Ben Wandering

Introductions

2005-05-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

As numerous as the wee shiny flying things in Star Wars, and just as substantial, are my excuses for not having a written a lick to most of you in months.

This is sort of by way of reintroduction. Howdy. I’m Ben. My interests include working 55+ hours a week at the Little Rock Peabody Hotel, and spending at least ten delightful minutes every other day with my lovely and equally work-consumed girlfriend Brandy Ussery, who I’m thrilled to announce will be changing her last name one year from now. To M.D. At which point she’ll probably wake up and realize she could be doing a lot better than dating a valet, which is why I’m trying to figure out how to go about paying for an M.A. in Int’l Relations from American U.’s School of Int’l Service in D.C.

I also enjoy the rich, warm reassurances of this century’s Mark Twain, Minnesota’s own Garrison Keillor, whose Writer’s Almanac I thought I’d take the opportunity to plug for all of you on this lovely Thursday.

I see by my little daily Writer’s Almanac e-memo that it was on this day in 1521 that the Diet of Worms decided they’d had quite enough of a certain tonsured tormenter calling the Roman church "the most licentious den of thieves, the most shameless of brothels, the kingdom of sin” (among other, less flattering things), and declared Martin Luther no longer welcome at any of the Catholic dens or brothels. Also, his writings were to be banned.

Now, however fortunate he may have been that Germany had not yet adopted the not-necessarily-more-effective but certainly more theatrically impressive practice of burning books (at the time, burning people satisfied that purpose), Luther was understandably glum at the prospect of his original work having to share a shelf at the library with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and so shifted creative gears and commenced to translating a German version of the Bible that is still in use today. Eventually, of course, he got back around to writing original material (a creative trajectory that some of us in the age of Hollywood screenplay writers may be surprised to learn was entirely unremarkable), the impact of which continues to be felt across the entire length and breadth of Minnesota. Most notably, he introduced “bulwark” to the English lexicon, which had been getting on just fine without it, thank you very much.

Ah, I can just see ol’ Garrison Keillor now, at the dining room table of his St. Paul home, fingers poised over his laptop, trembling Tom DeLay-like at the prospect of serving up nourishing anecdotal nuggets, the storytelling equivalent of Kibble n’ Bits, about the lives of writers (some of whom were reduced to subsisting on Kibble n’ Bits themselves from time to time).

Or maybe he just records aloud what the emaciated NPR interns throw together fits of piteous coughing.
I dunno. Anyway, the finished product is a wonderful thing that any humanities major who has ever found herself eyeing the Kibble ought to appreciate.

http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Do write me, especially any of you in Minnesota to whom I might owe money or a long-borrowed book, or some such; next week may be your chance to collect, for it appears that I will be joining in numerous family shindigs up thataway around the first few days of June.

Jovially,
Ben

Ben Wandering

2005-04-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

Ben Wandering

Digesting Congress

2005-01-10T17:15:00.000-08:00

I've just finished what feels--after months of part-timing it--like a real heck of a workday: 7-11am at Barnes & Noble, followed by an 11:30-5:30 first-day shift at my new job with the "Legislative Digest," whose customers (mostly lobbyists) are counting on my keen powers of data entry. The job will be perhaps the most interesting and the most powerfully dull one that I've ever had. It requires me to get gussied up and, then perch up in the state senate gallery with a laptop (and some Jelly Bellies, if I can get away with it), making a blow by beurocratic blow record of what our public servants are up to.

So I'll be privy to the entire narrative sweep of the 86th Congressional Assembly, from its reconveening today, to the end of it all several months hence. You'd think, on the face of it, that I'd learn a lot from such a job, and I very well might, though so far I don't know that I'll pick up too much more than I did in high school civics; all the REAL fun takes place in committee meetings, which my laptop and I won't be invited to.

The real question now is, how do I make this pay beyond the job itself? Maybe the AP needs another in-house (in-Senate?) stringer.

One Girl, One Boy, One Heckuva Week

2004-12-13T04:12:00.000-08:00

The stars at 4:30 am are big and bright deep in the armpit of Little Rock. I'm just back from dropping off one Ms. Ussery (whose car is experiencing technical difficulties sufficient--at least in her estimation--to warrant the good pleasure of her company in MY car) at UAMS, where she spends her very early mornings these days poncing about in scrubs, waking the sick and the dying to do unspeakable things to them with metal utensils chilled overnight in the hospital freezer.

Acting as her chauffer, chef, study nazi and occasional pillow is my primary occupation this week, as she goes into grand mal panic mode in anticipation of her GREAT BIG SCARY surgery final. The sidewalk won't end there, though, for either of us, so in the cracks I'm managing to work 35 hours at The Nation's Premiere Book Monopoly, apply at the Demazette for advertorial writing, audition here and there for some voice acting/broadcasting work, and await assignment from Kaplan test prep corp., whose classrooms I candidated recently to fill. Plus hunt for an apartment so I can stop being a couch refugee. Oh yes, and tomorrow's my twenty-fifth birthday. Ye gads--how soon hath time, etc.

