Notes on watching the Royals play at Yankee Stadium

I went to see my long-suffering-but-perhaps-finally-good Royals with my wife last night at Yankee Stadium. Royals win! Besides that, a few other observations:

• The game played out like a pretty standard Royals game this year - low-scoring (one point), light hitting (3 singles), immaculate starting pitching, and shutdown closing. Of all the ways a team can consistently win (and lose) games, this is perhaps the most ulcer-inducing.
• I thought I'd be the only Royals fan there, but was pleasantly surprised to find myself in a section filled roughly half baby blue and pinstripes. I guess I wasn't the only one who'd deliberately gotten seats above the Royals bullpen.
• Speaking of the bullpen...I was looking forward to seeing our gauntlet of one-inning wonders in action, but with Shields pitching an 8 1/3-inning gem, they spent most of the game like this:

• Things did get interesting in the ninth, though, when Derek Jeter finally got a hit, a weak bloop single that sent the stadium into a frenzy and ended Shields' night. I read something earlier this week about this season turning into less of a pennant race and more of a Jeter farewell party for Yankees fans; everything I saw tonight confirmed that. Every time a "Let's Go Yankees-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap" started to break out, it inevitably morphed into "Derek Jeter-clap-clap-clap-clap-clap."
• I did sit behind two true blue Yankees fans, who at one point in the ninth, when the Yanks were staging the nearest resemblance to a comeback after Jeter's single, shouted back at our whole section, "Five years ago, there wouldn't be one person sittin' in this place!" Two guys sitting next to me replied, "Yeah, and they were getting ready to win a World Series five years ago." I don't think I've ever seen a purer distillation of the good fan/bad fan dichotomy. I made sure to fist-bump one of the guys in front of me after the game, and give the stink-eye to the guys sitting next to me.
• My wife also added to that conversation, asking, "Did this stadium even exist five years ago?" A good question: after looking it up, I'm surprised to find that it's now been six years since the new digs opened. 
• I'm now 41 years old; I was 12 the last year the Royals were in the playoffs. I'm cautiously optimistic.

New post on A Child Grows: A Dozen Songs for Summer

"Few things get me more excited about summer than listening to summertime music. I actually have an iTunes playlist containing over 500 tunes that fit qualify as Summertime Music, the most child-friendly of which I’ve been subtly putting on in the background as Checkers and Crazy Eights are playing. They are super-excited about summer, so it must be working. Here are a dozen that have been getting heavy rotation in our place lately."

Listen to them here!

New Post on A Child Grows: Take Your Kids Crabbing!

"You may or may not know, but the shores of our boroughs and the surrounding area are teeming with millions of eight-legged crustaceans whose most active season is summer. I’m talking about blue crabs, who are probably just as plentiful below the surface of the Hudson as humans are on its shores. You don’t need a license to catch and eat them, and crabbing is a family activity that kids of pretty much any age can get into.What’s more, these critters are not only delectable but fun and relatively easy to catch, making for an off-center family trip your kids might just talk about ad nauseam throughout the winter. Here’s what you need to know to get started."

Read the rest here!

My micro-essay "The Love Song of Kumquat J. Farthing" in the new Austin Review!

"Some words just sound dirty. So when my brother Justin showed me an email he'd received from Mr. Kumquat J. Farthing, I naturally assumed he'd been using my business computer to look at porn."

So begins this little essay, in this beautiful little journal. Buy it either in print or Kindle format here!

New Post on A Child Grows: Urban Foraging!

"I recently discovered at the Horticultural Society of New York’s exhibit of composer/forager John Cage’s folios for his 1972 Mushroom Book that Cage once had to have his stomach pumped after misidentifying a hellebore for skunk cabbage and accidentally poisoning an entire dinner party. Which brings me to the number one fear of many would-be foragers: having to get your (or worse, your child’s) stomach pumped after mistaking a hellebore for skunk cabbage, or eupatorium for garlic mustard, or pokeweed in its poisonous stage for pokeweed in its edible stage, or…you get the picture. This is why it’s important for a beginner to find a good guidebook, or even better a seasoned veteran to guide you in identifying species, as well as making sure you’re practicing sustainably and within city code."

