Why the Rolling Stone Cover is Wrong

People are furious over the cover of Rolling Stone featuring alleged mass murderer/terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.  There are protests, calls for banning, and general upsettedness about the cover.

Rolling Stone's official response is pretty weak - I will instead link to the much stronger piece by Rolling Stone Contributing Editor Matt Taibbi explaining the cover and his reaction to it.  You can read it here.  Please do so. I'll wait.

(Incidentally, if you've never read Taibbi's work before, do so.  And keep doing so.  He's one of the best reporters out there.)

This is the strongest defense of the cover I have seen thus far.  He is articulate, reasoned, and makes many great points about the investigative reporting quality regularly found in Rolling Stone, possibly the best in the country in the mass-media magazine market.

However, in his reasoning about the cover, Taibbi is one thing that he so very rarely manages to be.  He is Wrong.  The cover IS a big deal, because this is not the cover of any other mass media magazine.  It is the Cover of the Rolling Stone.

The site rockpaper.net has an archive of all the Rolling Stone covers ever done, and from this archive list I have chosen to look at the 2000's as an example.  Thirteen and a half years of covers.  For individual cover photographs of people who weren't the current President of the United States or an entertainer (meaning musicians, actors, TV personalities, or Shaun White), we have the following:

http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS0853-550x660.jpg

http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS0961-550x660.jpg

http://www.catchandreleasebooks.com/shop_image/product/4aa4e5a0669dd612924042a48d538c1c.jpg

http://hstbooks.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/7092281.jpg

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/18/1870/8LX8D00Z/posters/stephen-danelian-howard-dean-rolling-stone-no-941-february-2004.jpg

http://cast.thirdage.com/files/originals/steve-jobs-cover.jpg

Thirteen and a half years.  SIX covers.  FIVE people.  Three Presidential candidates, one iconic writer intimately connected to Rolling Stone, and an Industry Legend who fundamentally shifted the way we consume media.  The Jobs and Thompson covers were also in honor of their passing (one Thompson cover for his death, one for reminisces two years later).

It is true that Rolling Stone sometimes does covers for their political reporting, but there is a very noticeable difference in those covers:

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/18/1870/3VX8D00Z/posters/robert-grossman-george-w-bush-rolling-stone-no-999-may-2006.jpg

http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS1012-550x660.jpg

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/pictures/2010-rolling-stone-covers-20100302/rolling-stone-covers-1096-you-idiots-planets-worst-enemies-44224048

http://rollingstoneauthentic.com/files/RS1165-550x748.jpg

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/Rolling-Stone-1063-JOHN-McCAIN-Jackson-Browne-Carlos-Santana-Of-Montreal-/00/s/MTYwMFgxMjAw/z/5fEAAMXQM0FRfAzh/$(KGrHqZ,!lQFEH3hWDn)BRf!zhSPFQ~~60_35.JPG

I missed a couple for brevity.  But the point is, they are not photographs.  They are drawings, cartoons, and graphics.

A portrait cover on Rolling Stone is a cultural touchstone that has been with us for most of our lives.  It is a symbol of an entertainment figure having "made it", and truly making a dent in popular culture.  There are even songs about it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ux3-a9RE1Q

(fun fact - written by Shel Silverstein)

Rolling Stone themselves are well aware of their cover's place in popular culture history, as evinced by this book available at Amazon, Rolling Stone 1,000 Covers:

http://www.amazon.com/Rolling-Stone-000-Covers-Influencial/dp/0810958651/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1374336640&sr=1-3&keywords=rolling+stone+cover+to+cover

"For the past 39 years, the covers of Rolling Stone have depicted the great icons of popular culture, from John Lennon, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, and Madonna to Steve Martin, Uma Thurman, and Richard Nixon. Often it was an appearance on the cover that launched a performer’s legendary status in the first place."

Rolling Stone has also proffered up issues devoted entirely to their photography, the careful construction of it, and the impact on culture:

http://i.ebayimg.com/t/ROLLING-STONE-958-The-50-Photographs-Sep-30-2004-HM-/15/!B81lKL!!Wk~$(KGrHqQOKoYEz!t)jnMpBM4Fselmzg~~0_35.JPG

Carefully crafted, meticulously detailed.  Not found photographs.

