South 12th

Maybe I am just a naive quasi-Midwestern southern transplant...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:51:00 -0600

Maybe I am just a naive quasi-Midwestern southern transplant that hasn’t spent enough time on the east coast, but I truly find Philadelphia art kids to be the weirdest, scariest, most extremist art kids in America.

I have had the pleasure of traveling all across this great country of ours in my many capacities as an artist, art student, writer, rock musician, rock music appreciator, lovelorn post-adolescent road-tripper, and whatever else might look good exaggerated on my CV. I have met art kids from every city in America, and even attended, by secret invitation, their secret art kid parties in their secret warehouses and non-profit art spaces and tiny cramped apartments. I have interacted with all of them: Pittsburgh art kids have fondled my leg in a college dormroom toilet, and Manhattan art kids have unambiguously mocked me for attending art school at a backwater third-tier basketball camp posing as a public land-grant diploma mill instead of Connecticut. Chicago art kids have given me terrifyingly intense dissertations on William “The Refrigerator” Perry while shotgunning oversized novelty cans of Old Style, and Oakland art kids have taken me into walk-in kitchen pantries doubling as bedrooms to show me homemade tattoos so perversely blurry that only the easy-come-easy-go collective attitude of the East Bay could have allowed them. But never have I felt closer to some terrifying anarcho-Rimbaudian fever dream of total beardo oblivion than when interacting with shirtless, hooting, atavistic Philly art kids at 4:00 in the morning.

So it’s in that spirit I give you the late, great Need New Body’s immortal Philly anthem “Sth St Rx” on this Sunday night. Somewhere in southeastern Pennsylvania right at this moment, in a crumbling brick industrial structure in a ungentrifiable neighborhood somewhere on the banks of the Schuylkill, there is a shirtless 22-year old who has been awake for twenty-eight hours performing alarming, miscreant acts of aesthetic derring-do fueled only by warm Yuengling, psychotropic drugs, homemade synthesizers and serious misreadings of postmodern critical theory.

Wish him or her well, reader! Philly art kids are the best at what they do. Only Baltimore art kids even come close.

This has been http://southtwelfth.tumblr.com, South 12th,...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 02:00:00 -0600

This has been http://southtwelfth.tumblr.com, South 12th, Minneapolis, concluding our broadcast day. South 12th is owned and operated by South Twelfth Productions, Incorporated, and is broadcast on a frequency of 24 megabytes per second, as assigned by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington, DC. South 12th studios and executive offices are located on 12th Avenue South in Midtown Minneapolis. Our transmitter is located high atop 419 Park Avenue South, Suite 807 in New York City.

Portions of today’s programming have been mechanically reproduced, and some programming has been pre-recorded on videotape. Viewer comments about our programming are invited by writing the office of our General Manager, Minneapolis, MN 55407.

On behalf of all the people that bring you the news, entertainment and public affairs programming of S. 12th, we invite you to join us again this morning at 6am, and wish you a good night.

Ladies and gentlemen, our national anthem.

(I think I’m going to start queuing these up to publish every single night at 2am. Even on days when I didn’t write anything, like today. Maybe throw in a little “High Flight.” Are you reading this in real-time, right now, at 2am? That’s excellent.)

"A bunch of twee old farts reliving the Noughties."

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:07:00 -0600

For Filmosophy’s Wes Anderson Week, here’s a piece I wrote previewing the maestro’s later years. Includes many of your late-period Anderson favorites, from The Dreyfus Affair all the way through Well-Respected Men.

Who else writes a mean Wes Anderson speculative future piece? Tess Lynch, that’s who.

The $15 Midtown Drug Phone, 2009-2009. “You were always on...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:06:00 -0600

The $15 Midtown Drug Phone, 2009-2009.

“You were always on my mind…you were always on my mind.”

Things I Learned About From Mike Gunther, #2: The Midtown...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 12:23:00 -0600

Things I Learned About From Mike Gunther, #2: The Midtown Phillips Light Aircraft Graveyard.