Refugees

2004-12-07T07:27:00.000-08:00

Under the shadow of the Christmas tree
A spider carefully unwrapped itself
As a small child, December twenty-first
Might make a small, illicit inquiry
Through tape and paper of his pending bounty
Then, stifling his joy or his displeasure
Repair the breach and steal away, the spider
In luminescence, splayed, seemed to consider
Its happiness a moment, then retrieved
Again its compass-pointed legs and sauntered
Along the baseboard, where its fancied likeness
To cunning children died, for there I killed it
Rising to do so from a borrowed couch
Less citizen than fellow refugee
In the apartment but for that my hostess
Would rather die herself than lodge a spider.
Do not think my ungentleness to strangers
(At Christmas yet!) springs from antipathy;
Housing in Little Rock (in any season)
Is, for the jobless, worth the warring over
And charity a bourgeois luxury
Unfit for the unlanded such as me

Ode to Monster.com

2004-11-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

Heaven help me! Mercy Lord!
The jobs my res'me can't afford
Could fill a page (in fact, eighteen!)
Positions as I've never seen
And won't, I deem, unless B.A.s
In English become all the rage.

Could there be hope for such as I?
Let's see to what I might apply--

Store manager at Bed n' Bath:
Come, stanch the customary wrath
Of customers for whom shampoo
Applied thrice daily wouldn't do
Those things that it had promis'ed--
"I rubbed it well about my head
But see! There yet remain such flakes
My shoulders bow beneath the cakes
I cannot stand, nor shall I stand it!
O'er my money hand, bath bandit!"

Claims for Farmers Groupies Inc.:
A better job than you might think
Explore how devious you are
(While smiling; don't forget PR!)
Adjust, report, and calculate
And dither while they supplicate.
Unwrapping tales of human woe
And binding them in red tape bows
Is good for us and fun for you!
(And do not, Dives, while you chew
Ponder the Lazari who sweep
For crumbs around our fatted feet;
You'll find bread stolen to be sweet)

Invest! Insure! Or from your home
Make millions o'er the telephone!
Apply online; apply yourself--
Come be a corporate Santa's elf!
Recruit! Retail! Come represent
Us to the world! (And don't resent
It if you cannot pay the rent
At first, but try and try again
To he who strives the world's a friend!)
Experience and motivation
Fit you for this invitation!
Bootstrap puller-uppers wanted!
Bootlicks too! For all the vaunted
Liberty of self employ
Our golden stables you'll enjoy.
Get dental, health, 401K
Plush pensions and--what's that you say?
You haven't got an MBA?
Well . . . Taco Bell's just down the way.

Eve's curse, to pine for that which pains
Is Adam's, too--hence I complain
"Call these careers? They're fit for swine!
And (sniffle) where oh where is mine?"

I know what I am owed by Earth
That, though less than I deem I'm worth
Less still is owed than I've been giv'n.
(Thus having spake, I trow I'm shriv'n
Of notions of ungratefullness)
Where was I? Mid-complaint? Ah yes--
What choice awaits the failed auteur?
Which suicide is prettier:
A wife and forty hours a week
Or the revolver, quick and neat.
Thus spake (well, more or less) Camus
Myself, I think it isn't true
Do not mistake the true intent
Of this my tiresome testament
For all that miles of joyless jobs
Await us graduated slobs
Still, old Quoholeth had it right
Man could do worse than spend his might
In toil by day and rest by night.

Beneath the sun is nothing new

A collar, whether white or blue

Remains a collar, teth'ring shure

Each rower to his 'pointed oar.

Each pursues his golden fleece--

Why's mine soaked in french-fry grease?

Oh Birthday Boy

2004-11-08T08:56:00.000-08:00

My own recollections of 1981 are vague. Strolling through the misty neumonic archives of that year, I find a black lab named Solomon (whose affection for me would decrease over the next few years in proportion with my increasing facility for directing food to my mouth rather than more accessible surrounding regions), a red tricycle, and drowsy rides in the cushioned rear window of Grampa's tractor.

The Iran-Contra affair, then just beginning to break, meant nothing to me at the time, nor had I any occasion to see Raiders of the Lost Ark until 1988 (inaugurating what has been so far a lifelong fascination with foreign objects of primitive idolatry, and a nervousness around fireplace pokers). It didn't bother me in the least, this freshly proposed notion that only an invisible and increasingly thinning layer called "ozone" kept my pink two-year-old skin from looking like hickory-smoked jerky.

Funny, the things that happen whether or not you happen to be looking up from your sandbox to see them. Not that noticing matters always matters; every moment of the present may contain excitements that will mean something only once they have rushed to join the past, which is the crucible in which all the present moments to come are forged.
So it was for me on November 8th, 1981, when mysteriously, in the middle of all the carpet-level discoveries that (to the best of my memory) made up my bold young world, I acquired a little brother. They called him Joey, wrapped him in Gramma-knit blankets, and lay him in my outgrown cradle.

I don't know when I first realized that this would change everything. Six years later I would be wiser, erupting in furious tears at the news of Andy's impending intrusion into our family--not again!! I knew that this betokened more change, more compromises, more noise. I hadn't yet learned that ruptures in stability tend to become new stabilities, and should be greeted with equanimity (at worst) or (in the case of such ruptures as new life) laughter.
Neither Joey nor Andy were ever improved upon, and I have no way of knowing what sort of initial reception the three of us would have given another sibling. I suspect I would have done a bit better, that I'd have managed to set a good example to the younger sibs of immediate hospitality and happiness once the first few chapters of what is now a mammoth catalog of fraternal memories were assembled.

Flip, flip flip.
Heh heh.

1986. Joey and I have had enough of sitting still on an impossibly long car trip, and we're feet to feet in the backseat, whooping and flailing away at each other's viscera with bare heels. In the dark, we don't know or care about split lips and puffy eyes. Mom, unaware that this isn't a tag-team match, performs an impressive twisting double scissor-lock maneuver and persuades us to reconsider careers in pro wrestling, at least for tonight.

