The City That (still) Spits

UPDATE

Latest spit (for the complete, ongoing list, see here):

• 12/01/08 8:41 am Saratoga Street at Howard, African American man, 30s, in an ollllllld white Honda. Another open-the-door-at-a-red-light-and-drop-one. The young woman beside him seemed to be unconcerned.
• 12/01/08 8:43 am Saratoga Street at Park Avenue, same as above.
  

The City That Spits

The City of Firsts--true, but historical.
The City that Reads--hopeful, but not necessarily connected to reality; opens us up to "irony."
The City the Breeds--stop.
The Greatest City in America--well, um, I like it here, but...(see also: The City that Reads)

I propose a slogan for our Baltimore that is current, true, without the invitation to ridicule. Every day that I leave my house, I see at least one person spit. I have been known to spit, true, but I confine my spitting to those times when I am in my own yard and have gotten some nasty thing or other in my mouth. Spitting in public strikes me as an ancient habit, from the days when it was ok to throw soda cans and potato chips bags out the window of the Buick while driving down the avenue--from the days before that public service advertisement with the Native American on his horse, looking down into the river of trash, a tear in his eye. Certainly people spit in public in other cities, but I live in this one, and every day, I see at least one person spit. To wit:

• 12/01/08 8:41 am Saratoga Street at Howard, African American man, 30s, in an ollllllld white Honda. Another open-the-door-at-a-red-light-and-drop-one. The young woman beside him seemed to be unconcerned.
• 12/01/08 8:43 am Saratoga Street at Park Avenue, same as above.
• The intervening days I spent, mostly, in Lima, Ohio, where, during my entire stay I saw exactly one person publicly expectorate.
• 11/21/08 2:43 pm Howard Street between Fayette and Baltimore. Some will argue that this does not count, and that today, so soon, is the long-awaited Day Without Spit, but: while I did not actually see it happen, I very nearly stepped in it, a vast, very fresh pool of it on the bricks. In lieu of a witnessed spitting today, I will give you a greatest hit from about a year ago. My wife, driving home, saw a woman on Howard Street near the light rail stop at Saratoga. At this stop there is a signpost, attached to which is a little cannister ashtray. The woman in question, holding a cigarette, took a big swig of mouthwash, and, from a distance of about four feet, expelled it, in a wide spray, in the direction of, but not necessarily into, the ashtray. Some mouthwash, made it in, I guess, but only incidentally.
• 11/20/08 Thursday: 12:06 pm Eutaw Street at Lexington Street, in the crosswalk in front of Lexington Market: 50s African American man, leaning forward on one foot, looking down, into the pavement.
  
• 11/20/08 Thursday: 8:54 am Howard and Fayette Streets, outside the McDonald's: 40s African American man. Big one, out into the street, with a splat audible over the sound of an approaching light rail train.
• 11/19/08 Wednesday: 9:13 am Howard and Saratoga Streets: late 20s white guy with his head shaved, professional appearance. Let fly in a long arc into the rising sun.
• 11/18/08 Tuesday: 3:52 pm Saratoga and Charles Streets: white woman in her 50s(?), slight, white-haired, rather eccentric/hip-looking in patched stockings and a floppy hat. Face twisiting, downward looking hock onto the sidewalk.
• 11/17/08 Monday: 9:23 am 33rd Street, near City College High School: African American man, 20s(?), driving a Buick (yes). Open door at stoplight, drop one onto the street. This seems to be the preferred method of spitting in Baltimore. It is also, incidentally, a favorite way to empty the car ashtray.
  

I will keep this running tab, updating it, and noting--should it ever come--the day I leave the house and do not see a single person spit.

Fell's Point (a lost-and found from two years ago...)

Long ago here, in this space, I began writing about the neighborhood we lived in at the time. As with most things I begin, that subject--Locust Point--remains un-fully-examined. I am not going to write today about Locust Point. Today's Point is Fell's. From it one can see Locust, across the Northwest Branch of the Patapsco River. We visited it today, and stopped here:End of the Bond Street Wharf

For a little bit we sat here, watching the tug "Jupiter" from Philadelphia (built 1902) pull up, discharge two passengers, then pull away into the river. The harbor was awash in tugs today, and from all corners their whistles thick, ancient, wooly sounded. As we walked back up the wharf, the loud, clear whistle of the Domino Sugars factory began singing. A ship was unloading there, but it seemed that the whistle was a bit of play. It ruled the harbor, a blue jay on the highest branch.