Read more here!

New Post on A Child Grows - 2014: The Year of Composting

"We now have more options than ever for ethically disposing of our organic trash. But this embarrassment of riches poses its own problems—with all these options, it would be easy for urban parents new to the organics recycling game to shake their heads and give up. My few years of composting hardly make me an expert on the subject, but I would like, at the very least, to provide a beginner’s list of ways to recycle and repurpose our scraps."

Read the rest here!

New Post on A Child Grows: Consider the Pickle

"Let us take a moment to consider the pickle. In order to fully understand and perceive its wonder, I think we should first consider, if only for a sentence or two, its two most popular forms: the cucumber pickle and sauerkraut. The most common adjective for the cucumber would probably be “boring”—the cabbage, “stinky.” But add some salt, water, a few spices if you feel like it, some vinegar if you’re canning them, and wait—both the hardest and most important part of pickling—and eventually you have nature’s most delectable act of controlled rot."

Read the rest here!

The Tweetable Nietzsche

I've been reading a lot of Nietzsche lately for a piece I'm writing, and was thinking out loud on Facebook the other day that I could post a different quote every day for the rest of the year. It turns out someone is already on it on Twitter, of course.

New Post on A Child Grows: Nasturtiums!

"This year we’re planting tomatoes, small melons, peppers, and plenty of flowers. But the favorite thing we plant is also the easiest. Even better, it does double duty—it’s both a flower and a food. I’m talking about the beloved nasturtium. Not only are the flowers multicolored and plentiful, they taste like a kind of like a lightly peppered cauliflower and can be plucked right from the vine. They make stunning additions to a summer salad, or as a garnish to grilled burgers, or grilled anything really. And if you let them go to seed, fear not—you can eat the seeds too!"

Rest the rest here!

New Post on A Child Grows: Fiddleheads!

"Though technically spring arrived almost three weeks ago, it finally feels like it—right in time for Passover, Easter, and all the good food that entails (gefilte fish and matzoh for Passover, Peeps and Cadbury’s eggs for Easter). But of all the good foods that have come to represent spring for me, nothing trumps the fiddlehead. Much like asparagus, fiddleheads are the early shoots of a much larger plant, in their case the ostrich fern. Their name derives from the tightly curled embryonic fronds that form each of them, making each little plant resemble the head of a fiddle."

Read the rest here!

Blog tag!

It seems a game of Blog Tag is afoot, and I have been pulled in. As anyone who knows me knows, I'm always up for a game of tag. My friend, the egregiously talented story writer Mary Stein, has let me know the rules of the game: get tagged, answer four questions, tag another writer. And so it goes, into perpetuity.

The questions are custom-built for the writer's ego, so I'm happy to answer them:

