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Back in the fifth grade, I spent my spring break visiting my grandmother in
her southern Texas retirement community. Not an old-folks home--a plush, gated
community with a golf course, hot tubs, and fancy restaurants. Big pimpin' for
the Midwesterns who had tired of snow tires and rock salt.
My spring break coincided with Easter, which was celebrated with a parade.
Think golf carts painted pink and old men in bunny costumes. Think slowest
parade on earth set to Lawrence Welk. My grandmother took it upon herself to
fashion a rather elaborate hat, not too different from the one above, dressing
me up as Minnie Pearl. Mind you, this was before the Dead Milkmen had made her
fashionable again. I was being dressed like the cranky old lady from Hee-Haw
solely for the amusement of my grandmother's friends and made to do the walk
of shame behind a trumped-up golf cart driven by a man in pink.
Those sorts of things build character.....right?
@ Wednesday, March 06, 2002 @ Wednesday, March 06, 2002 Thank god for Radiohead. And thank god I'm feeling much better. Things are actually pretty swell at the moment, but I still have that uneasy
feeling that the rug could be pulled out from under me at any moment. I'm living
life a lot more cautiously now, but there are more and more moments where I am
so happy to be alive, and in total awe of how great life can be. Last weekend, Thor and I ventured to Veggie Castle in Flatbush for a little
Jamaican breakfast. On our way to the train station, we passed a graveyard with
a huge rooster wandering among the headstones. A rooster? Loose in Brooklyn? And
no one had stolen it or fucked with it or ate it? I went inside to examine
things for myself, and found that the rooster was quite at home--he had bowls of
food strewn about and a little nest. Perhaps this was some crazy santeria-voodoo
rooster that had escaped from one of the local botanicas? While in the
graveyard, I browsed through the headstones, many of which were so old or
weathered that lettering no longer remained. Those that did dated back to the
1600 and 1700's, and I recognized the names from streets and neighborhoods of
Brooklyn--names like Lefferts, VanDerBilt, and Lotts (of
New Lotts Avenue, I presume), most headstones written in Dutch or German. These
were some of the first people that settled Brooklyn--dutch farmers, mercenaries,
and soldiers from the Revoluntionary War, and they were buried in an unkept
graveyard full of branches and crumbing slate in a neighborhood that was too
poor to tend to the living, nevermind the dead. How could this be? Why hasn't
some sort of preservation society stepped in and maintained what little is left?
I've been doing a little research to see whom I would contact, but it looks like
this might be a DIY effort--I might just take a garbage bag and rake down there
one of these warm spring days, and do some housecleaning for Mr. Rooster and his
squirrel friends. @ Wednesday, March 06, 2002
@ Thursday, March 07,
2002
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Wednesday, March 06, 2002
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®TMark, your gateway to value!
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File under "All things that don't suck will eventually get
cancelled from network TV", yep...Fox canned Family Guy, presumably to
schedule more eating contests or a second night of Titus. @ Wednesday,
March 06, 2002
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I haven't updated in forever and ever and ever. I was feeling a
little too exposed for awhile--like I needed to retreat for awhile and hide.
This involved lots of weekends in my bedroom with the covers over my head
listening to Kid A.
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