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Sometime in the not so distant future I’m going to trade in my fuel-guzzling, emissions-spewing truck for something more efficient and cleaner.  A Prius, maybe, or a Matrix, or some other cutely-named vehicle about the size of a jelly donut. 

This is kind of sad to contemplate, a sadness which isn’t about ownership or consumerism or anything like that.  It’s about the life I’ve led with my truck.  I have made good use over the years of my truck in truck-like ways: hauling brush, hay, bales of bedding, bed loads of dirt, fill, rocks, etc.  Even, often, pulling a horse trailer (with horse).  One insanely hot day I managed to fill the entire bed and a horse trailer with bales of hay — I forget how many, but it was about 100 total — and then haul the hay fifty miles to the barn we had out in the country.  Of course the signal lights on the trailer failed, and so I had to hang out the window and gesture like an insane person whenever I wanted to stop or turn.  But we made it, the trailer, the truck, and I.

In the years I’ve had it, my truck has come to look like a truck: it has a lot of coffee stains on the floor, the back seat serves as an auxiliary office, changing room, and storage bin.  It smells like a truck: residue of wet dog, muddy horse, boots that have stepped in whatever one steps in around a barn, stinky ashtray I have never cleaned with any real vigor, miscellanenous weird food smells emanating from under the seats.  It sounds like a truck: big V-8 engine grumbling along, a log in the bed that bounces whenever I go over a bump. 

When I’ve driven visiting writers around in my truck, I gauge the merits of the writer initially on how they react to being driven around in a truck.  One woman writer felt moved to comment on the fact that I had a whip in the back seat.  She had some interesting observations about that whip; she was rather disappointed to learn it had a really pedestrian use: horse training.  An elderly man writer gripped the grab bar above his seat the entire time he was in my truck.  Another woman writer couldn’t actually climb up into the cab. I think we took another vehicle.  Finally, one writer got in and said, simply: Nice truck.  (That’s of course all you are supposed to say when you get in a truck:  “Nice truck.”)  Him, I liked.

But it’s time.  I’m not hauling hay to a barn anymore.  I’m not dragging my horse off to horse shows anymore.  I’m not living in the country accessible only by unplowed roads anymore.  I really can’t justify having a truck.  Not anymore.

So, yesterday, I called up a local dealership and made an appointment to test drive a Prius. It was fun, a cute little car kind of shaped like a futuristic tuna can, with lots of gizmos and computer screens that tell you how many miles to the gallon you’re getting, and when the battery is taking over and even, when you back up, a screen that shows you what’s behind you  (very creepy, I might add, not to mention insulting to anyone who’s ever learned to drive a truck and trailer, and can — ha! — even parallel park that truck and trailer).  In the Prius, there are also are cute little cup holders and little stretchy baggy things that hold your groceries.  Even comes with a special Prius first aid kit.  Neato.  The saleswoman that rode around with me and Dick was doing the sales thing: we’ve-got-a-big-sale-buy-now-save-a-lot … and all that.  I said, probably about forty times: really, I’m just gathering information.  Really, I’m not going to buy a car today. 

I don’t think she heard me until I said: Really, I’m just dating. I’m not ready to commit. Okay? And then she finally said, Okay.  Just tell my manager that, please?  Which I did, while backing out of the big Toyota store, the salespeople making sad salespeople faces and lobbing deals and promises after me and Dick (they even were trying to sell HIM a vehicle) as we scuttled across the parking lot, making our escape.

I will trade in the big truck for a little vehicle.  I really will.  For a lot of reasons, I will.  But not just yet.

Sun.  80 degrees.  Wind.

No dog pee indoors for the last 36 hours.  (And its corollary: no cat barf on the clean laundry this week…yet.)

A gift certificate to Meijers won for something, I’m not exactly sure what, which I intend to spend on a new soaker hose to water the transplanted bushes before they are dessicated to death by the very warm wind blowing from the (I think) south. 

My ever-patient horse Buddy, for not bucking me off, even though I made him work very hard two days in a row.  And, the two generic advil dispensed by a sympathetic student/friend to ease the pain of those two days.

Popcorn.

Butter.

America’s Next Top Model.  In re-runs.  (Um…this is research…really.)

Having, for the first time in my career, a research assistant.  Who is just as thrilled as I am about this. 

Getting a nomination, today, for a leadership role in a national organization, and having the luxury of being able to say “no” if I want to. And…having a generous colleague willing to suggest that saying “no” is a reasonable thing to do.

Owen.  Who doesn’t care that his new tennis ball is pink. 

Having exactly one week of classes left, then one week of finals after that, then the beginning of summer while it is still, officially, spring, and there will still be days and weeks of weather like this to enjoy, ride and play ball in.

Happy Birthday, Eric. 

