Trial-By-Fire Emergency (Step)Parenthood

It happened at roughly 2:30 pm - the phone call from the after school program at Jeffrey's school. He had bumped his head by running into a pole and apparently there was a lot of blood and though it wasn't serious he wanted to come home. So I rush off to pick him up. He's not happy, but not terrible either. There's two blood soaked band aids on his head and it just appears that it's just a big bump underneath. After we get home I call Stella at work and tell her what happened. While I'm talking to her I take the bandages of Jeffrey's head and see that it's not really just a bump - it's gash large enough, and deep enough, to require stitches.

At this point Jeffrey is terribly, terribly unhappy and just wants his mommy. The last thing he wants is to spend Halloween in the ER getting stitches. He's crying, saying that this is the worst day ever and saying he refuses to go, clinging desperately to the curtain in his room. Finally I convince him that it won't be that bad, that it needs to be done, and if he hurry we can be back in time to go trick-or-treating. Armed with a Harry Potter book, we finally head off to the Emergency Room so they can sew up his forehead while Stella starts the almost 90 minute commute to Berkeley from her school.

After waiting an hour for the initial consultation (reading lots of Harry Potter to Jeffrey), Stella shows up just as the clinician is interviewing us and deciding what's required. As I thought, he definitely needed stitches. After another wait (and more Harry Potter) we get into a private room where the doctor does things to Jeffrey's head that make me a little squeamish, and I don't typically get affected by stuff like that. But Jeffrey takes it all really well, with no crying at all! The local anesthesia helped a lot for sure. Everyone was very impressed with how well he accepted five stitches to his forehead. If only we had planned a Frankenstein costume for him for Halloween.

We did finally make it back in time to go trick-or-treating, which was totally crazy in the particular neighborhood we went to. They take their Halloween very seriously out here in Berkeley, I must say.

I guess this was trial-by-fire parenthood. Fortunately, I think I passed. But it proved to Stella that she needs to work in the same city that Jeffrey lives and goes to school. So after our lease is up here at the end of June, we will almost surely be moving to San Francisco.

Return To Ann Arbor

I know, I know... it's been too long since I've been blogged. What can I say? I've been busy. I went back to Ann Arbor last week to see Edgefest and visit old friends. I was a great experience. I'll do a separate post about Edgefest shortly and focus now on what it was like to be back in Ann Arbor.

I lived in Ann Arbor for about 21 years, other than the (almost) year I lived in Vermont for most of 1992. Now I've been in Berkeley for 3 months and returned to Ann Arbor to visit. I feel like I'm still trying to sort out the experience. On one hand I felt like I was returning to my home; It was so familiar and full of friends and acquaintances. On the other hand I also felt like a visitor since I was a guest in someone's house and my life is now 2500 miles away. Overall, it was a strange feeling.

After flying all night tuesday night, then renting a car wednesday morning, I made my way to Eric & Anica's house, just a few houses away from my old house. In my slightly sleep-deprived state, I really had to focus to not just drive to my old house, park in the driveway and walk inside. After a few hours of sleep, I met up with Stella (who flew in earlier Wednesday) to have dinner at Pacific Rim, my favorite Ann Arbor restaurant. Their seared tuna is outstanding.

The next day I paid a visit to the people who bought my house. There is a group of five lesbians living there and they were quite receptive to me visiting. Of course I had a legitimate reason - I had some info on the house that they needed. I had left it on the counter when I moved, but somehow it got packed and moved to Berkeley. The women seemed like a great group of people and they loved what I had done with the garden and seemed genuinely interested in maintaining it. It was also nice to catch up with a couple of my old neighbors who happened to be out when I went by.

The rest of my stay was a crazy whirlwind of avant-garde improvised music and seeing old friends. It was fantastic to reconnect with old friends and I felt very at home while simultaneously being aware that I was just visiting. It was an odd sensation - part of me looked forward to being back home in Berkeley while part of me longed to be home again in Ann Arbor. One thing that really struck me, however, is how small Ann Arbor felt. It was all so familiar that it made me more aware of how much I loved living in a new place with so much to explore. The BayArea, and even just Berkeley, is so much larger than Ann Arbor. There is an endless amount of new things to discover here and I love being in such a radically different environment. If only I could just move all my Ann Arbor friends here too. Then I would REALLY love being here.

