every time he tried to reassure himself - "We'll make it through, we always do" - he found something else to worry about - "The washing machine has been leaking recently and there's no way we can afford a new one." Laying there at ten past three in the morning, he wished he could just pass out and be done with it. But it wasn't to be that sort of night. Instead, he gradually flitted in and out of sleep until he was finally out at a quarter of four. Not that this was any consolation - that night, he dreamt that he was back in high school, and that, not only had he turned up at school in his underwear, but he had forgotten to write his term paper. Kate liked to call that his "Oh crap!" dream. And Avery tended to only have the "Oh Crap!" dream when there was something heavy weighing on his mind.

Returning to Monday morning, the consequence of all of the cheap beer, money troubles, and insomnia was that Avery found himself slumped in his van with his head against the driver's side window. Avery was so tired, in fact, that he didn't even notice that the windowpane was ice cold - this was a November morning in Milwaukee, after all. Or perhaps he did, but the cold felt good with his hungover headache. An inattentive observer could easily have mistaken him for a dead man.

However, it was an attentive observer who noticed Avery first. A young man, unemployed and wandering around Lincoln St. looking for a place to get a cheap meal, noted that Avery was passed out and decided that this was as good a place as any to score some quick cash.

"Hey mister," the man said in a stern voice while rapping on the window. "Hey mister, open up!"

With all the windows rolled up, the man's voice was muffled, and it took Avery a minute or so to notice that someone was talking to him. The young man then started rapping something metallic on the window. Avery finally stirred and opened his eyes.

"Hey mister, I think someone graffiti'd your car."

"Huh? Oh."

Avery sat up, swung open the door and stepped out of the van, turning to look at the driver's side, where the young man was pointing. "Where? I don't see ..." Suddenly, the man shoved Avery to the ground. "What the hell?"

Turning around, Avery realized what was going on. The young man was brandishing a knife.

"Give me everything!"

"Hey man, you don't understand. That's my grocery money."

"I don't give a shit. I said give it, punk."

"Oh crap," Avery muttered, reaching into his pocket for his wallet and handing it over. "This is all have."

"Your watch, too."

Avery barely had time to pull to watch off before the man snatched it away and ran around the corner. Avery was still sitting on the pavement when he realized that a little boy across the street had seen the whole thing.

"Are you okay?" the boy asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Are you the book man?" the boy asked, gesturing at the Avery's van, which read BOOKMOBILE across the side in foot tall letters (it also said CARRO DE LA BIBLIOTECA in smaller letters, because Avery mostly found himself assigned to the near-South Side, which was to center of Milwaukee's Latino community).

"Um, yeah. I'm the book man, yeah," Avery answered, dusting himself off and standing up. He looked both ways - partly looking for cars, partly making sure that the guy who robbed him wasn't still lurking around - and crossed the street. The boy stood still, staring thoughtfully, but not saying anything.

"What's your name?"

"Hector."

"Where's your mom?"

Hector pointed back over his shoulder towards a small apartment building. A young woman, maybe 25 or 26, was standing by the front window, watching Hector and holding a baby girl. The baby was wearing a little yellow dress and had a bow in her hair. The mother smiled.

"My mom said that I should get a book to read. We don't have any books at home."
"Do you want something in English or en Español?"

"English," Hector answered, looking past Avery at the van. "Do you have Green Eyes and Ham?"

"Sure, sure." Avery took the boy's hand, and turning towards the apartment, waved at the mother. Looking both ways again, he crossed the street to the van. He opened the driver's side door of the van, revealing the interior full of books - mostly children's books and adult classics. (To Kill a Mockingbird and Romeo and Juliet were two of the favorites - Avery had multiple dog-eared copies of each in the van.) The books were hardly organized in a manner appropriate for a librarian - the Dewey decimal system was mostly a suggestion, and most books weren't even categorized by genre or author. Luckily, Avery knew exactly where the copy of Green Eggs and Ham was, since it was a favorite of his, too. Yeah, he was a little old for a children's book - thirty-two, to be exact - but reading through the Seuss classic reminded him of happier times.

With the book in hand, Avery grabbed the barcode scanner that sat in the front passenger's seat. Frankly, he was glad that the guy who mugged him hadn't taken that, too. That had happened once, and his supervisor had forced him to do an inventory of the entire bookmobile to account for the books checked out. And when a couple books couldn't be accounted for, he had to pay for them himself - $47.83 docked from his paycheck.

"Hector, do you have your library card?" Avery asked as he scanned the book out.

Hector looked blankly at Avery, squinting as the sun came from behind a cloud.

"Hector, do you have a library card?"

Hector shook his head no.

"Okay, let's go back and ask tu mámá."

Avery grabbed a clipboard from the back of the van and again took Hector's hand, this time with Green Eggs and Hand and the clipboard tucked under his other arm. They started to cross.

"You have to look both ways, mister."

Avery stopped and smiled at Hector. "Of course." He corrected himself, looking both ways before crossing. Hector had to skip a little to keep up with Avery's long strides. They walked up to the apartment building, opening the outer door and stepping into the small lobby. It was heated, uncomfortably so - after being outside in the 30 degree weather, the lobby was like a desert. Avery looked down at Hector, who was smiling and didn't seem bothered by the heat - he still had his coat zipped all the way to his chin, and his knit cap was pulled down nearly over his eyes.

"Okay, let's call your mom. Which button is your apartment, Hector?"
Before the boy could answer, though, the inner door started to open. The young woman from the window was standing there with the baby in one arm and a library card in the other.

"I saw you coming. He always forgets his card," she said, gesturing towards Hector.

"Oh, it's no problem, ma'am," Avery answered, pulling a pen from his pocket. "I just need to copy down the name and number from the card."

"Hector is always so excited about going to the library, but with the new bébé, we don't go very often anymore."

"Well, that's why we have the Bookmobile!" Avery exclaimed more excitedly than he had intended.

"El carro de la biblioteca!" Hector mimicked in Spanish, smiling.

"Sí, Hector," his mother said. "You see? Excited," she said to Avery.
Hector continued to smile at his mom and Avery.

"Hector, unzip your coat. It's too hot in here." She turned to Avery. "He loves that coat. We got it from Channel 12," she said, referring to the local ABC station that gave away donated coats to the poor every winter.
As he stood writing, Avery suddenly felt very self-conscious and felt the need to break the silence. "You didn't happen to see the guy who robbed me, did you?"

"Perdon?"

"Oh, nevermind." Avery finished writing the information down from the card. "Okay, that's it. You just need to have the book back when I come around again in three weeks. Or you can drop it off at one of the branch libraries - you can go to Forest Home or Zablocki on Oklahoma. Do you know where those are?"

"Sí," she answered. "Thank you."

Avery smiled and handed Hector the book and the library card. He waited until the boy had gone inside and his mom closed the inner door before he opened the door unto the street. The cold air seemed even colder by contrast with the overheated lobby.

Avery dashed across the street, forgetting again to check for cars. As he looked back over his shoulder, he could see Hector in the window, shaking his head as if to gently scold him. Avery smiled.

*****

The remainder of the morning went by uneventfully. Which is to say literally so. A cold November day is hardly the best time to run a bookmobile. Most people would rather do their browsing of books inside, thank you very much. Avery would normally have listened to the radio, but someone had broken off the antenna last week, and so the only signal that came in clear was the heavy metal station. But the silence just reminded Avery of his hangover, and he started hankering for some coffee.

Though he was technically supposed to stay out in the neighborhood until at least 2 o'clock, Avery always preferred to cut off a few minutes early. That way, he had enough time to grab some food, or get gas, or just get back to the main library a bit early. Today, his goal was to make it to Esmerelda's bakery on Mitchell before they closed. It helped that he knew Esmerelda herself, but still, he didn't want to keep her - bakers work long enough hours without having to stay open later in the afternoon for slackers.

Pulling a U-turn, Avery headed back east on Lincoln and then left onto Forest Home, one of the main streets on the South Side, heading northeast until it connected with Mitchell Street. This section of the neighborhood was called, officially, the Historic Mitchell Street Shopping District, but that was just a glamorous way of referring to the six-block stretch of Mitchell that had, on one point in time, been a relatively upscale shopping area, but was now mostly home to small business catering to recently arrived immigrants from Latin America - employment agencies, check-cashing shops, and at least a half-dozen shops selling dresses for weddings, communions, and quincineras.

At 12th and Mitchell, Avery stopped the van - half pulled-over, half blocking the street - and hopped out, dashing into Esmerelda's. "Hey, Esmé! Can I get a coffee and, um, whatever's fresh?"

"You come in here at five to two and expect hot coffee and fresh pastries?" Esmé teased, even as she was filled his cup while her daugher, Cecilia, grabbed a pain au chocolat.

"Oh, you wound me!" Avery exclaimed in mock horror. Esmé smiled. "What do I owe you?"

"Half off on the pastry, so ..." she paused, adding it in her head.

"Oh, dammit," Avery cursed as he reached for his wallet and remembered that it had been stolen. "Esmé, I don't have my wallet. I got robbed ..."

"That's okay, Ave. I know you're good for it." She smiled. "Besides, I already put cream in your coffee."

"Thanks a bunch. I owe you." Avery took the coffee and the pastry.

"But you'd better get out there before they tow you."

"Oh yeah, hey," Avery stuttered. He was still embarrassed by not having the cash to pay Esmé. He knew that she only barely did enough business to pay the rent on the store and the mortgage on her house since her husband had died two years earlier. And, though Esmé seemed confident that he'd have the cash for her, he wasn't so sure himself.

He waved goodbye as he backed out the door and hopped back into the van. He'd only been in the bakery a minute, but the cars on Mitchell were already backed up for a block and they were honking. He quickly dropped his coffee into the cup holder and headed downtown.

*****

Avery took surface streets downtown. Partly it was that he really preferred not to drive on the freeway - no character, just mile after mile of pavement - and partly it was because the Marquette interchange construction project had made a horrid mess out of getting to and from downtown. It was scheduled to be completed in two years, but Avery wasn't holding his breath. All it took in Milwaukee for a construction project to fall behind was for winter storms to show up early and often. Of course, Avery's preferences when it came to driving on the freeway didn't really much matter, since the bookmobile could barely hit 55 on a good day. In the cold weather, and with a low tank of gas, a full-size van stuffed with a few hundred pounds of books wasn't the most nimble of automobiles.

Avery crossed the 6th Street Bridge and passed the Amtrak station, turning onto Wisconsin Avenue just east of the Main Library. The building was, if anything, the classic American library - a large neo-classical building with Doric columns and a large staircase leading to the main entrance. Outside, on the median strip on Wisconsin Avenue were statues of honoring George Washington and Civil War Union soldiers. The reading rooms inside were cavernous and voices echoed off the high ceilings and marble floors. Avery often wondered if the architects who designed libraries did that on purpose so that people would be even more self-conscious of their talking.

But, of course, when driving the bookmobile, Avery didn't enter from the front. He pulled around the rear of the building, backing carefully into the loading dock. The dock, naturally, was not built in neo-classical style, but rather in neo-practical. It was smelly and dirty, the asphalt covered in a thin layer of motor oil and the scent of garbage in the air from the nearby bins. In the winter, snow would pile high and mix with soot from exhaust fumes to make a disgusting brown sludge. Because of that foul mixture, Avery always hoped for fresh snow even when he was working outside - at least it was a fresh layer of snow to cover over the old.

"Hey, hey! Watch it!"

Avery slammed on the breaks, and checked his mirrors. He couldn't see what the commotion was.

"Ave! Pull back out! We've got some books spilled in the dock."

Avery rolled down his window and leaned out. Now he could see what had happened - a large library cart full of books had dumped in the dock. Several of guys were hustling to pick up the mess, but fully half the books were still scattered about.

"Tony, you need a hand?" Avery asked as he hopped out.

"Yeah sure, Ave," Tony answered, walking up and shaking Avery's hand. "Been a while, huh, man?"

"Yeah, well, you're the out who went and took a vacation."

"Visiting my mother-in-law in the U.P. hardly qualifies."

"Well, it sure beats this place," Avery retorted as he bent over to clean up the spilled books. In reality, he was pretty happy with his job, but it's not like this is what he had intended when he went off to college. No one ever says that they want to be a bookmobile driver when they grow up. But, like many English majors, stacking classics on library shelves was as close as Avery was going to get to writing the great American novel. Thing is, at least most English majors had actually gotten their degrees. Avery had never quite had the ambition to stick out college, and had dropped out halfway into his sophomore year. The mounting student loans hadn't helped.

"But yeah, man, in the U.P., the snow's already two feet deep on the ground. Crazy, man," Tony continued talking. The U.P. he was referring to was the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which was actually a large peninsula jutting off of northern Wisconsin, forming the barrier between Lake Superior to the north and Lakes Michigan and Huron to the south. If the U.P. was known for one thing to Milwaukeeans it was that it got very cold there, and snowed a ton. While most Americans probably think of Milwaukee as far north, the U.P. is what Milwaukeeans think of as far north. (Canadians, of course, see things differently.)

Within a few minutes, the spilled books were cleaned up, though now there was a nearly full library cart full of books that were completely out of order. Tony started to push the cart inside when Leonard stopped him. "Maxine wanted me to take care of these."

