September 2002 Archives

This Week's Theme: Altered States of Consciousness
I'm in DC again. Things that happened since last I posted:

• I met an evangelical preacher in West Chester, and remembered his "thousand yard stare" from my own time working with missions organizations.
• I saw a number of five-to-eight-year olds hacking at a pinata at a picnic. The kids had their game face on, and after their three swipes they would turn around and you could see the red mist of battle gradually clear from their eyes.
• I almost met international motivational speaker Anthony Robbins, when I went to drop off The Ultimate Water Gun at the Meadowlands Exposition Center. Instead, I met some of the four hundred and seventy-five crew members that will staff his "Unleash your Personal Power" weekend. Some were at least half volunteer, I think, and others had standard Broadway-show-issue wool jackets with "TONY ROBBINS M.E.A.T. TEAM" embroidered on the back. It wasn't "m.e.a.t", actually, but it was something like that.
• So, as a joke, Kate brought home the 12-CD Tony Robbins "Personal Power II" set that her mom had bought on QVC five years ago and never opened. (Everyone buys a Tony Robbins set at one point in their lives, I'm sure. I know my dad did; I'm glad I didn't have to pay three hundred bucks for mine.) And I listened to the first disc on the way down.

Altered consciousness? You betcha! More to come, all about MASSIVE CHANGE and PERSONAL DYNAMIC FORCE and having a really, really, really big head.

Attention all Gen-Xers: we're all busted. Everybody out of the pool.

Follow me from ironic hipsterhood to yuppiedom, my friends. Kate and I will show you the way.

Of course, if you can't afford Yoga DVDs or an espresso machine, you could just continue being unabashedly ironic.

All my electronic gadgets give me a veneer of competency: the GPS, for example, can get me to a location faster, sometimes, than someone who — unlike me — can actually find their way out of a paper bag by themselves. And, if my GPS runs out of batteries (like it did yesterday morning), I can always call my destination on my battery-mounted speakerphone, and have the concierge talk me in. And, if that doesn't work, I can open up my laptop, get online with the wireless connection, and use Yahoo Driving Directions.

Like a new English speaker who has to translate everything heard into their own language in their head before understanding, though, the "digital bubble" I'm in leads to a whole lot of befuddlement. Yesterday, I left Duane Reade after purchasing new batteries for my GPS, got back into my nondescript rental car, and turned the key, only to find it didn't work. Suddenly, I realized: I was in the wrong car! I grabbed my stuff, scrambled out, and walked away, only to realize that I now had one extra bag!

I slung the extra bag back into the strange car (I hope it was the right one!) and scurried away, trying to look harmlessly absent-minded. Though the number of reactionary, shoot-first-ask-questions-later bravos driving gray Hyundais is probably pretty small, so I don't imagine I was in much danger.

I plugged the fresh batteries into my GPS, got my bearings from a computer, and drove away.

Commando Consulting
I'm sitting at a steel picnic table under some pine trees in Herndon, Virginia, about 30 miles west of Washington, DC. I'm on an assignment to a client down here, and DC is easy to reach from Wilmington, which is in turn about a 30-minute drive from my house. Surrounded, as always, by a small cloud of battery-operated electronics, I downloaded the client's coordinates to my GPS unit last night, then rode my motorcycle to the Wilmington train station early this morning.

Things got a little hairer when I got to DC: the Metro is beautiful, but having to use your ticket to get out of the station seems scary, and always causes a moist, pocket-grabbing panic when I arrive at my destination. In this case, I took the Red line to Shady Grove, then the Orange Line to West Falls Church, because I'd read on Deja that that's what the other Herndon commuters do. From there, I stumbled (somewhat blindly) onto bus 950 to Herndon town center and stared at the GPS unit, getting off when I was half a mile away.

I walked through a nicely-landscaped corporate park (.42 miles to go), then a less-landscaped strip mall (.3 miles to go), then ended up having to bushwhack between back yards filled with rusty mattresses and snarling dogs (.21 miles to go), before emerging (whew!) in a nice, pine-lined street. Of course, there's no signs at all, and the gatehouses to the office buildings all have uniformed guards and bright red car-blocking deadfall traps. Land of military contractors, and I'm skulking through the bushes carrying a motorcycle helmet staring at an electronic device. If only I could somehow be wearing a wetsuit over a tuxedo, my happiness would be complete.

Excellent Blog Postings to Check Out.

• Genevieve's Blog, with tips on holding a tag sale in Brooklyn.
• Will Ronco's Blog, with a blow-by-blow account of his latest triathalon. Kate particularly enjoyed it, as it took her back to her hard-core student athlete days rowing crew for the University of Washington. I particularly enjoyed the hard-core shorts-peeing episode. No wonder he's chafed!
• Alejandro's Blog, which just gets more interesting all the time. Follow Alejandro into the not-that-seedy-as-it-turns-out world of Australian bathhouses!