I’m writing this from a seedy hotel somewhere in North Carolina, listening to the gale force winds outside my room, wondering when (no, not “if,” not yet) I will ever get home.  My flight, like the flights of hundreds of people yesterday, was cancelled last night.  The reasons the airlines give us for these cancellations are varied — mechanical failure, weather, crew-related (their term, not mine), and in the case of my nice little airplane, a lightning strike on the plane itself. 

At first, the very nervous US Airways terminal person told me I’d be in North Carolina until Wednesday.  This was last night, around midnight.  Sunday.  “Wednesday?” I growled.  She nodded, looking distinctly scared of me, and every other frustrated traveler behind me.  Wednesday. 

I wasn’t angry with this poor young woman, doing a job no one should envy, for which she is paid I would guess really lousy wages.  But I was pretty tired of being shuffled around by the people of US Airways, no matter how much I sympathize with their misery for their jobs and wages. The fun began earlier in the day in New Orleans.  The lines waiting to check in were really long, inching forward at a glacial pace.  People nervously watched the clock.  It was 145.  A flight was due to board at 215, leave at 230.  Suddenly, all the self-serve kiosks went down.  Just like that.  Now, everyone had to check in with a live human being.  This would have been dandy, but at 155 p.m., all the live human beings save one lone young woman, announced that the were “going on break.”  And so they did.  Six US Airway personnel, all at once, disappeared.

The young woman in line in front of me, toting a garment bag emblazoned with BCBG Maxazaria (I can never pronounce this, but know it’s some hotshot designer), turned beet red.  Furious.  Demanding to know where everyone had gone.

Honey?  They’re on break.  It’s about the only perk you get as a working class stiff.  And if you can wield your only perk as power in the face of over-entitled lovelies like you?  All the better.  The crew is on break, and you, MS. BCBG, are just going to have to deal with it.

At 210, the crew came back.  The passengers on the flight that would board at 215 were hissing like enraged rattlesnakes by now, but they could clearly see that everything was out of their hands.  This was, of course, interesting to watch, and fascinating to see the power wrested away from the power elite, but still: US Airways is a bit of a mess. 

I suppose that the crew knew what we did not yet know, and that inspired part of their laissez-faire.  Most of the flights going out would be cancelled anyway.  And so it was.

By midnight, hundreds of people, mostly angry priveleged white people, stood in line at the US Airways service line waiting for some kind of answers.  What we heard varied depending on the person we talked to.  And soon enough it became clear that the answers defined the solutions.  I didn’t know this until last night, but if an airline tells you your flight is delayed or cancelled because of weather, then they are not legally responsible to do anything for you.  No hotel.  No food.  If you’re lucky, you get another flight that gets you where you want to go.  If the airline, alternatively, tells you that your flight is delayed because of maintenance or crew issues, then they must provide you with a hotel, and food vouchers.

Finally, after an hour and a half in line, I got my voucher, got to my hotel (accompanied by a very funny woman, with an accent like Reba McIntyre, who worked for Nascar, and took all of this shlepping around easily in stride), and then waited another hour and a half while the lone desk clerk checked in dozens of people sent to him by US Airways.  This guy, named Luke, doing another crappy lowpaid job, should be given a medal: he answered the phone (it rang off the hook), dealt with his own long line of angry white people, coordinated the shuttle van coming from the airport rerouting it when his own hotel got full, convinced the pizza delivery guy to work overtime, got everyone a room, and through it all was funny, efficient, poised, and unfailingly decent.  My Nascar friend leaned over to me at one point and said, “He is really good.”  So he was.

He too could have looked at the line of grumpy wealthy people standing, waiting, and could have wielded his power behind the desk to make us all wait that much longer.  But he didn’t.  Does it matter that he was black?  Working class? I think so. Because when I see that, I can say: there is hope for change.  I don’t think it will come from wealthy white people who care more about their designer clothes than the human being in front of them.  I think change will come from those who know what it means to really work a real job, really reach out a hand to a live human being in a time of need, and then do it.

We should all take heed.

*****

I don’t know about you, but if this wild weather doesn’t come from climate change brought about by our own overspending, overdriving, overconsumption (us wealthy white people — or brown or black), I don’t know where it comes from.  Perhaps the class revolution that needs to happen will happen not simply because the poor will — must — rise up in howling protest at being driven off their land, always the lowest, the most vulnerable places, the land most prone to flood, the house trailers easily torn up by tornadoes, the coastal inner cities flooded out by hurricanes, and yes I’m thinking New Orleans, the poorest of it still in ruins, but perhaps the class revolution will most likely happen because quite simply, when the poor are driven out of their homes, they will have nowhere to go but among the wealthy.  And when the wealthy try to keep the poor out?  Try to ignore the poor?  Give the poor a hard time and keep them moving on, ever west, like latter day Joads?

