Monday, April 28, 2008

Horses

Here follows a rendering of what happened on the way home from work today courtesy of Jesse and UBS man.

Jesse: "There were horses loose on Route 421 today!"
UBS man (discretely): "4 horses"
Jesse: "There were four horses loose on 421 today and they were being chased by a woman!"
UBS man: "A fat woman..."
Jesse: "There were four horses being chased by a fat woman on 421 today!"

Saturday, April 26, 2008

I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are an evil

Dawn. A light rain falls on the surrounding hills and all is quiet. A figure ventures down the driveway and into the misty morning. Two are left behind aware only of solitude's harsh embrace. We fear only that which we know, that there will be no returns and that the figure ventures down and out of the mountains for the last time. Simultaneously, a second figure reluctantly steps into a car. The car pulls out and down, following the figure recently departed, leaving a tired crowd behind. The crowd knows that nothing will be the same and that an era has ended. An era has ended out of necessity, and not for the better.

Early this morning, Ross and Jennie left CAP, ending their times and venturing on to bigger and brighter things. In every place you go in life, there are certain people who define that particular place and make it what it is. Ross and Jennie defined this place in many ways.

In J. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye Holden Caulfield proclaims, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." I used to think, every time someone close to me left, that this was the most brilliant quotation of all time. However, now I know it to be mostly nonsense. If you took this stance, you would never take the chance of knowing anyone because you would assume that you would one day miss them. You'd never take the time to say that which matters most and your life would be mostly empty. But, this is not the way we live. We share ourselves and then we do miss people. It does not mean that we stop trying to find the people and share with the people we will one day miss. We miss them because we love them, and that is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.

The memories of these two are seemingly so thick that we have to brush them away from our faces. There was the time we went to Flat Lick Falls in mid-February to jump in the ice cold water. I think we did this as a way to ward off cabin fever. Ross came up with the idea, as he often did, then asked, "you in?" To which I replied as I always did, "you know I am," regardless of how insane the proposal was. There were the hikes at Red River Gorge, the pizza afterwards at the small mountain pizza shop. Shopping late the day before Christmas eve. There were the trips out to the east side forged countless times to see our friends. The pool party with our east side brethren. There were the pranks played on Callista, the Rooster we put in Jennie's room as a special visitor. There was the ski trip to North Carolina with the east side and relaxing the porch on an unusually warm day. The trip to disaster relief and shingling that roof we had no idea how to do. Driving the conversion van around Tennessee (aka "the Perfect Storm-mobile). There were countless masses we went to on Sunday mornings, trips to the Mellow Mushroom in search of good ale and good pizza, the time Ross and I hit back to back dingers (Manny and Big Papi style) in the softball game. And of course, can any of us ever forget the Perfect Storm. Enough said.

We made memories up to their departure. Yesterday was Ross' birthday and last day in Kentucky so I decided we should try chewing tobacco (aka dip). You can not be an official Kentuckian unless you have tried dip. I went into the Shell station and awkwardly made my way to the counter. "May I have a can of your finest chewing tobacco mam?"
"Huh?" she replied with twisted countenance.
"You know, a can of... people chew it."
"You mean dip?" she replied.
"Yes! Yes indeed, dip."
The other man working at the counter rolled his eyes, for obvious reasons.
"Well what flavor do you want, there's apple, peach, vanilla"
The man next to her said, "give him cherry, that's my favorite." So cherry it was.
When Ross and I got back to the house we decided to 'dip' as it were. We took a golf ball sized pinch (although I think that's pretty generous calling it a "pinch") and put it between our bottom lip and our gums. (We would later learn that this was way too much, especially for the first time.) It wasn't so bad at first. Just tasted like cherry flavored dirt in your mouth. And of course you could NOT under any circumstances swallow because it would most certainly induce vomiting. We even had the energy to come up with slogans for the product like "SKOAL, when you're looking for elegance and sophistication you can spit into a bottle, make it SKOAL." Or, "SKOAL, you're dead asshole." Or, "SKOAL, when you want to feel like complete Hell, make it SKOAL." Anyways, after 4 minutes of having this huge bulge in our mouths we started to feel completely awful. I said to Ross, "I feel sick." He replied, "Do you feel sick, because I really kind of do" Our heads were spinning like you wouldn't believe and we could barely walk around. Ross spit his wad off the porch and I quickly followed suit. The next 10 minutes were spent bent over the porch rail spitting and washing out our mouths with expired power aid, trying our best not to vomit. "Why would anyone do this every day!?!" Ross asked. To which I replied, "I guess to feel like a real man...." Jennie just sat there gleefully, watching us spit and hack our way out of misery.

Whenever a member of our fair fellowship leaves us, as I have often mentioned earlier, they commission the remaining work to be done by those left behind. They do not always leave because they want to but because just as they were once called here they are now called away. As Gandalf says in his departure, "Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk to do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help. You are grown up now. Grown indeed very high; among the great you are, and I have no longer any fear at all for any of you."

I think Red puts it quite well in The Shawshank Redemption, "I have to remind myself that some birds aren't meant to be caged. Their feathers are just too bright. And when they fly away, the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice. Still, the place you live in is that much more drab and empty that they're gone. I guess I just miss my friend."


Cheers.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Spring Comes to the Cumberlands

This is the most beautiful time of the year in the Appalachians, in my humble opinion. The dogwood, red buds, and all sorts of flowering bushes are showing their true colors as spring has finally come to Jackson county, after much anticipation. We have been working like mad to finish old workfest jobs. While it was a great time to have the students around, we now have 3-5 jobs open. And, the existing work on the jobs is ... less that perfect. So, we have been tearing down and putting up as fast as possible.

