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j_d_finch

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Flooding in Vermont on Labor Day 2011 [Sep. 5th, 2011|08:24 pm]
More rain brings a giant pain!

Photos (c) J.D. Finch
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Lovecraft and Flooded Brattleboro [Sep. 2nd, 2011|02:00 pm]
[music |Take It Easy - Jackson Browne]

"The whole matter began, so far as I am concerned, with the historic and unprecedented Vermont floods of November 3, 1927. I was then, as now, an instructor of literature at Miskatonic University in Arkham, Massachusetts, and an enthusiastic amateur student of New England folklore. Shortly after the flood, amidst the varied reports of hardship, suffering, and organised relief which filled the press, there appeared certain odd stories of things found floating in some of the swollen rivers; so that many of my friends embarked on curious discussions and appealed to me to shed what light I could on the subject.

I felt flattered at having my folklore study taken so seriously, and did what I could to belittle the wild, vague tales which seemed so clearly an outgrowth of old rustic superstitions. It amused me to find several persons of education who insisted that some stratum of obscure, distorted fact might underlie the rumours.

The tales thus brought to my notice came mostly through newspaper cuttings; though one yarn had an oral source and was repeated to a friend of mine in a letter from his mother in Hardwick, Vermont. The type of thing described was essentially the same in all cases, though there seemed to be three separate instances involved—one connected with the Winooski River near Montpelier, another attached to the West River in Windham County beyond Newfane, and a third centring in the Passumpsic in Caledonia County above Lyndonville. Of course many of the stray items mentioned other instances, but on analysis they all seemed to boil down to these three. In each case country folk reported seeing one or more very bizarre and disturbing objects in the surging waters that poured down from the unfrequented hills, and there was a widespread tendency to connect these sights with a primitive, half-forgotten cycle of whispered legend which old people resurrected for the occasion."

From "The Whisperer in Darkness" H.P. Lovecraft





(Photo: J.D. Finch)
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The Irish Question [Aug. 20th, 2011|10:16 pm]
Back in the late 90's I went to a Paterson NJ fundraiser for an Irish themed festival where the special guest was Malachi McCourt, younger brother of school teacher and Angela's Ashes author Frank. Malachi was always the sort of roustabout hard living one. I was looking forward to buying a drink for a Fenian friend, but alas, he was now a teatotaller and would only accept a club soda, which I was more than happy to procure for him.

Anyway, we shared in some blarney. (Spoiler -- Shockingly he was better at it than I, though I felt I had something to offer as I was an acquaintance of two arty types named Quinn and I'd actually: been to the Old Sod, where I'd not failed to kiss the Blarney Stone (it's cold); visited Yeats' tower (physically not that impressive -- historically, yes); immersed myself in James Joyce through visits to Kenny's Bookstore (RIP) in Galway; and drank enough Guinness to float a medium sized hooker. That's a boat. What the hell did you think I meant?

I later found out that I could have coasted on my Irish blood, passed down from my grandmother and not gone through all that effort to gain my bona fides, but it's all good. (My parents weren't big on the heritage thing and neglected to give me the lowdown on my family history until I was, oh, about forty. Better late than never, I suppose.) Anyway, at the end of the evening McCourt led those in attendance in a singalong of the song in the video, Wild Mountain Thyme and everyone was properly imbued with the spirit.



McCourt struck me as a wry sentimentalist: staunchly proud of his roots, yet not getting sappy about what is too often portrayed as the Paddy Culture, a ready-made commercial version of Ireland that plays well with the tourists, but to anyone willing to look a little deeper is obviously an oversimplification of a complex people and their situation.

BTW, the images in the video complement the song well.
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The Mugged Mailbox [Jul. 18th, 2011|12:26 am]
[mood |Retro]
[music |Soundtrack to Help!]