South Minneapolis is unlike a lot of other urban areas in the sense that it’s not as dense as it seems like it should be — this part of the city wasn’t developed until the 1910s and ’20s, so instead of multistory apartment buildings, it’s miles and miles of really narrow lots laid out on a grid, each with tiny front and back yards with single-family houses, duplexes and triplexes (or, in the case of the S. 12th residential compound for which this tumblelog is named, a six-plex). More than one east coast native has pointed out to me that the southside has to them a somewhat suburban feel to it. Rightfully so, because it is suburban. Literally: South Minneapolis is right below the urban core, and was populated by the first generation of Minneapolitans that could just as easily take the streetcars to and from downtown as live there. The southside is still laid out, in a grid, along those streetcar lines — Cedar, Bloomington, Chicago, 28th. Though the streetcars were torn out sixty years ago, those avenues still form the skeleton of the area, with Nicollet as the spine.

My point is that when you’re walking or driving through Powderhorn or Phillips or Longfellow or any of the other neighborhoods south of Franklin, the grid layout and its endless lots can all run together. Superficially, there’s a kind of a bland, repetitive quality to these neighborhoods. Stucco duplex, stucco cottage, Lutheran church, brick triplex, stucco duplex…

Hidden away, however, behind streetcorner buildings and between all those stucco duplexes are all sorts of weird little details that make South Minneapolis so quietly interesting. A case in point is the light airplane graveyard in Phillips, a block or two north of my house on 13th.

Mike tipped me off on its existence, and if he hadn’t, I might never have noticed it — it’s behind a tall wooden fence with barbed wire lining the top. There is no information on the fence or the adjoining building about who owns the lot, or how to get in touch with them, or anything else. There’s just rows and rows of Piper Cubs and Cessna 120s, crushed and stacked atop one another in piles. They are stacked just high enough that a bent propeller or wing will peek over the fence. Did people die in these planes? Or just sell them for scrap? It’s hard to get a look. Apparently the business is called Wentworth Aircraft (“the world’s leading supplier of used aircraft parts for single-engine aircraft”), but you’d never know from the exterior.

The airplane graveyard is next door to a squat, one-story light industrial building that’s been repurposed as a mosque. In the summer, sometimes the East African teenage boys will take their shirts off and do chin-ups on the metal railing overlooking the Greenway. Two block away is the Circle of Discipline, a converted garage in which neighborhood kids train in martial arts; you sometimes hear them jogging in formation down 12th chanting “Who are we? C.O.D.! Who are we? C.O.D.!” South Minneapolis doesn’t wear its eccentricities on its sleeve. You have to find them yourself. Or have Mike Gunther find them for you.

Elvis Presley, “The Yellow Rose of Texas / The Eyes of...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:59:00 -0600

Elvis Presley, “The Yellow Rose of Texas / The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.” You cannot look away!

A lot of people complain about Elvis’s movie soundtracks, because they’re terrible and he’d literally sing any god-damned thing the Colonel asked him to, no matter how trivial or humiliating or stupid it was.

Fair enough. But, you know, I like this song, and I like the fact that Elvis was willing to sing an ancient Civil War song smashed together with a wholly unrelated college fight song, and not only sing it, but sing the shit out of it. Listen to him going to town! Any other “artist” would say “no, absolutely not, that’s ridiculous,” but not El. Nothing was ever off the table for him, and that is why Elvis remains the best, most perfect, purest, most perverse and most horrifying product of American popular culture.

So do I tear up a little when I hear overblown, ill-conceived nonsense like “An American Trilogy”? Oh, god, do I!

It’s Wednesday, which in many cultures means you are going...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:49:00 -0600

It’s Wednesday, which in many cultures means you are going to be forced to look at a picture of me.

Last summer I went to go visit my friend Tom in Oakland, where this photo was taken. The bandana scarf and jaunty cap indicate that I am at the dizzying apex of my celebrated Fiorello La Guardia-Era Newsboy look.

Earlier in the day, Tom had taken me to his favorite flea market in Berkeley. Every Saturday, apparently, he biked down there to pick up new conspiracy theory DVDs from a very excitable vendor that knew him by name and had an endless selection of titles with bizarre Photoshopped covers on subjects ranging from UFOs to weather control to Freemasonry.