1. What are you working on now?
   You mean besides this blog post? I'm actually working on two major projects, each of which approaches book-length writing from opposite ends. The one that's taking up the most of my time right now is gathering up my essays, published and unpublished, from the last four years, and making a thematically and (somewhat) narrativally cohesive manuscript out of them. The other is envisioning a book-length manuscript from proposal and seed-essay. Neither of these projects is coming to me particularly quickly or easily, as most of my writing has been at the essay level until recently, but they been terribly enriching to me, both as a writer and as a person. Oh, and a third project: my List and the Story stuff, which I go back to when I need a break from intensive product-based writing to think about my life and work more holistically at the macro level. I feel like I'm learning more about myself every day.
2. How does your work differ from others in the genre?
   I guess I should first define my genre. The word "essay" means so many different things in our current culture, both popular and academic; I feel like I spend whole semesters, for example, deprogramming college freshmen from standardized test-based five-paragraph essay writing. I think of "essay" more as a verb: an attempt (from the French essai) to make sense of something - an event, a person, oneself, the world - through writing about it. Peter Elbow elucidated this process pretty well in his seminal Writing Without Teachers: "Writing is a way to end up thinking something you couldn't have started out thinking. Writing is, in fact, a transaction with words whereby you free yourself from what you presently think, feel, and perceive." In this sense, every essay is different from any other essay - every writing process is different, even if some of them reach similar conclusions.
3. Why do you write what you do?
   Because I have to. I know, copout. Hopefully my other answers are better.
4. What is your writing process?
   I find myself tweaking and refining my approach to my work continually. I try to keep a fairly running journal, though many times that entails simply writing down a thought, impression, or series of words when it comes to me, on one of my notepads or (more and more often) on my phone. Every now and then, perhaps every couple of months on average, I take those entries and try to integrate them into what has become a fairly sprawling matrix: I have five folders on my laptop, in ascending order, which give me a (perhaps false) sense of order and progression:
   1. In Development - This is where I put things I've written down that seem important, but I haven't figured exactly why. It's where I start when envisioning what I want to write. Many times, when I'm perhaps stuck on a piece I'm writing, I'll go back and peruse this folder; many times, I'll find a variation on a thought I was looking for here. As you might guess, this folder is pretty full.
   2. Drafting - This is where I keep track of a piece I'm currently writing a first draft of. I try not to keep more than one or two pieces in this folder; if I find myself blocked on a piece and I can't get myself past it by looking back at stuff in the previous folder, I'll send the piece back there, and pick it up later.
   3. Editing - This usually has five or more pieces in it - essays for which I have a beginning, middle, end, etc, but which are not ready to submit. I try to give myself some time between drafting and editing a piece, so many times I'll move a piece to this folder when I'd finished drafting, work on something else, and pick up that piece next month or later.
   4. In Submission - This is where I keep pieces that are, in my opinion at least, ready for publication. I keep notes here on where each piece is currently being considered, the number of rejections, and possible venues.
   5. Published - My favorite folder! This is where I keep pdf's and relevant information of pieces that are in print somewhere.

So there. And Kristopher Jansma, you're it!

Got rats in the subway? Solution: No more trash cans, bub.

I saw this poster today at my stop on the F train. This has to be the strangest reasoning I've ever seen on an MTA notice, which is actually saying a lot. I love the varied scribbled comments, which actually make more sense than the sign itself.

View fullsize

New post on A Child Grows: On the First Blooming Crocus

"With all due respect to the daffodils and tulips, they are not the first bloom of spring. It’s not even close, actually. Despite the preponderance of cut daffodils at the bodega, the ones in my neighborhood are still hesitantly poking out their shoots, with no flowers in sight. This week, though, any glance in the dirt around most trees on the sidewalk or at the park will reveal clumps of grass-like blades with purple flowers that look so delicate they might be made of tissue paper. The crocuses have bloomed."

Read the rest here!

New Resident Dad Post: Just Food Conference 2014!

"I have been following Just Food for some time now. Since 1995, their role has been to empower and support community groups in their efforts to increase access to local, sustainable food. I’ve been putting their values into practice. I have a batch of sauerkraut fermenting on my counter that I canned with Jeffrey Yoskowitz of the Gefilteria at his pickling workshop at Congregation Beth Elohim this past Thursday. And of course, our tomato seedlings sit in the window soaking up some rays of what has seemed like an endless winter that is finally breaking. This will in fact be my first year attending the Just Food Conference, but I have a feeling it might usurp the rose blossoms at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and NYC Punk Rock and Underground Record Fair as the first sign that spring has sprung."

New Resident Dad Post: Van Brunt Still House

"I admit to having an unhealthy fixation with Red Hook. It has everything this urban idealist needs to believe that Brooklyn will find a new model for Twenty-First Century urbanity. Decaying signs of its roots as an industrial port mingle seamlessly with its more recent revitalization, making it an ideal laboratory for a sustainable future. Old factory buildings house art studios and business startups of every stripe, and many of their roofs are topped with gardens. When I get a sinking feeling about my choice to live and raise a family in the largest city in North America after, say, listening to too much WYNC or reading The Power Broker, I go walking in Red Hook. One discovery I’ve recently made is the Van Brunt Still House, one of a growing number of 'artisanal distilleries' in a collective of small-batch alcohol providers commonly referred to as the Brooklyn Spirits Trail."

