December 2009 Archives

I've never been a hunter. I don't really know why.

I'm certainly more than happy to get up at insane hours and wander around in the half-light looking for wildlife. My moral principles aren't compromised by eating meat--in fact, I'd probably feel less compromised by eating a game animal that had lived a healthy life in the wild, rather than a domesticated animal that had been crammed into a berth at a factory farm for years. And I don't really have a problem with shooting at targets, either with guns or with a bow.

Still, I've never really wanted to blast away at a living thing. I think part of the problem is that I see the contest between hunter and prey as somewhat unsporting. A deer, or a dove, or a turkey, has little in the way of resources to escape the encounter unharmed; it's got instinct, whatever physical abilities it can bring into play--speed, camouflage, flight, whatever--and whatever experience it's picked up in its brief lifetime, assuming it's got the longterm memory to use that experience. (And if you look at the size of a dove's head, I don't expect it to have much.)

A hunter, by contrast, has not only his own physical and mental abilities, but centuries' worth of accumulated wisdom and technology. Every trick that one person learned and passed along, every bit of information that was written down by an earlier hunter, and every bit of progress in the fields of metallurgy, gunsmithing, textile manufacturing, transportation, and biology is his to use. In a very real sense, it's not a battle of deer and human, but one of deer and humanity.

Humanity has been kicking animals' asses as a species for quite some time. How can one single animal, and one that isn't even a predator, get a fair matchup against the collective knowledge of the species that drove the moa, the European lion, the passenger pigeon, and the Tasmanian tiger to extinction?

I have a proposal.

First, consider the human being's natural abilities: binocular vision, bipedal motion, a few reasonably sharp teeth, an opposable thumb, and a big ol' brain. None of these by themselves constitute an unfair advantage against, say, a ten-point White-tail buck, which has hooves, horns, and impressive acceleration.  Put such a buck in an arena against a naked human and you'd probably get a pretty even match; there's not much a naked human can do in an arena, except maybe think up a way to get out of it. That's a legitimate use of the big ol' brain, but it would sort of defeat the purpose of the contest.

Second, consider that the big ol' brain, being a natural part of the human's arsenal, ought to be a legitimate part of this sport, just as the deer's antlers are. We want to challenge the hunter, not handicap him. All we're trying to avoid is giving the hunter ten thousand years' worth of equipment when he goes out into the woods.

And that's exactly what we do. When you go in for Real Hunting, you face nature as Nature intended: naked, armed only with your wits, your limbs, and anything you can find to use as a tool. This last is important: your ancestors were capable of picking up rocks, limbs, even antelope thighbones, and using them to help bring down prey.You should have that same opportunity to use what Nature provides. (And no, you can't use a broken Pepsi bottle or a discarded strand of barbed wire as a weapon; if you're going to do that, it's only a matter of time before a hunter thinks leaving a Bowie knife or a Browning semi-automatic lying in the forest and pretending to stumble across it would be legit.)

Other than that, there are no rules. Bring down your prey however you want; brain a rabbit with a well-thrown rock, or set a vine snare for a weasel. Charge at a deer and send it over a cliff, or brain a beaver with a birch branch. There are no restrictions on season, nor is there a limit on your kills. So long as you kill it in the Real (and sporting) fashion, all is well; failure to hunt in the Real way would be the only grounds for revoking a Real Hunting license, but your license will never need to be renewed. And if you're successful, you have another important advantage: like your ancestors, you can use what you kill to make new stuff.

Yes, prey does not provide meat alone for the Real Hunter. He can use the bones to fashion tools--cutting edges, or spear points, or short-handled war clubs--which will make it easier for him to bring down the next animal. He can fashion himself a spear, or even a bow and some arrows--but he can't hunt with anything unless he's made it himself from what he's killed.

Perhaps even more than weapons, the main trophy the Real Hunter will claim from his prey will be clothing. Yes, you can create shoes and warm clothes from the fur and hides and sinews. In fact, the other hunters will know at a glance what you've killed, because you'll be wearing it. From the coonskin cap on the top of your head to the tip of your deerhide shoes, you will be a walking billboard for your own badassness. A naked hunter is obvious to all as either a complete novice or a total incompetent. But if you're wearing mountain lion--dude, you are no longer just a weekend hunter with an Eddie Bauer gift certificate. You are fucking Orion himself.

