Homie G and the Time Machine

I'm exhausted. I spent yesterday trying to finish a paper while walking with a group of students around EMU campus. Every time they sat down for an orientation or presentation, my seventy pound laptop that is powered by candles and a thin rat on a wheel came out and I was picking away at a mere seven pager about the politics of recognition. All day it was up and down, in and out, unpacking the laptop, packing the laptop. Then I had to drive back from Ypsilanti to Detroit, get picked up by Suzanne, drive to Inkster, pick up the Escort from Livonia Auto, and then drive back to Detroit for class. I still had a paragraph or two to go by the time I made it to the WSU library at 5:30. By 6:10, I was in class with my paper in hand. Whew.

I'm not the young man I used to be. There was a time when I just would have stayed up all night writing the paper and would have had it done by morning but I don't have the stamina for that any more. Of course, those weren't exactly halcyon days either. Sure, I may have been able to stay up all night but I also would have fallen asleep in class or skipped work or just generally been a rude, crabby person to everyone I know. So it's a trade off, I guess.

Anyway, the great news is the Escort didn't have anything significant wrong with it. A spark plug wire had gotten burned and that was it. Now, a fresh wire is in its place and is clipped to the others so it won't fall onto the exhaust again and the car runs like a dream -- like a not-recently-cleaned dream from 1996. (Would that make it a dirty dream?) Anyway, it's a huge blessing to #1 have a car that runs, #2 to not have to pay with my various appendages (arms, legs) to have it fixed, and #3 to have found a mechanic that apparently is trustworthy and isn't out to leech my blood. Always a good thing.

And now for some time travel music!

Some songs take you back almost bodily to certain moments, certain eras. Here are a few songs that do the H.G. Wells thing to me:

Pearl Jam's Yield Album -- Jennifer Allen and I had just broken up for the last time and I was living in Pocatello in a bleak state of being. The music was loud and weird and even the photo on the cover looked appropriately washed out and empty for how I felt at the time.


John Denver's Greatest Hits Vol. 1 and Paul Simon's Negotiations and Love Songs -- These were the albums I listened to over and over again in Jackson Hole, WY while living in a windowless, basement room with water pipes for a ceiling. As cheesy and/or sentimental as they seem now, I'd still put Annie's Song and Hearts and Bones up against any other song written in the last 20 years. Plus, Me and Julio Down By The Schoolyard? Hello? Does it get better? I think not.

The Indigo Girls' cover of Mark Knopfler's Romeo and Juliet -- I attended my first big concert at Park West (now Wolf Mountain) when I saw the IG on their Rites of Passage tour. I was eighteen, all on my own, and was completely enraptured. Amy Ray did her solo and played Romeo and Juliet. As she was performing the song, this gargantuan full moon started to rise behind her head and the audience was trying to get her to turn around and see it. It was rare, unplanned, and wonderful.


Coldplay's Trouble -- I'm not a fan of Coldplay but whenever I hear this song, I remember a weekend afternoon when we were living in Boise. We went for one of our "make the children sleep" drives and ended up in the desert somewhere between Melba and the Raptor Refuge. Both girls were asleep in their car seats and Suzanne had dozed off next to me. Trouble came on the radio and the mournful piano intro caught me. It was just this very still, kind of idyllic moment

Regina Spektor's Begin To Hope -- When I first moved to Michigan, I saw a dark haired young woman perform a song on Conan O'Brien. I liked the song and I remember noticing that Conan really seemed genuinely impressed with her instead of just the usual "thanks for coming" and a handshake. I didn't remember the woman's name or the name of the song but a couple of days later, I was listening to NPR while driving down Wayne Road and they were interviewing a singer named Regina Spektor. The more I listened, the more I realized it was the woman from Conan. They played bits of her various new songs and asked her about her upbringing in Russia. I was in love. I drove immediately to Best Buy and bought her CD. I played it non-stop for the first six months I was here. It will always call me back to that time.



By the way, on a completely random note, I was just rereading what I'd written so far and came across the line about H.G. Wells. I remembered that in late high school/early college, Madison H.S. alumni Jeremy Dressen had an a capella group called TIME. (Henry Luce would be so proud.) I think the group was Jeremy, Marsh Morford, Maren Stewart, and my Taming of the Shrew nemesis Amy Winkle. They were gonna tour, get in the studio and cut CDs, the whole deal, man, real world stuff. Jeremy was either managing or doing DJ work at the still-inexplicable Retrix dance club in Rexburg and went so far as to get a vanity plate for his sporty red car that read, of course, "TIME." My good friend Brad Barrett then dubbed Jeremy and his car, "Homie G Wells and the Time Machine." Fifteen years later and I still laugh.