"Okay, man, I just thought I'd help, cause ..."

"No, I'll do it," Leonard responded tersely, pulling the cart inside.

Tony turned around to face Avery. "Shit, I hate that guy. He acts like he owns the effin' place." Tony struck a match and lit a cigarette.

"Can I bum one?"

"Yeah, sure, man," Tony answered, handing Avery a cigarette. He started to offer a match, too, but Avery waved him off and pulled out a lighter from his pocket.

"I got robbed today down on Lincoln," Avery said as he took his first drag.

"Shit, man. Again?"

Avery nodded. "I fell asleep in the damn van and some punk pulled a knife on me." He sighed. "Eh, the kid probably needed the cash more than me, hey?"
Tony laughed. He knew that Avery wasn't exactly pulling down the big bucks, because, of course, they were both making the same amount. Thing was, Tony's wife had a decent office job in over in East Town. Kate, on the other hand, was working her way through grad school waiting tables and selling homemade jewelry. Sometimes Tony would buy a necklace from Kate just to help out a little, ever though he thought her jewelry was ugly.

They finished their cigarettes and headed inside from the cold. Avery had left the van pulled halfway into the dock. Frankly, he didn't figure anyone would much notice, or care. When Avery had started at the library three years earlier, the staff in the restocking department (of which the bookmobile crews were a part) was top-notch. But after a few months, old man McGee had stepped down and retired to Florida, leaving Maxine in charge. Within a year, she managed to take the department from one of the best in the library to one of the worst. But her cousin was the overall branch manager, so Maxine enjoyed unearned job security.

The biggest problem was staffing, epitomized by Leonard. He had worked in the library for years, but always in low-level positions. He was one of those guys who thought that he knew everything about everything and bristled at being ordered around. Problem was that he was barely capable of reordering a shelf without help. Somehow, though, he ended up as the assistant manager of restocking. Mostly, though, that meant that he acted as Maxine's enforcer, bossing people around on her orders, since she couldn't be bothered most times to interact with her own employees.

As Avery and Tony entered the main restocking room, they couldn't help but notice that the place looked even more disheveled than normal. The sorting table where books that needed re-shelving would be placed was piled with all matter of books, some in stacks but most just scattered about in no order. Some books had even been thrown down open, their pages creased and torn. The whole table looked much like the dock had looked after the cart dumped.

"Shit, look at this mess," Tony said, stopping and shaking his head. "Whatever, man."

"Come on, we'd better get to it."

"I guess."

Avery and Tony started to sort the book, first simply arranging them into neat stacks, and then separating them by fiction or nonfiction.

"Hey, Tone, why don't you grab that cart from earlier. We'd may as well sort those, too."

"Sure, man," Tony answered, walking over to grab the cart. "Hey, Ave?"

"Yeah?"

"Didn't there used to be four full shelves of books on this?"

"Yeah, sure, I think."

"Well, there's barely three on here now."

"Whatever, less work for us."

Tony wheeled the library cart over to the restocking table and began to unload the book into a stack by Avery, who then sorted them into two piles for fiction and non-fiction.

Suddenly, there was a large banging noise from a different part of the floor.

"What was that?" Tony asked.

"Probably someone spilled some books or something. Just more for us to clean up, I guess."

Tony laughed.

But then, they began to hear loud voices shouting. Avery recognized Maxine and Leonard as two of the voices, but there were several others.
"Some sort of ruckus, sounds like," Tony opined. He had stopped working for the moment. Avery was still sorting books, but slower and less attentively. Just as he put a biography of Franklin Roosevelt in the fiction pile, he heard Maxine's distinctive voice shrieking.

"You can't do this to me! You can't do this to me!"

Avery and Tony both started walking towards the inner hallway where Maxine's office was located - and from where the yelling was emanating - when they suddenly saw a sight that they may have secretly wished for many times, but certainly never thought they'd see - Maxine and Leonard were being led away by the police in handcuffs. Maxine was still yelling, but the police were hustling her towards the door (and the dock) at an ever-quickening pace. Avery and Tony stepped to the side just as the police passed them wordlessly.

Avery and Tony shared a knowing glance, and without so much as a word, began to following the police officers back out to the dock, keeping a respectful 10-12 steps behind them. When they got to the dock, they found Maxine and Leonard being loaded in the back of a paddy wagon that was parked halfway into the dock.

"Whose van is this? Who has the keys to this thing?" a police sergeant was asking loudly, gesturing towards Avery's bookmobile. "Who can move this heap for us?"

Tony looked at Avery, who was just staring at his feet.

"Give me a break, man. You'd have left it there, too. You know you would have."

Tony just laughed.

Music Collection #10: Austin Powers, B-52's, Badly Drawn Boy

2006-12-06T19:24:00.000-06:00

Artist: Various Artists
Album: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me Soundtrack
Favorite Song: Draggin' The Line (by default)
Origin: Amoeba, purchased for $5.95

This is one of those things in the collection that we only own because of one song - R.E.M.'s cover of Tommy James' Draggin' The Line. It's okay, but not worth the six bucks we spent on this. Of course, I'm sure even more hopeless R.E.M. geeks spent full price on this.

Artist: The B-52's
Album: Time Capsule
Favorite Song: None
Origin: Unknown, from Annie's collection

So, this one is totally not my fault. Once again, the icy grip of R.E.M.-fandom is to blame. You listen to R.E.M. six hours a day, read every article and ever website, buy a biography or two, and suddenly you've convinced yourself that The B-52's are a good band because they're from the same Athens, Georgia music scene. The B Fuckin' 52's! What the hell?

Anyway, this best of album is remarkable for one reason only - it contains 18 tracks! 18! Frankly, you'd have to try pretty hard to fill an EP's worth of songs for a B-52's best of, but someone went batshit crazy and provided the world with a good 15 tracks more than it ever desired.

Artist: Badly Drawn Boy
Album: The Hour of Bewilderbeast
Favorite Song: Epitaph
Origin: Hanukkah gift, I think (maybe birthday)

This was one of the first albums I ever asked for after having only read the reviews. My birthday, Christmas, and Hanukkah all fall in the same month, which means that a good way to get new music is the read the year-end lists and asked for whatever sounds best. Anyway, this was on there, and I got it and enjoyed it. And, despite the fact that I haven't listened to the album all the way through in years, it's still a touchstone in my musical evolution (wow, I don't think I've written a sentence that pretentious in a while). This was the first album I remember having with weird instrumentation, lo-fi production, experimental songs, etc. - presaging later favorites, including Neutral Milk Hotel and Sufjan Stevens.

Music Collection #9: Arcade Fire

2006-12-03T08:37:00.000-06:00

With Nanowrimo done, I have returned to music blogging (by less than popular demand)!

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: Funeral
Favorite Song: Wake Up
Origin: Birthday present last year

So Arcade Fire were the hot new indie band at one point (2004), combining all of the essential elements of indie-stardom - being from Canada, having tons of multi-instrumental members, having inpenetrable lyrics (some in French, even!), and having a lead singer with a weird name (Win Butler). The best part of having a singer with a weird name, by the way, is that people can totally drop it into conversation or cd reviews or whatever, and it's awesomely pretentious - "The arpeggiated harmonies on this song have such a Win Butler-esque appeal" or "After listening several times, I still couldn't figure out the double-tracked vocal melange. What is this, a Win Butler track?" Best of all, it doesn't have to make sense. But readers or listeners will just assume that you have some sort of insight into the mind of Win Butler, who must (must!) be some sort of reclusive genius or idiot savant or something.

Anyway, I got a bit off-track there. Point is, Arcade Fire were the hot new indie band at one point. Then I saw them on, like, the Fashion-Music Awards or some such crap show. And they were performing their song Wake Up with David Bowie (sharing lead vocals with the aforementioned Win Butler). The song was super-awesome - much better than the usual mix-an-up-and-coming-band-with-an-established-star mash-ups that they often do at awards shows. So I put their CD on my wishlist and received it for my birthday. And it's good, but not as super-awesome as the hype led me to believe. Wake Up, however, is still an awesome track - my favorite, in fact.

SUCCESS!

2006-11-26T01:00:00.000-06:00

Check out the counter!

Nanowriming

2006-11-19T22:37:00.000-06:00

Check out the counter on the side there! I'm currently 11,198 words shy of the Nanowrimo goal, with 11 days remaining. Victory is in sight, but this is of course no time to rest on my laurels. I honestly can't believe that I got this far, though. I really figured that I'd get a good start but then my interest would wane, I'd take a "break" and then the story would be dead. But I'm really enjoying my novel, and that's keeping me going. Also, I've being trying to stay realistic in my goals - 2000 words a day (which is about 2 hours of writing, give or take) is very doable. I think probably a lot of people get into the problem of trying to get a great start, writing 5000 words a day or something, and then burn out.

Anyway, I'm considering posting the novel in serialized form on this blog. I think that would be a good use of the blog. In addition, I plan to go back to the CD project once Nanowrimo is over (although my novel won't actually be finished by then, I don't think, so blogging will still take a backseat).

Halfway!

2006-11-14T13:25:00.000-06:00

So I'm more than halfway to my Nanowrimo goal of 50,000 words in the month of November (notice the counter on the right side of this page). I've been sticking to a goal of 2,000 words a day - some days that's very hard, others quite easy - and it seems to be working. My greatest fear was that I would just lose interest in writing. But here I am at 26,000 words and I feel like the story is just starting to get interesting. And I am, as of this writing, currently in 9th place for wordcount among the 152 Nanowrimo participants in the Milwaukee area!

Nanowrimo!

2006-11-06T22:32:00.000-06:00

So it's been several days since my last post, and even though I have a stack of cds here to get to, they will have to wait for another day. The reason? Nanowrimo! What's Nanowrimo? That would be National Novel Writing Month, of course! It's an annual event each November, when participants attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a single month. The rules are simple - start November 1st, end November 30th, and write as many words as you can in between. I first tried two years ago, but I only got a little ways, and what I did write was no more than a thinly-veiled account of my own life. Oh, it had a plot, or would have, had I gotten that far. This time, I actually have a storyline, and I'm making pretty good progress. By the 30th, I'll either have quit in disgrace, or finished but developed carpal tunnel and/or pulled out all of my hair.

If you're interested, check out my profile. Or, better yet, start your own novel! (Well, maybe wait till next year.)

Music Collection #8: Aerosmith and Tori Amos

2006-10-31T22:05:00.000-06:00

Artist: Aerosmith
Album: Greatest Hits
Favorite Song: Sweet Emotion (I guess)
Origin: Annie's

Why is this in the collection? I don't know. It's a pretty random Aerosmith cd to own - it only covers the early part of their career, from 1973-79. I was less than a year old when the final song on this collection was released. Being a child of the MTV generation, I'm of course more familiar with Aerosmith in their Run DMC and Alicia Silverstone incarnations.

Artist: Tori Amos
Albums: Little Earthquakes, Crucify, Winter, Under the Pink, Cornflake Girl, Boys for Pele, Hey Jupiter, From the Choirgirl Hotel, To Venus and Back, Concertina, StrangeLittleGirls, Scarlet's Walk, Tales of a Librarian, The Beekeeper
Favorite Song: Winter
Origin: One of Annie's favorites

This is a lot of cds to cover in a single entry. I was originally going to make this two, but then I realized that I hardly have enough thoughts on Tori to fill a single post, let alone two.

My friend Sarah in college was a huge Tori fan. Huge. Like, camp-out-for-hours-before-the-show-to-meet-Tori huge. And she did meet her - twice actually. But by Sarah's own admission, she wasn't even close to being a truly rabid fan - some of the other girls, apparently, were carve-her-name-into-your-skin rabid. All of which is to say that Tori is not the type of artist who you can listen to casually. I actually purchased Little Earthquakes from BMG once, but sent it back before I opened it. She's a Bush Doctrine artist - you're either for her or against her. And I just didn't feel like lugging around that much emotional baggage.

I actually once spent an evening with Sarah and one of her roommates watching a VHS tape of Tori performances recorded off of TV (all my other friends had gone home for the weekend). I don't remember if it was something that Sarah put together herself, or if it was something that she traded for online from another fan. It was from that tape that I decided that Winter was my favorite song of hers, though at this point I frankly can't even remember how it goes.

Music Collection #7: Ryan Adams, finale

2006-10-29T11:32:00.000-06:00

Artist: Ryan Adams and The Cardinals
Album: Cold Roses; Jacksonville City Nights; 29
Favorite Song: If I Am A Stranger; The End; Strawberry Wine
Origin: Borders, downtown Milwaukee; ditto; and a birthday gift

2005 was a banner year for Ryan Adams. Or, at the very least, a marathon year - releasing three albums within the span of 8 months or so, the first of them a double album. At first I was going to write separate posts for all of these albums, but I decided that it made more sense to combine them, even though the album don't hang together as a trio. Cold Roses and Jacksonville City Nights are, in a way, companion pieces. Each stands alone, but they also complement each other. Really, they probably could have been released (with a few edits) as a single long double album - dump a couple of the slower tracks from Roses and some of the more generic songs from Jacksonville, shift a few others from the former to the latter, and voila! Which isn't to say that Adams should have done that, just that he could have (if I had more time and I was more awake, I'd throw together my hypothetical double-album setlist).