And as for the nature of that found photograph, there is an issue of presentation.  Taibbi (and others) point out the photo has been used multiple times in multiple other venues.  Setting aside the argument about the Rolling Stone cover's iconic status, let's look at image presentation.  Here is the image from the Taibbi article from the New York Times:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/files/2013/07/nyttsarnaev.jpg

Note the arm position.  The extension of the right arm clearly indicates this photo as a "selfie", a photo taken by himself, most likely with his phone.  There are thousands of them taken by teens and twenty-somethings everywhere.  It is an unremarkable photo that does not stick in the memory.

Here is the Rolling Stone crop for the cover:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/tsarnaev-rollingstone-290.jpeg

Any remnant of the right arm remaining is removed by cropping and text.  It now looks posed, professional, and striking.  Which is what cropping is supposed to do.  But it is no longer the same picture that Taibbi cited.  It has been altered to be remembered.  And in so altering, it removes the excuse of 'everyone else has used it'.

Add the image alteration to the cultural expectations of what goes into the magic of  Rolling Stone cover, and it makes sense that people thought this was a professional cover shoot done by Rolling Stone.

In Rolling Stone's defense, another controversial cover has also been cited, reaching back to 1970, and the cover article of Charles Manson.

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/0c9109c71ea0524d9fe840f91fabd67bb94a26a9/r=537&c=0-0-534-712/local/-/media/USATODAY/test/2013/07/17/1374076265000-XXX-manson-1970-rolling-stone-1307171152_3_4.jpg

Setting aside trying to stake precedence on a cover that is 43 years old, the Manson cover makes sense due to the pop culture ties of the time.  His "family" lived together in a commune similar to hundreds of other hippie communes of the time.  He named his "family members" after Beatles songs ('Lovely Rita', 'Sexy Sadie', etc.), and believed a war called "Helter Skelter" needed to be waged.  He was a musician and a songwriter, with one of his songs performed on the Guns 'n Roses 1993 album "The Spaghetti Incident" (to the shock, horror, and outrage of everyone not named W. Axl Rose.).  He was the dark side of the counter-culture of the time, and the main media outlet of that culture was...Rolling Stone.  

I called the cover a violation of trust, and my friend Jeff, a journalist himself, called me on that as a very bold statement.  As shown by the evidence, I stand by it.  Rolling Stone has spent the last 50 years defining their cover as a cultural touchstone, with a very specific set of expectations attached to it.  In an age where the print magazine is running into digital issues, Rolling Stone maintains a presence, allowing for in-depth journalism of the type Taibbi mentions as dying in other outlets.  It is protected by the sanctity of the cover, a cultural icon recognizable to most everyone in the Western World.  To defend it as "just a magazine cover" is at best disingenuous, at worst threatens the iconic status and therefore the survival of the entity itself.  

Works cited:


"Helter Skelter (Manson scenario)", Wikipedia.  Web.  Accessed 7-20-2013

"Look at Your Game, Girl", Wikipedia.  Web.  Accessed 7-20-2013

"Rolling Stone 1,000 Covers", Amazon.  Web.  Accessed 7-2--2013

"Rolling Stone Magazine Database", Rock Paper.  Web.  Accessed 7-20-2013

Dr. Hook, "Cover of the Rolling Stone".  Youtube.  Web.  Accessed 7-20-2013

Taibbi, Matt, "Explaining the Rolling Stone cover, by a Boston native", Rolling Stone. Web.  Accessed 7-20-2013

All photos cited individually.  All rights reserved by the copyright holders.

Finding "North"

About 31 pages into Roads, by Larry McMurtry, I hated the book, for reasons of a difference in preferential geography.  He is a man of the Texas plains, and a need for big sky. On page 31, he begins very simply with “I don’t generally like northern places”(31) and continues for much of the book to intermittently bash my beloved New England. 

To his credit, he does later on state that we all have our own particular geography we are attached to – his own preference for plains, or Hemingway’s attraction to northern Michigan, generally an attraction formed in our youth and stays as a certain vantage point.  I’ll give it to him.