Tom’s particular interest was in Freemasonry that summer, so he’d loaded up on titles related to that, no matter how crazy they seemed. Some of them did indeed seem crazy. For example, he was breathlessly telling me about one he’d bought that drew some parallels between Freemasonry, the establishment of the University of Texas and George W. Bush. You know, Longhorns. I couldn’t follow it, but it had to do with the “longhorn salute” and its relation to the One-World Satanic salute. Or maybe it had something to do with the University of Texas’s creepy fight song, “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You.”

Whatever it was, there is an agreeably sinister, omniscient Masonic quality to the lyrics:

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

All the live long day.

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

You cannot get away.

Do not think you can escape them,

At night, or early in the morn’.

The eyes of Texas are upon you,

Till Gabriel blows his horn!

Anyway, after the flea market we biked up to Amoeba Records, and the first record we found was a cheap used copy of Elvis Presley’s Flaming Star soundtrack, where he sings — oh my God! — “The Eyes of Texas”! Yikes! The Freemasons planned it that way!

So in tribute to all-seeing eyes of the Texan Freemasons and their Satanic One-World Masters, Tom is throwing up the Longhorn salute, and I am forming the “Eye of Texas” with my right hand. We are under the thrall of Texas Freemasonry. It is important to have friends that share your interests.

Later on, we saw DJ Shadow at a stoplight on Telegraph Avenue, and he was blaring the organ solo from the extended version of “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida” for some reason.

What a great trip! What a great guy, that Tom Hall!

The great St. Paul-based singer and guitarist Mike Gunther,...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:05:00 -0600

The great St. Paul-based singer and guitarist Mike Gunther, above. The photo is courtesy Chuck’s Flickr.

I’m posting a photo of Mike above because this is the first entry in a new semi-regular feature here at S. 12th, Things I Learned From Mike Gunther. I don’t see Mike often enough, but whenever I do, he always has some completely outlandish bit of cultural ephemera to share with me. Mike, in addition to being a celebrated musician, also drives cabs and restores antique furniture. He is a man of broad interests and talents. So what he shares with me, reader, I will pass onto you.

(This feature does not have the personal approval of Mike Gunther, and should not be taken as an endorsement from him. I don’t think he’d mind, though.)

Things I Learned From Mike Gunther, #1: Dion McGregor

Mike once picked me up in a 1970s black taxicab to go help shoot a movie with two friends. Instead of playing music or NPR while he drove, like a regular boring person would, he was playing the recordings of Dion McGregor.

Dion McGregor. Wow. I could try to describe McGregor’s work for you in my own words, but that’s what Wikipedia was created for:

McGregor talked in his sleep. Not in quiet, barely-comprehensible mumbles: while he slept, McGregor would essentially narrate his dreams at conversational volume. As a narrator of his (often terrifying) dreams, Dion adopted various personas but frequently established a fey, argumentative, insolent approach to the subject at hand –- be it a hot air balloon trip to the moon with a group of multi-ethnic children, a frantic journey around New York, or a tattooing job on a woman’s tongue.

Basically, dreams described in real-time, with New York City traffic in the background. They’re sort of stressful to listen to. McGregor is almost always panicking about something, being chased or confronted with surreal, insurmountable problems, and narrating all of it in a really odd, really 1960s-sounding voice: a little bit like a cross between Truman Capote and Phil Silvers. Apparently his roommate would record his dream narrations, and some of the best ones were released by Decca as spoken-word albums. There’s some on a MySpace page for your perusal. Some of them are pretty, uh, blue.

Mike Gunther’s music is here. It’s really some of my favorite. I am truly lucky to live in a town where one of my favorite singers is able to sometimes pick me up in a vintage cab and drive me around South Minneapolis regaling me strange tales of the sleeptalkers of the 1960s.

Did you know? If the Burj Dubai tower had been built in South...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:16:47 -0600

Did you know? If the Burj Dubai tower had been built in South Minneapolis, it would be more than 2,652 feet taller than Matt’s Bar.

Who had the best outfit on the walk back from the Midtown LRT station to S. 12th tonight?

