Frank Stanford Diary, Part 2

The Chief

So the Chief ended up being so great. If I drove by this place at night and Edward Hopper were riding shotgun with me, he'd almost decide to paint it. "Dude, slow down . . aw, never mind," he'd say. They had shampoo packets, too, which was a bonus, because I had to wash my hair with tiny bar soap at the Motel 6 the night before.

The rest of my diary, then:

9:05 Atlanta Bakery

When there is a table of retired men sitting in a bakery where there are no pancakes, one of them will do all the talking. He is the large one. He will talk to his smaller, fellow retirees about other men they might know, and who have heart trouble and are looking for part-time jobs in their retirement. It is always this way.

9:15 Atlanta Bakery

I want to know, in The Savage Detectives, what happens to Juan Garcia Madero, but the book is not telling me and I am getting distracted. I almost put tea in my coffee just now.

Mathew Henriksen giving directions before the marathon reading of The Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You. In the background, you can see trucker hat guy.

9:44 in the upstairs loft at Night Bird Books in Fayetteville, where I have just discovered a new book of Chris Ware sketches that is beautiful but too expensive.

Before I left school yesterday, my friend Wendy said to me "Have fun on your trip! I hope you get to meet your poet-guy." "He's dead," I said. Then she laughed.

10:30 Farmers' market at Fayetteville town square .

Half of the citizenry of Arkansas is dogs. And yet it is still a red state. Not enough dogs.

If you see a three-legged dog, it is good luck. Especially if you have a leg and are looking for a dog.

12:50 Fayetteville public library, first panel discussion.

This guy in a baseball hat on the panel just said the exact same thing I have been thinking about Aime Cesaire and Frank Stanford but assumed I was wrong about. Now I think it's a good idea.
I will write it.

Matt again.

9:30 pm Marathon reading for Battlefield Where the Moon Says I Love You

We are 100 pages into Battlefield, and I have never read this much of it at one time and it's just too crazy. It's the only way this thing should be read. There are about thirty people listening in here and whenever the door opens to the hall outside, you can hear another twenty or so clinking beer bottles and talking about the poor market for PhD's.

I just got to get up on stage and read two pages. They included the part where the circus performer's cat is doused in cognac and lit on fire. I tried to rise to the occasion.

11:17 Getting tired already.

This guy in a trucker cap just got up there. I can't tell if the trucker cap is ironic hipster or sincere, but I wish I could wear hats the way he does. He gave the reading of the night. He sang it almost, in a voice like, I don't know, Michael Stipe or something if he were a public-access TV preacher. He was phenomenal, and a perfect note to end my night on. I'm not doing this all-nighter thing, though I might have if I brought a sleeping bag.

Irv Broughton, film-maker

And that's all I wrote! The travel and lack of decent breakfast was wearing me down, I think. I spent the whole trip home reading The Savage Detectives, but slowly. In the photo above is the guy who made the film that was one of the centerpieces of the conference this weekend. Before I took this picture, we talked IU basketball and Kelvin Sampson and the Ft. Wayne Zollner Pistons for a while. Super guy. Here's to hoping he can get a good version of It Wasn't a Dream, It Was a Flood released in the near future. It's stunning--I keep remembering the looped, hacking laughter of the figure that keeps coming in and out of focus at the beginning. Crazy.

Late Birthday

I'm so bad with birthdays. This blog, for example, turned three a few days ago. The vanity! To celebrate, and to buy time as I pick out what pictures to use for part 2 of the Frank Stanford diary, here are a few of the old posts that were kind of funny, if occasionally long and pointless:

8.6.07, in which I report on Prospector's camping trip to the Upper Peninsula.
and part two of the same trip.

9.27.06, in which I first cause my daughter significant trauma, both physical and emotional.

9.6.06, in which I recount the time I told a joke about drunks for third grade show and tell.

Good times!

Frank Stanford Diary

In Arkansas, they use vines for telephone wires, like on Gilligan's Island.

I'm back in Indiana, where my newspaper delivery lady, Maribel, has started delivering the paper to a different door, and I can't decide if I mind or not. Here is one part of a diary of my weekend in Fayetteville. This part, admittedly, does not have a lot to do with Frank Stanford.

