Dr. George Tiller, murdered today. He was killed because he performed legal abortions.
I just read about this and I hate, I HATE that I can't just say that I can't believe something like this could happen in my country. I should be able to say that, but I can't.
In the words of Saturn Smith:
Tiller could have operated with more safety in many other locations, but he chose, instead, to stay in Wichita, to offer health services -- yes, including late-term abortions -- to the women of south central Kansas and Oklahoma, women who already see their options for care reduced by distance and time. George Tiller kept going to work after he was shot in 1993; he kept going to work after his clinic was bombed; he kept going to work after numerous threats, after vandalism earlier this month, after protests. He kept going to work, and I have to believe that's because he felt it was his duty to help women get the best care possible, and to help us -- no, to allow us to make some of the most difficult decisions we face.
Dr. Tiller in his own words here.
5.31.2009
terrible
the last band
A very little over a week ago, I was standing in the balcony of the 9:30 Club watching The National. It was the fourth time I've seen them play live, and the only time in a sold-out space. We had stood in a long line, waiting to get in, listening to the couple in front of us talk about Rod Blagojevich (you can't escape people chewing over politics anywhere in Washington D.C.) then swelling into the club, after bag checks and hand stamps, shoulder to shoulder with other seeking bodies.
It was a good show - The National always puts on a solid show - and we met some friends, and it was nice to see them and the chiaroscuro people in the crowd - many singing along with all the songs, a little bit of love in their faces. And looking at all these people, I realized that most of them were about my age (30), give or take a few years. The guys on stage were about my age, give or take few years, and the songs they were playing were about people my age, give or take a few years. And seeing all this, I suddenly understood that I am on the edge of an ending moment. The number of bands that I have left to see in sticky-floored clubs singing songs about me and people like me in a sardine-packed crowd is coming to an end. The bands are getting younger and people my age are getting less willing to stand shoulder to shoulder and shout lyrics and spill beer all over each other and feel alive by being one among many. My moment being part of the current of now is trailing away.
It made me think of the summer after I graduated high school. You have the great formality that is commencement to officially alert you that Your Adult Life Is About To Start, but the summer that follows is a thresholding space, a time soaked in the awareness of change and suffused in unknown possibilities. It's the last, formalized generational moment - almost everyone gets there and goes through it at the same time. College commencement four or five years later is already a kind of dilution - a certain percentage of souls have already spun off, wandering satellites in irregular orbits created by the gravitational pull of their own life events.
Still, that last summer day capped and gowned - college graduation - is the end, the very end, of formal timelines. Any sort of forward motion afterwards is idiosyncratic and chaotic, endlessly variable and subject to change. From that point on, sharing group life events is a vanishingly small numbers game. Everyone is alone to find or miss what mile markers they may - careers, relationships, children, houses - whenever they happen to stumble upon them. The group march is over, and everyone staggers off to travel their own path.
So standing in the club last week, watching the band play and watching the crowd watch, in the peculiar particular way a crowd can watch when the band onstage is singing specifically for them, I had the sensation of stumbling against an unexpected object. It felt weirdly important, a sort of sharp jab in the ribs by some noodling cosmic finger alerting me that the days do run like rabbits and I cannot conquer time, and it felt a little bit heart-twisting, because I now know how rare that singular feeling of collective generational experience is, and how increasingly rare it will be.
Adulthood comes, whether you will or no.
(I'm interested in the last words of direction that are given at the doorway to the adult world, the benedictions and warnings and admonitions and inspirations heaped down by the older and wiser on the captive audiences at the gates: specifically, commencement speeches. So all this week I will be posting excerpts and links to some of my favorite ones. I'd like to hear what you think so I will be enabling comments in case you feel inclined to add your two cents.)
sunday tune: the national - mistaken for strangers
You get mistaken for strangers by your own friends
when you pass them at night under the silvery, silvery Citibank lights
arm in arm in arm and eyes and eyes glazing under
oh you wouldn’t want an angel watching over
surprise, surprise they wouldn’t wannna watch
another uninnocent, elegant fall into the unmagnificent lives of adults
sunday tune: lcd soundsystem - all my friends
That's how it starts.
We go back to your house.
We check the charts,
And start to figure it out.
And if it's crowded, all the better,
because we know we're gonna be up late.
But if you're worried about the weather
then you picked the wrong place to stay.
That's how it starts.
And so it starts.
You switch the engine on.
We set controls for the heart of the sun,
one of the ways we show our age.
