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From Eliza: Tim mentioned in an earlier post that he had lined up a few fun things for my birthday. In the culmination of what has been a very fun month, Tim and I attended the Belgian Beer Fest at the Boston Center for Arts’ Cyclorama on Saturday afternoon. Between the three of us, our friend Matt joined us, we were able to cover some serious ground. Here are some of our favorites:
- Orval Trappist Ale
- Westmalle Trappist Dubbel Ale
- Unibroue Chambly Noire
- Tripel Karmeliet
Brooklyn Brewery offered a nice Belgian-style beer with their Flemish Gold. The Lindemans Pomme Lambic was surprisingly good, not too sweet and a fun alternative.
From Tim: We met Matt at Bukowski’s–another favorite joint–for lunch and then walked to the Cyclorama. At lunch, Matt pulled his little, weathered notebook out, showing Eliza notes we’d made in our various trips together over the past few years. Our quirky ranking system didn’t seem as brilliant to her as it had to us. Nonetheless, we decided to pay special attention to the beers we were about to experience.
The Belgian Beer Festival was a great way to bookend the celebrations honoring Eliza’s birthday this month. Since visiting Amsterdam and discovering the Publik House, my tastes and interests in beer have grown and evolved considerably. This festival was like a walk around beer heaven with two of my favorite people in the world.
In the New York Times (September 22, 2008), three economists offered their view of the proposed financial rescue plan. All were interesting, but only Vincent R. Reinhart rang of deeper truths when he stated that providing “…aid to large financial firms is distasteful, especially when remembering their excesses and the time when their managers were considered masters of the universe. But those firms hold the larger economy hostage. As long as they are unwilling to support market functioning and make new loans, spending will sag and asset prices will slide.”
It’s apparent that the financial market needs help recovering and some important institutions are in critical condition. There’s still something sleezy about large corporations getting a good cleansing from bad investments while individuals are still losing their homes, jobs and pensions. How will this bailout effect the rest of us, other than seeing our taxes spent on bailing these companies out? How about including a plan for refinancing troubled mortgages owned by those who simply also made bad decisions by taking too much debt at too high an interest rate to buy a home. Or how about just a plan to temporarily lower the mortgage rate to stimulate the market and benefit all existing and potentially new homeowners?
I was first introduced to Wendell Berry by Michael Rozyne when he and I worked at Equal Exchange together. Mr. Berry is a productive writer, to say the least. I have not made the slightest dent into his large body of work. He is an essayist, a novelist, an environmentalist and a poet. I don’t always agree with his thinking, but I like and appreciate his mind.
If you don’t know him, I am pleased to introduce, Mr. Wendell Berry.
They Sit Together on the Porch by Wendell Berry.
They sit together on the porch, the dark
Almost fallen, the house behind them dark.
Their supper done with, they have washed and dried
The dishes–only two plates now, two glasses,
Two knives, two forks, two spoons–small work for two.
She sits with her hands folded in her lap,
At rest. He smokes his pipe. They do not speak,
And when they speak at last it is to say
What each one knows the other knows. They have
One mind between them, now, that finally
For all its knowing will not exactly know
Which one goes first through the dark doorway, bidding
Goodnight, and which sits on a while alone.
From “A Timbered Choir”
Whether reading the paper or bellying up to the bar, discussions of the financial market and crisis are right there confronting me. My life-long strategy of being too poor to be in the market seems to be the right one at this time.
Holding an undergraduate degree in finance as well as an MBA, I do understand a little of economics and financial markets. If a once-famous car dealership slowly but surely became known for holding mostly lemons in inventory, no one would be surprised if it ultimately lost everyone’s confidence and probably went out of business. The puzzling and most troubling question would be: how did this happen?
A good answer to that question regarding Lehman Brothers comes from the great mind and economist Joseph Stiglitz on Big Think, a highly recommended website filled with ideas from experts. Hearing him talk in such intelligent and understandable terms left me with a clearer sense of things yet no less troubled.
I prefer my 42-year-old mind, but wouldn’t mind my 22-year-old body back.
Aidan appreciating Richard Serra, Storm King 2008
The news of David Foster Wallace’s suicide was saddening. It was equally hard to hear that he had suffered for much of his life with depression. A battle he fought vigorously and eventually lost. We all expereince being down. We all have our funks. We all get the blues. Some of us even wrestle with real bouts of depression. I cannot imagine a depression as deep and as fierce as Mr. Wallace’s. My heart goes out to his family. Depression is a personal illness but it is far from a private struggle.
For my last birthday, Eliza surprised me with the ultimate gift. Somehow, she talked my friend and mentor John Evans of Lemuria Bookstore into an unprecedented trip to Boston. Even more surprisingly, she managed to keep it a secret from me even as my pals Matt and Glenn were planning an excursion to Providence for the same weekend. Indeed I was surprised to find John in my house as I came downstairs that afternoon. I was also greatly moved, and we all had a fine few days of spirits, food and good friendship.