Friday, 6:10 pm, Fort Wayne Int'l Airport

It has been so long since I last flew in a plane and I am surprised to learn that they still want you to only bring small tubes of things on the plane, not big tubes. I brought a small number of books, and have a small amount of change in a pants pocket, but they don't care about that. So my large tube of toothpaste, large and white and tartar-fighting, must go. I even throw it out before I go through the line to save myself the embarrassment of being exposed in front of others as someone who doesn't know about these kinds of things. When I go through, they don't even look in my bag, so I could have saved my toothpaste. I still have my floss, though.

6:45, departing Chicago O'Hare for Fayettville

It is night and downtown Chicago is all lit up below and around my window and I just remembered the Liz Phair song where it goes "I flew into Chicago at night, something something/ it looked like a Galaxie 500 video." I've seen a few Galaxie 500 videos, but don't remember any that look like this, but I am glad that I remembered that line while I was living it out in a way.

When you fly over a city at night and its lights are briefly and suddenly obscured by a soft shape below you, you have just seen a "night cloud," a cloud that is made at night

6:50 (all times are guesses because I don't have a watch)

I just realized that my wife's ipod that I have here has Galaxie 500 on it, so I could have been listening to them while I remembered that line. Minor setback.

9:20, landing in Fayetteville

When all the people around me, the second the pilot says it's okay, pull out their cells and call someone just to tell them "I just landed," the people on the other end should answer "So?"

Saturday, 8:00 am, Motel 6, Fayetteville, Ark.

There are blood stains on my motel wash cloth, and I haven't had a bloody nose and don't remember killing anyone last night.

Last night, when I checked in, the clerk said to me "Are the cops still out there?" "I dunno," I said. "Was there a dust-up?" "Every weekend. The cops come every weekend. It is a good thing," he says.

I like staying in awful motels. It has all the hardships of camping without any of the gratification, so it's more hardcore. I found a cheaper, hopefully more awful, motel closer to the Stanford deal, called "The Chief," so I'm going to move there for tonight.

I sat in the morning sun and watched this string band for an hour.
We talked about our favorite banjo tunings (D and double C) and Ralph Stanley.

8:45, after driving around looking for pancakes.

88.3 FM in Fayetteville is the coolest radio station I have ever heard. So far, though, I am the only person I have seen here who looks like they might entertain the thought of listening to it. What's more, you cannot buy a pancake here, yet all of the people I see look like they would really like pancakes. Fayetteville, I am learning, is a city of contradictions.

There is, literally, not a pancake within 50 miles.

It was carnage as usual at the Mississinewa 1812 reenactment this fall. Last year, I took the kids but missed all the fightin', so we made it a point to bring the whole family and get there early. The trees were gorgeous and the river is pretty: steep banks and a little bit broader than the river that is near your house.

Only when I got home did I read up on some of the history to learn that no real battle like this one you see here ever took place. The real battle on this river was in the middle of a snowy November and was an attack on some sleepy Indian villages. There weren't gaggles of British forces and cannons and firing lines and what not. We didn't care.

Because this thing was cool. The whole day. At first you think it might be embarrassing to see all these people playing dress up in one place, but they take it on with such earnestness that you can't help but suspend your disbelief a little bit. This is J and me listening to an Indian story- teller (not pictured) (and not Indian, either). I need a new black hat. My Air America hat, like the radio station, is fading.

This, too, is not an Indian, but he rubs red paint on his skin and plays one on the weekends in a kind of make-believe Native American National Guard. This particular one appears to be inter-marrying, establishing a Metis culture in a part of the country where I don't think there was one.

I still am not sure what tone this weekend is taking toward the events of the battle itself. They aren't celebrating it, but they aren't examining it either. The Indians always lose, though, that's for sure.

Best shirt of the day. And his friend had one just like it.


The climax of the day was supposed to be a "pirate battle," which just ended up being men shooting randomly at each other from across and in the river. Best part was when a white man settler-kind of guy ran out into the river, got tomahawked, and then did a dead man's float in front of us, following the current. I can imagine him looking forward to that performance all year: "Just wait til they see my dead man's float!"

You should go next year. It'll be fun.

Today's Word: "Saturnalian"

Worth watching to the end.