And if the sun comes up, if the sun comes up, if the sun comes up
and I still don't wanna stagger home.
Then it's the memory of our betters
that are keeping us on our feet.
You spent the first five years trying to get with the plan,
and the next five years trying to be with your friends again.
You're talking 45 turns just as fast as you can,
yeah, I know it gets tired, but it's better when we pretend.
It comes apart,
the way it does in bad films.
Except in parts,
when the moral kicks in.
Though when we're running out of the drugs
and the conversation's winding away.
I wouldn't trade one stupid decision
for another five years of lies.
You drop the first ten years just as fast as you can,
and the next ten people who are trying to be polite.
When you're blowing eighty-five days in the middle of France,
Yeah, I know it gets tired only where are your friends tonight?
And to tell the truth.
Oh, this could be the last time.
So here we go,
like a sail's force into the night
And if I made a fool, if I made a fool, if I made a fool
on the road, there's always this.
And if I'm sewn into submission,
I can still come home to this.
And with a face like a dad and a laughable stand,
you can sleep on the plane or review what you said.
When you're drunk and the kids leave impossible tasks
you think over and over, "hey, I'm finally dead."
Oh, if the trip and the plan come apart in your hand,
you look contorted on yourself your ridiculous prop.
You forgot what you meant when you read what you said,
and you always knew you were tired, but then,
where are your friends tonight?
Where are your friends tonight?
Where are your friends tonight?
If I could see all my friends tonight,
If I could see all my friends tonight,
If I could see all my friends tonight,
If I could see all my friends tonight
5.30.2009
treasure box
Today, we picked up a box of heavy treasure. Sean carried it back over great distances to our far-parked car, and when we got home, I sat it down in the middle of the living room floor and admired it.
Inside:
Books!
Piles and piles of books! Piles of books that dwarfed the dog!
I've been hugging myself all day with excitement. Hours and hours of reading pleasure await, all thanks to the Case Book Sale. I got something like 42 titles for $80.
I'm thinking about building a special book-reading tent in my living room and parking myself there to read until my eyes are glassy and my brain is humming with words.
5.29.2009
this weekend
Put on your best dress and cut the rug. Also:
- the mother of all book sales
- prom night
- the last chance for Lee
- a crazy good weekend for film at the Cinematheque
- open air in market square
- up
Happy weekend.
cool ska school
If you are looking to bust out some new moves, check out this video - it is dynamite. Seen here a ways back.
5.28.2009
rules for safety (don't let crazy into your house)
(My sister lives in the same Cleveland neighborhood that Sean and I live in, and she is having some issues with her neighbors ... the kind of issues that involve constant police surveillance and the actual landing of a SWAT helicopter on the lot next to hers - no joke. In response to all the drama, Sean sent her this list of his personal safety rules and regulations. It kind of cracks me up, and since it's all useful information no matter where you live, I thought I would share it with you.)
Sean's Rules for Living in the Trizzy*
(and frankly anywhere not like where you Madewells grew up**):
1. Have one first floor light with a compact florescent light bulb on a timer ($5 device you buy at Home Depot). You plug it into the outlet, and the light into the device. You set the time and walla***, the light turns on when you set it to, and it looks like someone is home. Also when you come home at night, it's inviting.
2. At night, put the blinds down as to not advertise nice television and furniture. It's fun to look at people's windows at night if you're an honest person. If you're a baddy, it's window shopping.
3. Never leave anything of value or anything that looks of value (like a bag) in your car. People smash windows for anything.
4. If you buy something that comes in an oversized box, don't put the box at the curb, ever. People watch the trash in Tremont. Take the box to the recycling container behind the church at W 14 and Starkweather (towards the Taphouse). Protect your shit and the environment! Remember this one when you move too, or if you ever buy appliances.
5. Always double check that the door is locked and use the bolt lock always. If you're going down the walk to your car or laundry, at least use the handle lock. (I slip on this a bit, but it's a good general rule).
6. If you open windows in the spring/summer/fall always double check that they're closed and locked when leaving.
7. Walk friends to their car at night - even guys****. Nothing makes a place feel terrible like a friend being jumped. Don't tell them why you're doing it, don't ask if they want you to, just do it and never worry about if they got to their car ok. They'll just think you're super keen, friendly and had such a good time hangin' that you want to spend as much time as you can before they leave.