Flip.

1987. Joey stands atop the backyard slide, thin and blond and fierce and armed, like me, with a plastic fishing pole connected via jump rope to his backpack. "No, you run!" he storms. "You're the ghost and I'm the buster!"

Flip flip.

1989. Joey, whose larger bedroom is home to Gramma and Grampa during their visits, stands in front of his closet door, arms crossed defiantly, chin resolutely angled. No Mom can't go in his closet--the contents of his underwear drawer needed to be emptied and relocated there because of course Gramma and Grampa will go snooping and if they saw his whitey-tighties he'd be unutterably humiliated so there!!

And on it went, and on it goes.

Oh, for the grace to see the present--and even the terrifying night of future--with the same clarity we see the past. For I have seen the past, and it was good. Not a bad year at all, 1981.

Happy 23rd birthday, Joey.
I love you.

2 Minutes Ago

2004-11-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

"Sheila, did you hear that Kerry just conceded the election?"
I tilted perilously back in my chair to catch her eye, but she wasn't looking at me. She was reading the AP article over my shoulder.

"Well, that does it then. I'm scared. I'm scared. The people have spoken, and they've declared me a second-class citizen."

Sheila, a stout, middle-aged lesbian, spoke more to herself than to me--how she usually talks, walking around her coffee shop in her own private but LOUD reverie.

"Must be the will of God, right? That's what they'll say. Four more years of running up the deficit, four more years of the politics of violence and of hate and of blind arrogance. Head Start's cut; who's gonna pay for all the kids left behind? Out with love; in with violence and hatred. I'm scared. I'm not saying Democrats are perfect--geez, no! But there is such HATRED the further Right you go, and it's in the name of God, and at least the Democrats have the grace and sense to invite everyone to the table."

She continued in this way on over to the counter, where she is now in heated dialogue with a group of like-minded women. Hoo boy. They're on to abortion now. Good gracious, the things that are being said, but I daren't join the conversation--I'd only be presenting myself a noble martyr to their anger.

Who knows what all of this portends, where these decision will take us?

My feelings, usually so near me, are out of reach right now. I don't know whether I feel (neither whether to feel) bleak disappointment, or relief. I was up too late, keeping company with too many chemicals and TV commentators as the map quarreled with itself into sharp-edged red and blue.
I probably look about as listless as Sam Donaldson did last night, poor old feller.

The one thing I'm capable of wishing for right now is the company, just for a few minutes, of those I love who are so thoughtlessly--not smug. . . what then? peaceful?--in their righteous redness. Just to show them the monster, Sheila. Real, live, right here. Queer and here and not goin' nowhere, however the states may throw up initiative fences to huddle behind. "Oh, Lordy Lord Lord, he'p us Lord, them gays is a'comin' fo' our li'l chilluns!"

Just to let them hear her bleat, watch her bleed, and ask themselves whether political solutions to the problem of her existence are what they really want.

Like a Republican

2004-10-28T19:12:00.000-07:00

So, last Thursday my mini-disc player and I got ourselves a press pass and went to hear what Vice President Cheney and his wife (The Vice Lady? The First Lady of Vice?), who was by far the more engaging speaker, had to say to the assembled masses here in Int'l Falls.

Though Cheney wasn't slated to show up until one o'clock, the line at the Bakus Civic Auditorium stretched well around the block when I arrived at 10:30. I grimaced and took my place in line (and in the rain, as it happened). There was plenty to look at, what with the various security personnel, campaigners gathering signatures, local candidates gathering handshakes, and the rows of fire trucks, ambulances, and log trucks. Yes, log trucks, set up in perimiter around the auditorium presumably to discourage would-be car bombers from showing up without a ticket.
Having no umbrella to occupy my hands, I got out the ol' recorder and began collecting soundbites from my fellow impatients:

"What are you expecting to hear from the VP today?" I asked a young man wearing the letter jacket of the local high school.
"I dunno."
"I see. I see. Okay, well, is there anything in particular that you'd ask Mr. Cheney if you had the chance to do that today?"
"Mmm. Nah. Don't think so."

His friend of the same age was a bit more forthcoming. Asked for his comments on the day's upcoming events, he grinned proudly and pulled open his jacket to reveal a t-shirt with a picture of an elephant accompanied by the words "Hung like a Republican."

It took me fifteen minutes of this to notice the press entrance. Leaving the great unsoaped to be drizzled on, I hurried over to this entrance which was attended by an expressionless guy wearing an actual dun-colored trenchcoat, accented with Matrixy sunglasses. This so delighted me that my microphone and I asked him if he was in the habit of talking to microphones, which he wasn't. Beyond him, several fellows in commando pajamas were busily exploring the contents of a Star Tribune photographer's camera bag. Both she and I winced as they performed a drop test of her 200mm lense, but it passed with flying colors and no flying glass, and before too long it was my turn. As they inspected my cell phone, mini-disc recorder, and person, I watched another security team down the hall relieve three elderly gentleman of as many Swiss Army Knives, which were then tossed into a five-gallon bucket standing by for the purpose.

I was cleared to move on inside just as the kids in the letter jacket and elephant t-shirt made their way past me from the other line. So much for special treatment for the press.