CAPS LOCK RANT - Against the Winter Olympics

THIS WOULD BE THE EASIEST RANT IN THE WORLD TO SIMPLY SAY THAT YOU ARE BORING, AND IT WOULD BE INDISPUTABLY TRUE. BESIDES PERHAPS HOCKEY (WHICH ITSELF IS ONLY ENTERTAINING FOR THE BREAKS IN THE "ACTION") THERE IS NOT ONE COMPETITION YOU PROVIDE THAT ANYONE BUT THE ATHLETES AND THEIR FAMILIES WOULD SIT THROUGH MORE THAN ONCE EVERY FOUR YEARS.

BUT YOU ARE MORE THAN BORING. YOU ARE A SHAM. YOUR GOVERNING BODY, THE INTERNATIONAL OLYMPIC COMMITTEE, IMPLICITLY COMPLIES WITH ANTI-GAY HARASSMENT BY ENFORCING YOUR HOST COUNTRY'S BAN ON OPENLY HOMOSEXUAL "PROPAGANDA." YOUR HOST COUNTRY'S OLIGARCH OPENLY FLAUNTS HIS HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS, ARRESTING AND DETAINING DISSIDENTS FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN EATING IN PUBLIC WHILE GLADHANDING IN FRONT OF EVERY POSSIBLE CAMERA, AND YOUR ATHLETES REWARD HIM BY FAWNING OVER HIM IN PERHAPS THE MOST EGREGIOUSLY STUPID TWITTER HASHTAG EVER.

FINALLY, YOU ARE BAD FOR THE WORLD. WE WILL SPEND ANOTHER WEEK OR SO BASKING IN THE GLOW OF THE SMALL ACHIEVEMENTS OF INDIVIDUALS WHILE IGNORING THE FOMENTING SOCIAL UNREST OF A COUNTRY WHOSE LEADER IS NOT ONLY ATTACKING HIS OWN CITIZENS BUT GIVING FIREARMS TO BOTH UKRAINE AND SYRIA FOR THE SPECIFIC PURPOSE OF KILLING THEIR OWN CITIZENS. A RECENT PHOTO SPREAD REMINDED ME OF ANOTHER FORMERLY SOCIALIST COUNTRY THAT HOSTED YOU JUST 30 YEARS AGO. THAT COUNTRY WAS ALSO ATTEMPTING A CONVERSION TO A MARKET ECONOMY WHILE SHOWING AN INCREASING APTITUDE FOR KILLING ITS OWN PEOPLE.WE ALL KNOW HOW THAT WENT.

Song of the Week: The Most Romantic Song in the World

I notice all week on Soundcheck, presumably to celebrate the death of our beloved martyr of lost causes, John Schaefer as been asking guests what their vote for the Most Romantic Song in the World is. Being as I wasn't on Soundcheck this (or any other) week, I thought I'd cast my vote.

First, let me say that I am the romantic of my marriage. My wife understands that any night she is gone I'm going to be watching Steel Magnolias, Midnight in Paris, or whatever romantic comedy I can find on Netflix that I haven't watched before. That said, I am not a sentimentalist. I think every ounce of passion and every happy ending must be won through suffering, misunderstanding, and/or loss. I also tend to romanticize carnivals, ugliness, ignobility, and people who work at jobs they hate. What was it they call Leonard Cohen? A "dark romantic." I think I might be one of those.

I think that's why I love Bruce. The first time I heard of him, besides the interminable "Born in the USA," was in sophomore-year Humanities class, when my teacher played "Born to Run" for the class, then mercilessly made fun of a certain line...

I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss

...And I remember thinking, "I want that too." I imagined that humanities teacher, a morbidly obese man who breathed heavily as he labored through his class lessons and smelled of sweat and bologna, listening to that song over and over again at home every night, wanting that too.

So yeah, "Born to Run" is not exactly a risky choice for Most Romantic Song in the world. In fact, it might be the safest. After all, it covers virtually every major aspect of American romantic fantasy: rebellion, escape through automobility, the fleeting nature of youth, compromised values, and of course the honking saxophone solo.