These two albums mark Adams' return to more country-influenced rock, but with Cold Roses having a more alt-country, bluegrass feel, and Jacksonville City Nights the more honky-tonk, straight-up country feel.
Cold Roses strength lies, then, in the more up-tempo rockers like If I Am A Stranger, Beautiful Sorta, and Let It Ride. All three are classic Adams - noise and bluster paired with melancholy, self-pitying lyrics. Jacksonville's strongest tracks - The End, A Kiss Before I Go, The Hardest Part, The Peaceful Valley - by contrast, have a more atmospherically country feel to them in place of the bluster. The lyrics tend more towards classic country themes, too - small towns, lost loves, death.

What really makes both of these albums work, though, is Adams' new backing band, The Cardinals. Though he plays guitar and piano in addition to singing, Adams has always relied on other musicians on his albums. But those musicians change from album to album, track to track. Here, he's got the same four-piece band backing him on every track (with a couple guest appearances by Rachael Yamagata and Norah Jones), which provides a consistency in both quality and overall sound. I have to admit that I was skeptical at first of the idea of Adams bringing in a regular band - partly because of the personnel-changing chaos that was Whiskeytown, partly because of the fear of a band diluting his music, and partly for fear of the pretense that comes with being ______ ______ and the _______s!

Finally, you'll note that I haven't said a word yet about 29. There's a reason for that - it's not very good. A couple of the tracks could have maybe fit on another album, but as a whole, it is simply too understated, too quiet (the volume is turned to -11), too pretentious (lots of strings), and too self-indulgent (it's a concept album about his twenties, for Christ's sake). Plus, it contains the single worst Ryan Adams track ever put to record - the spaghetti-western outtake The Sadness, which is just too awful to accurately describe.

So, that ends my foray into Ryan Adams. Having one of my favorite artists right at the beginning of this music project has really, I think, thrown off the feel of the project - most posts after this will cover multiple albums, and will be less like album reviews and more like some random thoughts on the albums strung together. But, given that I'm only doing this once, I couldn't after-all shortchange some of my favorite albums.

Music Collection #6: Ryan Adams, Love Is Hell

2006-10-28T11:53:00.000-06:00

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Love Is Hell
Favorite Song: English Girls Approximately
Origin: Amoeba, $9.99

So this is Ryan Adams' mope-rock album. God, I hate that term. It is, I'll grant, an album of mostly downbeat love songs, but then, so is Heartbreaker. Where this album is different is in the production values - lots of reverb in the guitars and vocals - which give it more of an urban feel that Heartbreaker's decidedly country aesthetic. Lyrically, this album covers an urban landscape as well - London, Manhattan, Baltimore. Maybe that's why I like it so much - I've always been a city guy at heart. The country is nice to visit or drive through, but I'd much rather ride on a noisy streetcar through rainy streets at 2 o'clock in the morning. So I don't hear this as a depressing album, I guess, which is why I like it so much.

Another thing this album does well - and which Adams improves on with Jacksonville City Nights - is tell stories. Many songs up to this point in his career were very impressionistic. Dear Chicago, for instance, is a beautiful, heartbreaking song, but the details of the relationship that is breaking down in the song are pretty sketchy. With this album, especially This House Is Not For Sale, I See Monsters, and Thank You Louise, Adams starts to flesh out his tales with little details that make repeated listens more intesting - I'd probably heard I See Monsters a hundred times before Annie pointed out that it's above Adams' girlfriend having a nightmare.

Finally, I guess I couldn't cover this album without mentioning the most famous song - a cover of Oasis' Wonderwall. And I'll admit, that was the song that first made me intrigued about this album back when it wasn't a proper album, but rather two EPs. Wonderwall was probably my favorite track, too, the first dozen times or so I listened to the album. It's a great stripped-down cover of a song so iconic as to be almost un-coverable. But I think it's a testament to the strength of this album and it's ability to grow on me over time that Wonderwall now seems almost a gimmicky addition - not even one of the best half-dozen tracks, to be sure.

Incidentally, if you're only a casual Ryan Adams fan, this is the final essential album of his - in addition to Heartbreaker and Gold.

Gratuitous 100th Post!

2006-10-28T11:46:00.000-06:00

This is the 100th post on this blog since it started a year-and-a-half ago (though the blog was dormant for roughly half that time). In honor of the blog's achievement (or rather, mine), you should totally buy me something!

Music Collection #5: Ryan Adams, Rock N Roll

2006-10-26T18:12:00.000-06:00

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Rock N Roll
Favorite Song: So Alive
Origin: Best Buy, 76th Street in Greenfield

So I made the comment in regards to the Gold bonus disc that I didn't like it at first, which was surprising for a Ryan Adams album. But now that I think about it, I didn't like this album at first, either. In fact, after a couple initial listens, I basically stuck this on the shelf and forgot about it for several months. Which was a shame, given what I went through to buy it. I had gone down to Southridge mall to buy Christmas gifts. But I don't drive (and Annie had driven our car to St. Louis that weekend anyway), so I had to do all of my shopping via bus and walking. And Milwaukee is not made for that sort of thing. I could have bought this album at a store in the mall, I guess, but I had a coupon for Best Buy, so I went there instead, which is at the opposite end of the 76th street shopping area. Between the mall, Bed Bath & Beyond, and Best Buy, I probably walked a mile or two up and down 76th St. (which doesn't always have sidewalks) in 30 degree weather, and I was sweating like a pig.

Anyway, when I got this home and listened to it, I was very disappointed. It basically sounded like one loud, obnoxious, 45-minute-long song. Around that time, though, I was listening to Virgin Radio on the internet, and they had So Alive in rotation (being the UK, they actually play rock songs on the radio). I grew to like it, and it was some time before I made the connection that it was Ryan Adams (being the radio, they often don't bother to tell you what you're listening to). Eventually, I started listening to the album again, and even started to like it - it served the purpose of loud, cathartic music to wash dishes to. Still, I would often skip tracks, including everything after Anybody Wanna Take Me Home most of the time.

Famously, this album was demanded by the record company after they deemed Love Is Hell not commercial enough. Adams turned in this in its place, and Love Is Hell was released as two EPs. In retrospect, I think it's pretty clear that Love Is Hell should have been the album, and Rock N Roll the EP - except that they should have made it one disc. The following tracklisting I think preserves the glam/punk attitude of the album, while culling it from fourteen mostly mediocre tracks to six relatively strong ones:

This Is It
Wish You Were Here
So Alive
Note to Self: Don't Die
Rock N Roll
Anybody Wanna Take Me Home (the Rock N Roll version, which is superior to the slower Love Is Hell version)

Music Collection #4: Ryan Adams, Demolition

2006-10-25T17:41:00.000-06:00

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Demolition
Favorite Song: Dear Chicago
Origin: Amoeba, San Francisco

Do you ever get the feeling that the randomizer is reading your mind? Yeah, me neither. But it totally did today. I was thinking what to say about this album, a collection of unreleased songs (demos, if you will - get it? Demolition?), and the randomizer went and played all three of my favorite tracks - Dear Chicago, Chin Up, Cheer Up, and Cry on Demand.

When I first bought this album, it was one of those "hey, neat!" moments that you rarely have, where you first hear of an album by seeing it on the rack in the store. With all of the music press nowadays, that's pretty rare. So I bought it and listened a few times. Like most collection of unreleased songs, it doesn't really hold together as an album, and there are plenty of songs that make it real clear why they didn't make it onto an album. (Nuclear, Starting to Hurt, and Gimme a Sign, for instance, all sound like rejects from Rock N Roll, an album that isn't good enough to have rejects.) But over time, I would find myself singing some song in my head, and I would dig around for a bit before I realized that it came from this record. Chin Up, Cheer Up and She Wants to Play Hearts (another good song) were like this - sorta sneaking up on me over time.

The best track on the album, though, is Dear Chicago, which is one of those rare cases for me where the track that started as my favorite has remained so. It's produced by Adams himself, I see from the liner notes, and sounds like something that would have fit both sonically and thematically on Love is Hell, which he co-produced (same holds for the other two Adams-produced tracks). The music is simple and haunting, and the lyrics are pretty direct, ending with one of my favorite break-up lines ever, sung in a pretty and resigned voice "I think I'm falling out of love ... with you." A perfect 2-minute song of heartbreak. This is the sort of song that makes an odds and ends collection worth having for real fans, and makes you say "How the hell did this not end up on an album?"

Music Collection #3: Ryan Adams, Gold and Bonus Disc

2006-10-23T15:49:00.000-06:00

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Gold
Favorite Song: New York, New York
Origin: Birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah Gift (I think)

Ah, Gold, named for the title track Gold to Me. Er, no wait ... that's Ben Harper.

Silver and Gold? U2.

After the Goldrush? Neil Young.

Well, then maybe it's just named after Adams' ambition that the record would go gold. And I think it did. And I'm pretty sure it's the only one his albums that has. In a way, that's because probably got the most publicity - the lead single was New York, New York which just happened to be released right around September 11th. I remember my brother complaining once that it was a little unseemly that Adams had rushed out a New York City tribute single so quickly. I had to tell him that it was actually recorded well before 9/11 - the video, in fact, features the Twin Towers in the background. But that song was the first by Ryan Adams I ever heard, and it was enough to get me to put the album on my holiday wishlist. (The only sour part of the song - the weird sax outro, which one review I saw mentioned as the highlight of the track. No. Saxes in rock music is a definite no.)

The real strength of the album, though, is its variety of style. Most of Adams' albums are genre exercises, and each has a different feel to it. This one, I think, does the best job of melding his various styles and influences. Now, maybe it's just because I got this album first, but this, to me, is what Adams sounds like. One common thread through the album is the heavy use of the organ. When The Stars Go Blue, for instance, contains one of my favorite musical moments ever - a little 2-second organ riff about a minute in. (Touch, Feel & Lose is another organ-heavy track, made more sublime/ridiculous by the scene in Ryan Adams: Live in Jamaica where he performs it with a gaggle of Jamaican schoolchildren singing backing vocals. "Cry, cry, cry.")

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Gold Bonus Disc
Favorite Song: Cannonball Days
Origin: Birthday gift from my parents

I got this last year for my birthday. When I opened it Annie was like "Doesn't your mom know you already own that?" Well, yes, but not the 21-track, 2-disc version! I've actually not bothered to get all of Adams singles, b-sides, rarities, etc. as, frankly, he puts out enough music already - 8 albums since 2000. But this was easy enough to get, and a 5-song bonus disc seemed to make it worth the extra few bucks (I've always hated paying $12.95 for import singles with 2 extra lousy tracks, or even asking for such things as gifts.) Problem is, the first time I listened to this, I didn't like it, which is odd for Adams music. But I gave it a few more spins, and I certainly warmed up to it. Sweet Black Magic and Cannonball Days are good enough that they probably should have made it onto the album. Only The Bar Is A Beautiful Place, unnecessarily long and string-laden, is a clunker.

One of the first times I remember listening to this and really digging it was shortly after Jamie was born. He was probably 3 months old or so, and I was dancing in front of the large window in our living room (he enjoys looking out at the front yard and the cars in the street). There I was, dancing with my infant son and singing along with lyrics about shooting up.

Music Collection #2: Ryan Adams - Heartbreaker

2006-10-22T09:38:00.000-06:00

Artist: Ryan Adams
Album: Heartbreaker
Favorite Song: Oh My Sweet Carolina and To Be Young (Is to be Sad, Is to be High) - tie
Origin: Amoeba, San Francisco, I think (purchased new)

This album is, without a doubt, Ryan Adams' finest. At least, that's what all of the critics say, and I always listen intently to what music critics say, since there words are like manna from heaven. Anyway, I really like this album, but I'm not sure that it's my favorite by Adams. I'm not sure that I have a favorite, actually. But this album certainly captures in 15 tracks many of the themes running through his work - heartbreak (Amy, Come Pick Me Up), drug use (To Be Young), existential angst about his Southern roots (Oh My Sweet Carolina).

What it lacks, except for a couple tracks, is the dueling bombastic/melancholy split in Adams' persona. It's this split, I think, that causes a lot of critics and listeners to feel that he's not very authentic, or even that's he's just a plain ol' asshole. I think there's two things wrong with this analysis. One, I think it assumes that most musicians/artists really are authentic, and that Adams' inauthenticity is therefore unique and bad. This, frankly, is either a willfully blind or exceedingly naive way of looking at rock music. All musicians construct a persona, so that you're not listening to John Lennon or Joe Strummer or Mick Jagger, but "John Lennon," "Joe Strummer," and "Mick Jagger." They are all, to different degrees, playing characters based on themselves. Or, perhaps that's being too harsh. They are all putting forth a different side of their personality that they feel is appropriate for the situation, just like how you don't behave the same way in front of your Grandma that you do in front of your friends.

Second, I think critics fail to see how the two halves of Adams personality logically co-exist. His situational personality switches between that of a forlorn lover and a hard-partying rocker, but both are ways of dealing with the basic unhappiness of his music. Read through his lyrics - this is not a guy who's happy with his life. I don't mean that he's clinically depressed, just that he never really sounds satisfied with anything, especially love. Most of his love songs are, in fact, songs about break-ups or missed chances. And these songs are full of regret - he's not yet ready to give up on finding the right girl. In fact, contrary to many stereotypes, Adams is usually the one holding out hope for a relationship while the girl walks away ("Oh, I love you Amy/Do you still love me?").