The main benefit conferred by my press pass, it turned out, was freedom to be outside the little fence that squeezed the herd of local Republicans together like so much livestock (an unpleasant impression, but one that the piles of hay bales framing Cheney's podium onstage did nothing to dispel). As a member of the media, I realized, I was under no obligation to cheer, boo, shake a sign, or do anything else on command, and any frowning would be construed merely as concentration. What a great job!

The media space outside the crowd of local supporters was a roomier playpen by far, but the twelve journalists in Cheney's entourage moved as a tight little group, twelve intense faces peering over twelve laptops as if beholding the Sermon on the Mount and determined not to miss a word, twelve faces that I recognized from countless televised White House press briefings. In tableau against the peeling, yellowed walls of Bakus Auditorium, they seemed so ridiculously elegant. I confess I was more interested in trying to distract them with questions about their jobs than in actually tuning in to the thirty-minute jacob's ladder of soundbites that was Cheney's speech. Still, I stood with my microphone arm uncomfortably raised to a speaker for the whole thirty-one minutes and twelve seconds. Later, back at the station, I would transfer the whole business to Sound Forge and find that an entire nine minutes of that had been nothing but applause.

MSNBC's Priya David, though exhuasted, was a sweetie. "Ever heard of International Falls before showing up here?" I asked. "Not that I recall. This is . . . Michigan-no, Minnesota, right? Sorry, it's just that we started the day in Wisconsin and we'll end it Pennsylvania, and frankly the whole trip's become a blur." Be that as it may, the food on Air Force 2, she confided, is simply amazing.

And then, as swiftly as they had arrived, they rolled up their extension cords, stuffed away their PDAs, pulled down the big top and loaded up the elephants, and with them went all the excitement that had, for a magical moment, graced our little town. As they one-handed their laptops and hustled out of the aging auditorium and toward the waiting motorcade that would take them to Air Force 2, a sad jealously overtook me; the big kids were goin' on a campin' trip and I had to stay behind at home on account a' I'm little.
Sigh . . .

So, what conclusions did I reach? What did I come away thinking of Cheney? Well, I had intended to get to that, but I'm on the air in ten minutes, so once again it'll have to wait.

Methinks the radio station will be an exciting place from which to watch the election results roll in tonight, not least because I get a TV in the studio for the first time, and there'll be pizza.
"It'll be like a Superbowl party that matters!" I said to Brandy last night.
"Let's hope it's a grand ol' party," came the wry reply.
To which I say, "Hmm . . ."

God bless us, everyone. On what will the sun rise?

Repairs and Recusings

2004-10-28T16:48:00.000-07:00

I'm told my link to Brandy's site works about as well as trying to one-up Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, which is just fine, since actually making your fingers do the walking to www.pepsicacit.blogspot.com will make you more appreciative of hyperlinks that do as ordered.

Speaking of work, that's where I'm at, and daren't snatch just now the moments necessary to recount my big day of covering competing rallies. Ah, who'm I kidding? I'm just as beat as Nader, is all, after a lengthy day. Do please check back tomorrow to see my blog runneth over.

Thank you, and goodnight.

New Kid on the Blog

2004-10-26T10:26:00.000-07:00

One Brandy Ussery (M.D. pending) has decided to invest a few of her precious hours outside of surgery rotation by regaling us with a blow-by-blow account of what goes on within. It's Discovery Channel of the mind, folks,
a rare look at the world of those terrifying men and women in white. Do warm hearts really beat behind those cold, cold stethescopes? Can you tie your tennis shoes with a suture knot? Do surgeons whistle while they work, or vent their spleens while exploring yours? And what's UP with the shower caps? Find out here.
______________

In other news, my interview with Sting was postponed. The ol' boy never called. Apparently being 6'3'' 270 and carrying a baseball bat to work gives a person the idea that he can neglect the little media folk who get his movie publicized in the first place. His agent apologized, and we've rescheduled for this Thursday.

This time, though, it will be my turn to reschedule, since our very own vice president is coming to International Falls that same day. First VP visit since Mondale in '79, and this little mill town on the river is excited, yessir! It's going to be an interesting show, what with the Falls being as divided as the rest of Minnesota. Arms will be open; claws will be out. The coffee shop from which I now write is directly across the street from the local union office, whose broad signs and bright slogans through the "Kerry '04!" soaped windows, give proof to the right that its members are unlikely to be much moved should Mr. Dick try poncing about in a hard hat.

Yesterday morning I went over to the Holiday Inn's Bronco Room to wait in line with the rest of the good townsfolk for my free ticket to the grand event. No great surprise that the local Republican Committee is overseeing things, but I was unprepared, as I stepped up to the ticket table, to be met with a sharp look and a "Well, lemme ask ya' this--are you a fan of our President Bush?" Not wishing to purjor myself I answered carefully, "Well, I'm, uh, not a big fan of the alternative." "Atta' boy! Here you go."

My ticket informs me that I'm prohibited from toting along with me are "knives, weapons, lawn chairs, and excessively large bags." If my mini-disc recorder and camera make it through I'll see what I can do about posting some of the digital goods on here. Whether or not questions from the floor will be taken I know not, but if anyone has a pressing question as yet unanswered by the debates etc., I'll do what I can to voice it.

So, um, What's Your Favorite Food?

2004-10-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends of Ben,

I confess myself in need of some advice. No, wait. Let me spin this differently.
I'm offering what may well be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sate your curiosity about a real live celebrity! This will be especially cool if you happen to be a fourteen-year-old boy (or an undergraduate male; the difference is often negligable).