Alejandro's blog links to a horrifying Jack Chick tract, which nonetheless has one panel that I quite liked of the heavenly messengers talking to Lot at the city gates of Sodom. Lot is displaying a hell of a knuckle-gnawing Catskill Mountain double-take. This is a point that's been made many times before (particularly at Union Theological Seminary) but what the hell was Lot doing hanging out by the city gates, randomly inviting tall, hooded strangers with Rock Hudson jaws over to "tarry at his house all night?"

This tract makes me really angry in a way that Chick tracts rarely do. Usually, it's the pipe-smoking plutocrat that gets his in the end: finding himself in hell gettting poked in the ass with a pointy trident. I can't laugh this Chick publication off, though, even though it's a ham-handed, Mad Magazine effort. It's too vitriolic, too target, and too just plain hatefully wrong. And I don't like that "liberal" Christians can comfortably place themselves only three notches to the left of this kind of thinking and consider themselves comfortably open-minded: "Well, homosexuality is a sin, but there are more important sins out there, and we should focus on loving people, not persecuting them."

It wasn't until I got to Union that I saw Christians saying unqualifiedly, "Being gay is NOT a sin." Even more, the UTS student body took the attack; some classmates formed a group called "Church Ladies for Choice", in which they would dress up in drag and spend afternoons heckling abortion protesters. "Sister Mary Cunnilingus" would seize the bullhorn, her nun's habit flapping around her hairy knees, and lead the crowd in a round of "Psychopathic Christians Spouting Crypto-Fascist Bullshit", sung to the tune of 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious'. Which is sometimes better than everyone just standing around waving signs like a ninny. There's a time to respect other people's views, and there's a time to ridicule them, and this Chick publication deserves dismissal and ridicule. I wish Seanbaby would take it on; he's good at making fun of awful things.

The Trinity Loop: Clouds, Cinders, and Plywood Cartoon Characters, Lurking in the Fen

I posted the Trinity Loop photos on Ofoto: if you click the link, you can see all the details about Newfoundland's premier train-themed amusement park!

I went jogging on Sunday afternoon, and discovered a high school marching band competition taking place just around the corner. But I discovered more than that: I discovered a world in microcosm, a world made up of formations in lockstep, feathery shakoes, and polyester uniforms/superhero outfits. I discovered the story of an ancient and mighty empire: born in shackles, swelled in conquest, bloated in corruption. And, even more than that, I discovered a window into our next-door neighbor's mind.

And what I found there kicked ass.

Forget spirit fingers,
we've got singing, dancing Spartacus! >>

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. Choo, choo!
These images are just a sampling of the terrors that await you at the Trinity Loop Family Theme Park in Trinity, Newfoundland. I'm working on putting all my pictures together, but it's taking a while because I can do only a little at a time. Otherwise, my eyes tend to roll back into my head, and I slide into uneasy, fitful bouts of unconsciousness in front of my laptop. While the "escape" key imprints its sans-serif sigul on my clammy temple, my darkened and unnatural slumber is haunted by fitful visions of Choo-Choo Charlie, friendly train park mascot -- and FEVERED DENIZEN OF HELL!

Okay, okay, the Trinity Loop is actually a family-owned, locally run train-themed park, staffed by friendly neigbors and surrounded by gravel pits and boggy fens. There's actually nothing sinister about Choo-Choo Charlie. Nothing sinister at all.

I'll post the rest of the pictures soon!

There's a great link on SlashDot this morning by a guy who's been stringing along a couple of Nigerian spammers. It's being updated in (or near to) real time -- quick, follow this link before he gets busted for faking James T. Kirk's passport and sending the scans to Nigeria!

On Saturday, Kate and I hid a Geocache on Fox Island, which is a steep almost-island connected to the shore by a narrow isthmus. Kate and I parked our rented jeep in the town of Champney's West, and walked up the rocky path, meeting lots of dogs and berry pickers on the way.

The first part of the trail is easy, up to Fox Island's "porch", where remains of 17th- and 18th-century fortifications have been found dating from Queen Anne's War between the English and French. Then, there's a precipitous hand-and-foot climb up to the top, where a couple of cairns have been posted. There's usually a flag posted on each cairn, which lasts until the winds cut it to ribbons. This year, a red turtleneck sweater had been stretched over the pole. It could only have been there a couple of days; it hadn't even started to unravel yet.