So, getting back to Heartbreaker, I think this album does a wonderful job of establishing the forlorn lover side of Adams' persona, which is the more "authentic" side embraced by the critics. Certainly, Amy (quoted above) or Come Pick Me Up ("Come pick me up/Take me out/Fuck me up/Steal all my records/Screw all my friends/Behind my back/With a smile on your face/And then do it again") are great, great songs of heartbreak and mixed emotions. If your preferred method of drowning your sorrows is drinking beer and whiskey at 2 in the morning at a dive bar in Greenville, Any Southern State, then these songs would be the perfect soundtrack. If you prefer to deal with heartbreak by snorting cocaine and busting up your rat-trap hotel room in Chelsea, NYC, you may be better favored by Adams' later albums, or by listening to To Be Young (Is to be Sad, Is to be High) on repeat ("Young gal, ya done me bad/So I went and did you wrong/Then I got high/Lord, I got high").

Ye Olde Sisyphusean Task

2006-10-22T08:47:00.000-06:00

As I stated in my original post explaining my project to blog my entire music collection, the idea came from my wife, Annie. Figuring I suppose that misery loves company, she has now embarked on the project as well. Will this be the moral support I need to soldier on through 800(?) cds? Will our dueling blogs thrive or wither through competition? Will we somehow engage in a division of labor allowing the us to finish the project together? Join me, dear reader(s) to find out the answers to these questions and more!

UPDATE: One thing that's interesting about Annie and I working on this project simultaneously is that many of our opinions are going to overlap. Compare my post on the 10,000 Maniacs with hers. Eerily similar. I'm going to refrain from reading Annie's comments on a particular album before writing my own, and vice-versa, but naturally our thoughts and opinions are going to line-up sometimes - that's part of why I married her, after all. :)

Music Collection #1: 200 Cigarettes, 10,000 Maniacs, Ace of Base

2006-10-21T14:02:00.000-06:00

Artist: N/A
Album: 200 Cigarettes Soundtrack
Favorite Song: Cruel to be Kind by Nick Lowe
Origin: Amoeba Music, San Francisco

Annie owned this movie, and I finally agreed to watch it with her one time. It was a lot better than I thought. Not high cinema, but an entertaining look back at the early 80's, complete with the requisite New Wave soundtrack. I found the album for $6.95 (the price tag is still on the case) in the used bin and picked it up. I think this was shortly after we had consolidated our music collection, and I was at Amoeba selling my duplicates (Annie, of course, would not part with her copies, even when mine were in better shape).

The album itself is something of a mixed bag. It's got some awesome early 80's rock - the aforementioned Cruel to be Kind, Elvis Costello's (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, The Cars Just What I Needed - as well as some passable covers, such as The English Beat's Save It For Later by Harvey Danger. There's also some real crap, such as Bow Wow Wow's I Want Candy and an unbelievably awful medley of Blondie tunes (a medley, wtf!).

The only time I really remember listening to this all the way through was just after we bought our house, and we were painting the living room. I was scraping old paint off the ceiling, and we were alternately listening to fun albums and Bob Uecker's radio broadcasts of the Brewers. Otherwise, I put the 8 or so good songs from the album on my computer at work, and so I hear them on the randomizer now and then.

Artist: 10,000 Maniacs
Album: Our Time in Eden
Favorite Song: N/A
Origin: Unknown

This CD is something of Annie's and so I've never listened to it. A couple of these songs are relatively well-known - These are Days and Candy Everybody Wants (which is sort of a dirty-sounding title, if you think about it). And I've heard a live version of Jezebel. Otherwise, none of these songs sound remotely familiar.

Artist: 10,000 Maniacs
Album: Few & Far Between Single
Favorite Song: N/A
Origin: Streetlight Records, Santa Cruz, CA

I believe that Annie got this as part of a buy 3 get 1 free deal from Streetlight's singles bin. Apparently it was $3.95. The a-side is from the aforementioned Our Time in Eden album (boy, that's a really pretentious title, now that I think about it). Two of the b-sides are from the MTV Inaugural Ball from 1993 - back when mixing music and politics was still considered cool.

Michael Stipe provides guest vocals on both of the Inaugural Ball tracks. Which brings to mind the real reason that these 10,000 Maniacs albums are in our collection - they're one of those artists with an R.E.M. connection - Grant Lee Phillips, Husker Du, Pylon, etc. - that, if you're a big enough R.E.M. fan, you feel compelled to own and, if not exactly enjoy, at least know something about. Man, the 10,000 Maniacs probably owe a few hundred thousand dollars worth of royalties to the fact that Natalie Merchant dated Michael Stipe for a while (or at least spent time together being artsy-fartsy).

Artist: 10,000 Maniacs
Album: MTV Unplugged
Favorite Song: Because the Night
Origin: Streetlight Records, Santa Cruz, CA

This one I actually bought myself (see above for R.E.M.-related explanation), and even enjoyed, although this copy is Annie's (see above for explanation of how all of my duplicates ended up at Amoeba). This is one of those albums that I listened to quite a lot for a while, especially Because the Night (Patti Smith cover) and Jezebel. Tracks from this probably even ended up on mixtapes that I made. But at some point, I just stopped listening to it. I honestly don't think I've heard it since I graduated from Santa Cruz in 2001 (omigod, I graduated from college 5 years ago).

Artist: Ace of Base
Album: The Sign
Favorite Song: None
Origin: Known only to God

This is the kind of album that emphasizes rule #3 - every album must be blogged. No exceptions. Only Annie can possibly explain why she owns this. I, however, am reminded of that horrible months-long period in 9th grade when the title track from this album ruled the airwaves and introduced Middle America to the ankh. Ah, memories.

A New Beginning

2006-10-21T13:10:00.000-06:00

After a long absence, I have returned to this blog flush with divine inspiration. Well, not divine, really. I have been reading Slate's feature Blogging the Bible, an attempt by David Plotz to blog his way through the Hebrew Bible. It's an entertaining and interesting read, putting a lot of well-known stories in context for someone who's never read the Bible himself. But, more importantly, it's a project. That is, Plotz has set himself a goal (and an attainable goal at that) in writing about the Bible, chapter by chapter, book by book. The problem with many blogs is that they have no direction, and thus it's easy to get sidetracked with mindless posts or by just quitting altogether. But a project has a purpose, a beginning and an end, and with a goal in mind, a reason to keep posting.

So then, what will my project be? My lovely wife Annie suggested something that never occurred to me - blogging my way through our music collection in alphabetically order. Sure, I could just blog about the good albums, the great songs, the best mixtapes, etc. But then, that wouldn't be a project! Going A to Z, covering the lousy albums, the brilliant albums, the embarassing albums, and everything in-between, that's a project worth blogging about.

A project, of course, needs rules. There are only 3 rules:

1) The blogging will proceed in alphabetical order by artist, chronologically by album. This is the order our collection is kept in. A note, however: Annie decided on the alphabetization style, so some artists are, to my mind, out of order. For instance, R.E.M. comes at the beginning of the R's (for shame!), and bands with number names (i.e. 10,000 Maniacs) come at the beginning.

2) Newly purchased albums will be blogged alphabetically as usual, unless that portion of the alphabet has already been passed by, in which case it would be inserted as an addendum whenever I have a chance (and something to say about it).

3) Every album in the collection must be mentioned! The post need not be profound, but the entire collection must be blogged. There are no exceptions.

Munich, ad naseum

2006-02-03T12:56:00.001-06:00

One last post about this movie, now nominated for a best picture Oscar.

This is an excellent article about the movie and its politics, far better than my rantings from December (and, helpfully, written by someone who has seen the movie).

Munich, Part 2

2005-12-29T11:20:00.000-06:00

So, despite my lengthy post below, I have not yet exhausted my thoughts on the subject of violence and the mushy thinking that accompanies discussions of it. Now, as I noted below, my recent ruminations on this topic have been prompted by movie reviews of Munich. And, admittedly, movie reviews are not exactly a sophisticated realm of socio-political discussion. Most of things I have read in these review echo arguments that I have heard again and again elsewhere.

First, to return to the topic of revenge in Munich. One thing that bothers me about the discussion surrounding this movie is that revenge is discussed absent the concept of alternatives and the fact that Israel was de facto at war with its enemies. In war, killing one's enemies is not considered to be morally problematic. So why are the killings in Munich presented as morally troubling "revenge" killings? They are no more revenge than the Allied invasion of Normandy was "revenge" for the Fall of France. Also, what was the alternative? Revenge is considered wrong in law-abiding societies because it substitutes extra-judicial killing for the legal process. But there was no real chance to apprehend and try those behind the Munich massacre. (Besides, when Israel apprehended and tried Adolf Eichmann for his role in the Holocaust, it was widely criticized for its methods. In fact, some argued Israel should have just killed Eichmann instead of proceeding with a show trial.)

Second, one oftens hears complaints about the use of the word "evil" to describe terrorists, murderers, psychopaths, genocidaires and other assorted folk. This word does not lead us to better understand these people. Perhaps not. But here is the definition of evil. It applies. And to not use the word displays, to me, a greater lack of understanding. It is to refuse to call a spade a spade, and then to pat yourself on the back for doing so. It is ignorance masquerading as sophistication. Those who shoot, hack, or starve to death innocent people are evil. This does not, it is true, reveal the nature of there malevolence, nor their motives. But it does pass moral judgment on the killers, and that is, unto itself, useful. The greatest problem with discussing genocide is not that we are too quick to call the perpetrators evil, it is that we are too slow to. And that tardiness in identifying evil leads to tardiness in combatting it.

Munich

2005-12-22T12:49:00.000-06:00

So yesterday I read my first review of Munich, the new Steven Spielberg movie about Israel's counterterrorism operation against the Black September terrorists who massacred the Israeli Olympic team in 1972. And my conclusion is this: movie reviewers shouldn't write about politics. Now, granted, this review was in The Onion, but still. The review was peppered with several of the grating tropes that populate commentary on the Middle East by people who don't know much about the subject.

The movie concerns the psychological and moral toll taken on the Israeli agents who carry out the killings, which is certainly an improvement over standard action movies where heroes kill without any remorse or second thoughts. It also has the important benefit of being true to the real story, and true to what we know about soldiers in general. However, the implication that reviewers have drawn from the movie (which I think is Spielberg's intention, given his comments elsewhere) is that basically, the movie shows the futility and immorality of vengeance. They note the uselessness of the "cycle of violence" and the "tit for tat" that characterize politics in the Middle East.

The frustrating thing about these terms is that they are both condenscending (to both the Israelis and the Palestinians) and largely meaningless. First of all, the "cycle of violence" is condemned loudly and often by all manner of commentators, but almost always with the implied solution that Israel should not retaliate against Palestinian atrocities. That is, Israel should step forward and put morality first. Rarely if ever are the Palestinians the ones encouraged to break the cycle. This is insulting to both sides. It seems to imply that the Palestinians are incabable of moral reasoning, and therefore cannot be expected to restrain themselves. It likewise holds the Israelis to a higher morality - they should countenance atrocities in the name of the peace process.

Furthermore, the "cycle of violence" seems to imply that A commits an atrocity, and then B commits an atrocity, and then A, and then B ..., as if all atrocities and all violent acts are equal. This is simply not the case. Some acts, such as the Munich massacre, are on such a scale (whether in terms of lives lost or the callousness of the act) that they cannot simply be brushed aside and lightly forgiven or ignored. And this goes both ways - when it appeared in 2000 that the Israeli army had deliberately gunned down a child, Muhammed al Durah, this was an act which went beyond the day-to-day violence and tragedy in the Middle East. The Palestinians could not simply forgive this crime (or alleged crime, as it now seems that the event may have not occurred as originally reported). In these situations, a response is necessary, and the response is necessarily violent.

But too often, these responses are dismissed as simply "vengeance," meant to imply that there is no other purpose than killing the killers to get even. But this is not true. Counterterrorism is concerned with killing the killers because that prevents them from striking again, because it puts them on the defensive, because it holds the individuals responsible accountable, because it achieves the strategic end of not giving in to terrorism. It short, there are a number of good reasons to kill those who have attacked you, especially when the attack is brazen and indiscriminate. Vengeance this is not, it is strategy, it is politics.

Finally, critics of the "cycle of violence" fall back on one last argument - what has 50 years of violence achieved? Well, Israel has survived. It has maintained and even expanded its borders. It is prosperous and modern. It is democratic. It has given the Jewish people a homeland. In short, 50 years of violence has accomplished a great deal. This is not to say that peace would not have been preferable. But peace was never really a choice. Instead, Israel has made hard choices, and they have included several mistakes. But to dismiss out-of-hand what has been remarkably successful strategy is simply unfair.

Power Grab

2005-12-21T12:56:00.000-06:00

So the President thinks that he has the right to operate domestic spying operations without warrants? Huh. There are a million good articles written on this subject already, so I'm not going to bother linking to any. Go to any political or news site and you'll find a dozen or two.