Here at the Jackson house, business continues much as it has this past 8 months, with change coming slowly ... if it comes at all. However, a looming cloud of awareness has come over those of us who are nearing our end with CAP. Most noticeably, Ross (my partner in crime for the Perfect Storm) and Jennie are leaving in less than a week and a half. For my part, I have begun to look for ... a job... yes, as odd as it sounds. I will most likely be in St. Louis or Chicago next year. As I begin my search, I am surprised how much the salaries are. When you go from making no money at all to making some money, some money seems like a lot. I'll say to myself "hmmm this is 35 times as much as I'm making now." I've also signed up for the GRE on June 7th. It seems my time here is starting to end as well. The first 6 months of CAP were carefree. Now, as my end approaches in 2 short months, I feel I may have to return to the fast paced world once again. A world where no one waves on the road, frequent breaks do not happen, you don't have dozens of friends ready to hang out on the weekends, and food costs money and is not yet expired.

I forgot to tell you a couple stories from workfest. So think of this as the encore to the Perfect Storm. Over a series of three weeks of workfest, Ross and I had convinced each of our groups that we had three different identities. One week I was a former British sailor and Ross was a former mercenary soldier. But, on our last week, Ross was a former NASA engineer and our group bought into this one hundred percent. One of the college students even asked Ross, "So, why did you leave NASA, was it budget cuts." To which Ross claimed, "The game changed, too fast, and I had to get out."

The second story comes from our first job. There was an 80 year old man who, more or less, joined our crew. His name was Denver (last name unknown). He spent most of the time spitting a ton of "backer" out among the girls and laughing at our kid's lack of construction knowledge. He was always coming in and leaving, every hour or so, claiming that he had to "feed the horses." And, at one point, he said, "Buddy, I don't move too fast, but I can if I have to. I bet if we raced to the top of that roof, I'd be up there in a heartbeat and you'd still be on the ground. aHEH HEH HEH HEH (spit backer here)." I had no response.

There has been a song dedicated to Ross and I, you can find it here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=1vFVvS0xxo4&feature=related

holla at you boy, and cheers.

quote of the day:

Life is change, and change looks frightening
Watch that wind I’ve been warned
But I live to feel this lightning
In this perfect storm

p.s. Here is a great article on the Pope's visit, which I am greatly excited about

http://online.wsj.com/article/declarations.html

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Chicago, Chicago, You'll Love It.

Whenever people go to or come back from a foreign country you'll often hear them talk about "culture shock". This is the idea that when changing cultures rapidly, your mind, having forgot how different things are in different parts of the world I guess, can't quite grasp the severity of the differences. And, it takes a little time to adjust.

After the perfect storm had swept through southeast Kentucky, I was pretty tired. I guess 12 hour days of instructing and motivating college students to do work they have no idea how to do takes it out of you. So, I decided to take a trip home to Chicago for 4 days, to see some people and relax before we have groups of high school kids coming in. Which, by the way, should be the most retched thing ever because they 1. can't use power tools and 2. can't get on ladders. which basically means, we're going to be doing a lot of siding and painting.

The differences are staggering really, between Chicago and Mckee, North and South. Mainly, the speed is so different. People in the city are just motivated to get things done and keep busy. You won't ever see business men in McKee running down the street in suits WHILE talking on their cell phones. Also, I've noticed that more and more people in the city are wearing those ear piece cell phones while they are driving and walking around. This often freaks me out because if they have their head turned so you can't see the ear piece, it looks like they're talking to themselves, or to me. I've even had someone on the train say, "hey, what's up" into their phone which I could not see because it was on the other side of their head. So I responded, "oh, not much man." He then turned to me as if *I* was the crazy one.

Driving is another thing. In the south, for those of you who have never been, people just randomly wave to each other all the time. In cars, on the streets, if people see you in their town, they figure that you are probably friends or at least should be, so they wave. Also, if you're driving in a pickup truck and you see another pickup truck, you will often give the one fingered wave off the top of the steering wheel as if to say, "we both drive trucks and thus are friends." So if you are in a pickup truck and you see another pickup truck, give them a wave ... unless of course it is a Toyota pickup. Then you should not make eye contact. But, for the most part people are overly friendly. Well yesterday, I was sitting in a parking lot in Wilmette, just sitting there minding my own business and this man in a beat up Ford Focus drives past me, yelling some incomprehensible gibberish (it may have been Spanish) out the window, honking the horn and waving his fist at me. I had no idea why, maybe I was in his way or he was concerned I was going to pull out of my spot, but I thought it quite odd. I tried to wave at him, but that seemed to enrage him even more.

Then, walking through the streets of Wilmette and Evanston, I was struck at the luxury of absolutely everything in some areas. The SUV's, the perfect 3 million dollar houses with stained wood soffit, brick masonry and polished copper gutters. It is a completely different world to go from considering which car to drive today to discussing if our house can afford to buy cheese this week. The determinants of what define luxury are worlds apart.

All of these events lead me to believe that I will never return to a city. But, as I was thinking this, I thought how much I enjoyed the drive up town, past Comiskey Park, how much I enjoyed my visit to St. Mary of the Angels church on the near west side for Eucharistic Adoration, how much I enjoyed the drive down Lake Shore Drive because there ain't no road just like it anywhere I've found. I thought of how I enjoyed the Thai food and the movie that was a 10 minute drive from my house, the ESPN 1000 sports radio, watching the White Sox game, and being within walking distance from the grocery store. Each place has its ups and downs, and I'm quite happy with where I live now...mainly because I don't have deranged possibly Spanish speaking motorists screaming at me down the streets of Jackson County. But, I may return to the city sometime soon. Only time will tell.

Cheers.


Quote of the day: "My favorite team is the White Sox. My second favorite team is who ever is playing the Cubs"
-Harry Carry (back when he was the announcer for the Sox, before his days with the Cubs)