Fell's Point is something like a Baltimore Georgetown. Which is to say it is nothing like Georgetown. Tourists go there, yes, and it has bars and a Ten Thousand Villages store, and some sketchy guys in the park, and yes, some of the bars cater to the backwards-hat-wearing fraternity Midlantic Man set (ask me about that demographic sometime), but it is still a pleasant place to spend a few hours, night or day.

"I Love Baltimore!"

This story comes from the late Greg Riley. Hadn't seen him in years, then one night, we're in the Wharf Rat a bunch of us (the one on Ann Street, the old one, the one that serves beer in glasses), and Greg Riley comes up. We never spoke much at school, except on the soccer field. The Greenwaves then were like the Azzurri--a soap opera of talent and crisis. Some people liked Mr. Riley, some did not. I didn't know him well enough to judge.
At the bar that night, though, we traded Baltimore stories. He lived on the East Side, down around Canton or Highlandtown or Greektown someplace, in a building that once was a warehouse. Lotta those around here. He lived on the first floor, and had a little porch, or deck in the back. One day he and his girlfriend were going to grill some chicken. He got the grill set up on the deck, got it lit, and went inside to get the food ready to cook. He came out a few minutes later, and the grill was gone. He looked and looked for it, but no luck. Gone.
The next day, he told a neighbor about this. The neighbor laughed. He had seen a guy, pushing a flaming grill down the street, stopping every couple of seconds to wave and blow on his hands, saying "Ow! Ow! Ow!"

Now, this is an implausible story, I grant you. And, we were in a bar, both of us with a beer in hand. However--and I suspect that Baltimore is not the only city in America where this is true--living here makes this implausible story quite believable, particularly the part where someone sees a man pushing a flaming grill down the street and treats it as just one event in a normal day. As Mr Riley himself ended the story: "I love Baltimore!...Every day I see something completely ridiculous!"

Later that night, he said goodbye, got down on his hands and knees to pull a book out from under the jukebox (Anna Karenina? Tristram Shandy?), and left. Never saw him again.

South Baltimore Haircut

I went to Joe yesterday (702 E. Fort Avenue, Regular Haircuts Only-No Appointments, 410-837-0469), because it has been too long since my last haircut: Beth has been threatening to cut off my "rat tail" for a couple of weeks, and because Joe charges 8 bucks. Sometimes (like yesterday), he cuts the front a little uneven, but so what. I think he does it because he thinks I am going to use Brylcreem to hold my part in place.
Every time I go, no matter where our talk begins, he ends up telling this story (if you know the white Baltimore accent, hear it strong in the words):

Lemme tell you somethin about how things is different now. I moved outta the neighborhood four years ago, so this was, what, five years ago? when we had a big snow, 20 inches. There were these young people, couple-a guys, on my street, they nehhhvvverrrr shoveled the walks. My daughter's lookin out the window and she yells to me "Hey, get the movie camera! Yer not gonna bleeve this!" And those kids, come out the house with snow shovels! Did they shovel the sidewalks? No. And this was a Monday...We watched them walk--then we followed them, cause we, y'know, wondered, all the way down to Mother's [a bar on Charles Street--p], where they shoveled the sidewalk in front of Mother's, so they could be sure and watch Monday Night Football in the bar! Can you bleeve it? It jus goes to show how things have changed.

Every time, my haircut comes with this story. Now knowing it, and having read, seen, heard enough things like this, you know a lot about what is going on in South Baltimore.

Blood and Gore on C-SPAN Radio

I am uncomfortable calling it entertainment, because "entertainment" is almost perjorative. But not necessarily. Aeschylus is entertaining, as is/was Lenny Bruce.
I am uncomfortable being entertained by public evisceration, even when all the players concerned are wearing suits, but comeuppance is satisfying to most people below those possessing sight of the eternal.