But what really strikes me about this is what a completely audacious power grab this was by the President, and how it is exactly the sort of Executive Branch overreach that the Founders feared. Basically, the President felt that the existing laws passed by Congress did not grant him the power he needed, and that they hampered him by requiring that he obtain warrants from the Judicial Branch. So what did he do? He simply decided to go ahead and take the power he wanted regardless of the checks on his power imposed by the other two branches of government. And, most disturbingly, he did so in complete secrecy, such that no one would have even known about it without the skillful reporting of the New York Times.

Think about this, the President has claimed (based on laughably ridiculous Constitutional arguments) that he may do whatever he wants if he feels that it is within his power. And he feels almost no need to justify or explain his actions. That's exactly how our system is not supposed to work. And it is entirely consistent with other Bush Administration moves to increase the power and reduce the transparency of the Executive Branch. The actual substance of the policy is irrelevant.

Musical Frankenstein

2005-12-14T23:45:00.000-06:00

So I found a link to an cool song creation site. (Note that you have to disable pop-up blocking.) Anyway, you just enter some words, and it creates a track using clips from famous songs. It doesn't matter what you enter - you could even enter this post.

Lazy Reviewers

2005-12-13T12:50:00.000-06:00

So the other day I was reading a review of Wilco's Kicking Television and the reviewer was talking about how Wilco had gone through several different incarnations. True enough. But then he referred to the band during the Summerteeth period as being "Beach Boys knock-offs" or something like that. And here's the thing - using harmonies does not make a band like the Beach Boys. But you would never know it by reading music reviews. Every band that harmonizes is compared to the Beach Boys (melodic songs earns you a Beatles comparison, literate singer-songwriters are hailed as Dylan).

Anyway, I realize that writing music reviews is difficult - as Elvis Costello (among others) said "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." But still, be a little original. Try to write without constant comparisons to other bands, because no two bands truly sound alike. Or at least admit that a band is a mixture of different elements from different influences. And try to avoid comparisons to the biggest acts in history. Wilco never sounded like the Beach Boys. Elliott Smith never sounded like the Beatles. Conor Oberst is not the next Dylan (subscription required).

Murderdeathkill, Part II

2005-12-06T16:24:00.000-06:00

As an update to my previous post, I hereby request that my faithful reader(s) [Hold on, lemme count. Let's see ... 1 .... That's it? Shit.] submit their plan(s) for their own murders. Remember, nothing banal. The plan must be fiendish in its intricacies.

Murderdeathkill

2005-12-06T12:53:00.000-06:00

So obviously, everyone in the world has thought about how they're likely to die, how they'd like to die, what the worst way to die would be, etc.

But today, I was thinking about what would be the most effective way for someone else to murder me. Now, I suppose the most effective way would be to drop an atomic bomb directly on me or something like that. But I'm thinking of something more elegant than that.

And what I came up with is this: poisoned pretzels.

I love pretzels, and I pretty much can't not eat them if they're around. Even if I knew that they were poisoned, I'd probably still eat them.

Now, thing is, I'm also very sensitive to how my pretzels taste. So my murderer should either use something that won't effect the favor and/or will kill instantly. I'd recommend iocaine powder (odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man).

Also, my murderer should be careful to pick a type of pretzel that I'm fond of, just in case I'm being a bit picky that day, or I'm not that hungry. None of this Rold Gold shit. The pretzels must have the correct crunchiness, saltiness, density, and dryness. Of course, I'm not going to give my exact preferences in all of these categories, because that would make things too easy for my potential murderer. I mean, I'm already providing him/her with a plan, does he/she really expect me to fill in all the details, too? If so, you are one lazy murderer.

Anyway, in conclusion, poison some good pretzels and you'll probably get me. Or just find yourself an atomic bomb. Either way.

Random Hatred

2005-11-04T15:04:00.000-06:00

So, we all know that random hatred of perfect strangers for irrational reasons is morally-upright and socially acceptable, right? Right. But what happens when the person you irrationally hate is also someone you admire? Such is my dilemma.

I give you A.C. "Carl" Newman, front-man of the New Pornographers, one of my current favorite bands. He writes brilliantly catchy, and yet off-beat, songs which combine disparate elements from across the rock spectrum into music that no one with good taste could dislike.

And yet ... I get the feeling that I hate him.

It all started when Annie and I went to see the New Pornographers at an in-store appearance at Amoeba in San Francisco. The set was short and messy, but fun. But Newman's stage banter was a bit much, y'know? He asked the crowd to recommend burrito places, and then proceeded to rattle off the names of several burrito places in the Mission. Who does he think he is?

Then there's this interview. Read it. Go ahead. It's riddled with smug I'm-the-front-man-of-a-critical-darling-band quips. Where? What are are you, lazy? Read it yourself. They're in there! I swear!

Oh, and also? He's Canadian! Yes, Canadian. He even admits it!

And finally, there's this picture. Look at it. Can you possibly come to any other conclusion than that he's an asshole? If you can, you're dead to me.

To recap:
1) Burritos
2) Interview
3) Canadian
R) Picture

What's that? My arguments don't make sense? That's why they're irrational! Haven't you been paying attention?

So, in conclusion, buy A.C. "Carl" Newman's music. It will make your life better. But while you do, curse his very existence. This I command!

Cheap Shot of the Week

2005-11-04T13:57:00.000-06:00

It's a good thing that the French don't have the problems of racial animus, incompetent governance, and intractable social issues like us poor benighted Americans.

Perhaps the Awesome-est Thing Ever

2005-10-21T15:56:00.000-06:00

Try this.

Overstatement of the Week

2005-10-19T14:23:00.000-06:00

Oh, by the way, I'm elated that the A's didn't hire Orel Hershiser's '88 Dodger-ass to be their manager. I couldn't stand the thought of raising a child in a world as perverse as that.

A Brief Foray into Indie Music Criticism

2005-10-19T14:18:00.000-06:00

Heart + Sleeve = Death Cab for Cutie

Heart + Sleeve + Drum Machine = The Postal Service

Pain and Baseball

2005-10-19T12:23:00.000-06:00

Ah, so it finally happened again. The zombie corpse of Kirk Gibson has arisen from a traffic and smog filled L.A. cemetary to haunt baseball once more, this time coming in the form of Albert Pujols.

I watched the conclusion of Game 5 the other night, and it was the kind of drama that makes baseball (and sports in general) so exciting. You can't sit there and say "Eh, seen it before" or "Oh, this plot is soooooo predictable." There is no plot. Just the sight of David Ecksteins slapping a ball into leftfield with two strikes and two outs. In Houston, I'm sure it looked more like the wheels coming off a big-rig at 80 mph. Then the walk to Edmonds. The big-rig is now jack-knifing. And then Pujols hit the gigantic-est homerun I have seen since Jose Canseco's moon-shot in the Skydome during the '89 ALCS. The big-rig is now engulfed in flames, rolling end-over-end, crushing all in its path.

And the stadium went silent.

And somewhere in Houston, a 9-year-old's childhood ended. Replaced with the pain and suffering that come with your team's failure on an epic scale. It's one thing to be bad year-in and year-out. But to get so close and then to fail so spectacularly can mean only one thing: God hates you. Not dislikes. Hates.

And I know. I can still vividly remember the arc of that ball off of Kirk Gibson's bat. I can remember my little 9-year-old heart hoping and praying that it would land harmlessly in Canseco's glove. But instead, it landed 20 rows up in the rightfield bleachers. And the A's lost the Series right there and then. There was no coming back. And it continued to haunt them - even their win the next year was tainted by the earthquake and Gibson.

Gibson!!!

They haulted that motherfucker out the ICU and put him right onto the field, didn't they? He was on crutches, bandaged head-to-toe, barely able to lift his arms. His homerun can be explained only by steroids, bionics, and a corked bat. I can't be the only one who remembers his bat exploding in a shower of cork and superballs, can I? Others remember the spent syringes falling from his pockets as he rounded second base, right? I mean, I shit you not, the man had to be rebooted at home plate.

That's who we got beat by. So I totally understand, Astros fans, if you're sitting around thinking "Best hitter in the game, sure, but you mean we got beat by a guy named Poo Holes? What the fuck?"

ACLU and Communists

2005-09-23T16:04:00.000-06:00

So a few weeks ago, Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy had a series of posts (one, two, three, and four) about the ACLU's famous decision to expel Communists from the organization. What struck me in particular about these posts is that they mirror an argument we once had in my family regarding that decision.

Both of my parents had worked at the ACLU, and one day on a long car ride we somehow came around to the topic of the expulsion of Communists from the organization. My mom maintained that it was hypocritical of a civil liberties organization to expel members based on political beliefs - the equivalence of McCarthyism. My dad and I both argued that it was perfectly proper to remove people who didn't, after all, believe in civil liberties.

Volokh's first post makes much the same point as my dad and I did (and it should be noted that Volokh was born in the Soviet Union, so he certainly has more first-hand experience with Communism in the actual, rather than theoretical, form).

However, reading further, I learned a number of things about the ACLU and it's Communist ties that I had not been aware of at the time of our initial argument (and perhaps not my parents, either).

First, the ACLU decision came in 1940, when the Soviet Union (and, by extension, all Communist Parties and their card-carrying members) was allied with Nazi Germany. This was also just a few years removed from the bloodiest purges in Soviet history. In other words, the danger of Communism, so often exaggerated, was very real at the time of this decision.

Second, the ACLU expulsion of Communists also extended to anyone who believed in a "totalitarian" ideology (i.e., Nazis and Klansmen, as well as Communists). So this was not just an internal purge aimed at left-wingers, it was an attempt to make clear that the organization was firmly opposed to totalitarian suppression of civil liberties, no matter what the rationale.

Third, Roger Baldwin, the founder of the ACLU, was himself an admirer of Communism and the Soviet Union, and even went as far as to defend the suppression of civil liberties in the Soviet Union in the name of expanding and nuturing Communism.

I champion civil liberty as the best of the non-violent means of building the power on which workers rule must be based. If I aid the reactionaries to get free speech now and then, if I go outside the class struggle to fight against censorship, it is only because those liberties help to create a more hospitable atmosphere for working class liberties.

In other words, the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union did not (at least in 1934) believe in the good of civil liberties for their own sake, but only as a means to an end. And that end was the triumph of "workers rule." Only after the Nazi-Soviet alliance did Baldwin turn against the Communists.

Given this, I have to say that not only was the ACLU's decision to expel Communists correct, it probably saved the organization as we know it. Had the ACLU continued to be dominated by Communists, it likely would have been utterly discredited by switching to pro-fascism in 1939 and then anti-fascism in 1941 (as all loyal Communists did). The coming of the Cold War would likely have been the death knell of the organization.

But instead, it decided in 1940 to reaffirm civil liberties as its primary goal (and as an end unto themselves) and has thus been an important defender of the Bill of Rights for the last several decades (despite the slings and arrows of many conservatives, such as the first President Bush).

Soccer

2005-09-20T15:57:00.000-06:00

So, I'm curious, why is it that Americans are often depicted as unsophisticated and provincial because they don't like soccer? Because, the way I see it, soccer is a remarkably unsophisticated and provincial sport.

The sport itself is probably the least complicated major team sport out there - essentially two teams kicking a ball back and forth, each trying to get the ball in the other's goal while defending their own. Now, I know there are a bunch of rules, but the fact is that an alien (of the little green variety) could probably sit down at a soccer match and figure out the basics of the game pretty swiftly. Compared to baseball or American football, which are ridiculously complicated, understanding soccer is child's play. Which, after all, is a big reason why the sport is so popular - anyone can play it, you can play it anywhere, and there's little learning curve. But that doesn't explain why Americans are unsophisticated for not liking it. If anything, it's the rest of the world that's unsophisticated for not loving baseball (or cricket).

But I think the real argument is just that Americans stubbornly refuse to embrace a sport that everyone else likes, and this is taken as further evidence of our arrogant nature (right up there with vetoing the Kyoto Accords). This, however, ignores that fact that soccer is hardly a sport that brings the world together. If anything, it tears people apart - soccer fans are notoriously nationalistic and provincial, not to mention thuggish. Are American sports fans terribly civilized? No, but at least we rarely see riots between fans from different places. "Hooligan" is thankfully not a word often associated with baseball fans.

I Rove You

2005-09-16T11:50:00.000-06:00

So the President has appointed Karl Rove to head reconstruction of the the Gulf Coast?

Huh?

Has this President learned literally nothing from the past couple weeks? Karl Rove is a political operative, advisor, and fixer. He is not (repeat - not) an expert in reconstruction. And as we learned from the Michael Brown debacle, having your crony in charge of something reeeeeaaaaaly important is a terrible idea.

This administration never fails to impress me with the massive disconnect between its rhetoric and it's actions. High oratory mixed with stunning incompetence.

Definition of the Day

2005-09-15T11:28:00.000-06:00

codify (cohd' i fie), -ied, -ing, -ies, tr.v. 1. to turn someone or something into a fish; Bob has lived in a fish tank since he was codified

Intelligently Designed Film

2005-09-13T11:45:00.000-06:00

So now some conservatives are arguing that March of the Penguins is, at it's heart, a conservative film that demonstrates the validity of Intelligent Design.

Let me pause for a second while I cry "Bullshit!"

