“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it, and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.” — William F. Buckley, Jr.
“I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it, and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon.” — William F. Buckley, Jr.
I am! I began working here about six weeks ago now and I have a confession to make: I drive a Fiat. Now, I’m not the type who gets overly concerned about having the manliest of cars or even the most luxurious of cars. In fact, my first car was a 1974 VW Beetle. It was a nasty puke green color with a brown and beige interior. And to spice things up a bit, I put an XXL tie-dye T-shirt over the driver seat and used a yellow billiard ball my Dad drilled a hole into for a shift knob. As for the real kicker, whenever I came to a stop, I had to keep my right foot cocked at a 90-degree angle to rev the engine a bit just to keep this beater running.
Fast forward seven years and I made my first big-boy purchase. In March, I drove off the lot in a slightly used gunmetal grey 2013 Fiat 500 sport, a far cry from my hippie-mobile. However, when friends see what I drive, the overwhelming majority of responses are, “awww…it’s so cute!” Not exactly the response I was looking for. Then I saw these ads by illustrator Alex Solis of Agency Leo Burnett Tailor Made. So, for those who call it cute, you’d better watch out. My “cute” little Go Kart will eat you up off the line.
In February 1974, three-eyed extraterrestrial time travelers entered Philip K. Dick’s bedroom through a portal of pink light. “Trying to make sense of it, he wrote an 8,000 page commentary he called his Exegesis. In it, he proposed that the source of the pink light may have been God, the KGB, a satellite, aliens, a 1st century Christian named Thomas with whom he was in telepathic communication, the CIA, a version of himself from a different dimension, or possibly his deceased twin sister contacting him from the spirit world.”
Riverside Cemetery, Fort Morgan, Colorado, 2016
So was Dick a madman or a mystic?
Kyle Arnold, a psychologist at Coney Island Hospital and Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, wrote a “psychobiography” of Dick to get to the bottom of it. In it, he recounts “the author’s mental illnesses one by one, including anorexia, paranoia, severe anxiety, vivid hallucinations, suicidal tendencies, and violent outbursts followed by amnesia.”
What ultimately did him in wasn’t mental illness or suicide, but something far more pedestrian: a stroke—less than four months before the theatrical release of Blade Runner, which was based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
Long one of my favorite authors, I finally got a chance to visit his grave a couple of months ago. Though I had neither a mystical experience nor a spiritual awakening, I can report that the site—in a quiet corner of a cemetery in a small town on the windswept plains of northeastern Colorado—is peaceful. Which, really, is what Philip K. Dick needed most of all.
There’s an article in yesterday’s Spokesman-Review that you really ought to read. No, it’s not because I’m quoted. It’s because you need to know more about Warren Heylman. And because Nick Deshais did a beautiful job telling Mr. Heylman’s story. And…okay, fine: because I’m quoted.
Seriously, check it out.
What can science tell us about morality? Not much, it turns out.
Speaking of philosophy, Roger Scruton weighs in on the absence of belief: “What we might have taken to be open-mindedness turns out to be no-mindedness.”
Bookies have apparently slashed the odds on either “a UK prime minister or US president” revealing the presence of aliens before the end of the year.
So you want to make a Tibetan leg flute. Nothing complicated, just “a simple length of femoral bone, from the knee joint to about half way up the thigh.” But where do you start? Well…”the most perfect specimen would be from a Brahmin child, male or female, free from worldly stains or faults.” On the other hand, “it should not be from someone who died of tuberculosis, plague or other contagion, or some accident or misfortune.” Sound a little daunting? Not to worry—”REAL Buddhist bone…taken during properly conducted, Chod based sky burials, can currently be acquired for $550 to $750, depending on quality.”
Surprise! The Soviets were jerks.
Geoffrey Hill died last week at 84. His poems, says David Yezzi, are “moral without being religious in any conventional sense, skeptical of power and the duplicity of language, and tonally fluent in ways that recall both the Jeremiad and the Psalm.” David Yezzi has more.
Bob Gimlin on the film that launched the modern Bigfoot phenomenon: “It ruined me.”