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:11:00 -0600

The couple biking east down Lake in identical matching South Minneapolis Autumn Fixie-Riding Uniforms (head-to-toe skintight red flannel)?
The blond party girl in the seasonally inappropriate but absolutely mesmerizing shimmering black retro silver-spangled Edie Sedgewick minidress staggering towards the northbound LRT platform in stilleto heels?
The surprisingly young-looking Minneapolis cop at the Stop and Shop at 18th Avenue whose attire seemed to be a deeply felt homage to Seth Rogen in Superbad, right down to what actually appeared to be a puka shell necklace?
The handsome, forlorn-looking Mexican man, also at the Stop and Shop, in the Don Henley-style unbuttoned mustard denim shirt and white cowboy hat and a mustache that split the difference between Tav Falco and John Waters?
The Somali teenager in the deerstalker cap and ’70s-style tuxedo t-shirt that walked past me at 13th Avenue?

ANSWER: Number 5, no contest. That kid was awesome. Where do you even get those t-shirts anymore?

Michigan’s own Death, emanating from a lonely storefront...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:44:00 -0600

Michigan’s own Death, emanating from a lonely storefront at 1099 35th Street.

(The whole amazing story of Death is recounted here, by the way — told as only the angry young thrill-a-minute pop renegades of the New York Times arts page could dare to tell it.)

I awoke very suddenly last night from a dream in which I’d...

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:50:00 -0600

I awoke very suddenly last night from a dream in which I’d rushed back from a business trip to the United Kingdom in order to get to an important appointment of some kind in Michigan (what a jet-setter!). I don’t remember the city in Michigan, but I had the address written on a piece of paper: 1099 35th Street. A cab driver picked me up at the airport and sped me to the address (“I don’t usually run this route,” he said. “The regular guy is off with his new boyfriend.” What a progressive place Michigan is! I thought. “That’s what I call his new girlfriend,” explained the driver. Never mind, I thought).

I arrived at the destination, paid the driver and jaywalked across a few lanes of traffic to get to the address. 1099 35th Street was an abandoned storefront in a row of commercial buildings. The building was completely empty except for a counter with a turntable on it. A young woman with bleached blonde hair and a cardigan stood silently by the turntable, playing something that sounded like a Michigan band. Maybe Death, or the MC5, or Saturday Looks Good to Me.

“Huh,” I said, by means of an introduction. ”I guess you Michigan girls really like to rock.” This sounded even stupider in the dream than it does now. And it sounds pretty stupid now. Really, go ahead: say it to yourself now out loud. Yeesh. The woman just glared at me.

I awoke suddenly, perhaps out of humiliation, and I wrote down the address so I wouldn’t forget it.

Anyway, above is 1099 35th Street SW in Grand Rapids. As far as I can tell, it’s the only 1099 35th Street listed on Google Maps in Michigan (except for what looks like a back street in Bay City). This quiet suburban scene bears no resemblence to what I saw in my dream. Where is the turntable? Where are the Rocket From the Tombs bootleg LPs? What does it mean, reader? Should I mail them a Saturday Looks Good to Me 7”?

I feel as if I should mail them something. It’s unusual to have specific addresses like that in dreams, and even more unusual to remember them. It should be commemorated somehow.

Two pizzas and a six-pack.

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:20:57 -0600

Here is a great joke from Robert Towne’s 1982 film Personal Best. A pentathlete tells it to her friend in a steam room following a practice.

So this drunk guy hails a cab and gets in. He knocks on the plastic partition between himself and the cab driver. The cab driver opens it.

“Hey, driver,” says the drunk guy. “You got room up there for two pizzas and a six-pack?”

“Yeah, of course!” says the cab driver.

So the guy pukes through the partition.

That’s the end of joke. The character made a really nice retching gesture, as well.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Sorry, I think that joke is really funny. I guess I like jokes about puking. The woman in the movie that told it liked it, too, although her friends were not as impressed.

I often wonder about jokes that are placed in screenplays. Not jokes written into screenplays, but jokes that are told by characters in a film. There’s a big difference. Where do they come from? Was Robert Towne holding on to that one for a few years, and just didn’t have an opportunity to use it in Shampoo or The Last Detail? Or did he hear it while writing the screenplay and figure it would be the perfect joke for women’s Olympic training locker room banter? Do screenwriters keep joke files and then match them to characters as needed?

What are your favorite jokes told onscreen?