Tomorrow (Thursday) at 11:00 am Pacific Time, 1:00 pm Central, I will receive a call on the KXBR hotline* from none other than Sting. No, not the Fields of Gold guy. Think mascara. Think chin like an Abrams tank.
Yeah, that Sting, four-time WCW champ Steve Borden, who has had folks "wrapped around his finger" in a less figurative sense than his musical namesake ever envisioned.
A guy who drops into the ring from helicopters, and is known for the patenting the Scorpion Death Lock of . . . death, or something. A wrestling persona inspired by Kiss, or by Brandon Lee in The Crow (or maybe by Wynona Ryder in Beetlejuice?).
And tomorrow I'm going to be interviewing him on the air.

It seems that our boy of the warpaint got taken down for the count (forgive me) by his own fame, until somewhere in the middle of an addiction to painkillers and nearly losing his wife, he found a friend named Jesus. Some people write books about their conversions; Sting, in conjunction with Willow Creek Marketing, has made a movie.

So I'm wondering, gentle readers, what you might like to have asked of him?

*218 285 9190
Which, by the way, I invite any of you to utilize weeknights between the hours of 6 and 10 p.m. central. No, you're probably not in my listening area, and no, we're not online and probably won't be anytime soon. But that doesn't mean you can't call me up to say, "Hey, how 'bout less Demon Hunter and more Cindy Morgan?", or for that matter share something of import with the good listeners of International Falls.

2004-10-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

(Kind of ) apropos of what ace scribbler Myles had to say in the most recent car of his rarely-rattling brain gravy train, I'm wondering if any of my fellow once-and-future (God grant it) students feel themselves to be, in a cerebral sense, growing "older and fatter and louder on the sidelines," as others now go about the bookish business that once so occupied and enlivened us.

Erstwhile Academic #1: Shoot, just look't 'em'ere boys. Cain't write fer spit, think MLA stands fer "More Loans Available?," prob'ly hain't got a clue 'bout nothin' 'cept ultimate frisbee and X Box. Ain't I right?

Erstwhile Academic #2: (Scratches. Clears throat. Spits with flair into the quad.)

Erstwhile Academic #1: Dang straight I am! Now you take the literary criticism class a' 2001. Think monkeys don't grow on trees? They're a dime a dozen, but ain't a one of 'em ever stuck his head in that classroom, no sir! Good's what we was! You recall' t, don'cha?

Erstwhile Academic #2: (Tamps pipe.)

Erstwhile Academic #1: Some've 'em even talkin' 'bout goin' on up to the big leagues. Well, I'd like t' just see long it'd take them fellas to get all chewed up 'n spit outa' grad school. Right into Wal-Mart's where they'd land.

Erstwhile Academic #2: Guess then we'd have some company, huh?

Erstwhile Academic #1: (Gives Erstwhile Academic #2 a look of infinite disdain before rapping him smartly on the head with the latest Danielle Steele novel, and storming off to the video store).

2004-10-06T18:24:00.000-07:00

Through the yet-golden leaves today came scents less of autumn than of summer. I'd have thought it wishful thinking on my part if it weren't for my liking fall so much. We're upon what Keats called "the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness." I thought of these verses as I made my way in across a winking carpet of dewey pearls and over to an old apple tree in my backyard. Autumn , the "close bosom friend of the maturing sun, conspiring with him to load and bless with fruit the vines that round the thatch eaves run." Kim, the Jehovah's Witness who had started my morning for me a bit earlier than I had intended to myself, followed behind me on the momentary path my shoes made through the morning wetness.

Those apples were maybe only the size of a fat baby's fist, but they were red and sweet, at least around their equator, you might say, as if the ripening effects of the sun hadn't quite worked into the green tartness of their polar regions. I relieved the branch of their weight, a whole cluster coming off all at once as the branch sighed, rising, so that I had to quick bring up two hands where I had thought one would do.

"Here you go, Kim. For the road." She smiled, shifting her Bible and stack of "Watchtower"s to accept two apples. I was glad to give them to her. It's not easy, doing what she was doing. "Nothing could compell me to flee in greater haste than if I were forewarned of a do-gooder coming to do me good," said Chesterton.
There are stickers a person can get now, little postage stamp-sized warnings for faith peddlers to "stay the heck away from this door!," and how was she to know but whether the next door she knocked on would have had such a sticker if its owner had only known about them?

For a minute there I had sure wished for a sticker, as I stood in my back doorway squinting, looking hungover, wondering what board meeting this nicely-dressed woman thought was being held at my house.
Surely they plan to have you at the disadvantage of shame, the way world hunger relief ads play on TV right after Thanksgiving. Her smile was pitying. It seemed to say, "Just look at yourself, poor lost little lamb--9 a.m. and still in your grubby t-shirt and shorts and Jim Carrey hair." And then she launched right in, wondering whether I didn't agree with her that death and pain sure were a bummer, uh huh, and wouldn't it be a better thing, really wouldn't it?, if I could inherit the Earth, just stay right here with Jesus Himself? I wondered what kind of hand I might play in the maintanance of the Earth once it had been bequeathed me, and thought maybe I could carry lambs or shocks of wheat like the smiling people in the magazine she was reading to me from.
But seeing as I hadn't yet inherited the Earth and had to be mosying along toward my current terrestrial occupation, I thought I'd better save my inquiries concerning matters eschatological for a time when I could be more sociable. I hated to just tell ther that, though, and was wondering what I ought to say when I spied over her shoulder those apples, huddled close together on the bough like a group of round rosey little women giggling out the latest gossip to one another. I wondered aloud whether she wouldn't mind just following me out a few steps into my backyard, and she didn't seem to think it so strange an idea, and so it was that she came by some apples to help her on her way, and perhaps ease any unpleasantness that the morning might yet bring her.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

As she settled the apples in among the things in her bag, I noticed that in addition to the "Watchtower" magazines, she had some literature offering counseling resources for unwed mothers and their families. She noticed me looking, and smiled. A little sadly, I thought. " I have two teenage daughters myself," she said. "Kids in this town need Jesus so very much."
"Well, 'Thou hast thy music too,'" I thought. "Aren't we in about the same business?"