The disparity:
Senator after Senator using words like incompetent, ashamed, deceived, credibility, astonished, appalling, and others, in addition to monosyllabic grunts of paralyzed surprise.

The Attorney General answering these withering questions with statements about how these issues are problems to be solved by hard work and dedication and attention to details--as if his job were simply a matter of tracking down various paperwork, and as if these Senators had not just keelhauled him, slowly, pausing at each barnacle to scrape a little extra skin off.

Port-i-pots

I say that there is no occasion* for which a portable toilet is appropriate. If one finds that his event requires a portable toilet, one's event has become grossly unsustainable.






* Construction sites are not occasions or events. They are perhaps the only reasonable places one could find a portable toilet

City boy, country boy

Baltimore June 2007

Gunpowder Falls

Education Today

At the aquarium today, the following, between a middle-aged man and a boy, about 10:

Man: "Y'see? fish spend their whole lives in school...so, stay in school."
[pause]
Boy: "Yeah. I'm not a fish."

It's a Hot One Today

Pretend you are naked. Not completely naked, but almost, and very weirdly so, and you are walking on a city sidewalk around noon while traffic is backed up because a bunch of guys are repaving the street. Now pretend that a guy in a Saturn with a baby in the back seat is looking at you, confused. What is the proper facial expression for you to have? Your choices are cliche, but so is walking around Baltimore airing out your buns, hon:
a) sheepish
b) proud
c) what the f*** are you lookin' at?

And of course, the answer is cliche, also. Is it always true that someone can be more menacing while semi- nude or nude than while fully clothed?

Yeah, so there he was, walking in front of my car as I waited to pull out of the Family Dollar parking lot (little baby swimming pool, 3 dollars). He was dark-skinned and "wearing" all black clothes, so at first I was confused. Went like this:
Hmm, a guy.
In a hood.
It's hot, though.
Wait. What's his hand doing?
Weird.
Is he wearing pantyhose?
Is that skin?
Is that like some kind of dark brown boxer brief? Like Marky-Mark?
No. Skin.
He's holding up his pants, with one hand, in front.
Barely. Those are definitely individual cheeks, there.
Not even a thong.
Don't look too closely.
He's looking at me.
He's still looking at me.

I realize that some of you will question my thought of a thong, but I challenge anyone, when faced with a bare bottom in broad daylight under circumstances like these, not to look for even a shred of fabric.

Today I learned that this same gentleman was at the same very busy intersection as my wife and a work compatriot of hers rode the #19 up Harford Road. You will understand my confusion when I heard this, because I saw our friend at about noon. My wife's bus passed the hot spot at about 5:15. Was he out, in the heat, showin' us sumpin', for five hours? Without drawing the attention of the local constabulary? Probably.

Thank you for waiting

I had a few things to take care of there.
Where do I start? Any requests?
To judge both your seriousness and my relevance, I will not be posting any pictures of Theodore until I hear from 5 people on these pages.
What do you want to hear about?

I could write paragraph after paragraph about my war against the passionflowers, but that's a short hop from extended riffs on why I like kitties. I could rip off Beth and begin a new feature called "Streets That I Hate," but that would be stealing. I could list for you all the items in my collection of junk I confiscated from fourth graders this year--but shouldn't I have given that stuff back? I could write about the guy on Harford Road earlier today with a fur hood and a bare ass, and I probably will, but someone has to ask for it first--and I've got a pretty good idea who that's going to be. Instead of outright theft of my wife's ideas, I could add a new feature where I retell her bus stories (which are better than mine, anyway) in my own words. That way I could make stuff up and it wouldn't really be lying. But, since this is Baltimore (see also: fur hood; bare ass), I won't need to make a single thing up.

I am, as you have noticed, stalling for time. I have a feeling that I will have time to think of something...

Where? When May I Have It? May I Eat It, Too?

Field Trip

Fourth Grade Goes to Fort McHenry

Major League Debut

In answer to the question "who will Theodore root for?", we have said that he will hope for a well-played game. Last night's Orioles/Twins matchup was not exactly well-played (three errors between them, some boneheaded baserunning, some bad pitching), it was interesting (lead changes, a triple, and some National League style hit-and-run plays, stolen base attempts--successful and not).