THE BEACH IN AUGUST
Weldon Kees
The day the fat woman
In the bright blue bathing suit
Walked into the water and died,
I thought about the human
Condition. Pieces of old fruit
Came in and were left by the tide.
What I thought about the human
Condition was this: old fruit
Comes in and is left, and dries
In the sun. Another fat woman
In a dull green bathing suit
Dives into the water and dies.
The pulmotors glisten. It is noon.
We dry and die in the sun
While the seascape arranges old fruit,
Coming in and the tide, glistening
At noon. A woman, moderately stout,
In a nondescript bathing suit,
Swims to a pier. A tall woman
Steps toward the sea. One thinks about the human
Condition. The tide goes in and goes out.
from The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees (1962)
Spent Independence Day—or ‘Murica Day to you insufferable millennials—at an undisclosed location in the Idaho Panhandle, enjoying a suitably proportionate combination of food, family, and fireworks to mark our country’s 240th birthday. (There was patriotic music as well, but that didn’t quite fit into my alliterative scheme. So we’ll just add “festivities” to the mix and call it good.)
Best part of the day? Hard to choose, really. After all, there was pulled pork and a homemade cannon. But if I had to pick, it’d definitely be the framed photograph of Ronald Reagan on the nightstand in our hosts’ master suite. Darn near brought a tear to my eye.
Happy birthday, America.
I had my first cup of coffee when I was around eight years old. I use the term “coffee” somewhat loosely, of course: what was actually in that styrofoam cup was equal parts sugar, milk, and whatever swill you could get in a grocery store in 1975.
By the time I was 11, though, I was hooked. And when I entered junior high, it would’ve been unthinkable to board the school bus without at least two cups in my belly. Halfway through high school I’d ditched the milk and sugar entirely and doubled my intake of delicious black goodness. And by the time college rolled around, well…I’m pretty sure I was the only person in my dorm with a 10-cup Braun automatic coffeemaker.
The Braun eventually yielded to a Chemex, then an espresso machine, a Bodum vacuum pot, an ibrik, another Chemex, an AeroPress, a Bialetti Moka Express, a French press, still another Chemex, and finally to Technivorm’s magnificent Moccamaster.
As for the coffee itself, let’s just say that it’s good to live in Spokane. They may be condescending Peter Pan lookalikes, but hipsters have pretty much ensured we all have access to an amazing cup of Joe whenever we feel like it. (I’d say “Thanks guys!” but that would just reinforce the gender binary, and I know how y’all feel about that.)
So it’s with no small amount of satisfaction and pride that a little company I work with is now offering some of the finest coffee around: a smooth, balanced cup you can quaff all day. DOMA Coffee Roasting Company makes it to order, hand packs it, and promises to get it to your door in no time.
So drink up. You’ll not only be partaking in a ritual that’s literally hundreds of years old, but also helping a local design student pay for tuition. Win-win, right?
I got the terrible news this morning that Jim Boyd died Tuesday.
I met Jim back in 2002 when I was writing a feature story about him and his music for the erstwhile Local Planet. We sat, he and I, for hours in my living room, talking about songwriting, politics, reservation life, and how the hell I was supposed to refer to him in the upcoming article.
“Sorry to ask this,” I said, deliberately avoiding eye contact, “but…am I supposed to call you an Indian or a Native American?”
Jim actually laughed at me. “I’ve been an Indian all my life,” he said. “That’s what we call ourselves on the rez. Then one day, this white college professor tells me I’m a Native American. Whatever, man. I’m still an Indian. Call me that.”
It was about that point that he looked out the window and noticed that my five-year-old son Jake was rummaging around in the back of his pickup truck. I called him in and asked what he was doing. Jake looked Jim up and down, taking in the long black hair, the leather vest, the beaded necklaces.
“I was trying to find his bow and arrow,” Jake answered.
“Oh, those?” Jim said, deadly serious as he crouched down to Jake’s level. “I left ’em at home. Maybe I’ll bring ’em next time.”
There wasn’t a next time, of course. Jim was a busy guy and I had a story to file. We stayed in touch for a few years after, but, as so often happens, the time between emails and phone calls kept growing until they stopped altogether.
