March 2004 Archives

Yesterday threw me into an interesting musical space. I began by looking through the new issue of Spin in the library's periodicals room. The cover story concerns the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain's death and his influence on pop music, and features such items as a history of grunge and a list of the twenty best grunge albums of all time, but it's basically the same kind of pop hagiography we've been seeing since the death of Buddy Holly.

When you think about the number of premature deaths in pop music, it's almost amazing that people still try to become rock stars. If the drugs and booze don't get you (Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Lowell George, Hillel Slovak, Shannon Hoon, John Entwistle), it seems as though transportation accidents will (Holly, Ritchie Valens, the Big Bopper, Patsy Cline, Duane Allman, Berry Oakley, Chris Bell, Johnny Van Zant, Randy Rhoades, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Kirsty MacColl). I wonder if it's significant that we're now seeing rock stars like George Harrison, Joey Ramone, and Joe Strummer dying of age-related ailments--cancer or heart attacks that don't seem directly related to drug abuse. And of course, most people my age recall well those who died at others' hands, like Marvin Gaye and John Lennon, or their own, like Richard Manuel, Michael Hutchence, and Cobain.

I was a bit late to the party with Nirvana. Cobain was four years younger than I, and Nirvana's early efforts came out when I was finishing up my M.A.T. and wrapping up my days on radio. When "Smells Like Teen Spirit" hit the airwaves in 1991, I'd already run away from the Record Bar to become a first-year teacher and a first-year father, so I wasn't paying much attention to the song's apparently revolutionary impact. Or then again, maybe it wasn't that revolutionary. Surely I wasn't the only person who (eventually) heard the opening riff of "Teen Spirit" and immediately said, "That may not actually be 'Debaser,' but these guys were sure as hell listening to the Pixies." And sure enough, it turns out that Doolittle was one of Cobain's favorite records--and one of mine, too; we wore that sucker out in the Record Bar when it came out in 1988.

Perhaps because of this perspective, I still have some trouble separating the Seattle-based grunge sound from that of any other punk scene. OK, the bass is heavier than on the original punk records--the Kinks' "You Really Got Me" and the Who's "My Generation"--and the songs are a little longer and more complex than the three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-dust tunes written by the Ramones or the Buzzcocks in the late 70s. I'll grant that. But the anger, the thrash, the raised middle finger, the self-loathing coupled with a loathing of hypocrisy... it's all there in every era, like a snarling tiger chasing its own tail.

And it's sad to think that Cobain was able to ride the tiger of success for such a short time. Three years and one more studio album--that was all he had time for once he'd become an MTV star. I love rock & roll music and its many forms, but sometimes I wish Pete Townshend's lyric "Hope I die before I get old" didn't have to be taken so literally by so many of its practitioners.

8:24 PM

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Saturday, March 27th, Virginia Festival of the Book, 2:00
I'll be sitting on a panel entitled Publish and Flourish: Networking through Readerville.com, along with my online chums M.J. Rose (Sheet Music), Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater), and Andrea Buchanan (Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It). Readervillean, writer, and radio commentator Janis Jaquith (Birdseed Cookies) will moderate. Visit www.vabook.org for more information.

So. Florida.

Big state, Florida. Or rather, a looooooong state, as I learned by driving from Key West to South Carolina in a single day. There's certainly a lot in it: astonishingly green Gulf waters, enormous reptiles, ridiculously pricey hotels and restaurants, spring baseball, dumbstruck tourists, and of course utterly fascinating birds.

My dad and I chose to go there for a couple of reasons: first, I had a two-week spring break that neither my wife nor my kids shared, so rather than hang out around the house the whole time, I chose to try some male bonding instead. Second, Florida has a number of bird species that do not occur in the rest of the United States, or in some cases the rest of the world. And third, yes, I admit it, I was really close to seeing my 300th life species, and I wanted to go over the top.

That statistical obsession is the kind of thing that will get you in trouble every time. Remember how it took Roger Clemens about three-quarters of a season to win his 300th game? I had the same kind of thing going in Florida. Before the trip, I had recorded 295 species on my life list--a number that, like 295 home runs, suggests years of solid professionalism, if not a Hall of Fame career. With the smorgasbord of new species available to me in Florida, however, I knew I had every chance to break 300, and because I had every chance, I also knew that the universe would find it highly ironic and amusing if I didn't.

At first, the universe seemed willing to let me do my stuff; I saw my first Florida lifer only hours after we drove across the state line from Georgia: a Swallow-Tailed Kite. I am not exaggerating when I say that I may have a new favorite bird. Yes, I'm enormously partial to woodpeckers, and Black Skimmers are just too cool for words, but the Kite was an absolute stunner: an elegant white raptor with long pointed black wings and an equally long forked black tail. And it's enormous--the wingspan can reach over 50 inches. I'd long hoped to see one, but I'd expected a smallish bird, perhaps crow-sized, that darted from tree to tree. This was something altogether different, though: a hawk of majesty and calm, gliding gracefully above the trees along the northbound lanes of I-75, unconcerned. Number 296.