From The Onion: Report: Swelling Hippie Herds Pose Threat To Delicate Freakosystem

(Thanks to Warren who posted this on MySpace...)

Report: Swelling Hippie Herds Pose Threat To Delicate Freakosystem

WASHINGTON, DC-The indigenous North American hippie population has expanded to the point that its teeming herds are endangering the planet's fragile freakosystem, warned a Department of the Interior report released Monday.

Report: Swelling Hippie Herds Pose Threat To Delicate Freakosystem

December 9, 1998 | Issue 34•19

WASHINGTON, DC–The indigenous North American hippie population has expanded to the point that its teeming herds are endangering the planet's fragile freakosystem, warned a Department of the Interior report released Monday.

Enlarge Image

Earth In Crisis: An Onion Special Report

According to the report, over the past 20 years, the wide-ranging, largely migratory hippies have more than tripled in population, insidiously infiltrating nearly every other U.S. subculture while venturing far beyond their natural Vermont and Colorado habitats.

"Due to the species' lack of predators, willingness to live almost anywhere and rabbit-like breeding habits, the hippie has become the most prevalent feature on the American countercultural landscape," Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt said. "If we do not soon find a way to thin their herds, they will overwhelm every other subculture on the continent, potentially leading to freakological disaster on a mass global scale."

Enlarge Image

A herd of hippies grazes in a field near Burlington, VT.

Experts say the hippie-related environmental damage has largely been the result of their sheer numbers. Long regarded as a mere nuisance species, the hippies have grown over the past 10 years into one of the most populous in North America, numbering close to 20 million. Further, because of the hippie herds' normal daily cycle of waking, bongo-playing and large-scale grass consumption, followed by a brief period of torpor and then aggressive nutritive replenishment, their freakological impact is enormous.

"Each summer, the hippie herds migrate north to Boulder, wiping out 80 to 90 percent of the hummus supply of the regions through which they pass," National Park Service director Roger Kennedy said. "In certain parts of Colorado, by mid-August, the patchouli reservoirs are entirely drained."

The burgeoning herds–identifiable by their dreadlocked hair, hemp jewelry and distinctive tie-dyed markings–have greatly affected the quality of life of people living in these areas of high hippie concentration.

"They're everywhere," said Linda Hewson of Albany, NY. "Last night, when I went to take out the trash, I found one of them foraging through my garbage cans for Dead bootlegs. I shooed it away, but a bunch more came by later scavenging for discarded twirling sticks."

"My property is overrun with them," said Vallejo, CA, resident Patrick Davis, who said he is considering moving if the problem gets worse. "They even set up a bead-vending stand in my backyard."

First introduced into the cultural landscape in the early 1960s, the hippie, or homo habilis VWbus, was initially applauded by freakologists, who believed they would be beneficial in curbing the growth of the then-ubiquitous Establishment Type. When the crisis passed in the early 1970s, the hippie population was reduced to a fraction of its former size, creating room in the American freakosystem for numerous other subcultures, including punks, new-wavers and goths. Social developments of recent years, however, have caused the hippies' numbers to balloon once more.

A 1985 photo of an Olympia, WA, meadow sparsely populated with hippies. By 1996, the meadow was destroyed, its topsoil stripped clean by migratory hippie herds numbering in the thousands.

"For some time, it was believed that the extinction of Jerry Garcia and the dispersal of The Grateful Dead would have a suppressive effect on the size of the hippie population," Kennedy said. "Surprisingly, though, exactly the opposite has happened: The herds have grown, diversifying and spreading out. In the past, if the Dead were playing in Chicago, the entire hippie species would be singularly concentrated there. But today, you could have a herd of hippies at Red Rocks to see Phish while, at the very same moment, an equally large herd is massing in Ann Arbor for a Widespread Panic show."