Look out, America.  It’s time.

There was a festival going on as I began this entry last night, a festival 33 floors below where I sat watching the sun set over a curve of the wide Mississippi River.  This is the French Quarter Festival, a kind of mini-Mardi Gras, all about music, but there was more than music on the streets yesterday: there were street performers of all kinds — a gorgeous woman in a dark red ballgown, balancing on stilts while twisting balloons into beautiful little animals; a dwarf juggling fourteen rubber balls and telling a long complicated story while he juggled; a man painted silver over every exposed body part (which was most of him) pretending to be a machine, a machine that only moved if you dropped a quarter into the can at his feet.  Yes, he was a mime, there were really too many mimes to count: the machine man, a woman miming a fairy, another man miming something that resembled a disgruntled clown; there were breakdancers, swing dancers, spontaneous tourist dancers, toddler dancers, elderly men tapping their feet to the rhythm of zydeco, blues, old time New Orleans jazz, Preservation Hall variety, the kind I grew up with, my dad blasting it on his turntable in the basement.

During the morning (while I played hooky from my conference) the streets were full of congenial people, enjoying the music, the sun, one another.  I ate a blackened catfish sandwich while sitting next to and chatting with two elderly men — one from Australia, one from England. I watched the swing dancers in a crowd of young and old, black and white, all of us applauding.  I did the spontaneous tourist dance while the New Orleans jazz band played.  The morning was great.

But then, it was time to go back and be a dutiful English professor.  I spent an afternoon listening to sessions on literature and the teaching of literature and the reading of literature, and writing about literature.  By dinner time, I really needed to get outdoors again.  So, I ventured back to the French Quarter.  Now it was about six in the evening.  And now, everything was different. 

In New Orleans, as I’m sure most people but me know, it’s legal to drink on the street.  Beer, wine, whatever goofy cocktail you happen to appreciate.  The only rule is: no glass bottles.  And so, the sidewalks were packed with people, drinks in hand, plastic cups of beer and pina coladas and margaritas, all navigating the now huge crowds on the streets.  I don’t begrudge anyone their particular cocktail pleasures; I like a good glass of wine as much as the next person.  But last night’s crowd wasn’t about sipping and chatting, watching the world go by.  These folks were on a mission: get tanked.

I saw a lot of very drunk people last night. There were the people who seemed to be homeless, or definitely indigent: a thin woman, dressed in a dirty t-shirt and bluejeans, leaning against a building, babbling almost incoherently, but repeating over and over where are you going? where are you going?  Her companions, two scruffy guys pushing onespeed bicycles, swayed on the sidewalk, equally incoherent: we’re here baby we’re not going anywhere.  There were the fat t-shirted tourists, stumping along the sidewalks, big cans or cups of beer in their hands, talking loudly, pointing at the gewgaws in windows, photographing each other in front of streetsigns, the voodoo stores, the sad mules standing in harness.  There were the thin Palm Beach couples, haughty and tanned, clad in black, strolling along cocktails in hand, she carrying a big pricey designer bag (Chanel was well represented), he smoking a fat real-Cuban cigar (they do smell better, it’s true).

All classes were represented last night on the streets of New Orleans, and perhaps the booze that flowed equally among them created a kind of solidarity.  If so, then I am a tourist snob, not interested in solidarity of this ilk.  I retreated to my lofty room, opened the shutters to the floor to ceiling window, and had the best night a writer can have: I wrote as long as I felt like writing, while the sun set over the great Mississippi and the beautiful city of New Orleans.

We flew in, low, over the city, late in the afternoon.  I jam my face to the window, peering down at the city.  New Orleans.  Strands of clouds, some yellowed with smog, obscure the view in patchy streaks.  The city reveals itself in glimpses.  Twisted rivers, acres of subdivisions, green grass, red dirt.  And squares of blue scattered across the city.  I think of Mexico and remember the roofs tiled in hundreds of colors.  We fly lower. I realize now what I am seeing: in New Orleans, the roofs are not tiled in blue.  The roofs are bandaged, hundreds of them — houses, businesses, schools — in blue tarps. 

*****

Driving in from the airport to the city I see evidence of the hurricanes still, even now, two years later: a devastated hotel, two stories, ravaged and empty, its windows blown out.  No doors, no grass below, only a shell of building, and one lone dumpster parked outside.

A football field filled with temporary homes.  Trailers.  There must be a hundred, all white, all set at angle from some imaginary center line, neat rows, as though this were a perfect and new subdivision.

A ruined apartment building with a huge sign plastered on the front: “Short Term Lease Available.”