The next day Dad & I drove from our hotel in Naples to Everglades City, where we met the good ship Manatee at the National Park Visitors Center and took a two-hour tour of the Indian Key area in the Ten Thousand Islands. We didn't see any manatees, alas, but the sky was clear, the temperature a perfect sixty-nine degrees, and the breeze brisk and invigorating. We saw egrets and herons and ibises aplenty, spotted some dolphins in our wake, and got close to several osprey nests to watch the parents feeding the chicks. And we also got a look at a rarity: the "Great White" Heron, once regarded as a separate species, now considered a color morph of the Great Blue Heron. Since it may well be a separate species when the next administration of "Splitters" takes over the American Ornithological Union, I logged it. Number 297.

The next day, I suggested a visit to Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, one of the first tracts purchased by the Audubon Society for preservation. It's a stand of virgin cypress forest, and birds of all sorts live (and often nest) within it. One, the Limpkin, is a Florida-only wader that I was desperately hoping to see during the trip, and I knew this might be my best chance. We took to the boardwalk through the various stands of trees and grasses, and I saw many wondrous things from it: at least three of the peculiarly pale-feathered Red-Shouldered Hawks that inhabit south Florida, a sudden storm of warblers (including a Northern Parula, a Black-and-White, a Pine, and dozens of Palms), some achingly beautiful Black-Crowned Night Herons in full breeding plumage, but no Limpkin. I did, however, spot an improbable lifer: three feet from the boardwalk and eight inches off the ground, sleeping without a care in the world, was a Chuck-Will's-Widow. Its buff and rufous "camouflage" coloring did little good in the position it was in, and I cheerfully assigned it number 298.

Day Four involved a two-hour canoe trip from Everglades City up Half-Mile Creek. Mangroves were involved--lots of mangroves. And there was a capsizing incident which soaked my new Peterson guide in brackish water. I don't want to talk about it right now. From a birding standpoint, though, I'd call the day a bust. You can't see much in a mangrove swamp. Not even the Roseate Spoonbills which reportedly favor it above all other locales.

Day Five saw us packing up and heading down the Tamiami Trail toward Key West. We had a wonderful lunch in Key Largo with a family friend, and then we settled back in our seats for the drive down US 1. It's a drive everyone should make, if only to appreciate the fragile tendril of road that links the Keys to the rest of the world. In a hurricane evacuation, or just at a busy time of the year, there's not an alternative route. If you plan to drive, you drive on Highway 1. The Gulf waters, however, are a gorgeous shade, a turquoise that almost alarms the observer who's used to the darker and murkier colors of the Atlantic coast. And when you're driving along and see that above you is a Magnificent Frigatebird--huge, piratical, and dark, with scissors-like wings and tail, the scene is perfection itself. Number 299.

You can see how this will play out, can't you?

Despite keeping my eyes open for a day and a half in Key West, despite driving an hour back up US 1 to Bahia Honda State Park, despite sailing out for a sunset cruise west of the islands, I saw nothing. Not a single bird I hadn't seen before. Hell, Bahia Honda barely had any birds at all--a bunch of Laughing Gulls, a dozen Brown Pelicans, and a single Palm Warbler who apparently hadn't gotten the memo that it was Hide From PC Day. I saw a few oddities, at least--some Common Mynas near the naval base, and a few more Frigatebirds high above, but nothing new. And when we packed up and started our epic fourteen-hour drive to South Carolina the next day, I knew I was deeply unlikely to get Number 300 from the car seat. And I didn't.

But I got home, and took out my notes and my field guides and dutifully logged it all into the computer. I had a brief hope that I might get to 300 with the Common Myna; if the Mynas I'd seen in Hawaii in 1977 were Hill Mynas, I might be OK, but no such luck--my Hawaiian field guide reported that Oahu is home to the Common Myna. It wasn't a lifer.

But as I looked over my life list, I realized something: I had never put the Hawaiian birds on it.

There were only two birds I could be sure of, the Myna and the Red-Crested Cardinal (which I'd actually managed to photograph), but I had seen them both when Dad and Mom took us to Hawaii for the 1977 Rainbow Classic Basketball Tournament. And come to think of it, when they took us to England in 1982, I'd seen a Great Green Woodpecker, and I didn' t have that on the list either.

I was over 300. Even if I discounted the Great White Heron. Thanks to parents who love to travel and love to take their sons along, I was at 302 life species.