He's a Mike Whiskey.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:17:00 -0600

Raynor’s stupendous (and stupendously unhelpful) unhelpful phonetic alphabet reminded of a particular instance in my own life where the more traditional NATO phonetic alphabet, the one that Raynor’s will shortly replace, proved extremely helpful in the pursuit of some dubious sociology.

There was once, several years ago, a new-ish band made up of some guys Nate and I knew. This band had ten or eleven original songs, and they had a distinctive sound (a bland mishmash of Fugazi and the Rapture, which was a very popular sonic cocktail in those days). They had great outfits to wear (tight pants, Wayfarers, ironic t-shirts), and they even had a show lined up.

What they did not have was a name.

So they were asking around for suggestions, and Nate and I privately agreed that these pleasant, blandly attractive, generic rockers ought to go ahead and call themselves the Fun Guys Who Probably Mean Well. It seemed to suit their essence — they were fun guys to have a drink with, and blandness aside, they certainly had their hearts in the right place.

So while they ended up calling themselves something else, our name stuck. It seemed vaguely rude, though, so we just started using an acronym — F.G.W.P.M.W.’s. That’s a mouthful, of course, so drawing on my training as a secretary, I devised a better name. When I need to spell things out over the phone, I use the NATO phonetic alphabet (alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, echo, foxtrot…). So the abbreviation could be spelled out as Foxtrot Golf Whiskey Papa Mike Whiskey. That’s also too long, so, for short: Mike Whiskey.

So you have the Mike Whiskey: a fun guy who probably means well.

It turns out that there is an entire subgroup of urban-dwelling men in their 20s and 30s that, although they collectively constitute a very clearly identifiable demographic, had previously gone unclassified.

A Mike Whiskey is the sort of guy you often run into at rock shows or art openings, who is sort of handsome with shaggy hair, wears nice jeans, always has a funny thing to say (but not that funny), likes to drink beer, and has given his heart over to OK-but-frankly-not-that-great aesthetic pursuits. You like seeing him, but don’t go out of your way to do so.

A Mike Whiskey is the sort of guy whose band you see on the bill of a show you were going to anyway, and you don’t say “oh, awesome!”. You say “oh, I know him.”

He’s a Mike Whiskey. You’ve known a lot of them. You’ve probably dated one. You might even be one.

It becomes such handy shorthand that you don’t know how you got along without it. For example:

“So, what’s he like?”

“Uh, he played guitar in that one band we saw last year at the Nomad — you know, I think he works at the Wedge? He used to date what’s-her-name? Got kind of a scruffy beard sometimes, but he had a mustache last year for a few weeks? Come on, you know him, super nice guy — remember, we ran into him last weekend at the Mountain Goats show? And he said he liked your shirt? And he was going on and on about the new Grizzly Bear album? Come on, you know who I mean…”

Or:

“So, what’s he like?”

“Eh, he’s kind of a Mike Whiskey.”

“Oh, I see.”

He’s a Mike Whiskey!

I thence invoke thy aid to my adventrous Email.

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:34:00 -0600

I just received an email from an account executive in Philadelphia letting me know she was “reaching out” to inform me of an upcoming publication deadline. I love it when people unintentionally use really grandiose language to describe very mundane situations. Reaching out, from far beyond the muddy banks of the River Schuylkill, across prairies and plains and the watery depths of Lake Superior to let you know, Mr. Sturdevant, that the deadline is Monday, November 23.

The most common instance of this is when people use “downfall” as a synonym for “drawback.” I hear this a lot, as in: “Well, the downfall of this particular brand of chips is that they’re very high in sodium.” Suddenly, the stakes become much higher; choosing to eat a bag of too-salty potato chips is transformed from a questionable but harmless personal decision to a face-of-God-punching act of pure hubris. That were an ignominy and shame beneath / This downfall; since by Fate the strength of Gods / And this French Onion substance cannot fail.

Die magische Welt von St. Paul!

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:34:00 -0600

I was waiting for the 21 on University Avenue in the Midway this afternoon, when I heard the chattering of young children behind me. Children! I thought. In St. Paul! Why are they not in a St. Paul school? But of course they were: I turned around, and there I saw in front of me a large, tidy playground, populated by chattering groups of elementary school-aged children. The bus stop was right in front of a low-slung brick building that seemed to be, in fact, a school. On the front of the building hung a sign that read:

GERMAN IMMERSION SCHOOL

The children were laughing and playing, watched over by beautiful 25-year old teachers with dark hair pulled back in ponytails, dressed head-to-toe in chic black and gray tones. It was a very touching scene. A German immersion school! A German immersion recess! Sehr spannend!