I told her what I did, and said she should listen in to me on the radio that evening, if she wanted to, and she said she might, and thanked me again for the apples. I took a big bite myself out of one--glory! Wouldn't anyone think it about a fair trade on Eden for a taste of such crisp sweetness?

"Good luck," I told her, and whether or not I should have, I meant it.

And Now, a Word From Our Next-Door DJ

2004-09-29T01:04:00.000-07:00

Four blondes, I imagine them to be. No telling about that. But that one or more of their harmonies is tilted just far enough south to draw an uncomfortable look even from Shortwave, the radio station's tailess cat (that, or she's recalling the House 'Afire Horseradish and Beer Mustard I administered the last time she came nosing around me for food) requires no more imagination than a low-lying chair to the shin. Yowzers!

"The reason we sing / the reason we lift our voice . . ."

It's a pretty well-known song. Feels that way to me at least, tucked away among other vaguely recognized bits and bobs in an impossibly crowded file in my memory labeled "Yep." How could I have failed to notice until now how painfully off it is?

I seem to recall my dear sweet mother--God rest her (it's 2:15 am, you see, and if she isn't sleeping then she really ought to be)--singing along to it over the packing of lunch boxes back in our Nebraska days, when KROA out of Grand Island was on in our kitchen whether there was anything worth listening to or not. Often there was; Focus on the Family was a 7 am staple, its closing theme music announcing last call to get our little kiesters out the door and loping off toward school if we didn't want to arrive late (which of course we wouldn't have minded). And Saturday mornings I am forever doomed to associated less with cartoons and more with radio fare like Childrens Bible Hour (barely tolerable once I was past about age 8) and Adventures in Odyssey (which I still think is cool).

And then, there was the music. Ray Boltz. Sandy Patty. Larnelle Harris. Scott Wesley Brown. Carolyn Arends. Amy Grant (this before she showed herself a brazen hussy to the whole Evangelical community and got Sharpied off a lot of CCM station playlists by running off with Vince Gill). Occasionally some of Michael W. Smith's mellower fare would make it through the censors, but by the early 90s he had gotten a little wild and crazier with his "Go West Young Man" album than KROA seemed to think its listeners (and--ahem--supporters) would be comfortable with.

Such was the stuff of my musical heritage. Oh, not all of it, of course. Thanks to a "Lives of the Composers" tape set ordered from some homeschooling catalog or another, the sounds and stories of great European music masters became to known to me early on. In fact, my father selected Hayden for the delivery room when I was born (thank God--it could just as easily have been the Gaithers; imagine being slapped into bawling life in time to "He Touched Me"), but where the radio was concerned we dieted on music that sounded like it had been put through a baby food strainer and then boiled to remove any leftover flavor.

I'm told that at age two and some change I brought a Steve&Annie Chapman LP to a screechy halt and announced to my horrified mother, "I don't wanna listen to YOUR kind of music; I wanna listen to ROCK and ROLL!" We lived in Rose City, MN, population 23, and my TV viewing hadn't yet extended past Mr. Rogers and Andy Griffith, which is to say that I could have had no conception of what Satan's own music consisted of. And obviously I didn't have to, needed only to know that there simply MUST be something out there besides the attrocious treacle playing in our living room, and I was by Springsteen gonna' find it!

And now just look how far I've come. All the way . . . to here, a little Christian rock station snuggled up in the same building with the only slightly less small CCM station that gave it birth.
I sit in a little padded cell, offering such garnishing insights as I can between exceptionally uncouth- sounding songs performed by people with interesting, shiny things projecting from their faces, so that they bear a passing resemblance to bulletin boards.
And when I go out in the lobby to get a drink of water, or sneak a snack past the kitty, I can hear what's playing on the mother station:

" . . . is to praise the One, who gave the Son . . ."

So who did such a harmonically unfortunate job of "The Reason We Sing"? I could go check, I suppose. Wander out of the production studio and over into main control for a look at the play log. But it's nearly a quarter to three in the morning, I feel as if I've gone some distance toward paying my blog debt for the month, and even if I were to go over for an informative peek, odds are it would put me no closer to answering the question--what makes most CCM, an industry I truly believe to have been (if not, perhaps, be) populated by folks with earnest souls and bright eyes, the full backing of their home church choirs and genuinely good intentions so
. . . so not good?

Briefly, Of Bugs and When to Say When

2004-09-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

So, you've been wondering just what I'm up to? Still spinnin' those hot stax of wax--yeah!!

(Terminal . . . cheesiness . . . taking over! Must . . . get . . . new job . . . before . . . too late!!)

In fact, should the urge take anyone, they can "chat" in ye olde chatroom from 6 to 10 central weeknights by heading to www.edge919.com and following the magic link therein.