So thank you, Mom & Dad. And thank you, Universe, for teaching me once again that irony is a double-edged sword: sure, you can keep the richest bird habitat in America from yielding up a few species, but I can still beat you through incompetent bookkeeping.

On to 400!

5:05 PM

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Saturday, March 27th, Virginia Festival of the Book, 2:00
I'll be sitting on a panel entitled Publish and Flourish: Networking through Readerville.com, along with an ever-shifting group of my online chums: M.J. Rose (Sheet Music), Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater), and Andrea Buchanan (Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It). Readervillean, writer, and radio commentator Janis Jaquith (Birdseed Cookies) will moderate. Visit www.vabook.org for more information.

LBJs

*I'm writing this from my parents' house in Beaufort, SC, having spent a week on a whirlwind tour of Florida with my dad. After I get home, I'll be settling in to write about the trip at more length. For the moment, let me just note that Florida offers the casual observer a bewildering variety of contradictions, but the bird life is pretty cool. Oh, and the Key Lime Pie is good.

*I've finished two good books on this trip: David Quammen's Monster of God, a fascinating look at the last remaining man-eating predators around the globe, and Dan Simmons' Hyperion, a sprawling science-fiction epic that takes a cool approach to the the basic job of setting up the conflict and characters of the story: the main characters tell their stories to one another while we play eavesdropper. It's a classic trick--Chaucer, anyone?--but underused in this day and age. WARNING: Simmons' story is not self-contained, but is continued in the second book, The Fall of Hyperion. Don't expect closure on page 475.

*And if you were wondering, yes, I found a copy of The Fall of Hyperion at Books Ahoy used books today, so I'm ready to go.

*I'm very happy (and a little relieved) that my Tar Heels made it past the first round of the NCAA tournament, defeating Air Force in a game that could have been a lot closer. We face the #3 seed, Texas, in tomorrow evening's game, and I would very much like to win. For one thing, it would mean beating Rick Barnes, the former Clemson coach for whom I do not feel much affection. For another, it would mean that my dream can continue: I want all six ACC teams to make it to the Elite Eight. It's the best basketball conference in the country, period, and I want some results to reflect that. All six teams (UNC, Duke, NC State, Georgia Tech, Maryland, and Wake Forest) won in the first round, so we're on our way.

*I've decided: I like all kinds of seafood (well, not raw oysters), but the best kind is shrimp. If it's done well, there's simply nothing better--not lobster, not crab, not crayfish, scallops, clams, oysters, mussels, or fish of any kind. If it's mediocre, it's still pretty good. Call it the pizza of the sea.

*I have discovered THE most annoying name for a business ever created. It was on a sign in Florida, and I presume the state found it couldn't legally shut the joint down, though I'm sure all right-thinking people urged it to do so. It's a campground, and its sign reads (Oh, lord, I can't believe I'm typing it) Kountree Kampinn.

Isn't that just 2 Kute 4 Words?

2:33 AM

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Saturday, March 27th, Virginia Festival of the Book, 2:00
I'll be sitting on a panel entitled Publish and Flourish: Networking through Readerville.com, along with an ever-shifting group of my online chums: M.J. Rose (Sheet Music), Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater), and Andrea Buchanan (Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It). Readervillean, writer, and radio commentator Janis Jaquith (Birdseed Cookies) will moderate. Visit www.vabook.org for more information.

Whew.

Exams are graded, comments are written, grades are turned in, and I've got a few minutes to breathe heavily.

This weekend was a whirlwind of the first division. On Friday I gave my English exams, which ended at 10:00. I then shifted totally into Debate Coach mode, driving my ten qualifiers for the Va. Catholic Forensic League State Tournament to the Fairfield Inn in Chester, VA, to spend the night closer to the competition. We dined at Cracker Barrel, took in Starsky and Hutch (which sent at least one of my team members into serious Gran Torino envy), and retired.

On Saturday we woke up and headed off to competition. I spent the day serving as parliamentarian and presiding officer in the Student Congress chamber. The former is a pretty dull job, so I was somewhat pleased when the Congress director suggested I offer to serve as P.O. as well. Usually the P.O.'s job is filled by a student, one elected by the members of the chamber, but at Nationals, it's done by one of the judges; I served in that capacity in the semi-finals back in 1999 at the CFL Nationals in Pittsburgh. It seemed to work well Saturday; instead of bickering and showing off their parliamentary knowledge, the speakers actually debated the issues before them, and they got through 57 speeches, rather than the 40 or so that usually get delivered. All in all, a pleasant day.

