Observations driving along routes 422, 6, and 2 through Cleveland and the Erie Shore

· If I didn’t know any better I’d swear there was a smoke outlet called “Cheap Tobacco” because there seems to be at least 1 store in every town with some variation of that phrase on its signs.

· On 422 there are dozens of out-of-business car dealerships situated next to empty, unmowed lots with one paved drive in and no way out.

· There are also a lot of empty malls any one of which could be the model for the setting of “Dawn of the Dead.”

· I try to live my life so people think to themselves, “There’s a satisfied, happy guy.”

· In Warren, Ohio, there’s a fellow on the corner carrying a sign and wearing a sandwichboard with the curlicue hand-lettering of the crazy all over it. I couldn’t read any of his writing except for the phrase “XXX” but I don’t know if he was for it or against it.

· I don’t think much beats listening to the blues and driving slow and purposeful with the window down during sundown on a summer night.

alternatives to church, number 4

One of the nicest scenes was in the movie “Ray” when Ray Charles, when he’s visited in his apartment by Atom Egoyen to discuss a record deal, asks him to hurry up: “You see I’m in church.” It’s this notion of church being where you find it and being a state of mind rather than a building or even a congregation that appeals.

I’m considering this after a couple days at the Rainbow Gathering near Warren, Pennsylvania. There were more dogs and fewer naked people than I remember from the 80s and early 90s. The road to the Gathering, like much of life’s journey, is long and arduous and full of many sideroads that lead nowhere you want to go. But it was on just such a sideroad I met some other Family members equally lost—actually more lost than I was since they’d been over the same mountain roads for 3 hours while I’d only been over them for 1—and we teamed up since 10 eyes were better than 2. While they gassed up their truck I found a local and she gave me back way directions to the site. We knew within 10 minutes we were on the right road, found Welcome Home, parked and unloaded their kitchen, and I drove on to a more remote spot and settled in for the night.

I stayed a little over 36 hours, far less time than I used to spend but enough for this trip. I’ve decided it is my final one. I had a good time, probably better than the previous 2 I’d attended in the early and mid-90s, and decided it was a good way to say goodbye. I was disappointed because I’d come in the hope of seeing people I’d known or at least would recognize from 20 years before, but that didn’t happen. It was early of course—most folks don’t show until around July 2nd or the 3rd—although I did see 1 woman from Wisconsin, which surprised me as I hadn’t known her for Family. But most of the men my age fell into 2 camps: the pale, big-bellied, t-shirt riding high on their paunch, desperate types and the stringy, rough-ridden types who’d been on the road for decades and forgot where they’d lost their teeth, and I didn’t care to be associated with either one.

But what really sealed it for me was a comment I heard someone say yesterday about another brother he’d been discussing. This brother was “one of those corporate types who gets all his Rainbow lifestyle 1 week a year and then heads back to his corporate life.” And I realized, in my Guggenheim t-shirt and my cargo pants and my New Balance sneakers, he could have been talking about me. It is a lifestyle and a good one but it’s a lifestyle for people 30 years my junior. Not only were there fewer people my age and the ones who were there unappealing, but some accommodations had been made for a younger crowd—Main Circle is only a mile and a half from Welcome Home, the shortest hike I ever remember; there were dozens more busses at Bus Village than I’d ever seen this early; also, harder drugs were easier to get, while people seeking out hash and smoke were offered meth and crank. One couple I met trundled in 8 pounds of dip and they offered it up for free, which was kind, but snuff is better than tobacco in the way heroin is better than ditchweed. Similarly, there was a larger black and Hispanic contingent than I remember 25 or even 16 years ago—true, smaller than in proportion to the general population, but the Rainbow Family used to be whiteout central and now there are dots darker than the tan that comes from lying naked in the sun.

But in the key of church being where you find it, being out in the woods with the hundreds of hippies and freaks I choose to call family was like the best religious experiences: short, intense, intimate, frank, non-judgmental, and welcoming. When I sniff deep I can still smell woodsmoke and incense and sage and ganja on my skin as if I’d been in a temple where it doesn’t matter whether I was worshipping or being worshipped. In these spaces, it’s easy to smell stale beer on people’s breaths and so I avoid them—I like my beer as well as anyone, maybe more than most, but I go to Gatherings so I don’t need to drink. Despite the harder chemicals people managed to find a way to carry in, alcohol is still the dominant nastiness at the Gathering and it still wastes people’s ambition and commitment to anything other than themselves. This is why the revolution will not only fail to be televised but will not be well-attended. Some churches are too hard to get to.

la plus ca meme chose

it's a small town. in the 3 weeks I've been here:

• a hand-written cardboard sign advertising "small medium large" portions at the boy scout-sponsored breakfast (that happened in may) has remained duct-taped to a large tree in front of the fire department as have the "join cub scouts" signs on the lawn accompanying it;


• cooney hardware, the largest freestanding building in town and operated by the widow of the original owner on a sporadic and unposted time schedule, has remained closed (to be fair, the faded hand-printed card saying "back at 12:30" has disappeared but that's as likely to be the final deterioration of the cellophane tape holding it up as anyone removing it);