8. Buy a compact florescent bulb that is pennies per day to leave on, and leave your exterior light on. If its got a motion sensor, that's ok, but at night just leave it on all the time.
9. Crazy neighbors....don't let crazy into your house. Tell them you'll call the cops if they need you to, but don't let them in. Don't go near crazy. If they're acting crazy, don't get involved. If you don't get involved and need to call the cops they won't know it was you that called. If you call the cops, just tell them craziness is happening, and what you know to be true, and say "You might want to check it out". Cimperman***** has cops trained to respond quickly in Tremont so you shouldn't need to overstate to get their attention. Just the facts, ma'am.
10. If craziness hits your house - your fence is being messed up, trash on your yard, siding or windows messed with - just call your landlord. Revel in the glorious benefits of renting.
In short, lights, boundaries, and pay attention to your own comings and goings.
* Trizzy = Tremont
** We grew up in small towns where we regularly left our cars unlocked with the keys still inside of them. This horrifies Sean.
*** Walla = Voila
**** If you have ever visited my home after dark, you know Sean takes this one seriously.
***** Joe Cimperman is our local councilman
(That Sean. He is the best, I think.)
manhattanhenge
Manhattanhenge(sometimes referred to as Manhattan Solstice) is a biannual occurrence in which the setting sun aligns with the east-west streets of Manhattan's main street grid.
The dates of Manhattanhenge are usually May 28 and July 12 or July 13 (spaced evenly around Summer Solstice).
This is one of those random things I would love to happen upon in person one day.
Photo from NewYorkDailyPhoto's Flickr.
the things in my neighborhood
A few things Nora and I have been noticing in various spots along our daily walk.
Stenciled anglerfish (I like to think these are created by a thwarted deep-sea marine biologist):
Proselytizing bumper stickers:
Green-headed, worm-eating children:
Saber-tooth cats:
New ghosts:
And my current favorite thing, a tiny pantheistic shrine with standing stones, a saint figurine, the American flag, and skis:
Weirdly enough, this is the second set of standing stones on display in my neighborhood (the others are much bigger, but equally random). It's exciting to think I could be living in an efflorescence of stone-building that will come to rival the Bronze Age achievements of the Wessex culture.
5.27.2009
the last book i loved
This feature is great. Always so many books to read, so little time.
(And for the record, this was the last book I loved, but you don't have to take my word on it.)
if only my hair were half so interesting
I'm having a good time looking at all the rad stuff on this guy's site today.
5.26.2009
t-shirt a/z
STYMIE: Limited edition screen printed t-shirts by Julie Cloutier and Claire Nereim exploring language and its relationship to form.
I can't wait to see how this collaboration evolves.
the color yellow, raccoons, lapel pins and nice tunes
Each of the titular items make me happy. Joined together, they make for a particularly good Tuesday morning.
Eux Autres: You're Alight. Listen here. The rad cover art is by Chris of Yellow Owl Workshop.
The first 50 pre-orders get this nifty lapel pin.
I really need a record player so I have a rational reason to order 7".
5.24.2009
imaginary outfit: driving to dc
Sean grew up just outside of D.C., so over the years we've spent a lot of time there visiting friends and family and just kicking around. It's only a six hour drive from the Cleve, so darting in for a day or two is not that big a deal. You do have to prepare - between Cleveland and the truck-stop valhalla of Breezewood, Pennsylvania, it's pretty much a dead four hour stretch of turnpike, varied only by the occasional wind farm or Cracker Barrel. I've got a supply of Twizzlers and a frozen coke, a fat stack of new tunes and a charming red-headed companion. It's time to burn rubber. Happy Memorial Day.
5.23.2009
5.22.2009
back home
I liked Chicago. I already miss being in a bigger city, but I am so happy to see Sean and Nora the Bean that I almost don't mind.
The only cure for a travel hangover? More travel. We're driving to D.C. on Sunday to catch these guys. I am just a whirl of wind this week.
Other things I'll be fitting into the schedule, time permitting:
traveling home
Fortunately, my trip won't be as long as this one.
Astrophotographer Thierry Legault's photo of the Space Shuttle Atlantis crossing in front of the sun, taken on May 12, 2009.
5.21.2009
5.20.2009
flâneur
In murky corners of old cities where
everything - horror too - is magical,
I study, servile to my moods, the odd
and charming refuse of humanity.
Charles Baudelaire
(From 'Little Old Women', Les Fleurs du Mal, 1857.)