Bad news.

So sad.

Seen on the way to the annual Mississenewa 1812 reenactment, where a big Indian slaughter is celebrated, or depicted, every year near Marion, Ind.

Notice how the sign uses a backward D, creating an emoticon that can't be made with a keyboard. Some linguist working on her ph.d should interview the author, I would think.

Tomorrow's Breakfast

So in Chicago a couple of weekends ago, Kimberle totally kicked my ass at ordering breakfast. I made a common mistake by erring on the side of excess, going with a manly pile of eggs and chorizo and I think there were avocados in there, too. Kimberle went simple, though: oatmeal and caramelized bananas. I didn't have a chance!

So here is me correcting my mistake, realizing how laughingly simple it is to caramelize your own dang bananas. Why don't we do this every day, I have to wonder. Anyway, touche, Kimberle.

Anything for the angel of death

Man, I want to go to this thing: they've actually organized a conference for Frank Stanford in Fayetteville in two weekends. If I can get it approved for my professional development this year, I'm going to fly down, but time is running short for me to get approval before ticket prices go up. I wish I had known about the thing sooner, but oh well.

For the last year or so, more than almost anybody else, it has been his books that fall out at me when I go stare at the shelf. Here's one I read with my writing club last Friday, and which got a stronger reaction that I'd even expected.

Everybody Who is Dead

When a man knows another man

Is looking for him

He doesn’t hide.

He doesn’t wait

To spend another night

With his wife

Or put his children to sleep.

He puts on a clean shirt and a dark suit

And goes to the barber shop

To let another man shave him.

He shuts his eyes

Remembers himself as a boy

Lying naked on a rock by the water.

Then he asks for the special lotion.

The old men line up by the chair

And the barber pours a little

In each of their hands.


UPDATE: I'm going! My goal is to have at least one of my patented "awkward conversations with a kind of famous person who matters to me" with C.D. Wright!

file dump

Here are some other pictures to show what kind of fun we could get into with 24 hours of babysitting and enough gas money to get to Chicago and back. I love that city, but it's always a little scary going there. "What if I get lost in Gary?" (didn't happen) "What if I can't find a parking space?" (did) "What if I get jealous of all the cool downtown neighborhoods and their stately homes?" (did, but that's part of why you go there in the first place)

This is the second picture Cath ever took of me since our first kid was borned. Honest. She was mainly trying to get the prettiness of Potato Creek State Park, where we fit in two laps on their rightly-lauded mtn biking trails. Not technical, but fast and more fun than you'd think, being in what I assumed would be flattish part of Indiana. I bit it 2.5 times, but only one of those times was at all cool.

And this is the first picture Cath took. That fall light can't be beat and it makes you want to take pictures of everything, even your husband. My triumph of the day was after this picture when I talked our way through three levels of state park bureaucracy to get to use the campground showers before we drove into Chicago for the concert: (1) campground booth lady; (2) young ranger guy booth lady called in for backup; (3) unseen boss ranger guy called on his radio who gave us the ok.

Pointed toward Chicago now.

Hanging out after big burritos at Carmela's Taqueria, one block from the Aragon Showroom, oblivious that MBV was probably playing their first song right about now. It was a cubicle-sized restaurant that we shared with five ticket scalpers and a cop. Very cozy, and good food, but I wish I got to hear all of the first song.

Home

So the My Bloody Valentine show last night was kind of a stunner. I think I wanted to go in part out of a sense of obligation--I don't think there is any record I have listened to more in my life than their Loveless, and Isn't Anything is close behind. But a big part of me assumed that the live experience wouldn't quite be able to translate the feelings that I associate with the recorded version-- that was the whole reason they try to be the loudest band, right? To make up for their inability to recreate the album? That's what I thought, anyway.

It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. Ridiculously, I skipped the ear plugs until the finale of "You Made Me Realize." I tried them, but it made the sound to muddy. I mean, if Kevin Shields wanted it to be that loud, who was I to try to counteract his vision by wearing ear-condoms? My ears don't ring at all today, though, which is kind of a surprise.

And I decided not to wear my lawn-mowing ear protectors, too. And I'm glad, because I saw one other guy wearing them, and it would have been awkward.

