Los Angeles can be so ungrateful. Just weeks after the the city nearly burned down, the rain that usually waits until, at the earliest, Halloween arrived in amounts that anywhere else would seem innocuous.
And people were angry about it.
"How about THIS RAIN?" someone at the PTA meeting said last night. "I wonder if school will be cancelled?"
"Yes," I said. "I might have to jump in the L.A. River just to dry off."
There is some concern that mudslides off denuded hillsides will do to homes what the fires couldn't.
Still, my morning commute was often interrupted, even as my windshield wipers were on their lowest frequency, by people stopping in intersections and having no idea what to do about the rain. It's Los Angeles; can't people think of the rain as more-wet bullets?
At the gas station a team from a local NBC affiliate was getting reactions about the storm that was "battering" Southern California.
"In Massachusetts it's not considered battery until your own teeth are in your stool," I should have said, but didn't.
We need the rain. The cracked streets of the city are like Abel's blood crying from the ground. And I'm like "Well what did you expect, Abel?"
There have been a lot of changes to Lowell, Massachusetts, my birthplace, since I left; the city has embraced native son Jack Kerouac, it has a Single A baseball team, and it has finally gone ahead and christened a thoroughfare Crack Street.
"High on Crack Street: Lost Lives in Lowell" is a 1995 HBO documentary that follows three likeable and engaging crackheads through a year of half-hearted detoxes, breakups, reconciliations, and the daily drama of their lives.
Co-directed by Richard Farrell, an ex addict and Lowell native, "High on Crack Street" shows a side of Lowell's culture that doesn't jibe with its boosters' plans for urban renewal.
As a former National Park Ranger in Lowell, I was happy to see my former co-worker, Warne P. Nelson, in a featured role, standing by a canal and delighting tourists with stories of the city's industrial past. It was also a pleasure to see the late, lamented Eat A Donut, where my family would get a dozen excellent doughnuts every Sunday after church.
More than anything, though, "High on Crack Street" contains the best examples of the Merrimack Valley accent. Massachusetts natives know that people from Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont talk differently than each other, and people from South Boston speak differently than people from Cambridge. Very few people pahk theya cah in Hahvid Yahd, and if ya did yid get a fuckin' ticket, ya retahd.
The Lowell/Lawrence accent is distinct from any in New England. I hope it never goes away. And even Brenda the pregnant crackhead has moments in which her North of Boston accent makes her sound genteel.
Thanks to Youtube, you can watch the whole thing.
Update: Brenda went missing after the documentary and there are reports that she has died. Gary "Boo Boo" Giuffrida is still around. Dickie Eklund was released from prison and is now the subject of David O. Russell's "The Fighter," a film in pre-production starring (as of this writing) Christian Bale as Eklund and Mark Wahlberg as his half-brother, "Irish" Micky Ward. Melissa Leo plays their mother.
Here is Dickie Eklund fighting Sugar Ray Leonard in 1978.
Here's Eklund's younger half-brother, Micky Ward, in his first, legendary fight against Arturo Gatti. You can see Eklund as his cornerman. This fight is considered by many one of the greatest televised fights ever. It was the first of three. Ward won this fight and narrowly lost the next two, retiring after the final fight in 2003. He and Gatti remain good friends.
And while we're at it, here's the Dropkick Murphys' ode to Micky Ward, "The Warrior's Code":
In all, "High on Crack Street" reminded me of "Grey Gardens" without the landscaping.
When did that September 11 thing happen? Afterward, the current president notably tried to inspire confidence and stimulate the economy by authorizing two rounds of tax rebates and suggesting we all go fly somewhere. (And it's not like I refused that money, either).
But belt-tightening was never a top-down directive from the current administration, the way it was in Franklin Roosevelt's time, as if the suggestion to live frugally was an admission of guilt, or as if the September 11 attacks and the wars that followed were somehow their fault, ha ha. Imagine.
A story in today's Boston Globe indicates that people who lived during the Great Depression doubt the ability of the current generation to do without.
from "Great Depression survivors uncertain of nation's mettle"
Quinlan, 92, said today's financial crisis gives him a creepy sense of déjà vu. "I don't see any resolutions coming out of it," he said. "That's the scary part."
He and other New Englanders who lived through the decade-long economic morass of the 1930s vividly recall the bank failures, bread lines, and rampant unemployment that followed the stock market crash, best remembered for Black Tuesday, which occurred 79 years ago tomorrow - Oct. 29, 1929. And they question whether a nation accustomed to getting more of everything can now make do with less. Their fears echo the results of a CNN poll released last week in which four out of 10 respondents said they believe a depression is likely within the next year.
"We couldn't have all we wanted, and certainly we didn't have what kids have today," said Irene Morris, 83, a lifelong Lowell resident. Gratification was often delayed during the Great Depression, she said, and when it did come, the payoff was modest.