Yes, the film does demonstrate the wonders of penguin monogomy, which allows for the division-of-labor necessary to allow their young to survive. But to claim that this is relevant to human relationships is ridiculous, unless you also believe that we have something to learn from elephant seals, who manage to reproduce through violent polygamy - they engage in brutal combat to win the right to copulate with the entire harem of females in the group.

These conservatives also claim that the fact they these penguins manage to survive in the one of the harshest environments on Earth is proof that they must have been designed by a creator. But as the (conservative) columnist George Will points out:

If an Intelligent Designer designed nature, why did it decide to make breeding so tedious for those penguins?

Their success at breeding in such a seeming impossible environment is much better explained by evolution. The Antarctic was an open niche which these penguins evolved to exploit.

Finally, shouldn't it bother these conservatives that they are noticing such similarities between people and penguins? Doesn't a large portion of the resistance to evolutionary theory come from the fact that people are disgusted by the implication that people evolved from "lower" animals, thus violating the idea of man being created in God's image? If people and penguins are so similar as to invite comparisons, doesn't that show a good likelihood that we share a common descent or at least a common mechanism for the creation of our species?

Bring Me the Head of Michael Brown!

2005-09-06T11:39:00.000-06:00

Andrew Sullivan has called on bloggers to try to bring about the resignation or firing of Michael Brown, the head of FEMA, and so I am here to do my part. In my previous post, I said that we should wait until the crisis passed to start pointing fingers, but the more I read, and the more I think about it, people need to be fired now, if only to reassure the public that the administration is aware of just how colossal of a failure this is. I say "people need to be fired," because I'm seeing Sullivan and raising him one - Michael Chertoff ought to go to. True, the mess at DHS isn't entirely his fault, but he's the leader and so he has to go. And, after further investigation, I'm sure there are a number of mid-level people at FEMA and DHS who ought to be removed as well.

In addition, I think that George Bush owes the people of Louisiana and Mississippi (and indeed all of the American people) an apology for the poor showing of the government. Why? Because he's the President, and so the buck stops with him. He's the one who appointed Brown and Chertoff. He's the one who presided over the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. So it's his job to find out what went wrong, to fix it, and to hold those responsible accountable for their failures.

Now, some people might object that this is all just partisan politics at it's worst, capitalizing on a national tragedy. No, defending the administration at this point is the partisan thing to do. Calling for the resignation of incompentent bureaucrats is simply demanding accountability from government - the only way we can possibility expect things to be better next time. We have to change the institutional culture at FEMA, and we need to do it immediately.

Finally, please check out Andrew Sullivan, John Marshall, Slate, Constructive Interference, CNN, and any number of other websites that are doing an excellent job covering this crisis.

Katrina

2005-09-02T11:49:00.000-06:00

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple weeks. Last week we were on vacation, and this week I've been consumed by trying to keep up with the coverage of the unfolding disaster in New Orleans.

A lot has been said already by people a lot smarter and more knowledgeable than me, so I'd suggest reading your favorite news sites and political blogs if you're looking for in-depth analysis.

Meanwhile, a few thoughts:

1) The most important lesson from this catastrophe is that, in the four years since 9/11, we have not learned anything about dealing with urban disasters. We are unable to completely evacuate a city and maintain order, despite the fact that we had several days warning of this hurricane, and despite the fact that scenarios of this sort had been predicted for years. If, god forbid, an earthquake or nuclear/chemical/biological attack were to strike a major U.S. city without warning, we would likely see the New Orleans disaster unfold again, except on larger scale.

2) A lot of attention has been paid to the looting and disorder, but I think far more serious is simply the lack of basic necessities of life - water, food, ice, basic medical supplies, etc. It is unconscionable that the children, pregnant women, the elderly, and the infirm should have to go without water or necessary medication for days at a time. People should not die of thirst in this country, ever.

3) A few people have implied or stated that if the people of New Orleans had been more prepared - with emergency supplies - or had just followed orders and evacuated when the call went out, this could have all been avoided. This completely misses the point that the people still in the city are those in poverty, who did not have the means to escape or prepare in advance. An emergency kit full of water, food, batteries, etc. which have to be kept fresh is a luxury poor people cannot afford. It's also of little practical use when your entire house is underwater. As for evacuation, these are people without cars or without money for gas. Believe it or not, some people actually rely on public transportation to get around.

The lesson is that government, whether local, state, or federal, has to step in and help those who cannot help themselves. This is not simply a matter of individual sacrifice and bravery by police, firefighters, doctors, nurses, and soldiers. Someone at the top has to plan this in advance. The free market can't evacuate a city - the government has to do that. Disaster planning and preparation is right up there with maintaining law & order as one of the very most basic functions of government. And this week in New Orleans, government on all levels has failed at both of those basic tasks.

4) Finally, I'm not looking to blame anyone in particular. This is a profound problem that cuts across both parties and all levels of government. But right now, the Republicans control the Federal Government, so they have to accept that they will get a lot of heat, and that the proper response is to fix the problem rather than making excuses or deflecting blame. None of the Federal officials involved have come across looking good. Once this passes, heads should roll.

Anyway, at this point I'm just not hopeful that anyone really has a handle on this situation and knows how to move ahead. For the residents of New Orleans, your nation has failed you in your time of need, and I only hope that things can somehow be made right.

Intelligent Design, Equal Time

2005-08-19T11:36:00.000-06:00

I just got a call from the FCC indicating that my blog is showing a pervasive bias against Intelligent Design, and so in deference to the "equal time" rule, I must write a post in favor of Intelligent Design.
Here it is:

According to evolutionists, plants, animals, and humans are well-adapted to their environments and ecological niches by the process of slight mutations over time which favor certain individuals and thus increase their odds of producing offspring who also possess the favorable mutation.

However, there is a fundamental flaw in this theory, which is that all living creatures have full and functional organs. If change comes gradually, we would expect to see Nowhere in nature do you find an creature with a partial heart or half an eye. SUch a structure would be a hindrance to the animal, not an aid, and so certainly wouldn't lead to that individual having more children, as evolutionists predict.

So, where do these organs come from, if not gradual change? Perhaps sudden change? But this seems highly unlikely. The odds that evolution could produce by change a fully developed and functional organ is infinitesimal. We need only look at nature to see this. In thousands of years of human history, there is no record of, say, a dog being born able to walk upright, or a horse born able to grow antlers.

Since evolution cannot explain these changes as either sudden or gradual, we must return to our original assumption, that animals are particularly well-suited to their environments. Sharks have perfect gills and fins. Cheetahs have legs suited to incredible speed. Humans have highly sophisticated brains capable of thought and speech. Since these organs did not arise by chance, they must have arisen by design. Each species was granted by the designer with attributes suiting its environment.

Who, then, is this designer? Given the immense complexities of life, which even humans, the smartest moral creatures on our planet, cannot understand, this designer must be God, the only omnipotent and omniscient being known to exist. The fact that evolutionists deny this conclusion is a testament only to the blind spots that are inherent in secular science.

Intelligent Design Update

2005-08-19T10:32:00.000-06:00

In case you missed them, people have posted some very interesting comments to my remarks about Intelligent Design. I have responded at some length.

Coca-Cola Fortune

2005-08-17T12:22:00.000-06:00

So, as you may or may not know, an ancestor of mine, John Stith Pemberton (not quite sure how he's related, but that's not important), invented the recipe for Coca-Cola. This is a neat little anecdote, interesting to tell at parties and such. Inevitably, however, someone asks "If your ancestor invented Coke, how come you're not rich?" Well, turns out that he sold it for a only a few hundred bucks. Being not-rich because of this, I've always resented his lack of business acumen a bit.

However, the other night we were watching Antiques Roadshow and this guy brought on a picture of his great-grandfather (or was it great-great?), Asa Candler, and explained that this ancestor of his was the founder of the Coca-Cola Company. The picture turned out to be worth only a couple hundred bucks. But he got the same question I always do "If your ancestor founded Coke, how come you're not rich?" Well, turns out that great-grandpa Coke was a philanthropist, and gave away the fortune.

So, turns out that I don't have to be as bitter about my ancestor's lack of business acumen. No one ended up rich from Coke, after all (except, probably, the other shareholders in the corporation, but nevermind that). Huzzah!

Cindy Sheehan

2005-08-16T12:02:00.000-06:00

So I had been feeling pretty sympathetic towards Cindy Sheehan, the mother who lost her son in Iraq and is now camped out near President Bush's ranch, especially given the abuse heaped on her by right-wingers (most egregious was Michelle Malkin, who presumed to know better than Sheehan how her dead son would feel about the protest).

However, it turns out that Ms. Sheehan has a subscription to Blame the Jews Quarterly. Her objection to the war is that it was planned by neo-cons (Jews!) for the benefit of Israel (Jews, Jews, Jews!). It's entirely possible that Ms. Sheehan is not anti-Semitic, nor is she opposed to the state of Israel, nor does she even realize that her statements could be interpreted as anti-Semitic. But her theory is complete garbage. It's just a retread of the classic "enemy-within" view of the Jews - you can't trust them because their loyalty isn't to the country, but only to other Jews.

As long as she stands by the theory, my sympathy for her will extend only to her personal lost, not to her political agenda.

UPDATE: There is significant debate (scroll down to read the comments) as to whether or not Sheehan actually wrote the letter about neo-cons and Israel that Christopher Hitchens has attributed to her. If she did not write it, I retract my judgment about her theory of the war.

+6

2005-08-12T15:50:00.000-06:00

In an update to yesterday's post, my net total of boxes indexed for the week was 6. At this rate, I'll be caught up by Christmas.

Intelligent Design, Part Two

2005-08-12T12:14:00.000-06:00

If Intelligent Design is so obviously wrong, then what is there to debate? Why did I say that this is not a cut-and-dried issue?

Well, the fact is that just because one side is right doesn't end a debate much of the time. People cling to their faith, beliefs, ideologies, superstitions, etc. against all reason. What we have here is two sides talking right past each other. One embraces reason and one embraces faith, and never the twain shall meet. And evidence increasingly shows that there is little overlap between the two camps. That is, there is almost no room for a middle ground.

So what? Well, here's the bad news - the correct side, the side with all of the evidence, the ones on the correct side of history, my side! - are losing. At least in this country. We're a minority. And unlike other issues (relatively uncontroversial things like gay marriage and stem-cell research), we're not making headway. Why? That pesky talking-past-each-other problem.

Now, I know what many (most?) educated liberals will say - the American people are just too stupid to believe anything other than religion, and to understand something like evolution. This is just further proof that liberals are smarter. A couple problems with that, though. First, support for evolution is far higher in Britain, for instance, but I have never seen any evidence that the British people are any smarter than Americans. Second, support for evolution may have much to do with level of education, but unless liberals want to play the part of the elitists that conservatives already think we are, we'd really better not argue that only educated people are smart. Third, religiosity and intelligence are not mutually exclusive. Many of the greatest minds of history have been very religious.

Finally, and most importantly, no matter what, we still have to share a country with the religious right. That is why I try (though I don't always succeed) to maintain a civil and respective dialogue with conservatives.

Evolution, however, challenges religion in a way that, say, gravity and progressive taxation do not. And I don't know how, in the long term, we can win this fight without escalating the culture wars and further playing into the victimology of the religious right. In the short term, however, we have to fight to keep evolution in the classrooms.

Intelligent Design, Part One

2005-08-12T11:54:00.000-06:00

I wrote out a long post on Intelligent Design, which I have decided to split into two parts. Here's the first part:

What is to be done about Intelligent Design, the newest flat-earthism masquerading as science? To liberals and conservatives alike, the answers might seem obvious, but I don't think it's as cut-and-dried as each would like.

First, let me dispense with the obvious: Intelligent Design has absolutely no place in science classrooms, in public or private school. Period. It is not a scientific theory. It is not a theory at all. It is simply the latest faith-based appeal to Biblical literalism.

The arguments of conservatives that it is a legitimate theory that should be taught alongside evolution (in order to expose children to competing viewpoints) are both laughable and sad. These are the same arguments that conservatives deride when it comes to things like history, sociology, and politics. Furthermore, we already had this debate! When evolution was first introduced in the late 1700s, it was wildly unpopular and criticized by most educated people, until 1859, when Darwin came along with a theory so elegant and airtight that it became accepted as fact. Since then, further work has only strengthened the theory, not weakened it. So there is literally nothing to debate anymore (except for the details of the theory). Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, so there is no need to debunk it. For true-believers, it cannot be debunk. For the rest of us, it's just plain bunk.

Second, thought this may seem to be merely another salvo in the culture wars, this is more than an academic debate. The triumph of ID in schools would inevitably lead to a decline in the quality of American science teaching, specifically in biology, a field that underpins modern medicine, including stem-cell research, cloning, and gene therapies. If Americans do not lead these fields, someone else will (already the Koreans, Italians, and others are taking the lead in cloning).

History shows that voluntarily declining to pursue valuable technologies can have devastating effects for nations. In the 15th Century, the Chinese led the world in naval technology, but gave it up right as the European nations (with far inferior ships) ventured out in the Age of Exploration. Similarly, in the 17th Century, the Japanese led the world in the production of firearms. BUt they gave it up in deference to the Samurai class. Ships and firearms, of course, were the two of the prime technologies that led to the nations of Europe controlling the entire world. China and Japan were reduced to a shadow of their former selves, under European domination (from which Japan emerged only once it embraced Western knowledge and technology). This sort of fate is clearly a worst-case scenario, but we truly can't afford to be complacent about science education.