One of the children wandered away from the group, up to the fence. He regarded me with curiosity and suspicion. “Mein Herr, warum Sie warten auf den Bürgersteig?” he asked. ”Warum kommst Du nicht mit uns spielen und unsere Lehrer?”

“I have to go to work,” I said.

“Wenn Sie sprach Deutsch, mein Herr, können Sie lehren uns Lektionen über Franz Kline und Joseph Bueys,” he replied. ”Wir würden uns sehr viel davon, und so würde unsere Lehrer.”

But before I could answer, one of the chic black and gray-clad teachers clapped her hands.

“Kommt, Kinder! Bilden einen Kreis und lassen Sie uns gemeinsam Gedichte rezitieren.” Hearing his teacher, my little friend ran back to join the circle. It was then that the 21 bus pulled up, and I got on board to return to work in Minneapolis.

(Note: None of the events described after the second paragraph actually happened.)

Mel Tormé, “Comin’ Home, Baby,” 1962. Very...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:26:12 -0600

Mel Tormé, “Comin’ Home, Baby,” 1962. Very chic, understated little song.

I’d always expected Mel Tormé to be a stage name, a butchering of a far more formidable Eastern European name. Sort of, but not entirely — his parents were Russian immigrants named “Torma,” and the “a” became an “e” at Ellis Island. Mel’s parents retained the spelling and added the accent mark, and he was born Melvin Howard Tormé in Chicago in 1925.

On my birthday last week, my friend Kurt led a few people on the...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:40:00 -0600

On my birthday last week, my friend Kurt led a few people on the banjo in the singing of this number in lieu of the customary “Happy Birthday to You.” There were few on the scene, but most of them knew the words, so it was perfectly, appropriately sobering. I encourage you, too, to sing murder ballads on your birthday.

Thanks to Colin, Andy and Shanai at the WBSC, too, for a tremendous birthday party Saturday night. There was singing at that one, as well.

In tribute to improbable feats of birthday-related cooking this...

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:25:00 -0600

In tribute to improbable feats of birthday-related cooking this week, I give you for your Friday amusement the plinkiest new wave gem of plinky new wave gems: Jona Lewie’s “You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties,” from 1980.

Then I met this debutante, I said “I like new wave rock.”
She was into French cuisine but I ain’t no cordon bleu.

Occasional clock shifts present other challenges.

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:40:00 -0600

I am very likely in an embattled and sleepy-eyed minority here, but I really love the end of daylights savings in the fall. You can spend the entire summer enjoying long, lazy, well-lit evenings that dip off imperceptibly into twilight sometime long after supper, where you bike around without lights in white pants rolled up to mid-calf until at least 9:30 pm, at which point you realize the day is very nearly over and you haven’t accomplished shit except drinking a lot of summer cocktails with lime garnish and exploring a dozen city blocks worth of south Minneapolis commercial architecture. Yes!

So it feels right that as bike-and-white-pants season comes to an end, you trade all of that in for darkness, enforced solitute and a re-committment to the sort of unwavering Nordic work ethic that gave America everything from The Boat of Longing to “The Toolmaster of Brainerd.” Time to hit the studio! Time to up your Netflix queue to four-at-a-time!

Here in Minneapolis, the sun will set at 4:55pm today, and then continue to set two-and-a-half minutes earlier with every passing day until Hippie Holiday Winter Solstice. By the end of November, the sun will have set completely at 4:30 in the afternoon. The entire state will be plunged into darkness by the time I leave work, in other words.

I still find that tremendously exciting for some reason. It makes you feel as if you are privy to the secrets of the North, as if you have a shared kinship with Canadians and Swedes and Russians and Alaskans and Finns that everyone in the rest of the hemisphere doesn’t get as they go on with their subtropical sweating and stinking well into November.

I will be sick of of all of it by late March, of course, but I’ll have gotten a tremendous amount of work done, and will be ready to jump back into warmth and light with a sweaty, white-pantsed fury.