Theodore saw Torii Hunter hit a 2-run home run to break a 4-4 tie. He danced to "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" for the first time.


He received his first lesson in keeping score.

Biennial Cri de Coeur

Hurricane Katrina and our government's failure over it gave me a new, crystal answer to people who ask me why I became a teacher--specifically why I became a teacher in a Baltimore City public school. I tell them that I do not want any of my kids to drown in an attic. I don't want any of my kids' grandparents to drown in an attic. I don't want any of my kids to grow up to be suckered by people whose sense of worth depends upon them being suckers for their entire lives.
I thought at first that this space would be a place to write things about teaching: anecdotes, thoughts, all that. I wished to avoid political statements and opinions, because there is too much of that already, and because I have this problem with my own words. I see them written, and I am ashamed by their dullness. But so much of teaching is political, that every time I sat down to write about the antics of nine year-olds, the words began to shade farther and farther into the consequences of our idiotic education policies.
Then came Theodore, and this space became a place to write things about him and put up photographs for friends and family. But weeks go by without my having put things here, because every day I become more acutely aware that the future of this smiling little boy is bound up with the things our government does today. Blunty, I don't want him to drown in an attic. I don't want him to grow up a sucker. I don't want him to be drafted into a war created not by Islamic terrorists but by incompetent Americans three years before he was born. I don't want him killed or maimed in a calamity built on the muddy ground of a stupid idealist's vanity.
So I write this--because if we cannot learn from the mistakes we have made the past few years, what's to keep any of us from drowning in an attic?
The world really is made in words first, and there is no surer way to guarantee that this conflict turn into some sort of worldwide calamity than to keep talking about it as if it already is. Mr. Bush seems to need it to be true, desperately to need it be true. His administration has been one long exercise bent on proving that if you say something enough times it becomes real, and I suppose that in some ways we are living with the proof that he is correct to believe this.
Immediately after September 11, 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke on the subject of terrorism, saying that it was a blight on civilization, and one that we had tolerated for too long. If I remember correctly, his tone--which in matters of state rhetoric is nearly as important as the words--was one of deep reflection, not the sword-rattling self righteousness that very soon replaced it. At that time, listening to Secretary Powell, I understood him, and even told friends whose opinions of me I care about, that if the Administration 'got this right' I might even think about voting for them next time.
Alas.
There really is no more dangerous a person in the world than an idealist. An idealist is willing to sacrifice real things for imaginary ones, and had better have a firm grasp on the difference between the two if he is going to administer a sane government. It's one thing to write books like Albert Camus, but there were reasons that Albert Camus never ran France.
This is not World War II, or even III or IV, as I have heard some too-clever people argue about. Islamic terrorists are not Nazis or Fascists. Where are our Victory Gardens? Our rubber drives? Gasoline cards? The sort of retarded rhetoric of our president that is meant by turns to inspire, cajole, frighten and insult us, if it is not wedded to the sort of real sacrifice of real things for real things, is the cheapest kind of devaluation of our language. Vice-President Cheney got some press a while back for being quoted by Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill as having said that 'Reagan taught us that deficits don't matter.' What an elegant metaphor for those whose thoughts about fiscal policy apply equally well to their ideas about language and truth.
Remember the Clinton impeachment? Remember the Congressmen and Senators standing on the East Steps speechifying in voices a good octave below their normal tones about "The Rule of Law" and "Truth" and "The Justice System" and the forsaken "American People"? It was clear then that impeaching the president was a chance to justify themselves, whose lives previously had been woefully unimportant. What a shame it was, that such talent had heretofore been wasted on the mere, uninteresting, less-than-noble business of governing. Here, finally was Their Finest Hour--the one they had been born to live, the one that their destiny had led them to.
If last night's presidential address was not a variation on that theme, what was it?
Can we please have a president who is not trying to be Winston Churchill? It is not something that one can be by trying on like an expensive suit. Not one of us has that much money, and the attempt just gets people killed.
And even after all of that--no catharsis. I am still utterly disgusted.
Today is election day. I will vote.