Obviously not everyone will find much appeal in Real Hunting. Those who prefer to sit in a tree stand manufactured by Pennsylvania metallurgists clutching a gun made in Germany while wrapped in camouflage-printed polyester-and-velcro coveralls made in Taiwan will be able to do so (with all the existing rules and restrictions, of course), but if Real Hunting were in place, they would do so knowing that they didn't have what it takes to best Bambi mano a mano. No, they had to bring in assistants from all over the globe and throughout history, all so they could claim victory in a contest as hollow as a Duke basketball game in Durham in November.

All I'm asking for, really, is a little sportsmanship. And a cut of the licensing fees. Is that so much to ask? I think not.


9:10 PM

It's finally happened. After nine long years of struggle, the fish have wriggled up onto dry land, so to speak.

The Fighting Coelacanths are champions at last.



Formed in the fall of 2001 for the fledgling Fantasy League of Gentlemen/Gentlewomen, the franchise had an inauspicious beginning, missing a playoff berth and finding solace only in winning the inaugural Toilet Bowl between the worst two franchises. Since that time, however, the Canths have been one of the most consistent FLOGG franchises around--during the regular season. Despite earning playoff berths in every season from 2002 through 2008, the team couldn't seem to put a playoff run together, often losing to lower-seeded squads in early rounds. In 2005, the Canths finished the regular season 9-5 and fought their way to Super Duper Bowl V, but fell to the 7-7 Hipsters (a/k/a Hip Hip Hezbollah) on the strength of a 200-yard/3-TD performance by Tiki Barber.

By the start of the 2009 campaign, the Coelacanths were one of only two original FLOGG franchises never to win a title.

This is why on draft night, I decided (or more accurately, since we approach fantasy football as a role-playing game, my character--TFC owner/coach Perry "Shoat" Cooper, hog farmer, fisherman, and proud resident of Garland, NC--decided) to abandon the safe-but-unsuccessful strategies I had previously employed in forming my teams. I had picked 6th, 7th, 8th, or 9th in every draft since 2002, and I could never grab the star players I needed to take a title. This year, I swore that I would either make a big splash or at least fail so spectacularly that I could grab a top player in the 2010 draft.

That's why, when my pick came up in the sixth slot of the first round, I threw caution to the wind. With the top-tier running backs gone, I could select either a second-tier runner or follow the accepted Plan B of drafting a top quarterback.

I drafted a wide receiver.

Larry Fitzgerald of the Arizona Cardinals joined my keeper from last year, the Chargers' Vincent Jackson, and suddenly I had a pair of top-flight wideouts to anchor my squad. Fitz would finish the year as the sixth-best scoring WR in the league, Jackson the tenth. From that point, I could snag players as I would. I solidified my running game with Frank Gore, Pierre Thomas, Ray Rice, and Rashard Mendenhall, picked top-tier tight end Jason Witten of the Cowboys, and selected promising quarterback Jay Cutler.

And there you see my mistake. Though I had great WRs (with rookie Percy Harvin joining the squad in round 12) and a big supply of good runners, it became apparent around Week 7 that Cutler wasn't going to do the job, and backup Kyle Orton wasn't much more reliable. I was 3-4, mired in my usual mediocrity, and something had to be done. I had to get a consistent signal caller, and that meant a trade.

Luckily, the Peace Corps Psychopomps had two fine QBs, Matt Schaub and Philip Rivers, and had room for a good running back. Thanks to my late-round RB successes (Rice in 6, Mendenhall in 10), I decided I could afford to part with Gore and Orton in exchange for Rivers and Jamaal Charles. Rivers immediately proved himself a far more consistent QB than Cutler, scoring 193 points over the rest of the season (as opposed to Cutler's 124) thanks to 17 TD passes and only 6 interceptions (as opposed to Cutler's 12 and 16). As a bonus, when Mendenhall's star began to wane late in the season, Charles proved a fine option as my second running back.

Thus reformatted, the Canths went on a 4-2 surge to close out the regular season and finish over .500 at 7-6. As the third seed in the Tickle division, we faced the Banana Slugs in round one and took them down 106-89. The division-champion Donkeys had been dispatched by a spectacular 160-point performance from the Psychopomps, which gave me more than a little trepidation about our second-round meeting, but my Rivers-to-Jackson combo picked up 53 points to the 38 produced by the Corps' Schaub-to-Andre-Johnson package (not to mention the 19 earned by former Corpsman Jamaal Charles) and we emerged victorious, 115-97.