Story Time

Somewhere along the line the monkeys started to appreciate stories that don't come from their collection of children's books. I remember the first family story I ever told them was the classic about my dad throwing a metal John Deere toy tractor at the back of his brother's (good ol' Uncle Jim) head and momentarily knocking him unconscious. I thought the story was great and so when the girls were squirming in the van on a long drive, I told it to distract them from their boredom.

It was a hit and so I told other Dennis Brown classics -- the beehive, sinking Grandpa's truck in the ice, punching a hole in the wall of the school shop room, etc. Eventually, I ran out of Dennis stories and started to draw on my personal reserve. The girls are very familiar with the tale of Dad and Uncle Tony getting chased by a herd of wild cows while wearing no pants. (Actually, I was wearing pants. Tony was not. Long story.) They know about petting the baby hawk that was tearing apart a mouse in a meadow in West Yellowstone. They know about Dad throwing up while on a sledding date at the sand dunes outside Rexburg. (For that matter, they also know the "throwing up at the school assembly" story and the "throwing up on poor Cousin Karen after Kathie's wedding" story. Puke narratives are actually a whole genre in my storytelling oeuvre.) Besides throw-up stories, there are three general categories, -- Dad as a little boy, Dad as a teenager, and Dad as a missionary.

So the funny thing is, their appetite for stories never seems to relent but, even at the ripe old age of (almost) 34, I've only got so many stories to tell, y'know? If I start to retell one they've heard too recently they chorus, "We know that one, Dad!" So I've had to branch out from the grand narratives of my life story (y'know, the ones that involve pantlessness, angry cows, the threat of death, mutilation, and vomit) and I've had to start telling completely mundane memories that have stuck with me over the years.

The other night before bed, the monkeys were begging for a story. Now, I'm not dumb. I recognize that they are appealing to my vanity. They know if they ask Dad for a story from his past, they're likely to get another five or ten minutes of awake time before the inevitable turning off of the lights. But since I am vain and I do like telling them stories and because I've gotta respect their utter wiliness at ages 5 and almost 7, I usually give in.

So the random story I scraped out of my mental rafters was about Tony and I living in Provo just prior to his marriage to Cassie. We lived in the Riviera Apartments, worked at Frontier Pies, and spent the evenings roaming around Provo talking about life (women). One evening, there was some kind of church dance going on in a parking lot not far from our place so we moseyed over (they were playing Joshua Tree-era U2) and danced with a couple of dateless, lonely girls. After that, we bought a single bottle of Country Time lemonade from a gas station and walked onto one of BYU's many playing fields. We sat down on a pole vault landing pad and handed the bottle back and forth, wiping the top off with each pass. (Because that's so much more sanitary.) Anyway, as we talked, I eventually downed the last gulp of lemonade and absentmindedly handed the bottle back to Tony. He tilted it up to take a drink and got nothing. He laughed and said he thought I was kindly offering him the last swallow as a gesture of friendship and thoughtfulness. I burped and said, "Nope."

The girls were immensely tickled by this story for some reason. They thought handing Tony the empty bottle was the height of cleverness. A couple of days later, Maryn handed me the above picture that she'd drawn. She thought a pole vault was a tether ball pole so that explains the thing between Tony and I. The two details I love most about the drawing are #1 -- the sort of gleefully sadistic look on my face as I'm watching Tony try to drink from an empty bottle and #2 -- the phrase, "Be kool man be kool." That wasn't part of the story from the other night but Maryn, whose mind is a marvel of retention, remembered from way back when I told her that was Tony's favorite form of peer pressure. "C'mon, man," he'd say, "be cool. Just be cool." That she remembered that little detail delighted me to no end.


This, obviously, is another picture of autumn in my neighborhood. It is overcast, raining, and 55 degrees today so the warm, brilliant weather of last weekend is already sorely missed.

Trick Question?

Blogging for Good Mental Health

It's ten a.m. on Monday morning. I have a thousand things to do and yet I am blogging. It's been over a week since I posted last and the thing is, I enjoy blogging. I like it. It helps me to feel like I'm doing something at least borderline creative and it also makes me feel like I'm trying to stay connected with people who are beyond my immediate circle of three women and me. (Three women = 2 little monkeys and one queen.)

So I'm blogging right now instead of reading Bound by Recognition by Patchen Markell or working up ideas for the eight page position paper on identity and recognition that's due this Wednesday night. I'm blogging on the assumption that doing something good for me that I enjoy will make me better and sharper later when I'm doing those other, less pleasurable things.

A lot has happened over the last week or so.

#1 -- Suzanne and I both lost the name-that-photo contest over at www.thepioneerwoman.com. I thought one of us would at least get an honorable mention but no. She's a clever writer, a terrific photographer, and not a bad Ethel Merman impressionist but this last week Ree was no friend of ours. Ah well.