In matters of policy where lives will necessarily be lost, when one reaches that point where the most compelling argument in favor of continuing the policy is so that those already dead shan't have died in vain--hasn't one also reached the point where policy has failed, the dead have already died in vain, and argument is a mask for lies?

What, really, compels us now?

Emergency Vehicle

Leaving the barber shop (actually a national hair-cutting chain establishment in a strip mall: my regular barber Joe Verdi was closed for some reason) yesterday I noticed that an old guy was standing beside the car parked beside mine. He had gray-to-white hair, combed neatly, he wore a plain white sweatshirt (I didn't see whether it was ironed) and old guy blue jeans, the color that only old guys and eleven year-old girls wear. I don't know whether these were ironed, either, but I imagine that they were. A couple of rows over in the parking lot a policeman was driving out toward the street with a couple of his lights flashing. He did not seem to be in a hurry, until he got to the lot exit, when he started up the siren and peeled off south on Harford Road. The two of us, the old guy and me, watched this, standing next to our respective driver's-side doors, in the light mist of Ernesto.

I make associations. I thought, "Older man, neatly dressed but in the odd way some older men have of dressing; not tall, maybe Navy, probably not Marines; conservative, maybe Republican--we're close to the County; favors law enforcement; maybe an FDNYPD Never Forget sticker on the back of his Buick...this was running through my head as he said:

"Does he have to take a sh*t?"

I turned to look at him and laughed.

"They do that, y'know."

Then he walked off toward the Dollar Tree.

Six Months

A cliche it certainly is when I say that time passes quickly yet I cannot really remember what life was like before Theodore arrived. But look at this face:

The Last Toothless Grin

When all we do all day long is smile and laugh, sometimes the originality of language suffers. He has a tooth now, so until he's 94, putting his dental work into the glass on the nightstand, this will be the last anyone sees of a mouth empty of teeth.

We celebrated the day with a picnic at Fort McHenry--sitting on the blanket, telling jokes to each other, playing catch...

Fort McHenry, Baltimore

Fort McHenry, Baltimore

And then there's this little bit of nonsense:

The Future

Lab Assistant

I hesitate to show this photograph in public, because some of you know, or will guess, what it is we are looking at in the scope. I cannot resist, however, showing off my little science pal, whose lab duties include--but are not limited to--flipping the pages of the phone book, pounding my glasses on the table six or seven times, smiling at his mother, grasping for the microscope, the sharp glass slide, the hot lamp, my coffee...all of it.
We found what we were looking for, but we still don't know what it is. Nothing "in the literature". We wait for culture results.

Thinking at the Baltimore Museum of Art

Matisse, Picasso, and Rodin all made the infant "A" list. Rembrandt's portrait of his son Titus riveted us both for several minutes, as did Gaugin's Woman of the Mango.
Motherwell made him cry.
Then we went out to the sculptures and had a bottle of milk under the wisteria.

Credit Union

One waits at the Credit Union. An older man takes your name, then asks again, then asks how do you spell it. Then he asks what your business is today, then asks again, then looks at you skeptically. He writes this down. Then you wait.
I sit down next to a man, older, who is probably a cop. It's a city credit union, so most of us here are cops or teachers. Next to him is another cop--confirmed when he makes a quick call to someone to talk about the information he sent on to Homicide about that guy, and he's waiting to hear back.
We sit, waiting.
From somewhere a boy, nine or ten, is now sitting on the far side, beside the telephoning policeman, whom he asks a long series of interesting questions about sports, money, his family, his profession.

"How old are you?"
"Forty-nine."

"How old were you when you were younger?"

The three of us, older, laugh gently, remembering and trying to remember.

Five Months Today

...or is it 21 weeks and four days? When do we stop using weeks and start using months? Theodore would not tell me. He did, however, do some things with me to celebrate.

some crying

some playing in the running water

some eating--boiled pears and rice cereal

and some walking around

There was also some wrestling and a couple of naps. We pulled some weeds around the zinnias and four o'clocks. We said hello to Marmelade, the orange cat. We went really fast around the house in the little red stroller.

The Three Month Mark

What are you reading these days?

We're reading Middlemarch.