It's Better in Wyoming.

I've never loved winter as much as I have this year. Laramie apparently does not share my enthusiasm. I hear lots of people saying, "I'm tired of snow" or "I wish it would warm up" or "I fell on my ass crossing the street again today!" or "I'm ready for some green grass and a suntan" or whatever it is they say to indicate that they're anxious for the change of seasons to take place. But not me. This has been the first winter in my recent memory that has blessed us with snow consistently. Most winters, it seems to me, dump about four big storms on town, and then the snow blows away and we end up with a mostly dry season. But not this year--I woke up again this morning to a skiff of new whiteness, and we're supposed to get more this weekend. I've shoveled snow on 12 or 14 days, at least, and maybe more. It feels great to have a winter that actually feels, to me, like winter: you wake up, and there's a fifty-fifty c...

So Jack Adler gave a talk at UW today. Guy's a Holocaust survivor, came to tell us about anti-Semitism and his experience in various concentration/extermination camps. Talked about how he saved his sister, once, from getting sent to the gas chamber of Auschwitz. She later ended up at the chambers of another camp. Talked about a friend of his dad's who kept him from becoming a human subject in one of Josef "Angel of Death" Mengele's experiments--an experiment for the Luftwaffe to determine how much pressure the human body could take before it would burst. Talked about how an SS officer, for whom he became the cleaning boy, would put scraps of food into the stove for him to find when he cleaned out the ashes in the morning. Amid all the atrocities, it's amazing how such small acts of courage stand out. Not that they make up for the shit that went on during the Holocaust--that's not what I'm suggesting--but good deeds go a damn long way. Makes me ...

So after returning from the fantastic day ice fishing, I discovered that I shoulda been wearing sunscreen. I think I got second-degree burns on my cheeks--it looks sorta like I've got quarter-sized blisters beneath my eyes. This makes me feel pretty stupid. I mean, I realize I shoulda thought of this. But the snow was falling and the clouds were out and it was cold and I didn't think of it until it wasn't snowing and the clouds had burned off and by then I was already pretty fried probably and I thought we'll only be out another hour or so so why worry now. I've got half-moon shaped burns on my eyelids. And a totally white forehead where I'd pulled my hat down, way down, to help block out the whiteness of the day. I thought about hiding out for a day or two, hoping that the redness would fade, but why? What's done is done: mighswell get on with what life. Nothing can change the shape of the future. A new entry for my book of wisdom: Always wear sunscreen. Mo...

Today was my first ever ice-fishing trip. Drilling holes in the ice is harder work than it looks. About 10 minutes in the day, Jason--the guy who took me fishing--caught a 12-inch rainbow. (We'll say it was about 12 inches, anyway. Wink, wink. Actually, I don't think that's a huge lie. In fact, I might be underestimating the fish. Maybe it was more like 14 inches. Yeah, let's say 14 inches.) Then we caught no more fish in the next five hours. What I discovered, though, was that fish don't hit your bait until you've reached a critical level of distraction. When we were sitting there tending the lines, no bites. But, turn your back to take a pee-pee, open a beer, re-bait another line, open a jar of honey-roasted peanuts (mmmm, honey-roasted peanuts), answer a call, or take a picture, and, whammo!, here comes a fish. Also, obviously, combining any two distractors increases your odds of getting a bite. Another way to get a hit: drill holes a little to...

That's the tattoo I'm thinking about getting. Amen. I heard it means, roughly, "so be it" or "let it be." These days, that's advice that should be printed on my heart. Further research (through dictionary.com) yields up these definitions: an expression of assent or approval, a Hebrew word meaning firm and hence faithful, sometimes translated as 'verily,' a word which expresses the wish that a prayer be fulfilled, an acronym meaning "God, King who is Trustworthy," a derivative of the Hebrew verb aman "to strengthen," and a formula of conclusion -- finis. Additionally, newadvent.org notes that "the Greek letters which form amen according to their numerical formulas total 99," a number which "often appears in inscriptions ... and a sort of magical efficacy seems to have been attributed to its symbol." The word amen appears 99 times in some Bibles. Other entries at dictionary.com identify amen 's a...

Some random thoughts on this morning. - I'm not so keen on the previous blog I wrote. A bit too esoteric, I'm saying. - Willie Nelson sings a version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" on his Songbird album. In some research I discover that Cohen is said to have commented this about the song: Hallelujah is a Hebrew word which means "Glory to the Lord." The song explains that many kinds of Hallelujahs do exist. I say : "All the perfect and broken Hallelujahs have an equal value ." It's, as I say, a desire to affirm my faith in life, not in some formal religious way but with enthusiasm, with emotion....It's a rather joyous song. I like very much the last verse. I remember singin' it to Bob Dylan after his last concert in Paris. The morning after, I was having coffee with him and we traded lyrics. Dylan especially liked this last verse, "And even though it all went wrong, I stand before the Lord of song with nothing on my lips but Ha...

So I did consider starting a blog on MySpace, cuz then I could have the "all-in-one" site--pics, comments, blog, random survey results ("I'm a Snickers bar!"), groovy backgrounds, youtube videos that made me laugh, etc., etc., etc. And etc. But in fact, that's the whole thing I don't like about MySpace--there's just too damn much going on. And it's overflowing, and schizophrenic, and not so organized. And if somebody wants to contact me, they can post a comment, or send a bulletin, or send a message. Why? As a composition/rhetoric dork, I want to talk about "remediation" and multiple avenues for expression/creation of self and the joy of excess and the freedom of non-linearity. But as a user, I gotta say that the damn thing just turns me off. Another huge gripe I've got about MySpace: at the end of the day, most of the self-presentation that goes on there just seems to be pre-packaged. A background from here, a video from there, a ...

So I was watching the football game the other day when a Target commercial came on. In the background was some song-ish-ness, a repeating of the phrase "Nothing can change the shape of the future." I wrote that down in my book of wisdom. But I don't interpret it in the positive sense--as in, there is some concrete future that we will necessarily grow into. Instead I read it as "Nothing can change the shape of the future, because the future has no shape." Imaging that our futures are concrete or certain is sorta like trying to create an ice sculpture from tap water--there is no solid form to work with. This is part of my problem right now--I'm frustrated that the future I had imagined has suddenly vaporized. Somehow I'd expected that a promise guaranteed a certain shape to my future. And in fact, hopefully it is possible to guide the future into certain shapes--both at the individual level and at a larger, societal level. But being able to guide ...

So I'm not sure why tonight's THE night, why I'm sitting here at 9:20 suddenly writing this, my first ever blog posting. My friend Liz has assigned herself a 30-day blog challenge; maybe I'm feeling competitive. Also, I actually LIKE reading Sarah's blog (wyosarah203.blogspot.com); maybe I'm feeling inspired. And I feel like there's a lot of shit that I need to sort out right now; maybe I'm feeling confused. Whatever the reason, here I am. The first thing to say is, Casper Star got my horoscope right today. I was sitting at Coal Creek, listening to the Bluegrass Jam and reading the paper, which tells me, on page A8 or so: "Relationships are complex and will put you to the test. You'll make the strong choice, although it's hard to say whether it makes more emotional strength to hold on, or to let go." That pretty much sums up where I've been today. But it's nice to know that I'm going to make the strong choice--I was worrie...