The days of the rural rumination are over. No more E.B. White-like journeyman prose about feeding a humingbird filling three pages. No more Thoreau influenced epiphanies about the natural wonders just off the beaten sidewalk of your McMansion-lined streets. If Whitman were writing today his editor would tell him to "tighten it up". The reader in today's fast-paced world -- even if not an actual executive -- needs an executive summary, even for (or perhaps especially for) the leisurely country essay or rural rumination:

The New Rural Rumination Piece For People Living In Internet Time: The Rural Mailbox

Including a brief history, personal history, brief anecdote, summary and wrap-up

The rural mailbox, those metal Collossi that balance precariously on their pine and redwood posts in places like Bumslap Arkansas and Pilgrim Hat New Hampshire first came into use when mail order (practiced by the likes of Sears and Montgomery Ward) became a big deal through the institution of RFD (Rural Free Deliver).

Soon hix in the stix were ordering chix ("one gross (144) of living baby chicks, postpaid to your box: $5.49. Guaranteed most still alive.") and wicks. ("Whale blubber wax candles! Let your house and barn smell like the seaside vacation you've always dreamed about.")

When the country folks realized they already had enough chickens and need not order any more; and that eau de dead fish was not an aroma that improved much on the constant scent of manure wafting through the window from the lower 40 they began to order more exciting items like bags of marbles, BB guns -- to annoy the squirrels on their property -- and gingham, a fabric which they apparently used to make everything from curtains to underwear back in the day.

Today, the large and often unsightly mailboxes nevertheless do a yeoman's job accepting stoically and gratefully all of the modern world's useless and wasteful catalogs and flyers that clog our mail system. But all of that "junk mail", not to mention useless items ordered from Amazon and other mail-order retail behemoths, is the least of the rural mailboxes problems.

My own has been battered by passing snow plows so often that its post looks like this: / and the box itself looks like an oft-kicked deflating football as it forlornly has relinquished its noble pedestal-like existence at the top of its post to the gutter below, its demeanor that of the town drunk, with hangdog posture, head askew, with door hanging open like a lollygagging tongue, waiting pathetically for its next drink.
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Wikileaker Bradley Manning's Sympathizer House Detained [Jan. 23rd, 2011|02:21 pm]
[music |Urge For Going -- Tom Rush]

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My Big Moment [Dec. 26th, 2010|02:31 pm]
ComicCon, 2009 --
I met Robert Culp. And for 3 minutes he was my friend. Of course, I'd known him all these years, though he didn't have the glimmer of an idea that I existed. It was going to cost me $15 to get proof that he was my friend. But many friends I've had have cost a lot more, one way or another.

Because for $15 he was posing with those who wanted to rub elbows with a celebrity. I'm not sure, but I think he insulted me when I admitted I'd no idea how my phone took a picture. I had come to ComicCon NYC from Vermont, where there's no immediate need to record the trees, lakes and wildlife on a camera phone.

"Bunch of idiots with these phones, don't know how to use 'em," he said as I handed my phone to his assistant. Was he talking about me? It was a general comment thrown out to those within earshot, so I decided not to take it personally. At another table Lou Ferigno signed for Hulk fans and various writers had lines of the faithful waiting to be anointed with one of their favorite scribes' autograph.

I told Culp that when I was in eighth grade a girl had said I looked like him. He looked at me like I was sort of crazy and said something under his breath that seemed to be in the "Really? I don't see it" category of response. With my $15 paid the assistant snapped the picture, Culp and I wished each other success in the future and that was that.

The picture is still in my camera phone, the phone service having been ended suddenly before I had a chance to send it to myself and blow it up for a cool momento. But I'll eventually learn how Bluetooth works and then I'll have a fine record of the day. Until then I'll have to satisfy myself with the tiny image I can bring up on my phone's screen. These damn phones really make me look like an idiot.

Robert Culp August 16, 1930 – March 24, 2010


Wikimedia
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My Adderall Diaries Review, Rough Cut [Dec. 15th, 2010|12:08 pm]
[Tags|, , , , , , , ]
[Current Location |United States, Vermont, Brattleboro]
[music |Boogie Woogie Santa Claus -- Hampton/Parker]

Stephen Elliott is the guy that you meet that makes you come to your senses when you're young and trying out the underbelly of the visible world: He appears like a stop sign with the added advice "do not proceed beyond this point." Because it is clear that Elliott has gone beyond that point many times. It is not always pretty, though it is interesting.