Then it was time to face the Slap division's champion, the Screamin' Boiled Lobsters, who had ridden their first-round pick, Peyton Manning, to great success... but in Week 16, Colts head coach Jim Caldwell opted to give Manning a rest in the second half, leaving him with only a 7-point total. Though the Lobsters got a great boost from Ryan Grant and the Packers defense, they couldn't overcome double-digit performances by Rivers, Charles, Fitzgerald, Witten, and the Cardinals D. The Super Duper Bowl title was at long last the Canths' to hoist. After years of struggle, obsessive calculation, and recrimination, I have finally won a championship in the most fantastically entertaining fantasy league on the face of God's green Earth.

And that, I promise you, will be the last time I mention fantasy football for eight months. Though you can expect to see a photo once Dan sends me my trophy. Oh, yes. You'll see it. ALL of you will see it. Our precioussssss.


7:20 AM

Rusty blackbird, dark
with yellow eyes, atop the
snowy dogwood. Peace.



8:56 AM

Well, we looked at the weather report yesterday and decided it would not be a good idea to drive to Fayetteville, so we're not going to be at the Dalton family Christmas party tonight, which kinda stinks.

On the other hand, the four of us are home safe and warm, with plenty of groceries (and birdseed), a working internet connection, and one of the most beautiful snows I've ever seen keeping anything else from happening. It's like God called time out for us.

Apparently all I needed was a foot and a half of snow to cheer me up.



I scattered seed on the porch rail, and the Dark-eyed Juncos and White-throated Sparrows have been digging for it all morning.



One of the local Cardinals joins in.

One cold crow.

It's a good day to be where we are. Here's hoping that's true for you, too.



10:01 AM

Between the fall of 1991 and the spring of 2006, I was engaged almost daily in the task of preparing students for competition in speech and debate. I didn't intend that, having as I did no experience with forensic competition of any sort beforehand, but when you're a newly-certified teacher with a baby on the way and you're looking for your first job, when the principal asks if you can assist the debate coach you say "Absolutely."

Under the tutelage of Cathy Johnston, I discovered that my experience in drama (developed at Chapel Hill High and nurtured at the ArtsCenter), my natural ability to talk (honed by years of practice on WXYC), and my natural analytical abilities made me a pretty fair assistant coach. Cathy pointed me toward Student Congress and then Lincoln-Douglas debate, two events where I greatly enjoyed watching my students succeed, and I learned enough from her that when it came time to move from Fayetteville, I felt comfortable telling Woodberry's then-headmaster, John Grinalds, that I could start a team at WFS--if he'd let me spend two weeks getting coached up at the University of Iowa's debate camp that summer.

Thus, in July of '95, I spent two weeks in Iowa City, steeping myself in L-D theory, rhetorical structure, and a crash course in social contract philosophy. I came out feeling loaded for bear, and when I started my new team at Woodberry--with a whopping two students--I knew I could build a program.

It took a while. Luckily, I had some of Woodberry's most brilliant minds to work with, which helped the program take steps quickly. In 1997, we had our first student qualify for a national tournament: the National Catholic Forensic League finals in Baltimore. In 1999, we had two qualify, one in Lincoln-Douglas debate and the other in Student Congress, and we took a trip to Chicago. In 2002, two Congressmen made the NCFL nationals in Pittsburgh (where we saw a Pirates-Cardinals game) and one of them qualified for the National Forensic League national tournament in Charlotte. In 2004, we had our first state champion (in Student Congress), and he and one of our LDers qualified for NCFL nationals in Boston. (I ate scrod, visited Stephen Jay Gould's old stomping ground, and saw a Red Sox-Mariners game at Fenway, where I bought a Sox cap--BEFORE they won the Series!).

Then in 2005, everything came together. We had a strong Congress delegation, anchored by a defending state champion, as well as a solid L-D squad and even a top-notch performer in Original Oratory. We brought home trophies in bundles, and at the Va. Catholic Forensic League state tournament, we won the team championship in the debate division, with individual titles in both Congress and L-D. I earned my diamond from the National Forensic League (signifying 10,000 points earned by my students in competition) and felt good about my efforts, despite the fact that a change in Woodberry's calendar meant we couldn't attend the NCFL nationals because all my qualifiers were graduating that same weekend.