As for the story, it ran on the cover of the June 7, 2002 issue of the Local Planet. It also won an award from the Inland Northwest Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists—one of a couple I inexplicably received that year. And shortly after, I left journalism for, well…whatever it is I’m doing now.
Thanks for your friendship, Jim, brief though it was. You touched a lot of folks, and you’re gonna be missed by all of them.
Surprise! Selfies are little more than “a new manifestation of a time-honored tendency: the penchant for people to overvalue their positive traits.” Are you reading this, Courtney?
Pit bulls: “The Jews of the canine world.”
“In the last few decades, stroke mechanic experts have discovered that swimming under the surface is faster than swimming on the surface.”
If we all just peed in the shower, we’d save hundreds of billions of gallons of water every year. C’mon, now. Who’s with me? Let’s save the planet!
So people are suing Starbucks. On what grounds? (See what I did there? Grounds.) Under-filling their lattes. No, really.
BOOM: “A culture that values sensitivity and diversity without figuring out how to adequately define either needs ways to monitor the behavior of others.”
Last Tuesday evening, I had the privilege of sharing a few stories about one of Spokane’s mid-century modern architectural masters, Kenneth W. Brooks. The event was sponsored by the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, and was held in the auditorium at Ken’s signature project, the headquarters of Avista Utilities (completed in 1958 as the Washington Water Power Central Service Facility).
Ken kept diaries, sketchbooks, and notes throughout his career, many of which are available for viewing at the Washington State University archives. Among my favorite discoveries is a handwritten note from a graphic design conference he attended at WSU on March 20, 1965: “The graphic designer and the architect are born buddies.”
Even more significant to me is that, in 1947, Ken worked for the prestigious SOM in New York City, during which time he lived in a Midtown Manhattan townhouse. No big deal—except that, for the last 51 years, this same building has housed the design studio of none other than Milton Glaser.
photo by J. Craig Sweat Photography
Sir Francis Drake, sailing off the coast of north-western California, arrives at Nova Albion, 1578:
In this bay we anchored…The people of the country, having their houses close by the water’s side, showed themselves unto us and sent a present to our general. When they came unto us they greatly wondered at the things which we brought. Our general (according to his natural and accustomed humanity) courteously entreated them, and liberally bestowed on them necessary things to cover their nakedness. Whereupon they supposed us to be gods, and would not be persuaded to the contrary. The presents which they sent unto our general were feathers, and cauls of net work.
Their houses are digged round about with earth, and have from the uttermost brims of the circle clefts of wood set upon them, joining close together at the top like a spire steeple, which by reason of the closeness are very warm. Their bed is the ground with rushes strewed on it and lying about the house; they have the fire in the midst. The men go naked; the women take bulrushes and comb them after the manner of hemp, and thereof make their loose garments; which, being knit about their middles, hang down about their hips, having also about their shoulders a skin of deer, with the hair upon it. These women are very obedient and serviceable to their husbands.
From The Folio Book of Days (Folio Society, London: 2002).
N.B. While for some the exact location of Drake’s landing is in dispute, it’s pretty clear he landed in what’s now Drakes Bay.
Noticed the sky was on fire while on my evening constitutional yesterday. Figured I’d better take a photo, in case no one believed me. Doesn’t appear to have left any permanent damage, though—everything was cool when I looked west this morning.
carapace (noun) A thick, hard shell made of bone or chitin found on animals such as turtles, crabs, and armadillos.
To survive at helveticka, Aaron learned that a protective carapace was necessary not only to blunt the blows of criticism aimed primarily at his writing (not to mention his attire and taste in music), but also to stifle Courtney’s frequent encomiums to someone called “Queen Bey.”
shizukasa ya
iwa ni shimiiru
semi no koe
the stillness—
soaking into stones
cicada’s cry
Matsuo Bashō
(1644–1694)
From The Haiku Handbook (Kodansha, 1985): “Matuso Bashō…made his living traveling around the country, teaching people everywhere he went the art and craft of writing renga, or linked poems.”