Mr. Elliott likes to connect to cultural signposts, I guess in the process of trying to become one himself (he's made it!) -- though his whole schtick is too outre to allow most to measure their lives by the metrics that his often dysfunctional existence affords. (But who am I to criticize, as I read his memoir looking for dropped crumbs to lead me to a common ground where we both might have found direction in the lit world of the first decade of the 21st century.)

It's all very gritty, very real, natch, coming close to the "I've had it tough -- feel sorry for me" stuff, but stays just on this side of the line.

Briefs:
A bit too authentic to be on the NYT BS (the irony isn't lost on anyone) list, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.
An interesting enough bio/memoir to the extent that I really didn't care too much about the murder story. It had been covered thoroughly in the media and serves here mostly to trigger Elliott's thoughts and memories about his own situation and past and the family he left behind for the streets and juvenile homes.
I can understand why Eggers gave him a break, i.e., bringing him into the McSweeney's family; seems one of their commonalities is a mother who died tragically and too soon.
Or did Elliott con him with James Freyesque tales of J.T. Leroy imaginary doings? (Don't ask Elliott's father to get to the bottom of this. Anyway, by the end of the book I wound up believing Elliott is, in fact, a reliable narrator.)

#

I found the question I kept asking myself was "Is he totally honest?" Elliott doesn't admit the real sleaziness...that I know the street type perpetrates on people. I'm not talking about the basic activities of ripping off friends and relatives, but a deeper personality flaw that allows them to perpetrate the most terrible personal slights and insults without the need to feel any remorse whatsoever. Perhaps that's not in Elliott's bag of tricks.

But he is really "out there." So why, I ask, does he show he's connected to the zeitgeist by using a Paris Hilton "Day Of The Locust" type scene that, sorry to say, fell flat for me? The paps (oh yes, it's Felliniesque -- not that there's anything wrong with that), the wild crowds -- been there, done that. This is a little like the folks that stand next to a star in a pic to show their hipness, if not their connectedness. Is Elliott writing down to us, or does he just not know (isn't sure about) his audience? Do you know anyone who gives a toss about Paris Hilton or thinks it's cool to use her as a cultural signpost. I mean other than Gawker commenters and TMZ addicts? Really.

He takes one on a fascinating trip, not unlike what Eggers did with A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius. But I refuse to get too wrapped up and in fact the infrastructure that DE had (the fangirls and boys, now nearing middle age and who would be scandalized by this tome) is not there. The other bad boy in the DE stable has been washed out, banished as it were -- he, the real upscale middleclasser who shall not be named, as Elliott's father claimed the author was -- from the magical lit kingdom of McSweeney's.

Actually though, for those literatis who like their bad boys real, Elliott's your man as opposed to that once clown king of the Eggers empire.

Actually, Elliott and I share a lot and as I read I'm relating to his story so well that I don't even notice the writing -- it's after he mentions Eggers and I think, Oh, this is like reading a letter from a friend; then I slap myself and come back to my senses. (I'm telling you I slapped myself but it is a lie. Okay, there, I just did. Do you believe me? This is what Elliott's story starts to feel like after a while: believe it or not.)

At times he reminds me of Oscar Levant. As pals with Gershwin, he was a neurotic storyteller. Eggers is Elliott's Gershwin. Eggers as a presence lingers in the background. Even Elliott's quoting of Zen and the Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance is somehow McSweeney'sesque. I wondered some times as I read if Elliott was so messed up how could he remember so much? Of course Levant called one volume of his recollections Memoirs Of An Amnesiac. Elliott can always blame the made up parts (if any) on James Frey syndrome. After all, it's the "in" lit ailment.

I continue reading. I hit page 88 and he has now indeed described himself as "like a real J.T. Leroy" right after he mentions sleeping in his car in the Castro district.