#2 -- I watched Douglas Sirk's Imitation of Life and Written On The Wind both in a 24 hour period. That is a lot, and I mean a lot of old Hollywood melodrama, folks. Crying, screaming, music swelling like it's been stung by irradiated bees -- wow. It was a little much. But my presentation for class that night went okay so that's good.

#3 -- We went to a cider mill in Franklin Village on Saturday. It was crowded and had really insufficient parking. The doughnuts were pretty good and the cider was tasty but, in true Dennis Brown fashion, I felt like there were too many damn people.



#4 -- The Escort started freaking out. Last night on my way to Ann Arbor, the check engine light started flashing at me and the car had diminished power. The last time this happened, I changed the spark plug wires for 20 bucks and it ran like a dream. But that was only a couple of months ago so it's probably not that again. This means I have to take the car to that most dreaded of all places in Brown family -- the mechanic's garage. I have issues here. Maybe I'll write about them later.

#5 -- My friend Darlene Young finished her first draft of a YA novel. She makes all the usual apologies -- it's just a first draft, it's kind of short, it's not the great novel I want to write, etc. But the fact remains that she started and completed a novel and I got nothin' but respect for that. Just writing something, just finishing a draft is more than half the battle, I think.

I recently finished a Mormon novel that won all kinds of awards and recognition when it came out. I read it while I was on the retreat in Port Huron and, when I finished it, I thought, "meh." It was just no big deal. It was serviceable and not bad by any means but it in no way deserved the awards that it got except for one thing -- there's nothing better out there. I honestly think that in the LDS literary world some stuff gets published and praised for no reason other than someone had the fortitude to finish an entire manuscript. So many would-be LDS writers are too busy with meetings, family, food storage, repentance, etc. to actually get anything done. It takes someone with real drive to finish the job. (Spoken as a man who has 80 pages of a novel sitting on his computer. Said pages have been there since 2005)

Just based on her blog alone and the one or two short stories I've read of hers, Darlene's prose is much more lovely and readable than anything in this "important" LDS novel I finished. So the fact that she's finished something AND she can write well spells good things for her publishing career.

#6 -- It is Fall, baby. The trees in our neighborhood are like Roman candles and it is a sight to behold.


It is now after 11. My students are working away at some letters the Executive Director (Bev, she of the unfortunately applied lipstick) asked them to write in support of a grant she's going after. I have yesterday's tortellini with Suzanne's excellent homemade sauce waiting in the fridge and I have a paper about recognition to write. I am off. (Only to return shortly to upload other photos and random doodads.)

Sweet Friday, My Favorite Day of the Calendar

Friday is my favorite day of the week. This is nothing special, I suppose. It's a popular day for a lot of people. For me though, more than being the end of the work week, it represents the one day of the week when I can take a little mental break from school. I have class in the evening on Wednesday and Thursday so Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday during the day are spent reading, underlining, fretting, and trying to mentally process what I'm taking in. (Thursday daytime is similarly consumed.)

Saturdays should be study days but really they're not. They are for watching Legion of Super Heroes and The Batman with Maryn and Avery, shopping with Suzanne, driving around to new places, and occasionally eating out for lunch. Saturday evenings are for movies, baths, and watching whatever they decide to plunk down in the middle of the wasteland that is weekend TV. However, even though I don't usually do much school work, I feel the weight of "should" throughout the day.


Sundays used to prime study time for me. Sundays after church and dinner I would disappear to my study bunker and read until long after everyone else was asleep. It was a regular thing. When I started the program at Wayne State, however, I decided to put a stop to that. I decided that, if at all possible, I simply wouldn't think about, work on, or stress out about school on Sundays. Part of it was a desire to set a day aside for God and part of it was a desire simply to have one day when I gave myself permission to not worry. If it's a foregone conclusion that I won't work on Sundays, then I don't need to worry about it. It's a done deal and I can expend my energies on other things. I painted myself into a corner a couple of times last semester but, other than that, I've held to my decision and it's worked out really well.

Anyway, Friday mornings I spend responding to overdue e-mail from family and friends, updating my blog, and taking it easy with my students. In class, I like to use Fridays to read something fun and light hearted or to take the students walking somewhere in the neighborhood to write. Fridays are decompression days.

Consequently, I'm feeling pretty free and easy at the moment. I have a room full of prospective Young Detroit Builders taking their entrance exam. All the current students are upstairs in math class and the building (at least my floor) is quiet.

A little randomness:

pharmakon -- a Greek word that is obviously the root for pharmacy. In Greek, however, it can mean both medicine and poison. I think it's a great word because there are many things that can be described in that kind of dualistic way. There's plenty in the world that's healthy, healing, and restorative that can also be destructive and dangerous if used too much, not enough, improperly, etc. We are surrounded by pharmakons and our decisions help make them into either medicine or poison.