Photo of Nelson Algren walking down Division Street by Art Shay.
giant among giants
I am an American, Chicago born – Chicago, that somber city – and go at things as I have taught myself, free-style, and will make the record in my own way: first to knock, first admitted; sometimes an innocent knock, sometimes a not so innocent. But a man's character is his fate, says Heraclitus, and in the end there isn't any way to disguise the nature of the knocks by acoustical work on the door or gloving the knuckles.
Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March.
5.19.2009
slashing with his pen
I opened A Book of Prejudices and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.
Richard Wright on H.L. Mencken
Photo by Irving Penn of H.L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, 1947.
american in every pulse-beat, snort and adenoid
Find a writer who is indubitably an American in every pulse-beat, snort and adenoid, an American who has something new and peculiarly American to say and who says it in an unmistakable American way and nine times out of ten you will find that he has some sort of connection with the gargantuan and inordinate abattoir by Lake Michigan.
H. L. Mencken
Aerial view of Chicago with Lake Michigan by Stephen Wiltshire.
5.18.2009
a place of tall buildings
The Home Insurance Building, widely considered to be the first skyscraper. Designed by William LeBaron Jenney and built in Chicago in 1884.
it is not paris and buttermilk
I give you Chicago. It is not London and Harvard. It is not Paris and buttermilk. It is American in every chitling and sparerib. It is alive from snout to tail.
H.L. Mencken
(The Social Science Research Committee maps created by The Chicago School sociologists are fascinating. This one shows the city's population density in 1930.)
5.17.2009
5.16.2009
5.15.2009
this weekend
Venturing forth:
- fun times and free beer in Collinwood
- may-hem
- garden sale
- Les Triplettes de Belleville and Mishima
- internal compasses
Image from here.
i needed walking shoes
... but naturally, I fell in love with these instead.
Bring on the centurions.
packing for trips ...
... and wishing I had this bag. It's from h(y)r collective's forthcoming THE collection by (y) hand, and it is made by Tannis Hegan. Via another something.
5.14.2009
jackets
Kaarina Kaikkonen's mass installations.
Above: Towards Light, 2003.
Below: Shadow, 1999.
More here.
Found at the wonderful all the mountains.
5.13.2009
the optimist conspectus
The Optimist Conspectus: a compendium of contemporary optimism:
I can think of no divining rod more aptly suited to sussing out the nature of an individual than the measure of his or her optimism. In the answer lie clues to values, aspirations and fears rarely revealed through questions of a more direct nature.
(You can submit your own reasons for optimism here.)
joy and woe are woven fine
Their lives were too human for science, too beautiful for numbers, too sad for diagnosis and too immortal for bound journals.
George Vaillant, Adaptation to Life
Amazing reading: an article by Joshua Wolf Shenk about the men of the Grant Study - a 72 year, ongoing longitudinal analysis of 268 Harvard men largely overseen by Dr. George Vaillant. The purpose of the study was to try and uncover some sort of formula for what makes a good life. Wow.
Photo from Square America.
5.12.2009
a place together
When someday Sean and I have our own house, I want it to feel like this - light and spare, but homey. The kitchen especially is pretty near perfection.
Converted barn from OWI photographed by Vercruysse Frederik. Via Roseland Greene.
cover art
I'm considering buying an actual physical copy of this so that I can get my hands on the artwork. It's a collaboration between Mario Hugo, Carson Ellis, and Colin Meloy.
5.11.2009
how to stop being lazy
Good to know: You can't expect it to happen overnight.
(Wiki-how is so useful.)
thao
Tonight, I was up past my bedtime watching this lady play.
If you have the chance to see her live, go. It's much more rocking that this clip would have you believe. There was lots of banging of drums and pounding of guitars, cognac drinking and cowboy boot wearing, funny jokes and spontaneous dancing. I loved it.
And now to bed.
5.10.2009
a memory of kindness
A memory of kindness: the fragrance of 'the shining green scent of tomato vines growing in the fresh earth of a country garden', based on a childhood memory.
Erica sent me the link to this last week - if I had thought about it sooner, I would have gotten some for my mother.
imaginary outfit: me and my mom and pedicured toes
This is what we would wear to show off our newly varnished toes - me on the left, my mom on the right. I think I would go with a deep, dark purple ...
their work is never done
Happy mother's day, mom.
Day 329- August 02, 2004 by Todd Deutsch. You can order a copy for your mother here.