-1

2005-08-11T15:54:00.000-06:00

One of my duties here at work is to index the contents of new boxes before they are sent to storage. Lately, there have been a ton of boxes coming down for me (actually, they don't "come" down - I go to the secretaries and pick them up, and they're often very heavy).

Anyway, I thought I had made some progress, as I got 26 of the 90 boxes indexed so far this week. But then, guess how many new boxes I had to pick up today? 27. It's like I'm just treading water.

And the best part of all is that I've already been warned that it's only going to get worse.

Winning the Race

2005-08-11T11:33:00.000-06:00

So I'm hardly an expert on African-American history or culture, but I was struck by three separate articles that I saw this morning.

First, the rapper 50 Cent is in a dispute because he apparently stole his name from a gangster who "terrorized the streets of Brooklyn in the 1980s." Noting that admired the gangster and took his name as a tribute, 50 Cent has promised "to pay for a memorial to the late gangster in honor of his violent ideologies." Um, is this sick or what? Why should a gangster be a role-model whose identity you should want to usurp? And why should his family be indignant? If my son/father/brother/cousin was a notorious gangster, I'd like to think that I'd be ashamed of him, not proud.

Second, police in Berkeley, CA have arrested the men they believe murdered a rookie police officer in 1970. The officer was the first Asian-American ever hired by the Berkely Police Department. The motive for the murder? To prove to the local Black Panther group that they were tough enough to join. Again, this is disgusting. I understand that relations in the 1960s between police and African-American were tense, to say the least, but what happened to Officer Tsukamoto was cold-blooded murder, nothing more. That people to this day speak of the Black Panthers as if they were some sort of high-minded social organization is ludicrous (the professor at Oakes College who ran the community service program was a former Black Panther).

Third is an article that makes me far more hopeful, an op-ed written by John McWhorter in this morning's New York Times. McWhorter is one of my favorite writers, and this article shows why, extolling the virtues of the African-American community, rather than its pathologies. McWhorter argues, convincingly I think, that the silent majority of African-Americans agree with him and Bill Cosby and others, as evidenced by the fact that the majority of Blacks now strive for and achieve the same middle-class life as other Americans. But the popular culture perception lags far behind, viewing most Blacks as ghetto gangsters, and celebrating that culture. I think this is starting to shift, thanks in part to people like McWhorter.

UPDATE: Berkeley police don't have enough evidence to charge the men arrested for the murder of Officer Tsukamoto. But my point about many Blank Panthers being little more than cold-blooded murderers stands.

Love Savage

2005-08-10T15:57:00.000-06:00

Dan Savage is guest-blogging for Andrew Sullivan this week. Most excellent.

Friday = Silly Day?

2005-08-05T13:11:00.000-06:00

I just sent my boss an email that, among other things, gave instructions on what to do in the event that I become trapped under the enormous pile of files that is currently on my desk.

Hustle

2005-08-05T11:52:00.000-06:00

So I've apparently been reading a lot of ESPN.com lately. Anyway, here's a good article about hustlers and slackers in sports that manages to criticize slackers without blaming it on how "kids these days" don't work hard, etc. The author, I think accurately, points out that most athletes nowadays probably work much harder than the old-timers, which just makes the slackers easier to spot.

Say It Ain't So, Raffy

2005-08-03T15:49:00.000-06:00

So, what to do about Rafael Palmeiro? (Aside from the obvious answer - stick him on a rocket ship into the sun, erase all records of his existence, and pretend this never happened.)

Thing is, I've always had a soft spot for Palmeiro. Partly because of his sweet swing, partly because he's got a cool name (he does), partly because he has been a consistent excellent and feared hitter for the last decade plus, and partly because he always seemed like and underdog. I mean, take for instance the fact that until he got that 3,000th hit, there were still people saying that he didn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame. Hey, it's not supposed to be a Hall for the flashy and famous players, it's supposed to be a Hall for the great players. And Palmeiro certainly is one. Or take his Viagra ads - I mean, that's not the type of endorsement a top-flight superstar does. But that's why I liked Palmeiro - superstar stats without the superstar bullshit.

But, oops. It was all/mostly/partly/slightly steroid-enhanced. How much? We'll never know. But this certainly changes some things. First, apparently the MLB drug enforcement procedures work better than expected. Second, the MLB drug penalties are woefully inadequate (10-day suspension? that's pathetic). Third, Palmeiro is no longer an underdog. Fourth, he's also no longer a first-ballot Hall of Famer. Fifth, he's maybe not a Hall of Famer at all.

It's that last one that's the real kicker. Thing is, I don't know the answer. On the one hand, Palmeiro played in an era when steroids were rampant. He probably didn't do anything that several other future Hall of Famers (McGwire, Bonds, Sosa) and other stars (Canseco, Caminiti, Giambi) didn't do. He just got caught. And, unlike Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose, Palmeiro hasn't been banned for life, so he should be eligible for the Hall. On the other hand, eligible for the Hall and inducted into the Hall are two different things. Since we can never know how many of those hits and home runs weren't earned, how can we judge his career against others?

The Ring

2005-07-29T16:44:00.000-06:00

More (more!) on Paris Hilton and her ginormous engagement ring (for which she has nothing but my undying pity):

HILTON WEIGHED DOWN BY RING

Celebrity socialite Paris Hilton is regretting picking out such an expensive engagement ring because her weighty cluster of diamonds is hurting her delicate finger.

The problem is reportedly so bad, Hilton's shipping heir fiance Paris Latsis has brought her a plain band engagement ring for everyday wear.

A source tells American magazine Us Weekly, "(Hilton) started complaining how heavy her 24-carat ring was and that her finger hurt so (Latsis) got her a more manageable diamond-less platinum
Cartier band."

Music on the Internet

2005-07-27T20:39:00.000-06:00

So I read this article today, which suggests that the album may soon be on the way out. Frankly, I truly doubt this is so. I have a feeling that people have been predicting the death of the album since about 1964. But the author makes an interesting point, which is that the music business, and musicians more specifically, have not adjusted well to the Internet Age. And that's kind of counterintuitive at first, because one think that we associate strongly with the internet is mp3's and song-swapping on Napster or whatever. But think about it - those things are a product of the fan base and bootleggers, not of the industry and the artists themselves. The music industry, instead, revolves around making an album, promoting it, touring to support it, and then returning to the studio. This means the a given artist is in the spotlight only for a short time before falling off the face of the earth, sometimes for years.

So this author says that maybe the solution for music on the internet is to make it more similar to news or television sites - provide constant material, and music on the internet will thrive. This, in turn, would kill the album, because someone who's putting out 50 internet singles a year simply won't have the time, or the motivation, to produce albums. But, as I stated above, I really don't see this happening. I could be wrong, but I think most musicians are perfectionists, at least to a degree, and they simply wouldn't have the temperment to just dash off songs and stick them online for anyone to hear. Sure, some would be gems, and some would have a lot of work put into them. But others would be junk. And I think the average artist wouldn't be happy with that.

On the other hand, I think for certain artists, this could work. Take someone like Ryan Adams. This year, he has three albums scheduled for release, two of which (I believe) are double albums. So we're probably talking about somewhere in the 50 song range, total. Now, imagine that, instead, he made one really good album (even a one double-album) and then released the remainder of the songs on a biweekly basis. Yes, he'd probably sell less albums in the short term, but he'd make up for it in constant exposure. Every couple weeks, you'd likely see a short review somewhere of the latest internet single. And that could help his career in the long-term.
Anyway, an interesting article.

Bats

2005-07-26T12:03:00.000-06:00

Here's a cool article comparing old-time baseball bats to the more modern variety.

Anti-Terrorism

2005-07-22T12:05:00.000-06:00

So the bad news is that London increasingly seems to be under seige by Islamic terrorists. The good news is that their latest attempts haven't been successful. Three cheers to the brave London policemen who killed the latest attempted bomber! The story indicates that they shot him at extremely close range - it takes a lot of balls to get that close to a man with explosives strapped to him. Not to mention the good police-work of identifying him in the first place.

UPDATE: So it now appears that the police killed a completely innocent man. That means that pretty much everything I said above is incorrect - they actually did a poor job identifying the man and shot him without any real evidence that he was up to anything illegal.

Here's to hoping that the police take steps to prevent this sort of tragedy from occurring again.

Scotty!

2005-07-20T11:59:00.000-06:00

Sad news - James Doohan, Star Trek's Scotty, passed away today.

Doohan was an impressive man off-screen. I already knew about his WWII service, but it's worth repeating:

At 19, James escaped the turmoil at home by joining the Canadian army, becoming a lieutenant in artillery. He was among the Canadian forces that landed on Juno Beach on D-Day. "The sea was rough," he recalled. "We were more afraid of drowning than the Germans."

The Canadians crossed a minefield laid for tanks; the soldiers weren't heavy enough to detonate the bombs. At 11:30 that night, he was machine-gunned, taking six hits: one that took off his middle right finger (he managed to hide the missing finger on screen), four in his leg and one in the chest. The chest bullet was stopped by his silver cigarette case.

I didn't already know that his, ahem, child-producing skills were likewise impressive:

Doohan's first marriage to Judy Doohan produced four children. He had two children by his second marriage to Anita Yagel. Both marriages ended in divorce. In 1974 he married Wende Braunberger, and their children were Eric, Thomas and Sarah, who was born in 2000, when Doohan was 80.

Dr. Roberts, J.D.

2005-07-20T11:55:00.000-06:00

So, from what I've read so far, the President's nomination of John Roberts to the the Supreme Court appears to be the most sensible pick we could hope for. I have to say that I'm surprised and relieved. It looks like the Democrats' tenacity in fighting judicial nominees may have paid off big time.

Of course, to be safe, let me note that I'm reserving final judgment for now.

Mine's Not A High Horse (Anymore)

2005-07-15T11:51:00.000-06:00

So you may remember a post of mine from a long, long time ago about how, since I'm an atheist, I don't like being pressured into participating in religious activities, and how I'll try very hard to avoid doing so. How hard? Well, judging by this past weekend, not very.

My grandmother was being honored upon her retirement for her 25 years of service to the Synagogue where she worked. This involved a kiddush luncheon and also several mentions of her in the service, including the participation of her, her daughters, and (you guessed it!) her grandsons.

So my brother, two cousins, and I got to go up and dress the Torah (I'm sure that's not what it's called, but it's an accurate description), each of us decked out in a yarmulke and tallit. Four non-Bar Mitvah'd Jewish boys faking it (and not very convincingly). Did I feel like a fraud? Yes. Did my grandma just about plotz (explode)? You betcha. And in the end, that's why I don't really feel bad about it.

The worst part of the service, actually, came when the cantor paraded the Torah around the sanctuary before placing it back in the ark. He stopped briefly at each row and the congregants reached out to touch the Torah. When he got to me, I stood stock-still for what seemed like an eternity, with the cantor glaring at me, before he moved on. Thing is, the adulation people were showing for the Torah just seemed inappropriate (isn't idolatry, like, totally forbidden in the Ten Commandments?). I mean, I'm no Talmudic scholar or nothing, but I totally was not buying the argument in the English-language section of the prayer book that this sort of thing was different from idol-worship. I can understand considering holy the words in the Torah, but not the book itself.

Finally, I have to say that I kinda enjoyed the sermon (or whatever you call it) that the Rabbi gave. Partly, it was because the Rabbi emphasized that the Torah is not to be understood literally, something that I think a lot of people seem to forget nowadays. Secondly, I actually kind of enjoy all of those Mosiac stories. Maybe it's just because they resemble history (and, in fact, may actually be history, albeit with some, uh let's say, embellishments).

All You Need is Rove

2005-07-13T12:01:00.000-06:00

I don't have a lot to add to the whole Valerie Plame thing. Karl Rove should resign or be fired, but I doubt that will happen. It's extremely doubtful that his leak was an accident, and it certainly wasn't done for the greater good. But Bush will probably keep him anyway.

But one thing that continues to puzzle me is the whole controversy over Time magazine handing over Matt Cooper's notes. Time had to choose between the law and the principle of maintaining confidentiality. Jacob Weisberg does a very good job in this article defending Time's decision, because, with all due respect to Judy Miller and the New York Times, there's no such thing as a right to maintain confidential sources, at least not at the federal level. And the reason is to avoid cases like this, where confidentiality aided in the comission of a crime. So there's not really a choice here, unless journalists think that they're above the law. But frankly, that's a really bad precedent to be setting. How, then, do you decide who's a "journalist"? And how do you prevent other professions from claiming similar rights?

Judging Non-Judgmentalism

2005-07-13T11:46:00.000-06:00

One of the things that bothered me so much about the period right after 9/11 is how often you heard someone on the left say "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" or some such thing. They said it as if it were a profound thought. But really, it was a cliché standing in for a failure to make a moral judgment. Yes, yes, "judge not ...," but failure is the right word. What sort of world would we live in were we all to abdicate the responsibility to tell the difference between right and wrong?