But the music was just so, well, awesome. I think the entire Aragon Ballroom was in awe of what we were seeing after 16 years of waiting. You could really feel that.

Here's Youtube from last night of one of songs I especially dug.



And Nathan--no sale. By the time we got there, the street was swarming with scalpers asking for only $10--and there were no takers I could see. Sorry!

Last fm correction

Because Last fm does not track what I listen to in my car, I feel the need to post a correction to the data it compiles there. For the record, I have played AC's song "Frightened" exactly 3,000 times on my way to and from work this week. I don't even live that far from school--I just turn into subdivisions and drive around and around, pressing repeat on the stereo.

And I also need to say, as far as my "mental" Last fm goes, that I have thought about MBV's song "Only Shallow" about the same number of times while doing dishes this week. I have heard the song so many times, it is built into my muscle memory or something now, just like my golf swing, because I have listened to it so many times since that album came out like 17 years ago or so. I don't know what I'm going to do when I see it played when I see them this weekend. Probably look around at all the kindred souls as we get misty-eyed.

But really, for real, the song on my mind for real this week is this version of "Alysoun," or "Alisoun," depending on which Middle English minstrel you ask. Too beautiful. Have had two different students sing striking versions of it, too. I really need to get one of those flip cameras to record moments like that.

Best in Show and Tell

This here is Sarah Jane reading from the journal she kept in, I think, 5th grade, and it was the funniest thing, the perfect example of why journals must be compiled and then kept, no matter how banal they may seem to us at the time. The best part for me when hearing this was how easily Sarah Jane slipped back into the voice of her ten year old self.

This was all part of our first Show & Tell club, which is a kind of side-project or offspring of a book club we started a year ago, and I think it is going to continue for a bit. The book club still exists, but it's now more of a "this is what I read and liked in the last month or two" club on alternate months, and with the initial success of this new gathering, we'll have to see what happens. Maybe we'll start a recess club to take its place on the off months.

Here I am flipping through a darkly funny flip book made by Marie, whom I just met that day. I think most people left that day thinking "I want to make one of those things that [insert name] did." That's how I felt, anyway.

Cath and I had initial plans to do a cover version of Animal Collective's unreleased song "House," until we realized that we were bad. We had no problem embarassing ourselves--we just didn't want to embarass anyone trying to watch us. It was a lot of fun rehearsing, though. I love that song. And I learned how to use this cool free download music program to make some background for it. Mason, if you read this, I totally want a Fruity Loops tutorial some time.

Scraper Bike

Hilarious. There might be some bad language in this, but the parts I could make out sounded innocuous enough. The wife: "They have a great sound. Some producer is going to see that and think they could be a pretty good rap band."

As heard on NPR.

Last Day at Markle Pool

The Flop

The kid regretted it. A belly flop from the 8'3" board. And he jumped, too, so it was even higher than that, probably. The seen-it-all lifeguard and the swimmers waiting in line up on the cliff all heard the smack and we all winced in unison.

But that's part of the greatness of the Markle pool: that element of danger. The diving boards are tall, the 30' slide has almost no sides to it, and the lifeguards have this way of tacit encouragement to anyone willing to take a risk.

Click on this shot to get a better look and notice the guy going off the same board--he's in the middle of a weird kind of flipping dive he seemed to have patented. He landed feet first, but in this picture you can see him caught in an upside-down Christ figure pose right before he flipped back over and hit the water.

Me, I just jumped. Pointed my toes a little and it always feels like such a long fall. Then it feels like you are so deep, like 20, thirty feet, but it's probably only 8 or so. I held my breath and tried to swim as far as I could underwater and I couldn't see (or wouldn't look at--I don't remember) the bottom. It's so nice and I wish I were there right now, but it's closed for the year.

Ligonier Marshmallow Fest

So you tell the kids that you're going to the Ligonier Marshmallow Fest and because they are too young to recognize the absurdity of it, they say "okay" and climb into their car seats. And so you say "okay" and climb into your grown-up seats and drive some part of an hour to stand in the sun and compare this small town fair to all the others you have been to.

And this one was sad, just how I like them. Hopeful, mostly vacant streets. The carnies too hot to bother you much. They let the kids cheat. The kids climb over the rail and knock down the targets with their fists, choose their crap, and leave.