I've taken some commending from some of you after posting the last post--for my kindness, for consenting to listen to those who need listening to. For that, thanks.

Though I've gotta tell you, I was reading a Tony Campolo book the other day entitled "Living for Jesus Without Embarassing God," which mentions the temptation some of us with messiah complexes have to be savior to all the lost souls, to pin on a "Jr. God" badge and go right all the wrongs and hurts out there. Not unadmirable, really, but when all that enthusiasm is directed towards people who exist emotionally by leeching, then it generally accomplishes precisely nothing--the "Jr. God" winds up resentful, and the leech winds up hurt again, usually sniffling something like "But I thought you were different! I thought you were a real Christian!"

Campolo quoted (reluctantly, to his credit) a friend of his who quipped that the church, like all lights, attracts a lot of bugs. What a dreadful way to speak of those whom God loves! And yet, well, um . . . some of you are smiling, aren't you? You know what he's talking about. (You should--you've been listening to me whine on long enough now, haven't you?). Campolo's prescriptions are fairly simple--at least in principle. Mainly he suggests that ministry leaders organize youth groups etc. in such a way that groups rather than individuals reach out to enfold needy newcomers. Now if only I had a few more folks in the chatroom on "my side . . ."

Methinks there's a lot more to be said here (or elsewhere, for that matter) about this business of the needy pleadies out there, but I've got a show to run here (it's 20:24 as I write this; Demon Hunter is moaning out "The Guantlet," and 1 hour 36 min. remains of Six to Ten With Ben) and so I think I'll throw this one to Myles and company to chew on.

'Dja Hear the One About the Bulimic Birthday Party?

2004-08-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

The cake jumped out of the girl!

Part of me still finds that terribly amusing. The part of me that isn't feeling pretty raw from the latest in a nightly series of conversations with area teenagers who apparently have nowhere else but the radio station chatroom to go to be shriven:

"Forgive me Ben, for I have etched records of my sadness into my beautiful skin, pulled crimson wads of hair from my scalp, sought for divinations in my own coughings-up, and tasted the coolness of gunmetal against my tongue, thoughtfully . . . thoughtfully . . ."

"Oh, my child, I see that you are heavy-laden. I want you to pray with me, then go eat brownies and mint chocolate chip ice cream until you stop crying, and tomorrow get a restraining order on your bastard of a boyfriend. Go in peace."

They Who Are Fresh From God

2004-08-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

I am summoning my final reserves of lucidness to post this briefest of notes from The Farm, my grandparents' homestead in Rose City, MN, and the only timeless place I know. Here four wee cousins, abandoned by their Hawaii-bound parents, have demanded of me and the grandparents about two-weeks worth of love and patience in the space of 48 hours. It's been a fine time of piggy-back rides, tree climbing, hide n' seek (which you haven't played until you've tried it on a dairy farm, let me tell you), scraped knees,bloody noses, ATV rides and bedtime stories. All of which served to further whet my appetite for and dilate my pupils with fear of eventual fatherhood.

I had forgotten what an extraordinary schatological fixation occupies the pre and elementary school mind. Either it's all very Freudian, or it serves to explain from whence came Freud's fancies. It's a wonder, really, that MORE parents don't come away from the experience with slightly mad theories hinging on unsavories--"poop," "potty-heads," even "boogers." I've decided that, contrary to the popular idea that bathroom humor appeals with greatest resonance to undergraduate guys, those sophomoric expressions are instead merely pale revivals of a much richer period of hilarity occupying the first seven years or so of life.

At least one of these expressions was made with some poetry. Addressing to one nervously dancing little boy the question of why he wasn't proceeding to the just-vacated bathroom and the business that so obviously awaited him there, I was answered, "I hafta' wait 'till the toilet stops making its lonely, rustling sound." Many thanks to five-year-old Riley for so lyrical a description of a running toilet tank.

Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back to Canada . . .

2004-08-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

They're playing the blues today over the speakers at Coffee Landing, brown sugar dissonance whirling round and round the lazy ceiling fan with ghosts of steam from the coffee roaster. Better Monday than Wednesday music, if you ask me, though no one has, and if the afternoon strives for the consistency of most uneventfully crummy days, no one will.

Actually, I shouldn't whine so. I bellied up to the bar this morning intending to down a cuppa and read Jung for twenty minutes; instead, I found myself discussing _The Seven Pillars of Wisdom_ and mid-eastern politics for an hour and a half with Jim, an off-duty Canadian border customs inspector. He told me that not two weeks ago, Saddam Hussein drove casually up to his window and handed him a Wisconsin driver's license. The mustache, the eyebrows, the jowls--everything checked out. Jim almost told him, "B-but you're supposed to be in Baghdad under lock and key!", but instead dazedly called over his supervisor, who grumbled his way out of the office ("Hussein? Geez--how could you be such an idiot?) and over to the car, where he stood blinking for several seconds at what did indeed appear to be the terror of Iraq himself. One by one, every one of the customs officers filed over to gawk at the man and his ID, until finally waving him on through to Fort Francis. "They say everyone has a twin," Jim said, leaning low over his latte, "and I suppose this poor guy's life has been hell what with him lookin' like he does, but I tell ya', if it turns out that somebody sprung Saddam out of prison, well, Wisconsin or northeast Ontario wouldn't be bad places to start looking for him."