The next year, despite the shiny championship trophy in the case and my new-minted Degree of Outstanding Distinction from the NFL, I found it harder and harder to face practice in the afternoons. I didn't want to do any prep work, and practices began to drag on and on, especially on Tuesdays and Fridays, when I would often have to spend four hours at a time listening to my speakers. (A Lincoln-Douglas round takes 45 minutes, not counting the time spent on analyzing the debate and correcting mistakes; most individual speaking events take ten minutes, not counting coaching time, and an unabbreviated Student Congress session is two hours long.) I began showing up late for practice--never by more than a few minutes, but regularly. We were defending state champions, but I felt like I was trying to pump water out of a dry well.

After a while, I started asking myself what was going on, and I realized I really didn't like coaching debate anymore. I stayed gamely on top of it, but my misery was increasing, and the long days of competition were brutal: waking at 5:00 or even earlier in order to get to tournaments, eating unhealthy meals at fast-food joints, sitting in the judge's lounge popping donuts like mints and swilling bad coffee, wearing out my hands writing detailed flow-sheets of debates so that I had good notes by which to judge the winner (and to help his/her coach when I wrote the details on the ballot), waiting endlessly for results to be tabulated and trophies handed out, and then driving back home in the dark... I began to notice that a significant number of the coaches in the world of debate were morbidly obese, too.

By February, I was having to spend time sitting in a darkened room just to gear myself up to go to practice. I missed work altogether a couple of times, unable to muster the desire to get up and do my job. Then one afternoon before practice, I started to feel a tightness in my chest; my breathing was rapid and shallow and I felt increasingly helpless before the shadow that the upcoming practice was casting over me.

This was bad. I talked to my assistant coach to tell him I was having problems, and he gamely offered to help out however he could, but there was no question that I was dumping an awful lot on him already, and he didn't really have the experience yet to run the team without me. I also informed the team that I was struggling, and asked them for patience with me, which is a lot to ask a bunch of high-school students, but they were unfailingly kind.

Finally, on one cold dark Saturday morning, with the weather turning foul and my stress level maxing out, I simply couldn't do it. I couldn't make myself go to the tournament. Hell, I could barely catch my breath. I called my assistant and apologized, telling him I'd be unable to go, which effectively destroyed the team's ability to go, since I wouldn't be on hand to serve as a judge. (Judges are always in short supply at a tournament, so to compete, you've got to provide judges.) I apologized to the team as well, but I knew this was the end for me. I made an appointment with a counselor, and after getting some advice on coping mechanisms, I was able to escape my onrushing depression, but I knew that I had to lay the matter on the line for my boss: I couldn't coach debate any longer. I accepted the job of directing a play in the winter instead, and there the matter has remained, though I've now moved my directing commitment to the fall.

I still tried to help out with debate. Once, when he had to be out of town, I even took the new coach's team to a tournament. It was miserable. Not only did I feel eerily out of place now, but the whole situation was more obviously awful than I'd recalled: the oppressive atmosphere in the home ec room where the judges were stationed, trying to catch up on paper-grading or bitching about their budgets; the student holding area in the cafeteria, where everyone sat for eight hours, punctuated by hour-long bursts of travel to rounds of competition, perched on the tiny round dots of the tables' built-in stools like stylites on pillars. I ate a bad hot dog for lunch, and then bought another one just to have something to do. Even my copy of C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces couldn't distract me from the unpleasantness. I didn't have a panic attack, thank god, but it was a thoroughly unpleasant experience. I could hardly believe I'd done it for fifteen years.

And then, just the other day, one of the senior members of our current forensics team, whom I'd coached as a freshman back in 2006-07, asked me to sit and listen to him doing an extemp speech at 4:30. After classes ended at 3:15, I sat in my classroom, working on various papers, farting around on the web, doing anything but thinking about my commitment to hear a speech and pass judgment upon it... and at 4:15, here it came: shortness of breath, accompanied by the desire to sit in a dark room for a while.

I walked down to the room where I'd agreed to meet him to apologize and tell him face-to-face I wouldn't be able to help. And then I walked outside, leaned on my car, breathed deeply for a few minutes, drove home, opened a beer, and went to bed for a few hours.

It is sometimes pleasant to revisit something you liked long ago, so that you can awaken in yourself an awareness of who you were then, and why you liked it. Perhaps oddly, in this instance it was somewhat comforting to be confronted with something that I really didn't like at all, so that I could be sure of my feelings.

No, I hadn't been making a big deal out of nothing; I wasn't mistaken in my recollections; I wasn't just tired of coaching and capable of returning to it after a little break.