Frugality became the norm for her generation, Morris said, but young people will find it difficult to cope with a prolonged economic downturn. "I really feel bad for them because they're not used to doing without and waiting like we did," she said.
At first I thought the Globe story was about old people not understanding one of Pink Floyd's most underrated albums, but that was Meddle, not mettle.
A friend of a friend threw a birthday party for her and, as I walked through the unfamiliar house in California, looking through closets, rifling drawers, etc., I was pleasantly surprised to see this picture as the desktop pattern on a computer. (I have modified it from the original.)
It was taken from the Bridge Street Bridge in Lowell, MA, my home town. The camera faces up the Merrimack River toward the blue chimney of Saints Memorial Hospital, where I worked at age 16 incinerating amputated body parts (I still do this now, but only as a hobby).
The photographer grew up in Lowell and left there before I would have met her in high school, but there the picture was, 3100 miles away from where it was taken.
You might notice the graffiti on one of the mill buildings.
Today I was driving my family home from church. My daughter was singing a song with her class, and we got the fuck out of there once she was done lest a god I don't believe in suddenly manifest himself just to strike me down for hypocrisy, which I wouldn't put past him.
We were all in Sunday finery and traveling a road that is packed on weekdays when I drive my daughter to school. Today I was going 84 in a 70 zone, and got pulled over.
The California Highway Patrol officer was very polite, asked me why I was going so fast, asked me the meaning of my license plate, and let me go with a warning. I still can't believe it and think I'll need to be hospitalized.
In the two other times I've been caught speeding (both going 84 m.p.h., by the way), in New Hampshire and Arizona, I was driving either alone or with a group of guys and was made to pay hefty fines. Had it not been for the presence today of my uncharacteristically well-scrubbed family, I would have been toast.
Which leads me to California Proposition 8, which on November 4 will decide whether same sex marriages can be outlawed in this state. Proponents say that the continued legality of same sex marriages will force innocent people to tolerate them, will require churches to perform them, and will lead to roving gangs of gays force-gay-marrying people in the streets. "No on 8" supporters say stop being stupid.
Proponents also point to the tumult same-sex marriage has pushed Massachusetts into, similar to when it was declared illegal to burn people suspected of witchcraft there.
All I know is that in the place of my birth, people still expend a great deal of energy climbing mill buildings carrying three shades of paint to declare someone else's alleged homosexuality (I don't think Con painted that sign) and that, had today's CHP officer found me speeding without my adorable female wife and two children, I would be looking at a $474 fine right now.
But, as much as anyone deserves to be ticketed for the victimless crime of enjoying America's roads, I deserved that ticket. And same sex couples should be allowed to marry.
The latest Fogelfoot effort strives to weave a tale of maritime peril on the railbound Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority.
Influences here were Gordon Lightfoot and Johann Pachelbel, and I believe it is the only instance in western literature in which a former Bay State governor is linked with a line from "Evangeline."
Last week I needed to renew my registration, walked into a California Department of Motor Vehicles office carrying prepared paperwork I'd downloaded, took a number, and 16 minutes later I was done. I thought of calling an ambulance to meet me and my aneurysm outside, but I survived.
Once, in Massachusetts, I spent seven hours at a DMV. Once, in New York, I spent six hours at a DMV, doing the same thing that took me 16 minutes last week.
This morning I went to a gas station with three banks of double-sided filling islands. Only the island I'd parked near (x) had no number. I quickly looked at the visible numbers as I approached the cashier. It looked like this: I asked the cashier if I could have $20 on (x=Pump 7).
In seventh grade I was confident that I would never use algebra in everyday life. And I am still correct; if that were an algebra problem, I would be credited $20 at the nonexistent Pump 6 and 1/9.
Instead, I used analogies. Thanks again, tenth grade English teacher Sheila Hallissy! First you taught me Antony's Funeral Oration, now you're saving me cash on gas!
I went back to Lowell, where I was born and lived the first 17 years of my life (I'm 19 now) for about :30 this past weekend.
I haven't spent any time visiting the city's historic areas since I was a National Park Ranger there, so on my way to my Uncle Frank's birthday party I took a self-guided tour, not hitting nearly as many places as I would have liked (or visiting with anyone not related to me).
These are the Pawtucket Falls on the Merrimack River. It's nice to see a river with water in it now and then.
Los Angeles can be so ungrateful. Just weeks after the the city nearly burned down, the rain that usually waits until, at the earliest, Halloween arrived in amounts that anywhere else would seem innocuous.
There is some concern that mudslides off denuded hillsides will do to homes what the fires couldn't.
At the gas station a team from a local NBC affiliate was getting reactions about the storm that was "battering" Southern California.