We checked our watches, then, and shook hands, but before I waddled off to do something about the four cups of coffee I'd absent-mindedly consumed, he told me that between my syntax, diction, and reflective squinting, I reminded him somewhat of Hugh Grant. A first for me, and certainly for Hugh Grant.

Naw, I'm grumpy because even as I type, I'm supposed to be out and about selling advertising. Working for a tiny radio market is a many-splendored thing. Hosting "Six to Ten With Ben" is the least of my duties, and then there are middling tasks like making sure that Shortwave, the tailless radio station cat, gets fed, but the the greatest of them, the big icky, is trying to part area business owners from their dollars. Most often, that part of my job seems a little bit like Heaven, for there is no parting there.

My Life in Eleven Strained Stanzas

2004-07-30T13:16:00.000-07:00

B.A. in my attic
The wind in my hair
I'm seeking and finding
Enough room to err.

I hied me to China
For nearly a year
Now, by way of Dallas
And Boston, I'm here!

A crust of creation
That's yet in God's freezer:
The North! Minnesota!
Where Norwegian geezers

And dudes from the Cities
Can fish side by side.
And me? I'm just moving
Along with the tide.

And trying like everything
(really I am!)
To cinder my suitcase,
To work out a plan

Whereby I find somebody
Willing to pay
For me to work hard
Writing rubbish all day.

"And speaking of rubbish,
"My father intones,
"This 'plan' you're proposing
Makes me hold my nose."

But father, fond father
There IS such a place!
Where scribblers of scribbles
At last find embrace!

'Mid marble and granite
And folk with small glasses
At GRAD SCHOOL
I'll park myPoor keister at last. This

Requiring of course
That I make up my mind--
The law? Danish poetry?
Mand'rin? The mind?

Meantime I am reading
As fast as I can
And six to ten weeknights
I'm "Rock DJ Man!"

A T-Shirt Tale

2004-07-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

There is a tale told of an all but forgotten time, a time now spoken of by people who remember only the hearing of it. The story goes that then, as now, the vast variety of our planet was divided into what were casually referred to as "places," but with a critical difference. At that time (and do please try to remember that this is merely a story; it may well have no more basis in actual events than that of, say, the blind men and the elephant), there were two types of more-or-less distinct places. One type was a place in which people simply lived. The other type of place existed primarily to sell t-shirts to visitors swinging briefly through from the first type of place.
All of this is, as I say, only something I’ve heard, and is probably apocryphal. It’s hard to imagine a world without t-shirts commemorating visits to every place, and even places within those places! Why, even International Falls, Minnesota has its own t-shirts. "International Falls, Minnesota," they say. But if your time at the Int’l Falls Sportsman’s’ Paradise or, say, Coffee Landing of Int’l Falls was particularly warming and memorable, why then, there’s a t-shirt to tag that memory, too.
I’m glad this is so. It makes a Someplace Special of everyplace, and who would want to live just anyplace? Sure, I miss Boston--the squirrels in the Common, the choirs at beautiful Trinity Episcopal Church, the colorful Unitarian and Fundamentalist demonstrators colliding delightfully in front of the statehouse, the Democratic National Conventions-- but clad in my Int’l Falls t-shirt, I can strut from my house through downtown and to work not only in about half the time it took me in Boston, but secure in the knowledge that I’m living Someplace. Even if it’s not so prominent a place as to flatter its citizens with random searches on the subway. Even if there is no subway. Even if there aren’t all that many citizens . . .
But let me tell you what is here. A 24 ft. sailboat named the Irish Mist, and hundreds of miles of boundary waters coastline along which to learn the ways of the wind. From the gleaming coffee roaster in the front window of the Coffee Landing espresso shop, there are clouds of bitterly fragrant steam that loiter in front of the store like old men over a checkerboard. There’s the Adams Family, a fairly young, fairly bohemian family with whom I produce local radio dramas, discuss poetry, and watch "Mystery Science Theater 3000." Tonight there will be a lakeside potluck supper and baptism service to which Gomer* and I will be chauffeuring them. There’s my neighbor, an old man who sits stripped to the waist on his lawn, palms and legs flat to the earth in a summertime trance as his cat bats at his long, white beard.
Oh, and there’s me, and my sort-of celebrity. I wonder how fame works itself out in the lives of guys like Don Imus, Howard Stern, or even Click n’ Clack, the "Car Talk" brothers. For me, in a (very) small-town market, it means being blushed at by the sixteen-year-old girl behind the video counter who tells me, "I, uh, enjoy listening to your show." It means being taken aside by middle-aged women at church, and told that my joke about bulimia really wasn’t very amusing, then being high-fived by jr. high guys who insist that, on the contrary, they and their dads had almost thrown up laughing, themselves, it was so funny. It means just enough over minimum wage that I buy humus instead of refried beans, but not enough that I can stop using the radio station’s computer and buy that Powerbook. It means hosting a nightly chatroom in which terse, poorly-spelled conversation turns again and again to topics like hopelessness, ennui, cutting, sexual abuse, and of course, suicide.
It means that for the first time in some while, I am part of a community, a Someone among many Someones all consenting to wear the same t-shirt, even if some of us look downright goofy in them. For some reason, those shirts don't usually fit me well. They’re too roomy or they’re too tight, or the tag’s in the wrong place, or maybe the color makes me nervous. I suppose this one will start to itch after a while, too, but for the time being, it’s the one I’ve chosen to wear, and I don’t know that it looks half bad.

*My faithfully unfaithful car, named for an unfaithful woman, q.v. in the Old Testament. book of Hosea.