Day: February 2, 2009

Caveat: 48 Questions

Banalities & Journaling / Found Online

There was one of those list-note things circulating in facebookland, where you answer the questions and post them as a note in facebook. So I did that. Here's the result, crossposted here to this blog thingy.

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE?
Well, there's that patriarch
Jared, in the Bible — Genesis something-or-other, and he makes a quick
appearance in the roll call at the beginning of Luke. But I think my
mother was just fishing around randomly.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED?
November 16th, last fall.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING?
It's horrible.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT?
Pastrami (historically). Recently, K-spam (Koreans worship spamstuff).

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS?
One
stepson, turned 22 last month. Wow. He's in my facebook friends list.
He lives in St Cloud, MN. We're not super close, but I care about him
very much.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON, WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU?
No way. I'm insecure and excessively opinionated.

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM?
Regrettably, far too often.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS?
Nope. They got removed at Trinity Hospital, corner of C Street and 14th in Arcata, in 1970. I remember the jello vividly.

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP?
Definitely. It's on the list.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL?
I haven't eaten cereal in years. But, if I had to choose, maybe raisin bran.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF?
God, never.

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM?
Coffee.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE?
Personalitywise: "openness"? Physically: hands.

15. RED OR PINK?
Pink. Only because of a current running joke with my E2M3 kids at work.

16. WHAT IS YOUR LEAST FAVORITE THING ABOUT YOURSELF?
My indecisiveness / commitment issues.

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST?
Sometimes
I miss Michelle (my former wife, died 2000). Sometimes I miss my dad
and brother in L.A. Sometimes I miss my bestfriend Bob and family in
Wisconsin.

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO COMPLETE THIS LIST?
No. Someone has to resist the borg.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING?
I'm at home, after work. Blue shorts, no shoes.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW?
I
have more than 6000 tracks of music on my computer, on shuffle. Let's
see what comes up… LOL: Bee Gees, More than a Woman. ㅋㅋㅋㅋ

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE?
Greenish

23. FAVORITE SMELLS?
Honeysuckle
and asphalt (i.e. Southern California in the fall); diesel fumes
(really! makes me think of bus treks across Mexico); a Humboldt County
beach (the surging Pacific); a Minnesota spring;

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE?
My friend Basil, former coworker at hellbridge (my employer).

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU?
I like most people. Weirdly. In my abstract way. But yes.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH?
Hmm. Probably soccer.

27. HAIR COLOR?
Brownish greyish.

28. EYE COLOR
Bluish greyish.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS?
No.

30. FAVORITE FOOD?
Kimchi Bokkeumbap. Mole poblano. Mac n Cheese.

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS?
Happy endings.

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED?
헨젤과 그레텔. Note this is a scary movie, which doesn't make sense, given the previous answer. But whatever…

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING?
Um… bluish, sweatshirt.

34. SUMMER OR WINTER?
Winter. Why else do I keep moving back to Minnesota? Besides, the sun is evil.

35. HUGS OR KISSES?
Hugs. Despite years in Latin America, I never got comfortable with the kiss-as-hello thing.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
Me. See? … I just did.

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND?
I refuse to respond to this.

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW?
I
never read just one book at a time. Current in-progress
(pile-on-the-shelf-by-the-bed) list includes: Zarathustra (Nietzsche);
The World Without Us (Alan Weisman); Rational Mysticism (John Horgan);
Mainspring (Jay Lake); Progress and Poverty (Henry George); 프래니 (Koren
language translation of American children's book Frannie K Stein by Jim
Benton); Audacity of Hope (Obama).

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD?
I use the track-pad thing built into my laptop. The mousepad at work is black and unattractive. There is a mouse on it.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON TV LAST NIGHT?
My
TV is broken. I download old tv shows or movies sometimes, and watch
them on my computer. I was watching a Korean series called "Rooftop
Cat" a while back. And some Hawaii 5-O episodes. Bookem, Danno.

42. FAVORITE SOUND(S).
A
not-too-busy freeway, as heard from about 3 blocks away; cicadas in the
height of a Korean summer; the crunch of snow after a fresh fall, when
the temperature is below 0F.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES?
I don't really like either, but if I had to choose, I'd opt for Beatles, because of the childhood soundtrack thing.

44. WHAT IS THE FARTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME?
Uh,
which home? My current home is the farthest from my first home, I
think. But Tierra del Fuego is really damn far from both, and so is
Krakow, Poland. Hmm, how about Tasmania? That's farther from most of
my homes than other places, I guess.

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT?
I used to be able to sleep anywhere, under any circumstance. I seem to have lost that ability. It's very sad.

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN?
Trinity Hospital, Arcata, California.

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK?
Whosoever…

48. HOW DID YOU MEET YOUR SPOUSE/SIGNIFICANT OTHER?
We
were next door neighbors in 1992, in south Minneapolis, but also both
attending Univ of Minnesota. Michelle and I separated in 1998, and she
died in 2000.

Caveat: Centering

Banalities & Journaling / Life is a Dream

I had a profoundly traumatic fourth grade year, split between Edgemere Elementary in Oklahoma City (for that half-year we spent there when Ann and Mara and I were staying with my grandparents), and Sunnybrae (which at that time was an elementary school – it didn’t change to a middle school until a few years later, just in time for me to attend there again in 7th and 8th grades).
I really hated my fourth grade year, although I remember being sort of friends with Kray, and close friends with Colin Brant and Tom McConnell.  But the following two years, for 5th and 6th grades, I went to “Centering School.”
pictureI laugh it off sometimes, in trying to explain it to others who don’t know or understand what a Humboldt County upbringing can mean. “It was a hippie school,” I’ll joke. “We meditated after lunch, and they let us vote on what to study next,” I will explain laconically. The very last may be a bit of an exaggeration. But overall, they’re not inaccurate. And the fact of the matter is, they were the best years of my long, complicated education. I will remember teachers like Rita and Peggy forever. I still feel close to especially Peggy, who I describe to people using a word like “godmother” – she’s probably the closest thing I’ve had to one. Admittedly, Peggy was not just my 6th grade teacher, but also one of the residents of the extended A Street menagerie, and had been part of the community that raised me from infancy.
And my best friend was Steven Rossa. We used to stage mock battles in the halls, when Centering School was located at the Methodist Church on 11th Street, or go hunting evil villains in a sort of superheroes roleplay across the parking lot and around behind the buildings. The school was small, so what age you were meant little about who you hung out with… so it created a much more natural, human kind of interaction between the kids, with lots of mentoring of older to younger. There was a huge emphasis on arts:  drama, writing, drawing, etc. Appropriate, since the school’s founder was a HSU art professor.
Here’s what’s strange, now, all these years later. I’m a bit old to be part of the typical facebook demographic. As would those who are in my generation, which is to say, my Centering School peers. But lo and behold, it seems as if vast numbers of Centering School alums are facebookers, and everyone’s friending everyone else like mad. Perhaps something about the original environment drawing and encouraging creative types leads, all these years later, to a high rate of internet adoption and comfort? All I know is that there are more people from 5th and 6th grade Centering School in facebook than there are from my college years… at least that I’ve seen. That’s a strange statistical improbability.
Regardless, it’s very cool to be meeting up with people, online, who I haven’t seen since 1977, the year I finished 6th grade…  if rather disorienting. It was such a great community! I have sometimes said that I was subjected to two horrible traumas during my childhood: my parents’ divorce, and my departure from Centering School at the end of 6th grade – and I’m not really joking when I say that of the two, the latter was worse.
picture

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