(I arrived in SF during my cross country trip; in a lot at Haight Ashbury, very briefly; wired on diet pills from a girlfriend while buddies made do with No Doz... hit the streets in search of psychedelics and -- horrified -- found only psychos in the form of speed freaks and broken down hippies. Even though I was fresh out of high school I had enough experience, having gotten burned buying off the street in Greenwich Village* to know that this scene was hopeless. The summer of love bus had long since passed through, leaving a nasty oil slick and human pollution. It was a hitcher on the way to Monterrey who scored us good acid from his friend who had just been at the Monterrey Festival.)

*Hilariously one of us on the bus back home to the NJ suburbs from Port Authority tasted (not smoked, literally "tasted") some and sagely (and in fact I think there was sage in the ounce bag) intoned "This is good stuff" with the same wrongheaded knowingness as the Steven Fry character in Blackadder as he approvingly samples the "fine wine," a gift from the new world, utterly unaware that he is imbibing Baldrick's piss.

###
Chapter 6

Elliott offers another of his tales of dotcom boom and bust -- perhaps to show us that he has visited the real world, even if he can't exactly live it it -- with the added frisson this time that the company's powers that be threatened to kill him. I start to think at this point that you can take the advice that his buddy Eggers gave about parts of his own memoir and just skim or skip a few parts.

But I am now realizing that I'm starting to like Elliott and that he has worked the street con on me, but in the pages of a book. And he has made himself appear a victim of the dotcom world and evil suits and I really haven't doubted him.

I'm with him, gently conned into being his friend (an interesting variation of the reader-writer contract of give and take) when suddenly...Shocking! Is it a lie that he truly wants to know why Katie (who he presents as an innocent and purifying agent for his soul) is with him? As one who has been in a writer's entourage, close to the "star" at times, it is altogether clear to me that Elliott's lit celebrity has gotten him a compliant groupie.

And he might say he loves Katie, but in context he seems to be using her, especially as her pivotal role is within Elliott's consideration of veracity of narrative. If he had perhaps attacked verisimilitude he would have noticed that he was more concerned with Katie as a functionary in his story; she is in his life because he created a simulacrum of which its model in the real world might be jealous. (Yes, I did start reading more closely with Chapt. 6.) His angst about the role of Katie in his life strikes me as a bit disingenuous, the character "Katie" just adding a bit of clutter and unnecessary angst to the proceedings. (I will go back and reread this to make sure my impressions are correct -- remember, this is only the rough cut review. Anyway, I may just cut this whole part for the crime of fatuousness. My theory is: if you can't stand your own writing, why should you expect anyone else to?)

Amusingly Elliott wonders if he is lusting after another woman for anecdotal purposes, but doesn't consider this possibility for Katie. Huh?

The rest of the story is about an actual dotcom murder/trial and Elliott's relationship with his father. The father consideration is important stuff, sure, but that's another review, and really, where angst gets heavy and real. That whole end of things needs a part two review. Or here, but in the final review version.

Let me check out by saying that The Adderall Diaries is a book I read hoping to find a few answers to my past. In the end I found myself in my present, looking at my future through the lens of Elliott's story. I can't ask much more of any book.
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Wordle wordcloud of some of my recent words [Oct. 1st, 2010|09:22 pm]
[music |White Babbit by Sinclair Airplane]

Words
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I babysat for Schrödinger's cat [Jul. 5th, 2010|04:09 pm]
[Tags|, , ]

I babysat for Schrödinger's cat over the weekend. When I opened the box he was delivered in he was wearing tiny spectacles, a little white lab coat and holding a clipboard the size of a piece of melba toast. “You aren’t what I expected, LOL,” he loled.
“You just LOLed IRL,” I said.
“You just said IRL in real life,” he said.
We both fell about LOLing as he swore he and a bunch of rogue physicists were going to hunt down the LOLcats people and “when we find them it’s not going to be pretty.”
“Let’s see who’s LOLing then,” he said without even the hint of irony or LOL.
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Writer's Block: Family Adventure [Mar. 25th, 2010|08:04 pm]
[Tags|, , ]

What's the most exciting adventure your family has ever been on?

Brought to you by How to Train Your Dragon. In theaters everywhere Friday.

View 148 Answers



WTF?! (Went to France.)
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