Another reason for the hippie explosion, environmentalists say, lies in the differences between the current crop and the more mature, "old-growth" hippies of the 1960s. While old-growth hippies were a gentle species that was considered a mild annoyance at worst, the new breed, they say, is a hardier, more insidious creature which seems to thrive in virtually any environment.
"We're seeing these young hippies in the malls, in fraternities, on Madison Avenue–all kinds of places where hippies were once considered non-indigenous," said Alfred Meijer of the Nature Conservancy. "Years of cross-breeding and exposure to television have produced a hybridized, consumer-culture-bred hippie that can adapt to literally any environment, countercultural or mainstream. And unlike the old-growth hippies, which at least were anti-materialistic, the new ones are voracious consumers, swiftly depleting their habitat of all resources and purchasable goods."

Though most experts agree that the vast herds must be thinned, they are divided on how to go about it. Some are calling for the hippies to be spayed and neutered and then placed in designated preserve areas, where they would be free to roam peacefully and play hacky-sack. Others suggest more extreme measures, advocating the use of large, headshop-shaped traps to lure the hippies. Once inside the traps, the hippies would be poisoned with super-adhesive, cyanide-laced Guatemalan blankets and sweaters.

"Whatever we do, we must do it soon," Babbitt said. "If we don't, we are dooming our children to live in a world overrun with backless apron dresses and bare feet. And that is a fate we can ill afford."

and just for Andre...

some pictures of the Klingons at the Be As Berkeley As You Can Be Parade.

Be as Berkeley as you can be

On Sunday we all biked to downtown Berkeley to watch the Be As Berkeley As You Can Be Parade. It's an annual parade that celebrates the various eccentricities of Berkeley while also kind of making fun of itself. A few civic and non-profit groups marched, but it was mainly various Berkeley freaks being silly and a whole bunch of art cars. Art cars, as you may know, are just cars painted and/or covered with a whole lot of crazy crap. Oh, and there were also cupcake cars. Plus a few Klingons. What would a parade be without Klingons? The whole thing was very amusing, but photos tell the story much better than my words could.

more great jazz in San Francisco

One really positive aspect of moving to the bay area is getting to see one of my favorite musicians, Myra Melford, perform so often. On saturday she did a duo performance with saxophonist/clarinetist Marty Ehrlich at The Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco. Even though it took longer than driving, I took the BART there, which involved nearly two miles of walking to & from BART stops. But I really love public transporation, particularly the BART. While there are so many ways in which it could be improved (more destinations, more frequent trains, longer hours), and it pales in comparison to the New York subway, I still love it. I would much rather take the extra time and not worry about driving and parking and just enjoy the ride while people watching and/or reading. One of these days I will bring my bike on the BART and bike around San Francisco.

But I digress; this is a post about music, not public transportation. The Noe Valley Ministry is a church in the Noe Valley neighborhood (just west of the Mission) that has been hosting a jazz/new music series for ages. It's a beautiful sounding room with a really nice grand piano. I had seen this duo one other time, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in my last visit to New York just after 9/11. I enjoyed that show but left thinking that this duo didn't rank near the top of my list of favorite Myra Melford projects. Well, Saturday's show changed that opinion. It was a fantastic performance that surpassed my expectations with some wonderful new compositions from both musicians. After the show Myra offered me a ride back to Berkeley, so I rode back with her & Marty after we all stopped for gelato in SF. I had met Marty once before but never spent time with him; he's a really cool guy. I'll never forgot the story he told about Leroy Jenkins, the jazz violinist who passed away earlier this year:

Years, ago, probably in the 60's, Leroy Jenkins was staying with Ornette Coleman when Leroy was just starting out in the jazz world. But Ornette kept on calling him Leon and Leroy didn't say anything, thinking he didn't want to risk blowing this great deal of getting to stay with a legend like Ornette. Finally Leroy just couldn't take it anymore and after Ornette once again called him Leon, Leroy finally says "Ornette, you know my name is Leroy". Ornette pauses and says "I'm sorry Leon, I'll never call you Leroy again".