• a torn green sweatshirt has been splayed across the bike rack outside the school, the only use I've seen that rack get;


• the radar speedtracker set up on one of the backstreets has registered a quick "13" and then swiftly dropped to "7" each time I've walked past it (although why the radar is set up on that street, which is actually more an alley and has almost no traffic, I couldn't say);


• and a wrapped condom has been sitting on a rock just off the paved trail leading to the school until I finally put it in my pocket this morning. hopefully I have not screwed up the life of some kid who cached it there, leaving him or her now to unprotected sex, although it could as well have been a sacrifice to the virginity gods and now it's gone its owner may think he has to make a move...

too late, bobby

story of my life

50 year old pasty godzilla wrecks family outing

the one thing austin is known for, if it's known for anything at all, is the tragedy of a dam bursting 99 years ago, killing nearly 1000 and destroying the town. the ruins of the dam are now a park and a cold fish-filled stream winds through it. I spent most of this afternoon there, completely alone and silent except for the cars on the state road a stone's throw away. it was hot and I saw no reason to get my swimsuit wet. I was there to sunbathe too, so skinny-dipping was a way of reliving some past good times, and I slathered myself with spf 30 and lay naked on the grass, reading. finally, about 330, I hopped in for a last dip and when I stepped out of the shallows 5 minutes later I heard voices. I didn't even have my glasses on, so I stepped to my towel and slid it around me while looking for my specs. when I put them on I saw a carload of about 5 older people, including one person I thought was a child but discovered was a small wizened old woman with unnaturally brown hair, had pulled up to the ruins and was videotaping them from about 20 feet away from where a 50 year old, paunchy, very white and very naked man stepped like a pasty godzilla up out of the creek. being a gentleman, I said "howdy." they politely ignored me while I leisurely dressed and picked up my book and towel and walked to the car. it was only when I'd been associated with a vehicle that they took notice of me and the oldest fellow muttered, "'lo." did we learn at some point that it was impolite to speak to the nude, or that people can't see you unless you've got clothes and a car? think of the havoc we could cause by stripping down and acting up.

american women wearing the niqab

impressive article, well-researched and humanizing. I especially love the opening...

in christ there is no east or west

last week on my drive to olean I found a tiny out of the way mennonite church near port alleghany and decided I'd attend sunday service there. the birch grove mennonite church was sparsely attended--I counted 22 people--but they were 22 nice, friendly people. it's a newish building in the outback of the thick along a road called "two-mile." in conversation with some members afterward I found that their membership numbered about a hundred in the mid-90s, but when the majority opted to build the new building, the others left en masse, and death and moving away took care of the rest.

what I noticed immediately was the smell. it was the pleasant smell I've always associated with old abandoned farmhouses in this part of the country. the smell of old worn wood in a hot room takes on the odor of cinnamon and nutmeg--perhaps it's the resin leaching from it. the backs of the pews had been dark as the rest at one time, but were now bleached blond by generations of hands gripping and sliding along them. the walls were plain and whitewashed with a single brilliant stained glass window above the pulpit, the ubiquitous image of jesus praying over thorns in the garden at gethsemane. (interestingly, all examples of this image I've located online show jesus facing the left, while the example at birch grove shows him facing the right: perhaps it was installed for the benefit of people on the outside rather than in.)

the building had an east-west orientation so that the window caught the late morning sun and lent luster to the stained glass. jesus' robe was a deeper red, the greens of plants a denser green. there were plastic flowers on the alter and the organ and at each of the open windows. the pastor's message, an otherwise cliched and bland perfunctory sermon that was instantly forgetable--was punctuated by birdsong. the minister, an interim who'd been there he told me 7 years, was missing most of the fingers of his left hand but didn't hesitate to shake mine. the theology wasn't lacking a humanistic bent, except for the usual xian attribution of every event as "the lord working," and its point--that we are all 1--was something I could agree with.

but what really impressed me was a man I spent most of my time there talking with. born and raised in port alleghany, neil has a day job with the borough operating machinery and side work as a volunteer prayer minister ("I specialize in healing and talking ministry"). his wife who substitutes at the local high school is from northern california, but neil has never spent appreciable time away from the area. he'd been a hippie and had even lived in a local commune--it started, he said, as a drug commune but the members eventually "accepted jesus" in one place or another and rejiggered the place as a vegetarian religious community. the place burned to the ground when he was 26 and he met and married his wife in the next year and had lived his life "like a regular guy" since then. they have 2 sons and a daughter--the younger son was at church with them and was obviously bored and humiliated at his parents' spirituality and willingness to talk about themselves, and so neil gave him the keys to the car and I offered to drive them home. on the drive we talked about the counterculture as it'd been experienced there and the way it ebbed and flowed over time--many of the local businessmen had at one time or another opened head shops and vegetarian restaurants and health food stores before moving on to tanning salons and video stores and computer repair--as if this little town in the thick was a microcosm of america.