In the interest of not being too obvious (and slightly reducing the risk of being cited for copyright infringement) I thought I would include here not the studio version but my favorite live one, from the famed Hammersmith Odeon concert in 1975, right after the album was released.

So, to all the Wendy's of the world, may you to celebrate the death of our martyred saint on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss. Or maybe tomorrow.

New Resident Dad Post: Songs of the Snow

"It’s easy, in this mid-winter lull, to forget that there might be things to love hidden in the sludgy city snowscape. Also, because of the inordinate amount of time we by necessity spend indoors, we can always use some unstructured indoor play. Dancing is, in my humble opinion, the best unstructured indoor play, and what better way to sail our ships into the frozen horizon than to the beat of some winter-themed jams?"

Read more here!

Yet another legal clusterfuck brought about by "Red-State Governance"

My Facebook feed is abuzz with talk amongst my friends and family back home in Kansas about HB 2453, a bill approved yesterday by the Kansas House of Representatives that encourages discrimination based on sexual orientation for ostensibly religious reasons. I'll try to refrain from giving my opinion here, though anyone who knows me probably has an idea what it is.

I'd rather focus for a moment on my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, which I typically describe to people here in Brooklyn as an outpost for creative, progressive thought in the largely desolate wasteland that is the rest of Kansas. Predictably, most of my friends and family are none too happy with this bill. My sixteen-year-old sister gave a fair distillation:

So embarrassed to live in Kansas, right now. Ideally, I'd like to live somewhere where everyone is treated equally. Right now, that's only in my dreams.

My cousin Andrea, though, pointed out that Lawrence actually has a municipal ordinance in place to prevent this type of discrimination (boldface is in the document itself):

The practice or policy of discrimination against persons by reason of race sex, religion, color, national origin, age, ancestry, familial status, sexual orientation, or disability is a matter of concern to the City of Lawrence,since such discrimination not only threatens the rights and privileges of the inhabitants of the city, but also menaces the institutions and foundations of a free democratic state. It is hereby declared to be the policy of the City of Lawrence, in exercise of its police power for the protection of the public safety, public health and general welfare, for the maintenance of business and good government, and for the promotion of the City's trade and commerce, to eliminate and prevent discrimination, segregation, or separation  because of race, sex, religion, color, national origin, age, ancestry, familial status, sexual orientation, or disability.

While discussing with my cousin Skyler on Andrea's thread, I realized this new state law, its fundamental stupidity aside, could result in a legal "triple jeopardy" (for lack of a better description) scenario. In essence we have a local ordinance that contradicts state law, and that same state law contradicts more than 50 years of federal court precedent based on the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1975 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964. So, say a merchant in Lawrence decides to refuse service to a customer, or a government employer decides to fire an employee, based on sexual orientation. That person or organization, subject to a municipal ordinance that would clearly find that person in violation, could appeal to the State of Kansas, which now has a law that clearly states the person or organization is within their rights and could invalidate the violation. Of course, the violated party could then kick it up to federal law, which clearly supports the original local ordinance. I know, that's a long process to come back to where we started. All because the state of Kansas wants to be, as Governor Sam Brownback says, a model for "red-state governance."

Best Rejection Ever.

No writer is a fan of rejection, though (or because) it accounts for roughly 95% of our submissions. That said, I received my most gratifying rejection yet this weekend, and can't help sharing (I cut out any names, even though I would like to thank them):

Thank you for entering “The Coldest Night of the Year” in the 2014 [________] awards. While it was not selected by our staff as a finalist, I wanted to let you know that it was “this close.” We very much enjoyed your writing and found much to admire in this story.

The plot was fresh, your writing is fluid and well-paced, the dialogue was spot-on, all of which made for a difficult decision. That said, the reading panel’s concerns focused on the frequent shifts in perspective, confusion about whose sections were whose, uncertainty about the age of the son, and whether the second-person narration was necessary or beneficial to the story.

We hope you’ll read these comments in the spirit of constructive criticism and that you’ll send us more of your work. And if you choose to undertake a revision of this story at some point, we would be happy to consider it in a future submission period.