Better still were the results of the competition. Though WFS students have done well at VCFL states, finishing as high as second place and earning five berths at three CFL National Tournaments (1997, 1999, and 2002), we've never had a state champion--or at least, we had never had one as of Saturday. At the end of the awards ceremony, however, the team had tied for second place in the debate division and we had two state champs, in Student Congress and in Lincoln-Douglas debate. We're going to Boston in May! Better yet, the Red Sox are at home that weekend!

It was a fun drive home, but since then it's been grade, grade, grade.

Luckily, I'm done, which means I'm free to take off for a week or two. Don't expect me to post here until the 21st or so, because my father and I are off on a He-Man Adventure. Yep, we're going into the wilderness, just two guys, belching, grunting, and putting the convertible top down. Actually, we're driving down to Florida to visit a place I've never been before: the Everglades. I've been wanting to see it since I was five years old and I got a copy of Eleanor Francis Lattimore's Davy of the Everglades, and now I will. Naturally, I'm bringing the binoculars and several field guides, because South Florida has bird species that simply don't occur in other parts of the country (or even the world). And with any luck, when you hear from me next, I'll have moved past the 300th species on my life list.

I hate being away from Kel & the boys for so long, but since they're not on spring break and I am, I have to take my pleasure where I can find it. And if that entails a trip to the River of Grass, a look at a Snail Kite, and maybe a bowl of fresh conch chowder, it's a pleasure I'm prepared to take.

Happy March, everybody! See you at VaBook 2004!

7:30 PM

NEXT APPEARANCE:
Saturday, March 27th, Virginia Festival of the Book, 2:00
I'll be sitting on a panel entitled Publish and Flourish: Networking through Readerville.com, along with my online chums Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale), M.J. Rose (Sheet Music), and Roxana Robinson (Sweetwater). Readervillean, writer, and radio commentator Janis Jaquith (Birdseed Cookies) will moderate. Visit www.vabook.org for more information.

March comes in like a lion, all right. A big one, hopped up on antelope pineal extract and hormones, bounding around the savannah with claws unsheathed, chasing its tail and spewing pheromones into the thawing wind.

Around here, it's making its usual mess. We've got exams, first off. I'm proctoring one right now, for a student who won't be here for tomorrow's English exam. I've already given (and graded!) my speech exams, so at least I'm slightly ahead of where I usually am at this time, but there's no question that having the last exam before spring break succeth heade and bloweth meade, lhude sing goddam. By the time they get to Friday, the kids have all taken four to six other tests, and their brains are fried. Worse, they have to leave by 10:15, so there's a real sense of panic during that last morning, and it doesn't even have much to do with the vagaries of American drama. It's more like "Did I pack my swimsuit? Oh, man, do I have my plane tickets? Should I go by the ATM before the bus leaves for home?" I'll be lucky if they remember to write their exam essays in English and not Sanskrit or Fortran.

Once I give the exams, I've got to grade them, and calculate the grades for all my English students. I have fewer than I did last trimester, so it could be worse, but I've got to get about a dozen papers graded before I even get to the exams. AND enter all the data to calculate the grades. AND write comments about each student. And I have to do it all by noon on Tuesday.

This wouldn't be so hard if it weren't for the fact that Saturday is the day of the Virginia Catholic Forensic League State Finals. Thanks to some very talented kids, a little dumb luck, and yes, perhaps some competent coaching from yrs. truly, we had eleven students qualify for States this year; ten of them will actually compete. It doesn't sound like a big number, but we've never had more than FIVE earn a trip to States in a single year. Ten is a great number, both in terms of percentages (we've only got 14 kids on the whole team) and odds of earning a trip to nationals: the top five in each event win a trip to May's CFL Grand Nationals in Boston, and WFS has three of the 20 Extemp speakers, four of the 20 Student Congressmen, and three of the 16 Lincoln-Douglas debaters. I'm very happy with the team's performance, make no mistake. It's just that trying to get them ready for competition during exam week is a bit mind-frazzling.

We'll finish the competition, the awards ceremony, and the drive home on Saturday evening, just in time to watch the UNC-Duke game, something else which is guaranteed to make my brain buzz. (The new Sports Illustrated, by the way, has a wonderful article on the UNC-Duke rivalry; it's authored by Will Blythe, a fellow Chapel Hill native who went to both CHHS and UNC, and who's best known as Esquire's former fiction editor--check it out.) Once that's done, I may have a chance to grade exams and write comments, but I have to be done fairly quickly, because on Tuesday night, I'm catching a train to South Carolina. From there, my father and I will be driving to Florida to visit the Everglades, something I've wanted to do since I was four. I hope to return to Virginia sometime after St. Patrick's Day, but I'm not really sure when, because I haven't really had time to plan the trip yet.

Oh, and I turned 41 in there somewhere.

I'm really, really ready to be on spring break, make no mistake. I just hope I'm not broken by the time I get to it.

8:04 PM