The other difficulty I had was his intention of just looking at roads.  He specifically cited William Least Heat Moon’s books as the antithesis of what he wanted to do.  He didn’t want to meet people at all, and prided himself on saying a grand total of 14 words to three other people during an entire day trip.  His aim was to travel only interstates – end to end of the big roads that exist primarily to get people from point A to point B.  Charles Kurault once said the unfortunateness of the interstate system is the ability to drive from coast to coast and not see a damn thing.  McMurtry’s intention, at first, seems to be a book-long treatise on proving not only that Kurault was right, but that it wasn’t in fact a bad thing.

“I want to drive them…just to see what I see.”(23)

My own favorite road trips don’t involve the road itself, but involve the stops along the way, and it is the same with my favorite travel books as well.  So having this as a central premise was a bit off-putting.  However, I kept at it, and I’m glad that I did.

First, McMurtry is a rare-book dealer, and going through his narrative I came across titles I had never heard of, and would have unlikely cause to ever hear of.  Some I may never be able to put my hands on, but some of his journeys and rare sales make for some interesting combinations of thought that I never would have put together.  West Virginia and Milton, for example.  (He knows of someone who has a rare first edition of Paradise Lost with an intact title page out on one of his trips.)

He has a few choice words for Hemingway, travelling to northern Michigan to specifically view the geography of Hemingway’s early Nick Adams stories.  Travelling to Hemingway’s house in Key West, he is horrified by the furniture, notes that the Key West house was purchased after he did his best work, and wants to know which of his later wives was responsible for the furniture.  Best not to know too much about our favorite writers, so as not to have issues between personality and art.

The purpose for the travels doesn’t really come into play until the later part of the book, as he is travelling west from Washington, D.C., where he lived for 20 years as a rare-book dealer.  Following heart surgery, he suffered a profound depression that took years to return to a functional state of mind. 

“I don’t really expect my old personality to be waiting for me at a rest stop in Tennessee, or a Waffle House in Arkansas, but I am still listening for chords I haven’t heard in a while, wondering if a passage in a book or a place I once liked along the road will cause them to sound again.” (164)

He goes back to Proust over and over, “looking not for lost time, but lost feelings”.  It’s a taking stock book in a lot of ways. He spends a lot of time on growing up on the plains, looking at Highway 281, which he claims as “his river”, not having the mighty Mississippi of Twain and so many others.

The book comes to an end when McMurtry reaches the T of Route 2 and 281 in North Dakota, the northernmost point of 281.  He always wondered, as a boy, where 281 went as it went north.  (He knew the southern tip – no mystery there.)  His grandfather told him “Oklahoma”, not having been much of a traveler himself.

And it is at the top of 281 that he reaches an epiphany, and ceases his desire to wander, at least for a time.  He remembers a book by the cowboy Teddy Blue called We Pointed Them North, where a young and less-than worldly cowpoke thought that North was an actual place, a real destination or town.  And at the head of 281, McMurtry found his “North” – a mystical place along the lines of Shangri-La, Xanadu, and Home, that place one can never return to.

McMurtry laments that the problem with roads is one he realized several years ago with women – there are too many nice ones, and that means you are going to miss some.  It’s a simple fact of life.  “One of the saddening facts of life is that there is always going to be a delightful woman somewhere who, for whatever accident of timing or attraction, simply slips by and recedes, to return only in a dream.” (204)

He ends with summation of fiction primarily asking the questions of “Where does the road go?  And how is one to marry?”(206)  Possibly too simplistic, but essential questions of Life, to be sure.

I am glad McMurtry found his “North”, though it seems to be more of an internal sense rather than an actual place.  On reflection, “North” is always that – be it Shangri-La, Xanadu, or Home – an idea, a state of resting the wandering mind, drinking from Frost’s grail in “Directive”. 

“Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.” (Frost, Directive)

  Drink deep, my friends.  In this summer of my 40^th year, I aim to spend a lot of time drinking to resolve my confusion.  (Metaphorically, of course – it’s been my experience that literal tends to add to the confusion rather than resolve it.)  With any luck, I’ve got a few years on this road, and I aim to make them count.  J

Town changes - originally from May 6, 2013

This is something I wrote back on May 6th, but have just now gotten around to posting.  Hope you enjoy.

Le Roy has a history of tearing down its historical landmarks.  Many cities, big and small, had a brief period of time in the 60’s where “urban renewal” caused them to tear down a great many irreplaceable buildings in the name of Progress, but Le Roy has not been limited in scope to modern urban renewal.  This is a practice that has been under way pretty much since Le Roy was incorporated.