We hunted around until we found a deep recess under a flat rock, thrust the ammo box deep underneath, hid it with more rocks, and posted the coordinates to the Geocaching web site. On your next trip to Newfoundland, grab your GPS and go visit the cache! There's a bunch of good stuff inside.

The House on Bar Point
The house where Kate and I are staying is on a spit of land called "Doctor's Point" by the locals. My stepmother, Risa Benson, bought the land in in the late sixties, and various family members have contributed to the construction of the house. My brother Sam Benson, he of the Unimogs and TIG welders, did the lion's share of the framing carpentry, under the direction of local carpenters Alf and Jack Bellows. Sam and his friends Mica, Christian, and Hahn, lived in tents the summer of 1990, subsisting on vats of peanut butter, loaves of bread baked by Alf's wife Alma Bellows, and large amounts of Screech, the local Newfie rum. My sister Bridget and her husband Tony Dattillo came up for their honeymoon after a week at the Shelter Institute in Maine, and together they built the deck in front of the house. Later, Sam and I paneled most of the interior of the house with twisty juniper tongue-and-groove boards.

This is the third honeymoon in the house, counting Bridget and Tony's and my father and Risa's. We're not digging ditches this trip, though -- we're more sticking to hiking, Yoga on CD, and eating out^*. My construction activities are limited to building panoramas. The image below is a panorama that I created from disposable camera pictures (taken a few years ago). The house is green now, not tan, and there's some more deck on the side of the house, but you get the idea! You can click anywhere inside the image and drag to look around.

Click in the image and drag to look around

^*Note: we are emphatically not making cappuccinos with an at-home cappuccino machine, nor are we sampling the local wines. However, I am using a thera-band when I do the Yoga on CD. Which means my coolness factor has plummeted to previously unplumbed depths. If you want a nice antidote, go read Alejandro's website. Though, now that I think of it, he told me about taking a naked Yoga class in Manhattan. Oh well, I bet he got away with it.

Thursday was grey and rainy; Kate and I visited the Trinity Loop amusement park. Half gravel pit, half miniature train ride, half garden-gnome repository, in the rain it's like a minigolf course designed by Ingmar Bergman. I took a couple of pictures; here they are!

Kate and I took a hike on Skerwink yesterday, which is the arm of land that forms the northern boundary of Trinity Harbor. You can see some photos here!

(You might have to sign in or register with Ofoto to see the pictures.)

Wedding pictures, hurrah!
Kate and I made it to the house in Newfoundland this afternoon, unlimbered the laptop, and discovered that there are wedding pictures online! I'm now going to post links to the pictures. Which is one step away from putting pictures of your cat online, I know, but I've already done that, anyway.

• Genevieve Futrelle's pictures, with captions.
• Will Ronco's Odyssey (text)
• Dan Check's pictures (and the birthday party he attended the very next day.)

Still to come are the photos that the Official Wedding Photographer took. I'm especially looking forward to the ones of Kate's brother Matt and my cousin Martha on Matt's scooter, both making goofy faces in response to my strident and repeated demands. They're both really good at on-demand goofiness, as it turns out, so I hope I can sell the pictures to the Museum of Schtick, or something. I'll post them when I get them!

In a surge of absolutely glorious weather (bookended on either side by cool, rainy days), Kate and I got married at Downingtown Friends Meeting. On the way to Northbrook and back, I had been repeating my vows over and over again in my helmet, hoping that I wouldn't forget my line:

In the presence of God, and these our friends, I, John, take thee, Kate, to be my wife,
promising with divine assistance to be unto thee a loving and faithful husband so long as we both shall live.

...which is important to remember, since there's no clergy in a Quaker service, so you're up a creek if you blank on your vows, or make Comedic Wedding Vow Errors, transposing "Wife" for "Husband", et cetera. But all went well, we signed the certificate, and our friends and family (who traveled from Colorado, New Mexico, Maine, Texas, Germany, and points in between) had wonderful, heartfelt, and touching things to say. The service was incredibly beautiful, and I'm honored and thankful that so many people came so far to be with us.

On top of that, I managed to keep from stripping the gears when Kate and I made our exit in the Austin Healy. Whew! I hope that's a good omen of some kind.

We spent the night in the Hotel du Pont in Wilmington, in a bridal suite so lavish that — I am not making this up — the bathroom had a bathroom. And two telephones, a bidet, and enough towels to avert disaster even when you enthusiastically dump the whole bottle of Gilchrist and Soames Extra Foaming Bubble Bath into the jacuzzi, with spectacular results.

So Kate and I are back at home now, packing for our honeymoon. I feel very lucky, and very happy, and very blessed to have such wonderful family and friends. Thank you all so much for coming to be with us!