It's a bit sad, perhaps, but it's certain. For me, perhaps forever, debate coaching isn't an option. And it's good to take a deep breath, close my eyes, and be sure of that.


9:18 AM

Last night's "Informal Music Night" went well for all concerned, though the audience of 85+ was a bit larger than expected, ensuring that most of them didn't get any pizza.  Thing Two's a capella group, "Seven O'Clock" (six students and strings teacher Will Cole) delivered a rousing version of the Beach Boys' "Fun, Fun, Fun." There was a wonderful Rachmaninoff piano piece that I didn't recognize and another solo piano piece that may have been the student's composition. (Since it was an informal night, nobody printed up any programs.) Out in the audience, Kelly broke up two bars into the intro of a senior's performance of Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, and I had to stop from humming along during Saint-Saens' "The Elephant," as performed by Will and our best student bassist. There was even an avant-garde moment as we listened via iPod to a student's digitized and treated recordings of found sounds around the campus.

But my main objective was of course to remember how to play with a band. I've done a fair amount of solo acoustic playing in recent years, and even a few duets, but my electric guitar and I haven't gone onstage together in nearly two decades. (In fact, since my Ibanez AR-100 is actually on the fritz right now, I had to play last night's show with Thing Two's Schecter, which added a certain weirdness to the proceedings.) The main reason we formed at all was Will's insistence that the students would benefit from seeing faculty members playing together, and once he'd persuaded me to join in, we were able to locate a drummer (physics teacher Jacob Sargent) and a guitarist/singer (English teacher Marc Hogan). Will volunteered to pick up bass guitar, which he'd never played, but figured (correctly) that he could learn, given his knowledge of the cello and other stringed instruments. That left me on guitar, keyboards, and vocals.

Rehearsals were not unlike most early band rehearsals, with everyone struggling to come up with cover songs the other three guys might know, or sometimes songs the other three guys might know and not dislike. My initial list of ten songs contained not one song that Marc knew, though I thought it wasn't really that obscure, including as it did songsby Talking Heads, Little Feat, R.E.M., the Violent Femmes, the English Beat, and Britney Spears (though I included "Oops! I Did It Again" primarily because of Richard Thompson's brilliant cover.) Okay, Jonathan Coulton's "Re: Your Brains" is a bit more obscure, being an internet-released song about a middle-manager-turned-zombie trying to persuade a co-worker to let him eat his brain, but I have to have some fun.

Luckily, my 11th suggestion, "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding" (recorded by Elvis Costello, but written by Nick Lowe) passed muster with Marc, and we taught it to Jacob and Will without much trouble. Since I knew the lyrics, I took the lead vocal and electric guitar part, with Marc playing 12-string acoustic and joining Will on backing vocals.

Marc's suggestion was a Led Zeppelin song. This is not, in itself, a problem, but Zep is one of those bands where you have to  be careful because their oeuvre is so well-known; you don't want to set yourself up to look bad by comparison. Luckily, we had a secret weapon: Will's cello. By using that, Jacob's subtle mallet work on cymbals and bells, and my own piano version of the original mandolin part, we had a credible arrangement of "Going to California" to back Marc's guitar and vocal, and I think in concert it came off better than "PL&U."

The third song was the toughest one. We wanted something simple, so the Coulton was out. We wanted something newer than the other two songs, so the Feat, Beat, Femmes, and Heads songs were out, as was Marc's suggestion of the Rascals' "Good Love." And we wanted something that rocked pretty hard as a finale.

I had an answer, and sure enough, when we closed last night's concert, I was on vocals and tambourine, leading the crowd in enthusiastic handclaps in our cover of Outkast's "Hey Ya!"

There is a reason we decided to call the band "Poor Judgement."


10:52 AM

I felt sure I could make headway on another draft of A Raven for Doves tonight. I had my muscles stretched, my teeth clenched, my knee and elbow pads securely fastened, and I was ready to go.

Two and a half hours later, I've unrevised every revision I made.

I suppose there is the off chance that this draft is perfect and needs no alteration, but I suspect that's not the way to bet.

Grr.

But on the plus side, I'm performing with our newly formed faculty band at tomorrow night's informal concert, and I'll get to have the excitement of playing with a drummer for the first time since Rob Ladd sat in on a demo tape I recorded at Yellow Studios in... uh... 1994.

It'll be fun. Well, it had better be.

Grr.





8:57 PM