5.09.2009
5.08.2009
it's time for a friday morning dance party
I always aspired to dance like Molly Ringwald and dress like Ally Sheedy.
When I hear this song, I can't stop the head-bobbing or the hand-clapping. It's like a sickness.
5.07.2009
roots
Cross sections of roots 'from books by Nehemiah Grew (1641-1712), an English physician, vegetable and plant anatomist and one time secretary of the Royal Society'. Via Bibliodyssey.
woods
Images from Daniel Gustav Cramer's Trilogy.
Top to bottom:
Untitled (Woodland) #7, 2008
Untitled (Woodland) #75, 2008
Untitled (Woodland) #72, 2008
Found via Ffffound.
5.06.2009
sticky
Faces tape from Our Children's Gorilla via Hi + Low.
I need to get some of this posthaste. My walls could do with some crazy cardboard faces.
how i will be spending my wednesday
I love Simon Evans.
See all of his One Hundred Mix CDs for New York here.
a lull
I'm feeling this video. Design and direction by Nigel Evan Dennis and found at the ever-awesome Public School.
5.05.2009
chicago
I will be feeling the Illinoise in a couple of weeks, Chicago specifically. So far, I am planning on seeing the Robie House, visiting the new wing at the Art Institute, shopping here and here and maybe stopping by Bar DeVille. Everything else is negotiable.
I'd love any recommendations for things I should do/shop/eat/drink/buy while I am there ... I have a conference to go to, but I should have plenty of time to explore.
destined for my wall
I ordered one of David Horvitz's polaroid newsprint posters of the sky last week. You can get one here or here.
It's making me look forward to the mail even more than usual.
a new toy
I've been playing around with a Brio child's loom, weaving ribbon fragments into a sampler of sorts. I need to work on controlling the tension of the warp.
I have lots of ideas I can't wait to try out.
5.04.2009
mexican coke and other finds
Yesterday, we headed to Painesville, Ohio, to get tacos, look for ginger beer and stock up on Mexican coke, made with sugar, not corn syrup, and tasting of summer days in pick-up trucks when I was very small and relatives would buy me and my sister each our own tall glass bottle of pop to drink from the drive-thru beverage mart.
After loading up on coke and tacos pastor (spicy pork + pineapple) at La Mexicana, the local Mexican grocery store, we headed to my favorite place to find unexpected things - The Miscellaneous Barn. Yesterday, we were in luck.
We found seven 100% copper mugs for a dollar each (perfect for Moscow Mules, a summer obsession in the Madewell-O'Hagan household); 16 pieces of Swedish enamelware for $20, destined now for picnics and camping trips; and a set of deer photographs. Good stuff, but this was our best find:
A Hartmann U.S. Navy Seapack belonging to one Lee Hathaway of East Cleveland, Ohio, with an old United Air Lines check tag still on it. Sean found it back in a corner under a bunch of other suitcases. $25.
I love it.
she was born in spring
Men's lives shall waste with longing after me,
For I shall be the sum of their desire,
The whole of beauty, never seen again.
And they shall stretch their arms and starting, wake
With "Helen!" on their lips, and in their eyes
The vision of me. Always I shall be
Limned on the darkness like a shaft of light
That glimmers and is gone. They shall behold
Each one his dream that fashions me anew; --
With hair like lakes that glint beneath the stars
Dark as sweet midnight, or with hair aglow
Like burnished gold that still retains the fire.
From 'Helen of Troy' by Sara Teasdale.
Photos by Amira Fritz for Matthew Cunnington's fashion collection, discovered via Conscientious. The haloes are a thin layer of gold applied by hand.
(I would consider taking out a loan to get one of these for my own.)
a new season
Spring is finally, irreversibly, here.
Assemblage by Little Brown Sparrow via laceandflora.
5.03.2009
sunday tune: of montreal - an eluardian instance
(That summer)
It was too cold to swim
So we climbed up on the rocky shore
And freaked out on the mountain goats
But they were not impressed or scared of us ...
5.02.2009
yet another telling
A classic of the genre.
The take away: don't talk back to Darth Vader - he'll get you!
a present for my brother-in-law, the star wars fan
Star Wars: Retold (by someone who hasn't seen it) from Joe Nicolosi on Vimeo.
Happy birthday, Brian.
5.01.2009
this weekend
On my weekend agenda:
- studious avoidance of infectious disease
On second thought, I may just stay home, eat Twizzlers, and re-watch Pineapple Express.
Happy weekend.
Photo from Ffffound.