The first accredited Women’s College, Ingham University, was located right along the banks of the Oatka Creek, starting in the 1850’s.  It had a music conservatory, art program, and an academic program as rigorous as any men’s college at the time.  Today, no buildings remain, all of them torn down around the turn of the century.  The stones from the conservatory were used to build the town library, but that was decades later.  The rest was used for fill for the bridge.  There’s a plaque, but that’s it.

A striking round building housed the Unitarian Universalist church at the corner of Main and Lake until 1854, when it was torn down and the Masons built a temple there.  It was in turn torn down in 2008 for a Walgreens.  A fantastic mansion was torn down in a row of mansions for an Acme Supermarket, now a Sav-A-Lot.  (The mansion next door is for sale, and I have to imagine the property value suffers due to the supermarket.  It is going for less than a ranch house in the swankier Rochester suburbs.)

Factories that produced patent medicine, a real Dining-car diner built in Silver Springs, various other historic dwellings, the first church – all have been razed.  The Jello Factory has been spared the wrecking ball, but I think that was only due to timing (Jello left town in 1964), and now with Jello being a point of pride of the town it will never be torn down.  It is commercial space in an odd section of town, with a small plaque.  The LeRoy House, containing the Jello Museum and Historical Society, is the last building left of the LeRoy Institute, which was also torn down and used for backfill.

The Walgreens incident was a particular sore point with the town preservationists, mostly due to the land in question being private and in a commercial corridor, so the tearing down of a 19^th century Masonic Hall and putting up a distinctly modern drug store needed no public comment whatsoever.  And it was with this backdrop that the battle over the Wiss Hotel began.

The Wiss Hotel was not a beautiful building – a squat, three story brick structure on the corner of Main and Lake, right across from the Walgreens.  It was empty and abandoned when I moved here in 2010, home only to hundreds of cats that would stare out at you if you walked down Main Street late at night.  A few of my neighbors have memories of the Wiss as a flophouse with a bar in the first floor, the flophouse duties being taken over by the old hotel by the train tracks at 66 Lake Ave.  (An address that shows up in the police report at least once a month – last time for a guy who tried to hit a friend with a bottle of vodka while an underage girl was simultaneously giving him head.) 

The town quietly took possession of the Wiss during a nationally-covered outbreak of Mass Hysteria/Tourette’s of a number of high school girls, burying a story of the owners of the Wiss and connections to the sale of land for the high school built only ten years ago instead of on land freely available by previous educational deed.  Taxes hadn’t been paid for years, and the county passed on collecting the property and let the town take it.

Noise was made about tearing down the structure and replacing it with either a Dunkin Donuts or a Taco Bell, and with that, the preservationists swung into action.  There was no specific love for the Wiss as a building, but the idea of the town gateway from the Thruway being a Walgreens and a Taco Bell was too much. 

An LLC was formed, and an architect was hired to determine the structural soundness of the Wiss Hotel.  He determined it to be salvageable, and the LLC spoke of plans to turn the Wiss into luxury apartments and storefront space.

It wasn’t a love for the Wiss itself, but the viewing of it as an anchor of the downtown row on the east run of Main Street.  The edges have been chipped away for years on the south side of the street, while the north side was a strong, old-fashioned row making a quaint downtown district.  The district ends at the creek – an abandoned restaurant on the south side, and the post office on the north side (built in 1936, after the village had torn down a storefront block rumored to have been a hiding spot for Fredrick Douglass as he fled north to freedom).  The concern was maintaining the character of downtown LeRoy.

Town meetings were contentious.  The LLC wished to purchase the building, and also put forward concerns about the asbestos content of the building and the abatement as the building came down.  The LLC was willing to pay the town 10,000 dollars, while the tearing down would cost 155K. 

The town supervisors were dead set against it.  There were serious leakage issues, they said, and there had been for years.  They disputed the cursory structural assessment of the architect, saying a full assessment was needed. 

Full frustration and anger swung into action.  Articles about the town history pointed out that the Wiss was possibly the oldest standing commercial structure in the village.  Visions of the Wiss as a cornerstone of the revitalization of LeRoy with luxury apartments (never mind the glut of rental units on the market already), and support from the owner of the McDonalds (which tore down the Dining Car on Main St) and the owner of the Creekside Inn (still vacant years later with no sign of opening anytime soon). 

My own opinion was toward preservation after I bought the book on the History of LeRoy at Walgreens (all irony intended), and looked at the range of buildings that used to stand in LeRoy.  I didn’t know how a Taco Bell could possibly exist on that corner, as part of it was listed as a DOT right-of-way if the Wiss were ever torn down.

In the end, the board voted quickly to not sell to the LLC, and to authorize the funds to tear down the building.  The LLC was bitter, vowed to continue the fight in the months that it took for the Wiss to be torn down.

Months, as it turned out, was weeks.  A company was given the contract, it was announced that the building would come down “hot” – no abatement.  All materials would be trucked out, and the lot leveled and seeded for grass.

It came down in the space of a week, and in defense of the board, it was apparent in the tear-down that the structure was in terrible shape.  The third floor had simply been put on the flat roof of the original building, causing runoff to rot the sides of the structure, which was causing the cave-in from the back that was apparent from the street.  At a bare minimum, the third floor would have needed to come down, and it was questionable if any of the structure would have been salvageable.  Years ago, possibly, (maybe when it was owned by the family of one of the board members), but now there was no saving it.

Rumors of a Dunkin Donuts or Taco Bell swirled, but the mayor announced that the lot would remain vacant for at least six months while the village decided what to do with the parcel.  “This will possibly be the first time anyone who has known me has heard me say this, but money is not the most important thing in this matter.”  One of the board members mentioned he liked the new view of the town coming in from 490/Thruway, and that would definitely be a major consideration.

The protective fences came down today, and I got the first full effect of the new view coming in to the main intersection of Routes 5 and 19.  The dominating structure now is the Presbyterian church on the corner, a classic white clap-board spired church.  “A New-England Village Feel” is what one of the selectmen said, and I have to agree with him.  It does feel like entering a small town like the ones I grew up with, and I rather like that. 

Reflecting on the changes of the town, with a few notable exceptions (would happily trade back the Sav-A-Lot for the mansion), a village is in constant flux for populations and needs.  It stands right now as a pretty strong place, with cleanup needs of multiple small towns facing declining fortunes.  And in this delicate balance, aesthetically, it works.

But if the village considers selling the parcel to Taco Bell, I will be at the meetings.  With torch and pitchfork if necessary.

How my first car was destroyed by squirrels

The first car I really owned was a 1981 VW Dasher diesel station wagon. Army green, with the front end definitely fading and headed toward rust. I paid 300 dollars cash for it in the fall of 1994, prepped to drive it out to college for my senior year. I also spray-painted it with rustproofing one afternoon to change it to a flat black of sorts (it seemed like a perfectly good idea at the time), and it went from Maine to Vermont on a single tank of gas. I only had it for three months, but it was particularly memorable primarily for its untimely demise. At the hands of squirrels.


I suffered a bit of a nervous breakdown during exam week of my fall semester, and my parents came out that evening to come get me when I temporarily withdrew from college. My mother drove the minivan packed with my stuff, and Dad and I took my car to head home.

We made it as far as Montpelier when it started making some really ugly engine sounds. Hammering, groaning, could-fly-apart-at-any-moment noises. Under the circumstances, we opted not to go any further and got a motel for the night so a mechanic could look at the car in the morning.

(My Dad reassured me that he did not see this in any way as foreshadowing where my mental state was headed. For this, I was grateful.)

The nearest dealership was in Barre, and we had it towed there. The mechanic was a short, grey-bearded, solid guy who had worked in Waterville for 20 years before coming out to Vermont. He was shocked at my car. “Haven’t seen one of these in years….” he muttered. “I’ll see what’s up.”

We waited about a half hour when he came back out, a look of shock and horror on his face. “You gotta come see this,” he said, and motioned us back into the shop.

We walked back into the shop, where Weird Al was playing on the shop radio. (I did consider this a foreshadowing of the condition of my car.) Sticking out of the middle of the engine was a long-handled torque wrench. “Pull on that,” he said.

My father and I both did – the wrench did not move. “That should swing back and forth with no effort at all. Your pistons have all frozen up.”

“How did that happen?” my dad asked.

The man reached into the opened engine block, and pulled out a handful of broken acorns. “Car’s full of ‘em. Some squirrels have been using it for nut storage, apparently.”

I nodded. “They guy I bought it from did say that he’d let it sit outside for a year.”

“Yep. Any other car wouldn’t have even started up. You’ve been driving this how long?”

“Three months. And back and forth to Maine twice.”

He shook his head. “Always wondered what it would take to kill one of these diesel engines. And now I know. A bunch of fucking squirrels.”

We sold the car to one of the other mechanics at the shop for a hundred bucks – the nearly-new studded snow tires would fit his own VW, and he’d use the car for storage out in his back yard. “All the stuff the wifey doesn’t want me keepin’ in the house,” he said with a wink.

Mom unloaded the van and drove back out to Barre to pick us up. Dad and I still laughed about it for years. He also agreed that I needed a replacement car, and we found one during that month I was home recovering – a 1986 Honda Prelude that served me well for many years (and has a few stories attached to it).

My brother Andy also insisted it was time he got his own car as well – he got a Dodge Daytona that my Dad warned him against after test-driving it (when we got done testing the Prelude, Dad said if I wasn’t buying it, he was). The Daytona was a story unto itself, going through three engines in about two years before the mechanic insisted he was NOT installing a 4th into that heap-o-crap car. (Andy also totaled my Dad’s car running into a deer going back and forth to the garage after the death of the final engine, just in case there was any question about the bad mojo attached to the Daytona.)

My current car is very boring – first really “boring” one I’ve owned, and I’m finding I rather like it that way.

It's not a party 'til the cops call for backup

Regular readers of my FB page are familiar with the insanity of the lower apartment here at 41 Church Street. But I really had my hopes for quiet this weekend. Thanksgiving itself came and went very quietly. (I spent Thanksgiving alone - that's a different post entirely, and not a sad and pathetic one, I promise.) The neighbors even brought me up a piece of cheesecake. (I'd intended to go downstairs to join them for coffee, but ended up spending a few hours on the phone with a friend instead. Good to catch up.)

First - some backstory. The older teenager, Josh, has taken up with a young lady who has two kids. A three year old and a baby. The lady (Caitlin? I think? It works for now.) in question essentially lives with them, and the kids live there too. Josh is trying very hard to be a patient father, but he suffers from being a teenager (and spending way too much time with the small kids and not enough working on his GED).

  Oh - and I forgot to mention. Neither kid is his - the baby, however, is his stepbrother's. James is a scumbag (according to everyone downstairs - not sure what he actually DID), but is still a part of the baby's life. And as a side bit of juicy gossip, Caitlin is still desperately in love with the stepbrother and is merely waiting for him to get his act together and take her back. That's the story around the campfire, anyway.

(Yes, Jay - Jerry Springer IS on line one. Why do you ask?)

(Side note - you ever seen an argument over how to properly install a car seat ever come to blows? With the baby in the seat? Yeah - there's some tension between Josh and James.)

So Friday morning, Caitlin dropped the baby off with James at McDonalds, and apparently spent a little too long chatting with him for Josh's liking. A fight ensued, much shouting and door-slamming, and Josh took off out of the driveway - spinning tires, squealing and roaring of engine. (Note - this is not an uncommon thing. He's a teenage boy. I'll give him a little leeway.)

Three minutes later, he comes roaring back in at top speed, and nearly ends up in the front lawn as he brakes. More shouting and slamming of doors, this time involving Dan (Josh's stepfather, and yes, James's dad), yelling at top volume with a whole bunch of cursing and posturing about ass-kicking on all sides. And Josh goes roaring out of the driveway again.

Next is Dan on the phone with Wendy (wife and Josh's mother), screaming and cursing about what an asshole Josh is, and how neighbors on both sides have complained about the roaring in and out and how it needs to stop. "YOUR SON is fucking out of control! I don't know if anyone else is going to call the cops, but I FUCKING WILL!!!!"

Another two mintues pass, and Josh comes blazing back into the driveway AGAIN. (Well, technically blazing back onto the front lawn - really overshot this time.) More yelling, more door slamming, Josh's brother AJ now getting into the yelling. And a door slammi...wait, that's not a door. That's someone slamming into a wall. Or being slammed into a wall. Over and over. Lots more yelling. And I've got my phone out now giving some serious thought to calling the police myself.

But just as I'm about to dial, Josh goes running out to the car, and takes off in a blaze of gravel again. But this time, not headed toward Main Street, but in the other direction. And it's very quiet downstairs.

I'm about to check on the downstairs (keeping in regular text with a friend who was supposed to come over that afternoon, but elected to stay in the relative peace of inner-city Rochester instead) when a LeRoy town officer shows up in official car. I figure if there are bodies downstairs he's better equipped to deal with it than I am, and I go work on making more coffee.

At the sound of grinding gravel and squealing brakes, I look back out the window, expecting to see Josh peeling back into the driveway. But no - it's Wendy, Josh's mother, nearly taking out the back end of the police car and making it halfway to the lawn herself, before jumping out and slamming the door open and shut.

"What the FUCK is she doing here?!?! Why the FUCK is SHE in my living room?!?!?!"

Very quickly I see a female officer hustle into the cruiser, close the door, and get on the radio. A minute later, a State Trooper pulls up to the curb, and the LeRoy police officer re-enters the apartment.

(My contribution to the drama - at this point, I text the landlord. "Just so you know, state trooper and leroy town officer are at Dan and Wendy's for a disturbance call. I didn't make the call." "Wonderful lol" is all I get for a response.)

Music (or movie) starts blasting really loud at this point, but eventually quiets down. (In my own mind, I'm picturing Wendy cranking the volume and closing the door while Dan is talking to the officer. But i could be wrong.)

Eventually the officer leaves, and quiet settles over the land. Creepy quiet. I eventually take Dante for a walk, but things seem to have settled out. My friend finally came over, noting, as so many others have, that I really should consider moving away from the crazy people. Josh finally returned this morning. I've heard nothing exciting so far - all quiet. We'll see how long it lasts. Happy Holidays, everyone.

On gardens and started projects

So the back garden is now finished. I've posted pictures on FB (I do so wish I'd posted some "before" pictures, but you'll just have to imagine a field of weeds. I've also purchased 300 feet of hose (never occurred to me to think about how to WATER the back 40), and it seems that things are going to settle in and look really nice in a couple of years.

I have realized this summer exactly how awesome this location is for having a seven-year-old. There is the creek out back, the big backyard (now that I've cleared out the woodpile and Kevin hauled off what was left), the island in the creek (now suitable for camping), and the playground just up the road. I have fallen in love with living here this summer, which isn't bad for a place I'd originally moved into two and a half years ago with the intention of it being temporary. I've been looking over my posts and draft posts for the past year, and there seems to be a common theme of wanting to get projects done and get my motivation back. I spoke to a friend who told me one of the things she loved about me was my work ethic. Had this been an old friend who'd known me for years, I would have thought she meant the ethic I had in the past, as I've been kind of a sloth of late. But no, this is a friend who has known me for only about two years now - what I consider one of the more slothful periods I've had. I told her as much, and she pointed to the garden, the clearing of the island, the clearing of the woodpile, moving a library, helping Jess move, pretty much completely renovating the apartment - I've been pretty busy, as she pointed out. So I accept that I have my motivation, I just need to direct it a bit. It comes down to a morning ritual and figuring out what is important to accomplish. Working on the garden seems to be a good start. We'll see where it goes from here.

Gardening and cleaning and preparing

So on an impulse, I bought a pair of hydrangeas. I've always liked them, and the bountiful poof of colors they have. The front yard is the domain of Wendy downstairs, and I wouldn't even DARE ask about sharing space. So the hydrangeas are going out back, in an attempt to reclaim some of the back forty. If those two do well, then I'll look into the possibility of getting more to fill out the back. They would make a great backdrop to the end of the yard, I think. August is upon us, and as a teacher that means getting revved up for the year at hand. It means getting things in order as responsibilities start creeping up and then the crashing of September is at hand. So today is a day of cleaning and setting up aspirations. I need to streamline some things, clear out some things, and finish up a few projects that have just been lying around the apartment. I also plan to make some commitments to an August "challenge" at Zen Habits, so I'm going to do the writing challenge again. Seems like a good plan, and something I keep trying to do. So I'll be posting odd Facebook posts about word-count again. Bear with me. Hope summer is going well for you too. Future posts will hopefully have more substance.