Needless to say, I have felt the need to do something special for Eliza’s birthday month. So, I decided to find us several fun things to do for the month of September. For the first weekend, I got us tickets to the Boston Tattoo Convention for Friday night (9/12) and the beginning of the celebrations.
As we neared the entrance that night, we passed a group of dudes and ladies whose bodies were decorated with ink of mixed quality but whose attitude suggested nothing short of coolness. Once inside, we paused, took in the loveliness of the people, and talked strategy about how to walk the booths and take in the show. My initial reactions were to the intensity of the crowd, the unbelievably bad lighting and the unstable audio quality of the emcee loudly proclaiming the free T-shirt giveaway and the upcoming Tribal Fusion Belly Dance. I made a note to self about the belly dance to come, and we began down the isle checking out the booths which were intermittently buzzing with works-in-progress.
I must admit that most of the work there didn’t connect with me. I felt the quality of the art ran the gamut of bad to mediocre to mildly interesting. However, on the first row we did find what was to be the first of the two artists whose work blew us away.
Sitting at the booth of Fine Work Tattoo was a young woman and man, as well as a notebook of incredibly fine samples of work. We chatted with them for a bit, admired their personal body work, and carefully studied the notebook of samples. I’m fairly certain the guy was artist tattoo artist Chip Douglas, and I highly recommend visiting their site. They were making their first trip to Boston, and they hail from Orange, California. After a short visit and chat, we walked on, ended the first row and rounded the corner to see the stage area and emcee station.
The emcee’s appearance strongly conflicted with his pedantic wit and editing of the grammar in announcements handed to him. The emcee was the infamous Lizard Man, who appeared to be simply a freak that had used a wealth of body modification to look like, well a lizard. Upon further research (albeit his personal website), I discovered Lizard Man is a former philosophy doctorate student/entertainer who approached body modification procedures as a philosophical art piece to explore the idea of what it means to be human from a linguistic standpoint. On his website’s FAQ he says while he was “…working with philosophy of language and it occurred to me that some of the principles put forth by Wittgenstein in his later works offered an interesting potential for exploration in relation to the transformation ideas I had been working with in art.” He goes on to say that “…it goes something like this: (1) Wittgenstein suggested that one way in which we are able to apply one term to many different objects is because they share a sort of ‘family resemblance’ (2) Focusing on how this principle related to the use of terms like ‘human being’, ‘person’, etc in the sense that people identify others as humans more based on observation of surface physical characteristics and behaviors I decided to modify those aspects of myself in manner which would significantly differentiate me from other ‘human beings’ (3) In order to achieve this differentiation I chose to use permanent body modification procedures because I felt that a permanent commitment to the artistic statement was preferable if not necessary.”
I now look at my daughter’s pet geckos with a bit longer pause and slight more respect now.
After admiring the woman performing the Tribal Fusion Belly Dance—who was quite hypnotic—we continued up and down the isles. Men’s backs were laid out like canvases everywhere, and women were just as plentiful with exposed inner thighs and shoulders for artists to decorate. Soon, we discovered the second of the highlights and our favorite tattoo parlor, Tsunami Tattoo of Portland, Maine. We met Sue Tran, co-owner of the parlor and wife of the artist Phuc Tran. His work has a sharp detail and clean, distinct style, as well as a vivid and explosive presentation of color. Without doubt, Eliza and I will be visiting the Tran’s shop and planning for him to do some work for us.
An article in the New York Times this week suggests that being on the same financial wave length with your spouse or partner is one of the keys to a successful (financial and personal), long-term relationship. The article offers tips if you realize that you are not matched with your financial “twin.”
Money is a hot issue for everyone. Do I have enough? Does someone else have too much? Disparity in income for a couple where one person might be the earner and the other might manage the home is often very controversial. I wish the article had addressed how couples in this scenario could create a model for putting a financial value on the work of the person staying at home.
Storm King, August 2008
Frankly, I struggle with it. I don’t struggle with wanting to be connected or with the positive feelings that come from healthy, connected relationships. I do, however, struggle with how to do it and how to be comfortable with the vulnerability that is often associated with being authentically connected on an emotional, physical and spiritual level.
For so many years, I felt that being vulnerable meant being weak. There were pieces of me, my most powerful and my darkest that I never shared with anyone for fear of being really seen and therefore, never able to hide.
The darker, less understood parts of me are sneaking out here and there. Having Aidan called them forth and being in a committed relationship with Tim requires that they be front and center. Meaningful friendships can stay afloat with out them, but thrive with everything is shared, good and bad.
Vulnerability is not weakness. It is the key to understanding yourself and having others understand you and love you for who you really are.