*****

From far away the huge bulk of the Superdome looms over the city.  It has its own exit off highway 10.  We take it.  The Superdome resembles an nuclear power plant in its bulk and shape, an outsized, concrete, windowless mushroom.  Our trajectory into the city takes us right by it.  It leans over the sidewalk, the street.  I crane my head to see the top and cannot.  All its windows have been replaced, gleam new and black in the sun.  A sign on a small door reads, “VIP Only.” 

*****

I wander in the French Quarter.  It is late in the day, the temperature 75, 80 degrees.  Bright sun. It has brought me out here; it has brought out hordes of tourists; it has brought out vendors, hawkers, kids on skateboards, young men clutching 24 ounce beers cruising in pairs, the homeless.  Carriages drawn by ancient mules cart tourists around the French Quarter, the drivers pointing out sights, their accents thick with the Louisiana mix of French, southern, and I do not know what else.  The accent is liquid, clotted with glottal stops, aggressively friendly in a way that flirts and challenges all at once.  I have never heard the word “darling” said so often, and with such layers of meaning.  Or grown men referring to themselves as “Daddy” with no irony. 

There are tourists buying things everywhere.  Hot sauce in 59 different varieties.  Mardi Gras beads in red, green, pink, purple, iridescent yellow, white, silver.  Beer to go.  T-shirts, the ubiquitous t-shirt, with the favorite so far a black shirt with large aggressive white print: FEMA: Fix Everything My Ass.   There are postcards, sidewalk artists who will do your portrait in the realistic style, the cartoon style, the graffiti style.  Tours of architecture, cemeteries (don’t go alone, you will get mugged the signs warn), a visit to a voodoo priestess, tours of the devastation wrought by Katrina, tours of swamps, tours of plantations, tours where all you need to do is sit on the trolley car and watch New Orleans go by. 

*****

On the river, an enormous oil tanker glides along the brown water, leaving the Port of New Orleans.  The tanker must be four city blocks long.  Its red hull glows dully in the low afternoon light.  People stop, point, photograph it.  A couple sits on the bank of the river, sharing a bottle of wine, barely concealed in a paper bag, passing it back and forth. A young man plays haunting music on his guitar, amplifying it out across the water.  Couples drop quarters in the can at his feet. A deeply tanned man sleeps on the bank of the river.  A woman poses on the green grass, close to the brown water, the red tanker gliding behind her; her boyfriend snaps picture after picture. 

We’re keeping a production blog on the www.147film.com site.  Check out the “Production News” tab and see what we’re up to lately.

My brother is perfecting his video skills, and has produced a new one, which seems to fit the season.  If you’re a literalist, Biblically that is, take a deep breath.  But if you’re fond of gentle humor and quirky wisdom, have a look.  I think it’s quite wonderful, myself.  LINK

Meanwhile, Happy Easter.  Even for those of us who don’t perceive this day in its literal translation, it still is a day of great hope returning to the world.  You can’t quite forget that.

A year from now, our documentary film will be complete, and the fortieth anniversary of the explosion in downtown Richmond will have come and gone.  I deeply hope our film will be a powerful commemoration of the event.  There are so many stories to be heard and told. 

Yesterday, our website was launched — www.147film.com There is an interactive page where you can leave your memories of the explosion.  Already, since the launch of the site less than 24 hours ago, we have received thirty messages.  I imagine — I hope – we will receive many more. 

To read more about our press conference yesterday, here is a link to the Palladium-Item story: LINK

Today is the thirty-ninth anniversary of the explosion that shook downtown Richmond, Indiana.  The explosion that took forty-one lives, injured hundreds more, devastated the downtown of this small city, and changed its soul forever.  As readers of this blog probably know, I am working as part of a team to create a film about the explosion.  My role is to be the collector of stories.  And so, for the past ten months or so, that’s what I’ve been doing.  I started by reading about the explosion, hunkering down in the library with the old news stories, the book that was hastily produced shortly after the explosion, the commemorative editions of the Palladium-Item that followed in subsequent years.  I looked at photographs and slides and raw film footage.  I listened to oral histories.  I read depositions of people involved in the lawsuits following the explosion. 

As I did this initial research, the names of those who were injured, those who were killed, those who came to help, those who rebuilt the city, surfaced again and again.  At first they were only names.  But then, I began to meet the people attached to the names.  And I listened to their stories.  Stories of fear and stories of heroism.  Stories of terrible images seared into their memories forever. Stories of the selfless kindness of strangers.  Stories of courage and quiet grace.  Stories which, I have heard people say over and again, they have never told anyone before. 

But they are telling them now. And so, I continue to listen, take notes, and listen some more.  For the film, we are getting as many people as we can to tell their stories on camera.  In late April and early May, we will be finishing this part of the work for the film.  A year from now, the film, 1:47, will premiere.  In this coming year, you can watch the progress of our work on the film by going to our website at www.147film.com.  You can also read the progress of my work on the book in periodic posts on this blog.