This guy's van was parked next to about a hundred fancy antique hot rods. At first I assumed it was for sale, but now I think the sign was just for laffs.

It is not often you see a tent at a town fair selling--what are these, exactly? Under or outer wear? I was afraid to ask.

Slush/ No Slush

Annual Bluegrass

It is hard for me to go a full year without at least one day at a bluegrass or old-time festival of some kind, but we had for the past couple, so today I took advantage of the annual labor day festival up in Kendallville to hear some live banjar. When you are not around a banjo, the idea of a banjo is funny. But when there is a banjo near you and it is ringing, you realize that is is not funny at all: it is, I don't know, not funny. It's cool.

A lot of the bands that played were full of young'ns. My favorite of the night, Midnight Ramblers, looked just old enough to drive their van from their home in Virginia--after they changed out of their awesome big white hats and matching pink shirts (really, they looked awesome--I wish I could pull that look off sometimes) they had this quasi-Abercrombie & Fitch look to them. It was a jarring change.

The crowd at these things often skews old, though; I don't know where the young fans are. B isn't one yet. He just wanted to go find dogs to pet.

The highlight of this festival is always the one or two groups that get up there and play some great clawhammer or at least something old, maybe something Ralph Stanley played. And then there are always the hats that you get to see, and you get to watch people eating a lot. A lot of people eating a lot.

A skatepark fundraiser bake sale. How fantastic is that! I stood around this booth for awhile thinking maybe that all the local skaters might ride through and raid the place, doing ollies or whatever on the pies, and how funny that would be, but they never came.

Don't even ask me what B ate for dinner. I'm too ashamed. But when you're around people eating the way these people were, your idea of what is normal gets warped quickly.

Raising the stakes

Look at this cool invite Sarah Jane made for our club. Cath saw it and said, "we have to get serious about this." Time for practice.

Kaifei

Our own Mason Hunter just released an ep under the name Kaifei, and it sounds a lot like a record made by Panda Bear's imaginary friend. I don't think Mason would disagree. It's great stuff. In one of the comments below, he gave the url where you can download it.

If I remember right, he told me that he produced most of this using a program called Fruity Loops. I downloaded the demo and it's pretty danged cool. I can almost imagine myself using it to fulfill my dream of becoming a DJ--even better, a vegan, skate boarding, documentary film-making DJ. School has started, but maybe I'll give that dream a shot next summer.

Cut it out.

What a cool idea. I wish I had seen these examples of book cut-outs before we made ours in Club last spring. I have a couple of books left over and a lot of Mod-Podge, so I might have to try something different. It would take an incredibly sharp knife to make those, though--we had a fair bit of trouble with our big squares.

Assistantships, cont.

As an fyi to this year's seniors, I am willing and able, I decided, to take assistants for any period of the day except 7th. If you're interested, send me an email.

Harvest Rule

If you grow tomatoes, it is a rule that, when your tomatoes come in, you have to take this exact picture. It is part of keeping your garden's Martha certification or something. So . . here is ours.

I must be the laziest vegetable gardener. I have watered that garden exactly none times--oh, but I do love to knock down weed starts with this old-timey hoe I got from my gramma Pierce. I forgot that I did that--so, not so lazy, maybe.

Catching up

Okay, that was some nice time off. First, some older snaps from a couple weeks back at the county fair:

Here is Michelle in her favorite barn at the fair, with this crazy kind of bunny that has to be the fluffiest thing in nature. Really, if every home had a couple of these sitting around the living room to pet every once in awhile, we, as a nation, would be a lot more chill.

Mike, showing my kids how to steal their first peak at a tractor pull. B was pretty into it.

The first "freak show" style exhibit I've ever noticed at our fair. And yes, we all paid to see her, and yes, it was sad and we felt bad afterwords, or at least weird.

And . . . school is coming. I know, because the marching band for the school near my home has begun practice and as always I can just hear the drum line practicing their Indian-drum style war-chant. It always makes the idea of the first day of school take on an ominous tone, but I'm excited for it, myself. School! Any AP kids from last year who are looking for an assistantship during 1st period, let me know.