Below is a picture of Antoine Boykins, one of YDB's star students, taking part in a biochemistry experiment on Eastern Michigan University campus. We take a group there every other week as part of a bridge program that's meant to familiarize them with the college experience. It's been really successful so far. The only complaint has been that the schedule doesn't allow for enough "socializin' with the females."

The funny thing was, when they got to this class and got put into groups with a variety of pretty, smart college girls, my boys seized up tighter than a banker's smile. They were terrified. It was hilarious.

Colleagues and Students

Our staff photo from the retreat. From left to right, Rock McHandsome, English Teacher; Indira Pierce, Leadership Development; Dennis Booker, Science and Social Studies Teacher; Margaret McGuinnes, Counselor; Duane Maki, Administrative Assistant; Bev Manick, Executive Director; Jerry Pauzus, Construction Manager; Gil Hall, Construction Trainer; Sharron Walker, Counselor; John Wurtsmith, Construction Trainer; Derrick Tagger, Construction Trainer; Sabrina Seagraves, Job Developer; Raymond Abramson, Math Teacher; Rowland Watkins, Program Director.


At one point, we broke out into sessions for just the men and just the women. Naturally, the men's meeting involved building a fire even though it was broad daylight and 73 degrees outside. Gil (far right) is a former Marine who served in Desert Storm. Derrick (third from right) graduated from YDB's first cycle thirteen years ago, worked as a professional carpenter for several years, and then came back to work for us as a construction trainer.


Indira, Gil, Jerry, and Rowland at our annual fundraiser, The Showdown in Motown. It freaks me out how much Jerry reminds me of David O. McKay.


Bev Manick. Can you see how we might all be a little afraid of her?


Some of our most recent graduates: Eric Brown (no relation), Josh Gilmore, Artketia Bell, Glen Holliman, Jarel Jackson, William Little, Anton and Anthony Meeks.

Retreat!

Every six months, the school and work sites for Young Detroit Builders shut down for a week and the students get a little break while the staff travels north to Port Huron for a work retreat. We stay at the Port Huron Retreat Center which is right on the lake and spend our days talking about policies and procedures, getting training, reviewing the progress of previous six months, and making goals for the next six.

When I think about it, the prospect of spending three straight days with my bosses and co-workers sounds like some kind of Dante's Inferno punishment. However, surprisingly, it almost always turns out to be a pretty good experience. We take plenty of breaks which allow us to wander down to the beach to collect rocks and fossils. We're fed at the dining hall on a schedule so meticulously kept that it makes you wonder if the cooks ran the train system in Italy or something. The food is almost always good and there's always a lot of it.

And, as much as I hate to admit it, it's kind of nice to get to know my colleagues in an environment other than work. The more I know a person, the more human and actual they become to me. The more human they are, the less able I am to resent or ignore them. So it's good.

I tried to be selective about my rock and fossil collecting this time. Suzanne has often wondered about the six or seven jars of rocks I keep around for seemingly no reason. (I do use a couple of them as bookends.) I didn't want to add too many more jars to the collection so I made sure to only bring back unique items that I didn't already have. (I try to tell Suzanne that jars of rocks are pretty tame. I mean, I could be Howard Hughes and could store jars of my own urine. Strangely, she doesn't think this is a valid defense.) So I came away with a small collection of fossilized coral, a Petosky stone, some brachiopods, and a few other cool things. My fascination with fossils is similar to my interest in the Norse penny -- miraculous things just under the surface of the every day. One of the reasons I actually get a little excited about going to Port Huron is that there are thousands and thousands of fossils being washed up on the beach there daily and all I have to do is walk along and pick them up. I love it.



So it was a good experience, but I'm glad I'm back. I was lonesome for the women in my life -- Suzanne, Maryn, and Avery. It was just really, really good to get home and be with my family.



My luxurious room. My roommate, administrative assistant Duane Maki, is in his fifties and had never slept on the top bunk of a bunk bed. So, for the first time in his life, he tried it. He slept on the top of the set that's out of the frame. The next night he slept on the bottom bunk, having had his once-in-a-lifetime experience.


The view from my front door. The lake is just that close. It's pretty fabulous. The little thing in the center of the photo is a bell they have mounted on the grounds.


If you follow this slope down and around, it leads to an area where they've laid a medieval labyrinth into the ground with paving stones. It's supposed to be meditative to follow the maze. If you do it right, it takes a good five minutes.


On the horizon of this photo is another of my favorite things about the area -- giant tankers and cargo ships move back and forth across the lake all day. The ships are just enormous and it's restful to sit and watch them noiselessly crawl from one side of the horizon to the other.

The path to the water. There are Adirondack chairs and benches on the other side of the trees and it's a terrific place to just sit and stare at the water.