I bring this up because following the bombing in London, we've been hearing some of the same moral abdication from the left again. See this post for some examples. What make this so abhorrent is that these same leftists who are too sophisticated to judge terrorists have no such problem when it comes to Wal-Mart, Karl Rove, or Imperialism. So then, either they just don't think terrorism is that big of a deal, or they don't think it's wrong. Either way, that's a huge blindspot, and a big part of the reason that Kerry lost the election.

On a related note, apparently Oliver Stone is directing a movie about 9/11. That this is a terrible idea almost goes without saying, but if you're not convinced, read this.

Lawnmower Update

2005-07-06T12:09:00.000-06:00

Oh, so it turns out that I'm not incompetent. The lawnmower engine was defective - it wasn't pulling gas from the tank. So it would start when primed but wouldn't keep going. My father-in-law and I returned the mower to Sears and got a replacement on Sunday.

Score one for the city boy.

Public Prayer

2005-07-04T21:45:00.000-06:00

So Annie and I were having a very nice time at her aunt and uncle's 4th of July party when it suddenly came time to say grace before dinner. The 50 or so people gathered around the pool and took hands and her uncle said some things.

Annie and I, both being atheists, decided to stay inside and not participate. I, in particular, think that it's disrespectful to participate in religious ceremonies if you are an unbeliever, so when I do have to I make sure to neither actively participate nor be disruptive. For instance, at a church wedding, funeral, or baptism, I'll bow my head, but I won't repeat the prayers or even say "Amen." After all, I'm pretty sure that if God does exist, he doesn't want me faking it.

Anyway, after the prayer had started, our absence must have been noticed, and so Annie's dad came inside and pretty much told us that we were being rude by not participating. Not wanting to cause a scene, we sheepishly went outside and took our place in the circle, with 100 eyes trained on us. The prayer then continued and concluded by singing "God Bless America." Annie and I pretended to sing along. Annie and I both felt sufficiently chastened that the remainder of the evening was marred.

This sort of thing is exactly why I absolutely abhor the idea of government sponsored prayer. Look at what happens when peer pressure is brought to bear against unbelievers. Imagine the greater coercion and imposition on free-will if the pressure is exerted by government.

But I'm also confused, frankly. Why is it that Christians often want to compel the participation of unbelievers or heretics? I mean, isn't part of the point of Christianity that you freely except it and embrace Jesus Christ as your savior? Someone who has been coerced into participating isn't exactly letting Jesus into his heart, now is he?

Maybe this just can't except the idea that someone sincerely does not believe, and that such a belief can be as sincere as that of someone who does believe. Maybe they think of the prayer as a communal, not a religious, activity. But then why must it have religious content?

I truly don't have the answers to these questions. I can only hope that people of faith can come to respect those of us who live moral lives, but do not abide by any particular creed.

SCOTUS

2005-07-01T13:05:00.000-06:00

So Sandra Day O'Connor is retiring, paving way for the President to nominate someone who's idea of the perfect social order is Alabama, circa 1950. The Senate will then descend into the chaos (remember that judicial compromise? - out the window). Democrats will try to block the nomination by any means necessary. Frist will scream "obstruction" (how dare the opposition party disagree with the majority!) and threaten to go nuclear. In the end, Bush will likely win and get his social ultra-conservative. Girls in Mississippi will have to start driving to Illinois for their abortions.

But amid all of this doomsaying, I think that we liberals ought to focus on some very important. What's that, you ask? Blame. In other words, who's fault is this mess? Oh, I'm sure there are lots of candidates - Tom Daschle and John Kerry, for being lousy leaders; James Dobson and Ralph Reed, for being such social neanderthals; President Bush, for tricking us all into believing in 2000 that he was a moderate.

But the real blame in my book has to go to Ralph Nader. Remember? The asshole who cost Al Gore the election? Yeah, without him, Gore would be President, and we could look forward to a nice moderate liberal to replace O'Connor, a nice moderate conservative.

Oh, you might say, Nader's hardly the real culprit here, and besides you're just kicking a guy who's already down. To which I answer, maybe and sure, but so what?, respectively. Progressives decided in 2000 that Clinton and Gore were some sort of crazed arch-conservatives in disguise, rather than the best liberal leaders since JFK. So they deliberately torpedoed Gore in order to get Bush in 2000, and then hopefully a "real" progressive in 2004. But it all failed miserably.

So now we just have to sit and wait for Bush to nominate his ultra and wait for the fireworks to begin.

Exam, Part 2

2005-07-01T12:06:00.000-06:00

So I got back my exam that I took on Tuesday, and as I thought, I got 41 out of 50, a low B. However, everyone found the test hard, and so the the highest grade was a 45, and the professor grades on a curve. Plus, she decided one of the questions was vague, and so adjusted the scores of those who got it wrong.

In the end, then, I got a 42 out of 45 - 93%. So now I'm no longer worried about getting an A overall. And next week I only have two nights of class - Monday is a holiday and Thursday I have a flight to catch. These two things combined mean that I can relax and not worry about school this weekend.

The 'Burbs

2005-06-29T18:48:00.000-06:00

So I just had my first Dammit, I'm a City Kid! moment here in sunny suburbia.

You see, growing up we never had a lawn. Well, we did, but it was about 2' x 6', literally. So that didn't exactly require a lawn mower. Mostly, our neighbor who was a professional gardener just weed-wacked it from time to time.

Anyway, this evening I got out of class early (the professor decided that we were ahead of schedule, so he skipped the lecture and just gave us the quiz - awesome!), so I came home and decided to be productive by mowing the lawn. So I got out of my work clothes, dragged the mower out of the garage, and then, in full view of the neighbor lady who was outside on the phone, proceeded to have trouble starting the damn thing. Mildly embarassed, I gave it a couple I'll-pretend-I-know-anything-about-engines once-over and then tried again.

Nothing.

Okay, so now I wheeled the thing out of her view, and proceeded to check the oil. It was fine. Then I checked the gasoline. Hmm, I thought, gasoline doesn't normally have tiny little bubbles in it. That most be what they're talking about when they say don't use stale gas. So I went back to the garage, got the gas can, and proceeded to pour in new gas. I then promptly overfilled the tank and spilled gas on the mower. Dammit. That's okay, cause gasoline evaporates quickly.

So I screwed the gas cap back on tightly, and decided to wait a few minutes. Well, while I'm waiting, how about I check the underside of the mower, just in case something is stuck in the blade? So I tilted the mower over, and cleaned out some clumps of grass. Excellent. Now, let's turn her back over. Oh shit! Gas has now spilled out of the overfilled (remember?) tank. It's all over the engine and there's a puddle on the ground.

So at this point, I figured I ought to get the hose and dilute the spilled gas on the ground. But, trying to play it cool, I decided to water the petunias, rain lillies, and boxwood bushes. That done, I sprayed down the driveway to dilute the spilled gas (which has mostly evaporated already). Down the drain (and into Lake Michigan!) went the last of the gasoline.

Now I looked at the mower. The gas on the engine appeared to be evaporated. But it still smelled of gas. Dare I start it and risk igniting the entire damn thing? I hemmed and hawed for several minutes, crouching thoughtfully by the mower, trying hard to look like I knew what I was doing. Finally, I decided to just chicken out.

Defeated, I went inside to burn some CDs and write this post. The computer! There's a machine I know how to use.

Exam

2005-06-29T13:44:00.000-06:00

So I had an Exam in my Civil Procedure class last night. The teacher told us beforehand that it was going to be 50 questions, mixed true/false and multiple choice, and that it would only take about 30 minutes. So I totally wasn't worried about it, even though it covered 7 chapters. After all, how hard could a 30 minute test be?

Well, I'm not going to say it was really hard, but I should have studied much better. There were at least a dozen questions that I really wasn't sure about, and when I checked some of them later in the book, I realized I had missed most of them. So I think I'll be lucky if I end up with a B on this test. Which sucks, because the percentage of my tuition that my employer reimburses is tied to my grade, and we only have two more tests. So I'm thinking that I pretty much have to ace them to get an A in the class (and get 100% of my money back).

Things that Suck

2005-06-24T11:47:00.000-06:00

1. Karl Rove
2. The Kelo Decision
3. Torture
4. The War
5. John Bolton

You know those surveys where they ask "Do you think that overall the country is heading in the right direction?" I never know how to answer, because it's a ridiculously broad question. But this week, I have no such reservations. Things are looking pretty bad on the political front.

1. So Karl Rove thinks all liberals are sissy traitors, huh? And the White House is standing behind his comments? Well, with all due respect, fuck you Mr. Rove, and fuck you, too, Mr. Bush.

For the last week, we've been told that Senator Durbin's comments comparing American torture with that practiced by totalitarian regimes was so beyond the pale that the Senator should be forced to walk on his knees five miles across broken glass before apologizing to every member of the armed forces personally. But Karl Rove's comment? Perfectly acceptable. The White House finds it "puzzling" that anyone would object.

Fuck that. As a liberal who most certainly does not think that terrorists need therapy (they need a bullet in the brain or a 500-pound bomb in the gut) I want a personal apology from Rove. What's say, Karl? Are you man enough to admit your error?

2. The Supreme Court thinks it's okay for private property to be seized by eminent domain and given to other private citizens/corporations? Wait, when did this become a communist country? I thought our system was supposed to be based on individual property rights. But I guess the 4 liberal justices + 1 proved me wrong.

Well, guess what? When Walmart comes for my house, I'm coming for yours, Justices Stevens, Breyer, Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Souter.

3. This hasn't really been much in the news recently, but y'know, aren't we still torturing/murdering inmates and not really coming clean on it?

Are we going to start acting like a civilized country any time soon, or is it anything goes?

4. Oh, and remember that war in Iraq thing? It's still going on. And we're not winning. And the President doesn't really seem terribly concerned.

I mean, it's been over two years now, and there's no end in sight. The solution? More of the same. Here's a different idea - how about anything else? More troops might be a good place to start. But that would require admitting error, and that seems unlikely (see number 1).

5. Can we drop the fiction that John Bolton is going to walk into the U.N. and magically the place will start working perfectly? That's the best argument conservatives have come up with for why an untrustworthy, incompetent, undiplomatic (more precisely, anti-diplomatic) bully should become ambassador the United Nations, but it's complete hogwash. If confirmed, Bolton will instantly become the least popular guy at the U.N., meaning that he will accomplish zero. I agree that the U.N. needs reforming, but this isn't the way to do it.

Pot Kettle Black

2005-06-21T15:39:00.000-06:00

Okay, I'm not a big fan of Howard Dean, but this comment by Dick Cheney struck me as utterly absurd:

I've never been able to understand his appeal. Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does.

This from a man who'd kill and eat Santa Claus if the Energy Industry told him it would increase profits.

Cardinal Sin

2005-06-21T13:19:00.000-06:00

Cardinal Jaime Sin. Good man. Unfortunate name.

Sin had a sense of humor about his name, often referring to his residence as "the house of Sin."

Ancient Civilizations

2005-06-21T11:49:00.000-06:00

As a follow-up to yesterday's post, there is this recent article on what appears to be the oldest known civilization in European yet uncovered by archaeologists:

Archaeologists have discovered Europe's oldest civilisation, a network of dozens
of temples, 2,000 years older than Stonehenge and the Pyramids.

More than 150 gigantic monuments have been located beneath the fields and
cities of modern-day Germany, Austria and Slovakia. They were built 7,000 years
ago, between 4800BC and 4600BC. Their discovery, revealed today by The
Independent, will revolutionise the study of prehistoric Europe, where an
appetite for monumental architecture was thought to have developed later than
in Mesopotamia and Egypt.

To continue on yesterday's theme, I find it fascinating that one of the first things ancient civilizations from all parts of the world did was built huge temples and shrines - that there was, as they say, "an appetite for monumental architecture." I guess the urge to build huge monuments has always been there, just because. And to this day, we carve faces in mountains, construct massive dams, and build 1,776 ft. tall buildings. But in doing so, we're not really besting our ancestors, but emulating them with ever more sophisticated techniques.

Just one more piece of evidence that humans across all cultures are really more alike than different.

This Is Neat

2005-06-20T11:49:00.000-06:00

I saw this story in today's San Francisco Chronicle online:

Until now, few scientists have dared to speculate that the ancient Polynesians visited Southern California between 500 and 700 A.D., that is to say, in the centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. This is known as the "transpacific diffusion" hypothesis.

I find theories like this to be really cool. Not because I want to prove that "the man" has been hiding information about the achievements of minorities or something, but because the idea that technologically primitive people in the past were still incredibly smart, resourceful, and brave. Most people wouldn't travel across the ocean in a canoe nowadays with a GPS guidance system, but here's evidence that a number of people made the trip roughly 1500 years ago, presumbably with only the stars to guide them. That's impressive. And every time I hear about one of these fantastic trips in the ancient or medieval world - Chinese ships circumnavigating the world, Basques fishing off of Canada, Roman legionnaries fighting in China - I find it fascinating, even if I know that some of the stories might turn out to be unfounded.

Ryan Adams is Crazy

2005-06-15T21:09:00.000-06:00

So, this is a tardy follow-up to my previous post about Jeff Tweedy. As you'll remember, I was worried that Tweedy was too happy, sober, and stable to keep making good music.

Somehow, judging from this picture of his latest Letterman appearance, I don't think I have to worry about that problem with Ryan Adams: