You're in NO MA'AM's land now, baby!

So let's set the record straight: you need us jar-opening, oil-changing, spider-squishing, furniture-rearranging men a lot more than we need you...

R.I.P. Kobe

Our dog, Kobe, had to be euthanized this past Wednesday.  He wasn't acting himself a week before and my mom took him to the vet, who diagnosed him with lymphoma.  He was twelve, at the end of his expected lifespan, and the vet told my mom it was basically the end.  He received some pain meds but the vet gave him a few weeks at most.  By this Wednesday he couldn't walk and wouldn't eat, so it was time.  It was a bummer but expected.

What saddens me most is that Kobe's loss is a break in a time continuity back to when my full family was all alive. We got Kobe as a puppy in mid-May, 2001, right before my father died.  Scott died about six years later, and Kobe himself six years later.  I was able to look at Kobe and through him recall a very different time when we first got him.  His absence for me now dates just how distant that time now is.

Scott and Kobe (May, 2001)

I'll miss Kobe.  Sometimes he would steal the cat food, bite me when I tried to take it away, he barked in the middle of the night, and peed/pooped a little too much in the house, but he was a good dog.  I remember walking him late during lonely winter nights when I home visiting from school.  I was feeling otherwise very alone, and so very appreciative that at those moments he was there with me.  Thanks for the company, Kobe.  I hope I made your life happy, too.

The War of the End of the World

I have an ongoing project to work through the books listed on The New York Time's annual best books of the year lists.  These lists, I've found are hit or miss - sometimes I like the book and sometimes I don't - but I have certainly encounter gems I wouldn't have otherwise come across.  One of the books selected on the 1984 list was The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa, which I read earlier this year.  The novel is a fictionalized account of the real-life War of Canudos which took place at the end of the 19th century in back-county Bahia state, Brazil (I have a Brazilian connection now through Roberta by I was perhaps more inclined to select this book to read sooner among the other possibilities).

The 40th Infantry Battalion, Sent to Canudos in 1897

I absolutely loved the story, and I now consider it one of the best books I've ever read.  Llosa's novel is both epic and contained.  It deals with large themes on a grand scale yet through small interactions of individuals.  The story is also deeply tragic.  The beginning of the book follows with sympathy the development of Canudos as a refuge for the poor, the rejected, the marginalized, disenfranchised, and the wretched, yet deeply religious spiritual who find a meaning in following the preacher, Antônio Conselheiro ("The Counselor").  The book's climax swells with the romance of a lost cause - a Brazilian Alamo story.  I found myself with a deep emotional connection for the underdog Canudos community during the assault by the Brazilian army sent to crush them.  The injustice of asymmetry of a state against a struggling people who just want to be left alone which resounds with the irony that they don't even fully understand the motivations of the state which is seeking to subdue them.  My feelings were intensified all the more as, in this case, the story is true.  I highly recommend this book.

The Canudos Siege Survivors

Excerpt [...V...]

Antônio was not yet thirty.  But the ravages of overwork, his exhausting travels, the obsessive way in which he ran his business, made him look older.  He had lost a lot of hair, and his broad forehead, his little chin beard, and his mustache gave him the air of an intellectual.  He was a strong man, somewhat stoop-shouldered, with a bowlegged walk like a cowhand's.  He never showed any interest in anything but business.  While Honório went to fiestas and was not unwilling to down a little glass of anisette as he listed to a cantador or chatter with friends plying the São Francisco at the helm of the boats on which bright-colored figureheads were beginning to appear, Antônio had no social life.  When he wasn't off somewhere on his travels, he stayed behind the counter of the store, checking the account books, or thinking up new lines of business to go into.  He had many customers but few friends, and though he turned up on Sundays at the Church of Our Lady of the Grottoes and occasionally was present at the processions in which the flagellants of the Brotherhood mortified their flesh in order to aid souls in purgatory, he was not thought of as someone possessed of extraordinary religious fervor.  He was a serious, serene, stubborn man, well equipped to confront adversity.

This time the Vilanova family's peregrination through a region brought low by hunger and thirst was longer that the one they had undertaken a decade before as they fled from the smallpox epidemic.  They soon were left without animals.  After an encounter with a band of migrants that the two brothers had to drive off with their rifles, Antônio decided that their five pack mules were too great a temptation for the starving human hordes wandering about the backlands.  He therefore sold four of them in Barro Vermelho for a handful of precious stones.  They butchered the last remaining one, had themselves a banquet, and salted down the meat left over, which kept them alive for a number of days.  One of Honório's sons died of dysentery and they buried him in Borracha, where they had set up a shelter, in which the Sardelinha sisters offered soup man from Spanish plus, rock cavy, and yellow lupine.  But they were unable to hold out very long there either, and wandered off again toward Patamuté and Mato Verde, where Honório was stung by a scorpion.  When he was better, they continued on south, a harrowing journey of weeks and weeks during which the only things they came upon were ghost towns, deserted haciendas, caravans of skeletons drifting aimlessly, as though hallucinated.

In Pedra Grande, another of Honório and Assuncao's sons died of nothing more serious than a head cold.  They were in the midst of burying him, wrapped in a blanket, when, enveloped in a cloud of red-colored dust, some twenty men and women entered the village - among them a creature with a face of a man who crawled about on all fours and a half-naked black - most of them nothing but skin and bones, wearing threadbare tunics and sandals that looked as through they had trod all the paths of the world.  Their leader was a tall, dark man with hair that fell down to his shoulders and quicksilver eyes.  He strode straight over to the Vilanova family, and with a gesture of his hand stopped the brothers, who were already lowering the corpse into the grade.  "Your son?" he asked Honório in a grave voice.   The latter nodded.  "You can't bury him like that," the dark-skinned, dark-haired man said in an authoritative tone of voice.  "He must be properly interred and sent upon his way so that he will be received at heaven's eternal feast of rejoicing."  And before Honório could answer, he turned to those accompanying him: "Let us give him a decent burial, so that the father will receive him in exaltation."  The Vilanovas then saw the pilgrims come to life, run to the trees, cut them down, nail them together, fashion a coffin and a cross with a skill that was proof of long practice.  The dark man took the child in his arms and laid him in the coffin.  As the Vilanovas filled the grave with earth, the man prayed aloud and the others sang hymns of blessing and recited litanies, kneeling round about the cross.  Later, as the pilgrims were about to leave after resting beneath the trees, Antônio Vilanova took out a coin and offered it to the saint.  "As a token of our thanks," he insisted, on seeing that the man was refusing to accept it and contemplating him with a mocking look in his eyes.  "You have nothing to thank me for," he said finally.  "But you would be unable to pay the Father what you own him even with a thousand coins such as this one."  He paused, and then added gently: "You haven't learned to count, my son."

For a long time after the pilgrims had departed, the Vilanovas remained there, sitting lost in thought around a campfire they had built to drive away the insects.  "Was he a madman, compadre?" Honório asked.  "I've seen many a madman on my travels and that man seemed like something more than that," Antônio answered.

When the rains came again, after two years of drought and disasters, the Vilanovas had settled in Caatinga do Moura, a hamlet near which there was a salt pit that Antônio began to work.  All the rest of the family - the Sardelinha sisters and the two children - had survived, but Antônio and Antônia's little boy, after suffering from gummy, secretions round his eyes that made him rub them for days on end, had gradually lots his sight and though he could still distinguish light from dark he was unable to make out people's faces or tell what things around him looked like.  The salt pit turned out to be a good business.  Honório, the women, and the children spent their days drying the salt and preparing sacks of it, which Antônio then went out to sell.  He had made himself a cart, and went about armed with a double-barreled shotgun to defend himself in case he was attacked by bandits.

They stayed in Caatinga do Moura about three years.  With the return of the rains, the villagers came back to work the land and the cowhands to take care of the decimated herds.  For Antônio  all this meant the return of prosperity.  In addition to the salt pit, he soon had a tore and began to deal in riding animals, which he bought and sold with a good profit margin.  When the torrential rains of that December - a decisive moment in his life - turned the little stream that ran through the settlement into a river in flood that carried off the huts of the village and drowned poultry and goats and inundated the salt pit and buried it beneath a sea of mud in a single night, Antônio was at the Nordestina fair, to which he had gone with a load of salt and the intention of buying some mules.

He returned a week later.  The floodwaters had begun to recede Honório  the Sardelinha sisters, and the half-dozen laborers who now worked for them were dejected, but Antônio took this latest catastrophe calmly.  He inventoried what had been salvaged, made calculations in a little notebook, and raised their spirits by telling them that he still had many debts to collect and that like a cat he had too many lives to live to feel defeated by one flood.

But he didn't sleep a wink that night.  They had been given shelter by a villager who was a friend of his, on the hill where all the people who lived on lower ground had taken refuge.  His wife could feel him tossing and turning in the hammock and see by the light of the moon falling on her husband's face that he was consumed by anxiety.  The next morning Antônio informed them that they must make ready for a journey, for they were leaving Caatinga do Moura for good.  His tone was so peremptory that neither his brother nor the womenfolk dared ask him why.  After selling off everything that they were not able to take with them, they took to the road once more, in the cart loaded down with bundles, and plunged yet again into the unknown.  One day they heard Antônio say something that bewildered them.  "That was the third warning," he murmured, with a shadow in the depths of his bright blue eyes.  "We were sent that flood so we'd do something, but I don't know what."  As though embarrassed to ask, Honório said to him: A warning from God, compadre?"  "Could be from the Devil," Antônio replied.

They continued to knock about from place to place, a week here, a month there, and every time the family thought that they were about to settle down, Antônio would impulsively decide to leave.  This vague search for something or someone disturbed them, but none of them protested against this constant moving about.

Finally, after nearly eight months of wandering up and down the backlands, they ended up settling on a hacienda belonging to the Baron de Canabrava that had been abandoned ever since the drought.  The baron had taken all his cattle away and only a few families had stayed on, living here and there in the surrounding countryside, cultivating little plots of land on the banks of the Vaza-Barris and taking their goats up to graze in the Serra de Canabrava, green the year round.  In view of its sparse population and the fact that it was surrounded by mountains, Canudos seemed like the worst possible place for a merchant to set up in business.  Nonetheless, the moment they had taken over what had once been the steward's house, now in ruins, Antônio acted as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.  He immediately began to think up new lines of business that he could go into and set about organizing the family's life with the same high spirits as in days gone by.  And a year later, thanks to his perseverance and determination, the Vilanovas' general store was buying up and selling merchandise for ten leagues around.  Again, Antônio was constantly on the road.

But the day that the pilgrims appeared on the hillside of O Cambaio and entered Canudos by its one and only street, singing hymns of praise to the Blessed Jesus at the top of their lungs, he happened to be home.  From the veranda of the former steward's quarters, now converted into a combination house and store, he watched as these fervent creatures drew closer and closer.  His brother, his wife, his sister-in-law saw him turn pale when the man in dark purple who was heading the procession came over to him.  They recognized those burning eyes, that deep voice, that gaunt body.  "Have you learned to count yet?" the saint asked with a smile, holding out his hand to the merchant.

Polish Woodstock Looks Awesome

Google Reader is closing at the end of this month, and I've been going through the articles and links which I've starred (saved) there in order to decide whether or not to retain the link elsewhere for the future.  I rediscovered a New York Times Magazine 6th Floor blog post ("To Be Young, Polish and Covered in Mud") featuring a Look slideshow, "Come On, Feel the Mud", of the Przystanek Woodstock festival.

I rarely post to Facebook, but I posted the link to this slideshow on August 26, 2011, the same afternoon I discovered it.  I absolutely loved the sense of joyful abandon which are portrayed.  Just looking at the photos made me happier and I wanted to share.  It's worth preserving here as well.  My own comments to the Facebook link I posted were "Polish Woodstock looks awesome!" followed by "Maybe the most we can hope for is that Hurricane Irene prods our own descent into muddy revelry..."

Peter Bohler (http://www.peterbohler.com) for The New York Times Magazine

Alton Brown on Infectious Learning

I've often...I've had teachers ask me, you know, what, what is the, the basis of, of, your education, of, you know, being able to educate people and I always say "curiosity" first.  If the, if the teacher can be curious, can have a desire to know, that is extremely infectious, and and...the, the 'Good Eats' episodes that I like the most were the ones that were made during a time when I was learning the most.

-Alton Brown

On Point with Tom Ashbrook - "Celebrity Chef Culture"

(Originally Aired: Thursday, August 30, 2007 11-12PM ET)

Knot Then

At Roberta's helpful suggestion, I've begun (within the past year) always tying my sneaker laces in double-knots.  I otherwise have a problem keeping them tied.  It became embarrassing when twice during a single walk her her I've have to stop to retie them.  I wondered if my laces were of the extra lubricated variety.

Laces are annoying.  Once your shoe becomes untied, that's it - you've already lost.  You look stupid with your laces untied and stupid bending over to tie them.  No amount of cool can save that - Jame Bond's laces never came undone.

I wore Velcro Keds until I was ten years old. I only stopped then because they no longer made Keds in my size.  So, at that time I was then ten and I still hadn't learned to tie my shoelaces yet.  It's not that I had a learning disability preventing me from learning.  I was just caught in a catch-22, where I never practiced tying shoelaces because I always wore Velcro, and because I never learned to tie my laces, at each trip to the shoe store I'd again select the Velco Keds (which I liked anyway).

Eventually, I outgrew kids sizes and Velcro was no longer an option.  I remember that spring recess in the fifth grade on my very first day wearing the lace-up white Reebok's I was forced into.  I felt like I stepped out on a tightrope without a safety net.  I stood off to the side of the playground that day.  I was too afraid to run because I knew that if I accidentally shook my laces loose, I'd have no way to re-tie them.  I'd be helplessly unlaced and exposed as the fifth grader who was unable tie his own laces.  In rare precociousness (in determination if not skill-set), that very night I asked my mother to teach me once and for all and we sat down and practiced until I finally got it.

My current work shoe.  Trying to  keep it classy with a single knot, but undermined by the clownish excess lace material.

Velcro shoes are used now by seniors unable to bend over to tie their laces.  Life sometimes runs full circle.  I'll look forward to strapping on my Keds, a reacquainted friend, for a few last walks together. 

Which phone company do NSA employees use?

The big story today concerned the leak that the National Security Agency has been developing a database of Americans' telecommunications.  Verizon was the mobile company named has having its records used (but I'd expect there are others).

If the program is really no big deal as the U.S. government alleges, I'd be curious to know - for the officials, technicians, and analysts "in the know" about the scope and purpose of the program - which mobile phone company do you use?

A History of First Contact with Poison Ivy

Fifteen years ago I finishing my junior year of high school and I was starting to think about where I would want to attend college.  Around that time I chanced upon The George Washington University's website, which advertised that GW's graduation took place "on the front lawn of the White House" (actually on the Ellipse, a slight inaccuracy).  With that, I was sold.  I already knew I wanted an urban setting.  I ended up only appling to colleges in Washington, New York, and Boston.  UConn was the one exception, as a safety school.  My classmates warned me based on stories from their older siblings that Storrs, CT was a rural hell, where our only options for the next four years would be class and cow-tipping.

Although it was partially the excitement and amenities of city life which attracted me to these schools, another definite reason was that I was determined to avoid my reoccurring poison ivy rashes.  Since elementary school, I lost on average a week or two each year to severe poison ivy rashes.  I have terrible, hyper-allergic reactions - eyes swollen shut, my skin weeping pillow-staining orange fluid.  Once I even needed a shot I had it so bad.  Poison ivy was the reason I stopped going camping - catching poison ivy was almost guaranteed - and never wanted to go to sleep-away camp.  I completely ruled enlisting in the army based on my susceptibility, and in general limited as much as possible any outdoors activity.  Moving to the southwest desert seemed really attractive, or even more preferably, to a concrete urban jungle, where no green thing would grow.  I've been a city boy ever since I left Norwalk, and I've only gotten rashes twice since.  Once when I was visiting home during summer vacation, and again most recently in 2010 on the Blackstone River Bikeway in Rhode Island.

Over the past month, my walk to work has exploded in green.  Vines are creeping along fences where they weren't several weeks ago.  I can tell they're not poison ivy but they make me nervous.  In the final 10 minutes of my walk, I skirt through a mini nature trail in the Fresh Pond reservation.  In the woods there I see lots of suspicious vines.  They make me very scared, and I walk down the middle of the cement walkway with my arms folded in.

Last week, I started wondering how people lived here 400 years ago when everything was woods and poison ivy was possibly even more widespread.  Those first explorers must have been just as susceptible to it, yet lacked Cortisol steroids or air conditioners once they got the rash.  They'd get the same terrible reaction I experienced but they would still need to go deer hunting if they didn't want to starve.  I'm not aware of any such poisonous plant in Europe and so the this was just one more scary story about the New World they were inhabiting, along with cannibals, Satan's witches, and plants that make you ooze.

One day at my workstation I started poking around into first contact writings about poison ivy.  I found exactly what I was looking for when I located an article titled "An Anecdotal Biographical History of Poison Ivy" by Adolph Rostenberg, M.D., appearing in the Archives of Dermatology ([1955, 72(5): 438-445].  Dr. Rostenberg relays that the first reference in the English language to Poison Ivy was actually written by Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, in his 1624 book, The Generall Historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles. Smith wrote:

"The poisoned weed is much in shape like our English ivy, but being but touched, causeth redness, itching, and lastly, blisters, and which, howsoever, after a while pass away of themselves, without further harm; yet because for the time they are somewhat painful, it hath got itself an ill name, although questionless of no ill nature."

This passage is also the origin of the plant's common name, "poison ivy". Rostenberg commented anyone who has actually had a case of poison ivy would probably believe Smith was being "extremely charitable" in using the phrase "questionless of no ill nature". Rostenberg next draws from a report ("An account of the Poyson Wood Tree in New-England") written by Massachusetts-man Paul Dudley and submitted in a letter to the Royal Society around 1720:

"The Poyson-Wood-Tree grows only in Swamps, or low wet Grounds, and is something like a small Ash, but much more like a Sumach, and therefore is by some called the Swamp Sumach, for the Twiggs, Leaves, and Shape are exactly like the Sumach, and it likewise bears a dry Berry. It never grows bigger than a Man's Leg, nor taller than Alder, but spreads much, and several together, especially about the Stump or Roots of one that is cut down; as it is of quick growth, so it does not last long; the inside of the Wood is yellow and very full of Juice, as glutinous as Honey or Turpentine; the Wood itself has a very strong unsavory Smell, but the Juice stinks as bad as Carrion. Having thus described the Tree, we shall now proceed to give an account of its Poisonous Quality, etc.

1. And first, it must be observed that it poysons two ways, either by touching or handling of it, or by the Smell; for the Scent of it, when cut down in the Woods, or on the Fire, has poisoned Persons to a very great degree. One of my Neighbours was blind for above a Week together, with only handling it. And a Gentleman in the Country, sitting by his Fire-side in the Winter, was swelled for several Days with the Smoak or Flame of some Poyson-Wood that was in the Fire.  
2. A second thing to be remarked of the Poyson-Wood is, that it has this effect only on some particular Persons and Constitutions; for I have seen my own Brother not only handle, but chew it without any harm at all. And so by the same Fire one shall be poysoned and another not at all affected.
3. But then Thirdly, this sort of Poyson is never Mortal, and will go off in a few Days of it self, like the Sting of a Bee; but generally the Person applies Plantain Water, or Sallet-Oyl and Cream. 
4. As to its Operation, within a few Hours after the Person is poysoned, he feels an itching Pain that provokes a Scratching, which is followed by an Inflammation and Swelling; sometimes a Man's Legs only have been poysoned, and have run with Water.

My Neighbour that was so sadly poysoned with handling it, told me one thing very remarkable of the Wood, and that is, that when he touched it, he plainly perceiv'd it to differ from the other Wood, that he was throwing up into his Cart; for it was as cold as a piece of Ice; and withal assured me, he could distinguish it blindfold, or in the dark, from any other Wood in the World, by its Coldness; but the poor Man is as much afraid of it, when he goes into the Woods, as of a Rattle-Snake. He further tells me, that he felt an itching in a few Hours after he had handled the Wood, but the swelling did not come on till in about three days."

The first known illustration of Poison Ivy from Jacques Philippe Cornut's Canadensium Plantarum Historia (1635)

Rostenberg's final colonial-era description comes from Peter Kalm's Travels in North America. Kalm was sent to New World on behalf of Sweden in 1748 to to report on plants located there. Kalm talks in several places about poison ivy, and Rostenberg quotes his lengthiest account:

"A species of Rhus, which was frequent in the marshes here, was called the poison tree by both English and Swedes. Some of the former gave it the name of swamp-sumach, and my countrymen gave it the same name. Dr. Linnaeus in his botanical works calls it Rhus Vernix. An incision being made into the tree, a whitish yellow juice, which has a nauseous smell, comes out between the bark and the wood. This tree is not known for its good qualities, but greatly so for the effect of its poison, which though it is noxious to some people, yet does not in the least affect others. And therefore one person can handle the tree as he pleases, cut it, peel off its bark, rub it or the wood upon his hands, smell of it, spread the juice upon his skin, and make more experiments, with no inconvenience to himself; another person, on the contrary, dares not meddle with the tree while its wood is fresh, nor can he venture to touch a hand which has handled it, nor even to expose himself to the smoke of a fire which is made with this wood, without soon feeling its bad effects; for the face, the hands, and frequently the whole body, swells excessively, and is affected with a very acute pain. Sometimes bladders or blisters arise in great plenty, and make the sick person look as if he was infected by a leprosy. In some people the external thin skin, or cuticle, peels off in a few days, as is the case when a person has scalded or burnt any part of his body. Nay, the nature of some persons will not even allow them to approach the place where the tree grows, or to expose themselves to the wind, when it carries the effluvia or exhalations of this tree with it, without letting them feel the inconvenience of the swelling, which I have just now described. Their eyes are sometimes shut up for one, or two and more days together, by the swelling. I know two brothers, one of whom could without danger handle this tree in what manner he pleased, whereas the other could not come near it without swelling. A person sometimes does not know that he has touched this poisonous plant, or that he has been near it, before his face and hands shew it by their swelling. I have known old people who were more afraid of this tree than of a viper; and I was acquainted with a person who, merely by the noxious exhalations of it, was swelled to such a degree that he was as stiff as a log of wood, and was turned about in his bed.

On relating, in the winter of the year 1750, the poisonous qualities of the swamp sumach to my [unclear], he only laughed, and looked upon the whole as a fable, in which opinion he was confirmed by his having often handled the tree the autumn before, cut many branches of it, which he had carried for a good while in his hand, in order to preserve its seeds, and put many into the herbáis, and all this without feeling the least inconvenience. He would therefore, being a kind of philosopher in his own way, take nothing for granted of which he had no sufficient proofs, especially as he had his own experience in the summer of the 1749, to support the contrary opinion. But in the next summer his system of philosophy was overturned, for his hands swelled, and he felt a violent pain and itching in his eyes, as soon as he touched the tree, and this inconvenience not only attended him when he meddled with this kind of sumach, but even when he had any thing to do with the rhus radicans, or that species of sumach which climbs along the trees, and is not by far so poisonous as the former. By this adventure he was convinced of the power of the poison tree, that I could not easily persuade him to gether more seeds of it for me. But he not only felt the noxious effects of it in summer, when he was very hot, but even in winter, when both he and the wood were cold. Hence it appears, that though a person be secured against the power of this poison for some time, yet, that in length of time, he may be affected with it, as well as people of a weaker constitution. I have likewise tried experiments of every kind with the poison tree on myself. I have spread its juice upon my hands, cut and broke its branches, peeled off its bark, and rubbed my hands with it, smelt at it, carried pieces of it in my bare hands, and repeated all this frequently without feeling the baneful effects so commonly annexed to it; but I however once experienced that the poison of the sumach was not entirely without effect upon me.

On a hot day in summer, as I was in some degree of perspiration, I cut a branch of the tree, and carried it in my hand for about half an hour together, and smelt at it now and then. I felt no effects from it till in the vening; but next morning I awoke with a violent itching of my eye-lids, and the parts thereabouts; and this was so paineful, that I could hardly keep my hands from it. It ceased after I had washed my eyes for a while with very cold water; but my eye-lids were very stiff all that day; at night the itching returned; and in the morning as I awoke, I felt it as ill as the morning before, and I used the same remedy against it. However, it continued almost for a whole week together, and my eyes were very red, and my eye-lids were with difficulty moved during all that time. My pain ceased entirely afterwards. About the same time, I had spread the juice of the tree very thick upon my hand. Three days after they occasioned blisters, which soon went off without affecting much. I have not experienced any thing more of the effects of this plant, nor had I any desire so to do. However, I found that it could not exert its power upon me when I was not perspiring.

I have never heard that the poison of this sumach has been mortal; but the pain ceases after a few days duration. The natives formerly made their flutes of this tree, because it has a great deal of pith. Some people assured me, that a person suffering from its noisome exhalations, would easily recover by spreading a mixture of the wood burnt to charcoal, and hog's lard, upon the swelled parts. Some asserted that they had really tried this remedy. In some places this tree is rooted out, on purpose that its poison may not affect the workmen. The rhus radicans is a shrub or tree which grows abundantly in this country, and has in common with the ivy, called hederá arbórea, the quality of not growing without the support either of a tree, a wall, or a hedge. I have seen it climbing to the very top of high trees in the woods, and its branches shoot out every where little roots, which fasten upon the tree, and as it were enter into it. When the stem is cut, it emits a pale brown sap of a disagreeable scent. This sap is so sharp that the letters and characters made upon linen with it cannot be got out again, but grow blacker the more the cloth is washed. Boys commonly marked their names on their linen with this juice. If you write with it on paper the letters never go out, but grow blacker from time to time.

This species of sumach has the same noxious qualities as the poisonous sumach, or poison-tree, which I have above described, being poisonous to some people, though not to every one. Therefore all that has been said of the poison-tree is likewise applicable to this; excepting that the former has the stronger poison. However, I have seen people who have been as much swelled from the noxious exhalations of the latter, as they could have been from those of the former. I likewise know, that of two sisters, the one could manage the tree without being affected by its venom, though the other immediately felt it as soon as the exhalations of the tree came near her, or whenever she came a yard too near the tree, and even when she stood in the way of the wind, which blew directly from this shrub. But upon me this species of sumach has never exerted its power; though I made above a hundred experiments upon myself with the greatest stems, and the juice once squirted into my eye, without doing me any harm. On another person's hand, which I had covered very thick with it, the skin, a few hours after, became as hard as a piece of tanned leather, and peeled off in the following days, as if little scales fell from it."

In Just reading those accounts I felt complete empathy for each sufferer. When I started to read the Rostenberg's article, I hoped I might stumble across some old Indian remedy, lost to our modern knowledge.  Instead I found people I can relate to, born centuries earlier, suffering from the same miseries and instilled with the same fear of a plant as me. 

Crewing

I was a paperboy for The Norwalk Hour from approximately 1992 to 1995.  My daily route just went around my own street, and I probably made about $20 weekly.  When the only place I had to spend this money was the Rite Aid around the corner, actually it was more than I could possibly spend (until Mortal Kombat II was released at the arcade - oh, how much much did I waste just to knock cartoon men into the pit?).  Christmastime was extra lucrative with tips or boxes of cookies, and during the summers I often filled in for other paperboys when they were on vacation during the summers.  The ink would run and I remember having hands stained black with ink after I covered three routes on Saturday (and since there was no Sunday edition back then, Saturdays were The Hour's back-breaking thick editions).

Before I became a paperboy, the older paperboys let me know the funnest part about the job was "crewing".  I'm not sure, but "crewing" might have stood for "reCRUITing" or "sending the CREW out".  It was one night a week when paperboys were sent out to go door-to-door to try and sign new subscriptions for the paper.  When I finally got a paper route, I was so happy to be able to eligible for this sacred rite.

Crewing night was very formulaic.  Typically it began like this: all the neighborhood paperboys met at my house to get picked up my our route manager.  During the years when Matt, our disproportionately huge-butted manager, oversaw us, we would hear the sounds of Heavy D's  "Now That We Found Love" echoing off the nearby assisted living apartments, announcing Matt's arrival.  Matt would show up in his car, named "The Bomb".  Only two doors and zero seat-belts were functional.

We were driven to The Hour's building on Main Avenue, and entering there, I have to admit, was pretty cool.  Huge printing presses flanked our left as we walked into the large newsroom floor.  I remember recognizing the name of the sports editor's cubicle.  To twelve year-olds from Norwalk, The Hour might as well have been The New York Times.  The very first time we walked in, my neighbor and fellow paperboy exclaimed "this is where the magic happens" , like it was Willy Wonka's factory.  On the walk up to the cafeteria meeting room through the newsroom, I would hypnotically stare at Matt's pendulating rear.  Seriously, it must have been caused by localized Gigantism.

All the other paperboys going crewing around the city that night were sent upstairs to the cafeteria.  What met us there was from our perspective a pizza party.  From Hour employees' perspective, they needed to make sure we had the sales pitch down pat.  We were each called up to rehearse with an Hour staffer.  Of course, when you're twelve, more important than getting the sales pitch right would be to play it cool in front of our friends, and give a goofy speech.  The adults did not take kindly to that and I was dressed down every other week.  Matt would sit in the corner munching pizza.  One time I through a cup of soda at a paperboy who said I liked a girl I didn't.  Always, on the way out of the building we'd pass the supply closet and steal bags of rubberbands.  We didn't need them, it was just because we could.  If that sounds wrong, at least know that Karma eventually got back to me - the piles of rubberbands in my bedroom were later used as a litterbox my kitten, Cinnamon.

We usually had some time before our manager met us in the parking lot to drive us out (probably finishing up that pizza), and we always made a stop at the convenience store across the parking lot.  My neighbor walking in joke-yelling "yo, I want some condoms!"  I bought video game magazines that promised all the Mortal Kombat II moves (and so spent money which made me want to spend more money).  It soon got time to go, and best to go out with a bang.  That particular store had a walled-off section referred to as "The Corner", and was stocked floor-to-ceiling with adult magazines.  There was a notice reading that no one under 18 was allowed in "The Corner".  When you put a sign like that up, you're guaranteed twelve year olds are going to be running in there.  The store owner would chase us out and we'd run over to meet Matt at The Bomb.

Truthfully, the funnest part of crewing was now over.  We were usually dropped off at some apartment complex and then our manager took off.  We weren't even given a list of current subscribers.  If there was a playground in the complex we goofed around a bit, talked about "The Corner".  One time my brother and our neighbor snuck a dead bird into another paperboy's rolled up sample newspapers, and the bird fell out while he was speaking to a potential subscriber.  We did also ring a lot of doorbells trying to sell The Hour, usually out of boredom, and also because there were about $10 kickbacks for each new subscription we secured.  The sales speech we were instructed to give usually morphed into an unenthusiastic "Do you get The Hour? {No} Do you want The Hour? {No}"  The people we pitched to living in those apartments seemed unaccustomed to interacting with kids.  I remember most often being met by grimy men in t-shirts, seeming-single, probably in the middle of cooking dinner.  They always looked like the strangers in those school videos warning us not to take candy from strangers.  I also remember a lot of smelly apartments: stale food, pee.  One time a dog ripped through a screen door to bark at me...when the owner showed up, I didn't really have anything to do except try to sell him a subscription (he said no).  One time we were dropped off in a complex a little on the ghetto side, were people peaking out out through chain-locked doors, sometimes with beads (at that time, a gang symbol - we all play-scared ourselves to thinking we were going to getting shot - and I never found out in that neighborhood which gang blue beads represented ).

It was rare to sign a subscription - maybe I got one every other crewing night.  One huge night I got two or three.  We were almost exclusively paperboys, but the one papergirl that came with us consistently got more subscriptions that the rest of us combined.  Total sexism - there's something that makes it easier to say "no" to doofy middle schools boys than a sweet little girl.

I can't recall why, but I have an association between crewing and The Simpsons, so crewing must have taken place on a Thursday night.  I think the goal was to get back in time to catch the episode (after pizza was over, the only other thing to look forward to).  So away we went, approaching the old ladies' home in The Bomb, blasting "Now That We Found Love".  I don't think The Hour employs paperboys anymore, so there must not be any more crewing.  I don't think "The Corner" is there anymore, and The Simpsons isn't on Thursday nights now.  Heavy D died two years ago - The Bomb probably died twenty years ago.  With the collapse of local newspapers, I wonder how long The Hour will still be around. It's become a lost era, but a weekly highlight of my otherwise crummy middle school years.  I glad I got to be part of the crew.

Letter from Bridgeport Jail

THIS CORRESPONDENCE ORIGINATED FROM AN INMATE AT A CONNECTICUT CORRECTIONAL FACILITY

3/24/13

Mom;

Well; if I was you; I probably would ignore this letter; or throw it away, you know?  I am; and was under the impression you don't want to talk to me; and I can't blame you.  I'm certainly not angry; apathetic would be more accurate.

It's very important for me to prove to people; you included; that I am not a loser; or won't be successful; etc.  It's very hard to do that in jail.  I dunno how much you know, but I was arrested in Westport last July and violated probation.  I made bond on both cases.  After that; it was my last straw.  I went and got help - for the first time; I saw a Doctor - I also saw Judi's social worker; but didn't like her.  I paid Dr. Mason $300 per hour, and saw him 3 times per month.  I included the letter in here -> from him ->

Aside - let me first say that I know you think I am a "master manipulator" - but be sure I'm not asking for $ from you; I have paid the Dr. and my lawyer.  I don't need your financial help - so that's not why I write.

Anyways; I have included some letters Dr. Mason has written on my behalf.  There's obviously something wrong with me; he says PTSD + Recurrant Depression.  I don't know; but truthfully; he has helped me stop gambling.  I almost never do since I have seen him.

It seemed in late January that I might not have to go to jail for my probation violation -> I saved; paid almost $7,000 in restitution.  I have 3 jobs.  But I rented a car from Hertz - in my name - and just did not keep up with the payments.  They arrested me in Bridgeport, charged me with Larceny 1st.  I am not worried about that charge; the car was returned; however it doesn't look good for Westport + my VOP.  So here I sit; with a bond I cannot make.  Since I promised you in mid 2009 that I would not touch a cent of yours; I have not.  I have not taken TJ's either; and yes I know his ID was found on me in Westport - it wasn't because I was stealing; and I won't comment on that now because I'm not sure if you will show this to the wrong person.  I heard he was engaged.  Actually I saw my cousin J.J. at the gym last summer he told me.  I don't talk to any other family member.  I don't blame them either.  But congrats.  I too had a serious girlfriend for about 8 months, you would have liked her; and she knew about my past.  I don't know what will happen with that now.

In truth; I do want you to feel sorry for me, but not guilty - you have nothing to do with it -> but there's something in my mind that makes it hard for me to make good decisions.  I certainly had the money to pay for my rental - why didn't I??  I don't know.  Can't answer.

My lawyer's name is Sharen F----y.  She's very nice; she isn't a public defender; I paid her.  I'll ask her to email or call you.  Actually, Sophia; my girlfriend wanted to reach out to you around Christmas just to say hello; but I told her that wouldn't be a good idea.  I'd like to know when TJ is getting married.  Don't be cynical + think its for any other reason than curiosity.  Also; considering you have never written back - ever; I ave to assume I won't get a reply anyways.  There is something I want Sharen to tell you that will help -> and I refuse to write it down in this letter.

So the purpose of this letter is to tell you why + where I am; let you know Sharen may reach out to you -> and try to show  you that I am trying to better myself my seeing a Dr.  It's a small step, but it's the first time ever.

You have sent me books + cosmetic $ before; and if you'd like to do so please do; but it isn't necessary; that's not why I write.

I am not a bad person; but actions become character as you know; and certainly looking at 2008-2012 is not a good indication of the person I am.  I'd give anything or do anything to stop this stuff from happening - to stop these actions or whatever it is.  I really wish I could just be normal.  Wife; kids; job.  I will one day.  How can I ask for help when everyone thinks I'm trying to get over on them??  I guess I'm just sorry all of it happened.  If I could rewind I would.  I don't want to hurt anyone I'm too old.  And yet I put myself in these silly situations.  I'm 300 times smarter than any person in this place, which only makes it that much harder to take.  It's very clear what went wrong.  0 times in trouble/arrested before July 07, and dozens after - but why is very unclear.  Why don't I care about rules?  Why can't I seem to get out of my own way?  I'm not here for stealing thousands like in '09 - despite whatever the paper says I didn't take any $.  I have no reason to lie to you.  But I'm in here anyways.  I need to change or I'll be back.

Just saying sorry; I'm not terrible; please keep an open mind.  I honestly have no clue what will happen in court.  I could be out this year or 2017.  I have no idea -> Ha!  I'm sure you wouldn't mind if it was 2017 huh?  You told me once you felt safer.  You know I've left yo u alone.  So that argument holds no water.  Though unlikely; hope to hear from you.

Eric

I'm home for Memorial Day.  My mother holds my mail, and she had saved a letter she received from my brother after he was (finally) arrested (again) in February.  She thought it'd get a kick out of it.  I'm glad how far she's progressed in five years.  Four years ago I was literally begging her to call the police and she just couldn't.  Now she gets it: him, his problems, and what he does to her.  Yesterday she told me, "he [my brother] wants me to be in his life again, and I'm not gonna".

The 'master manipulator' line my brother said, it's a pop-psych buzzword.  I wonder whether he got it from my mom or picked it up from somewhere else (like in counseling)?  I was unsettled to hear he's seeing a therapist.  I've heard therapy doesn't work on psychopaths (my brother definitely has many of those tendencies) and only further teaches them to manipulate others.

I wonder sometimes what he's really thinking.  About us.  I have to believe Eric thinks he's smarter than us all, that we're wrapped around his little finger or are getting to be with each letter he writes.  Tellingly, he hasn't written a single letter to me in all the years he's been incarcerated, not even to say "sorry".  He knows he has a better chance to push a mother's buttons.  The letter above included several attempts to bait her to initiate contact: "I could tell you something but I'm not going to ..."  Most of his messages from the past several years included variations on that tactic.

I made a cameo!  He knows I got engaged.  While I don't like him knowing details of my life, it's not a private secret that I'm engaged.  I also like that it shows life is moving on without him.

Also, if he didn't take my "$", it's certainly because he couldn't, not wouldn't.  His letter omitted other cases against him, where charges explicitly state he tried to open accounts in my name.  Maybe it he  successfully drew against fraudulent accounts then technically it wouldn't have been my money he took, it'd be the bank's.  But who's left on the hook?

He wrote this letter in late March, and he's seemingly since pleaded out of his charges just this month.  The sentencing hearing is scheduled for early June.  I hope he remains in jail for some time  I, personally, am happier when he's there.  It means less worries that my credit card won't be accepted when I try to pay, less worries every unknown number calling me is a debt collector.  In his letter he wrote he'd do anything to keep this stuff from happening.  That's easy then - this stuff doesn't happen when he's locked up.

Popping Wheelings Like Whoa!

Spring is in the air!  I want to run!  I want to bike!

Via Design Taxi, this animated Polaroid is hypnotic.  It's also strangely evocative of Paper Boy.  In the 1980s, in our free time, we played video games about doing work.  Why?

At least, when I delivered for The Hour, calamities didn't include tornadoes or even honestly stray dogs.  Worse case scenario was the ink blackening our hands on hot summer's days

Jibbs and the Beauty

I made this photo to my Facebook timeline cover yesterday. The photo was first published in National Geographic, May 1938.  The original caption read:

"Jiggs, Simian Movie Star, Rehearses With 'The Jungle Princess.' The setting, on a tropical island, is for a scene in the new Paramount picture, Jungle Love, starring Dorothy Lamour..."

Sadly, the caption continues that Jiggs died shortly after filming completed - I omitted that unfortunate detail when I wrote the Facebook description.

You know, I always cried at the end of King Kong...

Jibbs on set with co-star Dorothy Lamour

Workouts Where You Find Them

On occasion during those cold winter nights I needed to cut weight, I threw on a garbage bag, a couple of turtlenecks, full sweats, and then jogged the mile or so to Naramake elementary school, my alma mater, to run laps of the building.

I'd also use the playground's gymnasium equipment to include a strength training workout.  I'd swing across the ladder bars, do pull-ups, and even attempted some Rocky IV style upside-down sit-ups (in constant fear of breaking my neck).  Basically, I did all the things I wasn't strong enough to do in elementary school ten years earlier.  Ironically, at 17 my height became a bigger impediment than my weight: the equipment was low enough so that I could easily reach up and grab the bars.  Obviously, it was designed to prevent perilous falls for a 10 year-old rather than allow me a full-extension pull-up.

Playground workouts are a thing, now, and I think it's partially about the finding utility in the environment around you - I used the playground because I didn't have a gym.  In this, a related phenomena is people preforming stunts around their cityscapes, finding physical obstacles in the everyday.  Skateboard stunt videos - people flying off stair railings - have been popular since MTV's Jackass, but I prefer the stripped-down, equipment-less spirit of free-running.  The sport has gained much exposurey through Youtube, but especially through Sébastien Foucan's parkour run in Casino Royale (and the best Bond film opening, ever).  To clarify, I'm talking about watching, not participating in free-running.  I'm not sure I'm even the same species as these guys.

Even Stan Lee parkours!  I found this good-humored video via InfinityList.  Highlights are "Lee's" opening neck-crunch warm-up, Spiderman-ing up the wall, a legs-splayed rope climb, and the bird scare run.

Krossed Out

Music news announced the death of one of Kris Kross's two Chrises this morning.  Chris Kelly, 34, was found unresponsive in his Atlanta home yesterday (the suspected cause is drug overdose).

Chris, MJ, and Chris - now only one remains...

Reactions to Kelly's death today elicited a wave early 90's nostalgia.  I was no exception - the one-hit wonders' one hit was 1992's Jump.  The song pitches me back to 6th grade, and my first middle school dance.  I'm standing awkwardly along the gym wall in the vicinity of boys I really wasn't friends with, to at least not be standing alone.  At 11, I played with Transformers while my cooler peers listened to music with the Parental Advisory warning: they knew what O.P.P. stood for.  The moment I best remember most is when Jump started playing.  The other boys went wild, everyone (else) knew the lyrics.  Their mid-step pause to cry out to each other Kelly's "wiggity-wiggity-wiggity-wack" line.  It was like that song cemented their secret fraternity I'd never be apart of.  I attempted a lame Running Man on the outskirts of their circle and certainly just embarrassed myself.

Looking back twenty years and seeing that little boy, it's so sad to think how his story would one day end.

A Hedge of Watermelon

Watermelon farmer player it safe, warned me that my seedless watermelon might be seeded. I'm happy to report it delivered on seedlessness as promised (and deliciousness!!)...

Seedless Watermelon: It may contain seeds

Words Worth 1,000 Pictures

Now (following Pictures Worth 1,000 Words Parts 1 and 2), something slightly different: Through the tastefully curated Show Us Your Clips video curation website I came across a beautiful and infectious short film, Words.  It features a series of interlocked short clips which focus around an theme - pay attention, and you'll get it.  WNYC’s Radiolab seems to have had a hand in its development - it's definitely their type of thing.

Cheers!


WORDS from Everynone on Vimeo.

Pictures Worth 1,000 Words - Part Two

Writing yesterday's posting featuring a static image so able to portray a complete (humorous) story, I recalled another favorite: Elliot Erwitt's photo featuring a lone woman viewing Francisco Goya's La Maja Vestida aside a group of men viewing La Meja Desnuda.  So great.

Prado Museum, Madrid. 1995.

Pictures Worth 1,000 Words - Part One

A posting in today's New York Times's Lens Blog discussed "Protecting the Right to Photograph, or Not to Be Photographed".  It's an interesting issue, that I myself have struggled with.  When I take photos while traveling in urban locations, I prefer my shots to not look post-apocalyptic.  I think they're more vibrant and better capture the true experience of the setting with people filling them, preferably locals and not my staged friends.  But this means strangers.  Is it rude to use people's images without their permission?  The didn't consent to being extras to enhance my photos.  Will natives think I'm stealing their souls?  In the U.S., I believe anyone out in public is fair game to photographed, but being legal doesn't mean not jerkish.  Abroad, our on-board pro camera man during Semester at Sea us told us that he always asked permission before he shot photos of other people (though it pretty quickly became clear that wasn't the case).  I try to snap quickly and rush away; I rationalize it by rarely sharing the photos I take with anyone but me.

The blog post included an photo taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson of two women seated at the Brasserie Lipp in 1960's Paris, a clash of generations.  I loved the photo - it's amazing how in just one static image Cartier-Bresson was able to tell a whole story.  To have asked for permission, the moment would have been lost.  I'm glad he snapped the camera, and gladder still he was able to share the picture.

Brasserie Lipp, Saint-Germain des Près, Paris. 1969

When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder

After skipping the past several Sundays, I was guilted enough to attend mass today.  A guest priest was filling in.  He gave his homily (Something about the bombings and how the rest of us are, on a lesser level, also hurtful to those around us.  We shouldn't do that).  Then, and I never saw this before, he mentioned that he passed out lyrics to a hymn, then sang a rousing essentially solo of "When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder".  The man had a terrific singing voice.

I'd never heard this song  before, but it really stuck with me today, and I found a recording through the Library of Congress's National Jukebox.

Will you be there?

Always Our Parents' Children

Yesterday during the lockdown I finished Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep - one of The New York Times's 10 Best Books of 2005 - which I enjoyed.  While I couldn't relate with the boarding school high school experience, much of the high school experience is universal.   Sittenfeld captured teenage insecurity in a deeply familiar voice, until...  The novel's final chapter took, um, a change of tone...a Judy Blume's Forever-esque change of tone...

Page 291 in the paperback edition of Prep: Bow-chika-wow-wow!

I blushed!!  The novel's back-matter included "A Conversion with Curtis Sittenfeld", the transcript of Katie Bacon's interview of Sittenfeld for The Atlantic Monthly.  I'd pass on that kind of thing, but being lockdown-bored, I skimmed it.  At one point Sittenfeld divulged that both her parents thought the novel would have been better without the last chapter, which they felt was unnecessarily graphic.  Bacon follows up:

Bacon:  The sex scenes are fairly explicit.  It must have been a hard thing to know that your parents were going to read them. 

Sittenfeld:  I think it's one of those things that as you're writing you can't think about.  It would just be paralyzing.  There are plenty of cases where if I had known the level of scrutiny the book would receive I might have done things differently.  As I was writing the book, I knew people would wonder, Is this true?  But I didn't want that to determine how I wrote it.  And I didn't want to write the book in sch a way that I hoped it would reflect flatteringly on me.  I didn't want to write a book where my main goal was to make people think that I, that author, was a charming person. I wanted to do what I felt was in the book's interest, not in my own best interest.

The question touched a subject I've long semi-obsessed:  Do others consider what their parents' reactions when releasing adult-themed material?  I wouldn't think of anything else, not escape that existential dread.  The, actors that do love scenes, teenage actresses that do topless scenes, can they take their parents to the premier with pride? (Those are my daughter's #$%@!!)  Numerous social scientists, even friends in my cohort, wrote dissertations on teenagers' sexual activity.  For me, that topic was clearly off-limits to me.  How could I have answered my mom when she asked what I was doing my PhD in?  She might think, "my son the pervert?!"  I always imagined certain career-paths were reserved for orphans.

Sittenfeld is the mature artist I am not, I'm also an extreme case.  So shy am I, I feared being able to kiss my own bride at our wedding (All those people looking at me, and "turn around, Mom!!").  I anticipate the embarrassment accompanying that announcement that my wife and I are expecting our first child.  This statement equivocally announces, "several months ago, we had sex".  Given how little has changed in the past fifteen years, I wouldn't expect too much from the next five.  The Mrs. might need to handle that announcement.  I'll stand by her, eyes to the ground.

Notes from a Lockdown

NYTimes Interactive Map of Watertown Manhunt Developments

Today was a payday and before I left for work I opened my computer to transfer funds.  Glancing at my Facebook timeline, I saw that there had been dramatic developments overnight in the marathon bombings story.  Yesterday afternoon, footage and photos of the bombers had been released yesterday afternoon.  Last night, the two bombers, since identified as Dzkokhar Tsarnaev and his brother Tamerlan (both of Cambridge) may have robbed a convenience store, then definitely shot dead an MIT police officer, stole a car (all in Cambridge), drove to Watertown, and engaged in a gunfight with the police in which Tamerlan was killed and another police officer was wounded.  Dzkokhar escaped (allegedly driving over his brother's body in the process) and remains at large. From MIT to Watertown the two must have driven in the vicinity of my apartment, and honestly I was uneasy about the thought of having to walk to work (the area skirts the Watertown border).  I woke Roberta to watch the news and she saw on her phone that Lesley was closed.  Hopeful, I checked my company's hotline and was relieved to learn that our Cambridge office was closed for the day.

Cambridge and Watertown, as well as Newton, Brighton, Allston, Belmont, and eventually Boston have been in lockdown since this morning - approximately one million people affected by this manhunt.  Some Watertown residents were evacuated, and the rest of us were told to remain indoors with doors locked.  All businesses were ordered closed (Dunkin' Donuts was - and this is true - asked to stay open to serve police working).  The MBTA is closed as is Amtrak lines running through the area, the line as far down as New York.  At least two license plates alerts were issued by Connecticut state police.

Our own neighborhood has been really quiet except for the sirens sounding continuously throughout the day.  Practically, "lockdown" has entailed sitting around to monitor news by television and internet.  Between 8-9am, police in Watertown had surrounded one particular house and tactical people were called in.  I thought it was all going to wrap up and I wondered whether I would be going into the office after all.  Clearly, Tsarnaev wasn't found, and this was the last time police allowed media to show their movements.

The news has been filling much of the airtime with interviews of the boys' local interactions.  The mechanic where they took their car, their fellow classmates from Cambridge Rindge and Latin (where Dzokhar was apparently a wrestling star).  Even Dzkokhar's prom photo circulated this morning:

Dzkokhar Tsarnaev, as normal teenager

I wonder what his date is thinking this morning...

Not to be pessimistic, but I'm suspicious Tsarnaev escaped Watertown, and increasingly so as the time passes.  I can't believe the firepower from the images and footages - most police officers in eastern Massachusetts and beyond were here by mid-morning, and they brought out the big guns.  But, I remember  the 2003 D.C. sniper attacks; the police literally shut-down the highway and went car-to-car, yet even then the snipers evaded the dragnet.  That Tsarnaev's campus was evacuated (UMass Dartmouth) and with the issued vehicle alerts (in Connecticut!), I suspect police are giving serious weight to the possibility he escaped.

Oddly, this morning Norwalk developed a connection to the story. Suspicious that Tsarnaev may have escaped on train, police stopped an Amtrak train at the East Norwalk train station.  It was oddly comforting to see my hometown mentioned on local news while watching developments in my current home [space] town.

Police respond to a terror suspect report aboard an Amtrak train which was stopped in Norwalk. Hour photo / Erik Trautman

My own emotions have gone from surprise about these developments to concern about having to venture out for work to joy about a surprise day off to interest in the news to (increasingly), impatience at being cooped-up.  I wanted to go to the gym.  If Tsarnaev escaped, how will long can they keep the Boston metropolitan area on lockdown?  How embarrassing would that be to call off the lockdown with Tsarnaev still as large?  Would anyone feel completely safe?  I doubt he would be able to remain hiding for long, but even a few days on edge could feel like a very long time.  This may not resolve today, and a rain storm is fast approaching.  Additional developments may have to wait until tomorrow morning.

The Boston Marathon Bombings, Observed from Cambridge

Twelve and a half years after 9/11, I was again in a city during a terrorist attack.  About quarter to 3pm on Monday, two explosions went off at the Boston Marathon's finish line, killing at least three and injuring upwards of 170+.

At that time far north in Cambridge, I was working in my office on the computer when I slowly became aware that the bubbly girl across the hall was sobbing.  At the instant my brain processed this realization my cell phone rang with Roberta's number: "Hey, I just saw on the news that there were explosions at the marathon..."  I suddenly connected the dots with my across-the-hall neighbor.  What bad news might she have received?  On 9/11 a student we ran into was concerned about a cousin working at the World Trade Center - I didn't know her and she left our vicinity before the towers collapsed, but she's who I thought of when we heard the news report.  I imaged her reaction would be similar to my neighbor's apparent emotional state.

I checked on my neighbor after Roberta's call.  She said she had been tracking her friend's marathon progress online, and her friend crossed the finish line just around the time of the explosions.  Luckily, as Roberta was calling me, my neighbor also received word that her friend was safe.  Still, she was teary and clearly shaken.

I read online news and twitter reports the remainder of the afternoon.  Several grisly photos circulated showing injured crowds over blood-pooled sidewalks, and even an amputated man being rush away.  My Uncle Jim called to ask if I was OK, and if Roberta was OK.  I felt embarrassed by the concern given how far-away safe I was, but I believe he thought we are in Boston, and anyway I appreciated the call.

Monday afternoon was noisy with police sirens (even in Cambridge) and walking home I heard the helicopters. National Guard inspected bags yesterday on the T (I got a female guardsman, and when she asked to look in my backpack, semi-flirtatiously I said I was sorry I had so many pouches.  "Just let me see what's in the big middle one," she replied dead-pan).  Since Monday the TV's have looped the moment of detonation.

Compared to 9/11, this was a fairly easy experience - I didn't feel the same personal danger as I did that day.  I don't really go out, but truthfully there's currently a bomber at large and maybe emboldened by having gotten away with it.

Cambridge is kind of its own thing, everything I want or need is here, and so I've rarely crossed the Charles in the year since I've moved here.  Boston seems a distant presence, just forming the skyline on Somerville Avenue.  Ironically, the incident has prompted me to visit to Boston soon and more often.  It reminded me how close Boston is, and how little I take advantage.