Category: Life

Half a Lifetime

John Winkelman

What kind of hometown is Springport, you ask? Lets see… Village population ~700; township (36 square miles) population in the neighborhood of 3,000. Pretty much all woods and farms. One golf course (used to be a field), one race track (used to be a field). When neighboring town Eaton Rapids had its homecoming earlier this month, the theme was “Hillbilly Week”, so all of the Eaton Rapids folk dressed up like Springport folk.

Big rivals Concord shut out Springport at the homecoming game on Friday. I stuck around until the end of the third quarter, when it was obvious that Springport couldn’t possibly win. The crowd held some familiar faces, people I hadn’t seen in around fifteen years, who were in town for the same reason I was.

The fifteen-year-class reunion took place at the Hotel Tavern in Springport. Of the original 67 members of the Class of 1987, perhaps eighteen participated. I didn’t mind; everyone who showed up was genuinely interested in the fate and doings of the others, some of whom were in town from as far away as Massachusetts.

To make a long story short, no-one is dead, no-one is in prison, some people are happy, some are sad, and some of the girls I never paid attention to in high school are now stunningly beautiful women. The three men who were at the bar all looked pretty much like they did fifteen years ago. Different hairlines, but the same faces.

As the evening progressed I felt recurring waves of vertigo and deja vu, memories of the same people in the same configuration, sitting at cafeteria tables, eating cafeteria food, talking the same talk at a smaller magnitude. Specific images and conversations stick in my mind: Meredith talking about her six children. Jane talking about her husband. The deep sadness in Keri’s eyes. Rusty’s pony-tail stuck through the back of his baseball cap. The angel in Nikki and the devil in Kelly. After the initial drinking binge a comfortable melancholy settled in, and for the first time in years, or ever, we just sat and talked. I finally let my high-school demons go five years ago, so this was a reunion of old friends.

We plan to get together in five years, same time, same place, and talk about what has gone before, and what is to come. Twenty years is a long time.

Notes from the Deep Fields

John Winkelman

The new computer isn’t in yet. I suspect the labor disputes among the dock-workers on the West coast have something to do with that. Not having a computer at home means going back to work at night and working on my site when no-one else is around. The new re-build you see before you is the result. The old design wasted too much real-estate.

Today I will be attending the Homecoming game at my old high school . I haven’t seen one of those in… oh, about fifteen years. Coincidentally, this was to be the weekend of the fifteenth reunion of the Class of 1987, but due to lack of interest, it was downgraded to “hanging out in a bar after the game”.

Played around a little with the Flash MX Drawing API again last night, and here is the result .

Fuck

John Winkelman

Well, the lovely and talented R****** done r.u.n.n.o.f.t. So much for that.

In other news, I am sitting here watching the Gregory Peck version of Moby-Dick . This story has some interesting things to say about the nature of obsession, revenge, hatred, and self-destruction.

No. I want to discuss these things meaningfully, but right now…I’m just pissed.

Alone With My thoughts

John Winkelman

There is a particular freedom to being offline for a while. Writing becomes more personal as there is an implied distance from the audience, strengthened by the fact that I won’t be able to post this for at least eight more hours.

I have noticed little talk lately of the ironically named “citizen’s brigade”. There are two possibilities: either it exists, or it doesn’t exist. If it doesn’t exist, then has there been any pronouncement that it was, after all, a miserable and stupid idea? If it does exist, then has there been any official pronouncement that it has been created?

When I first heard this idea I discounted it as the slightly justified but paranoid reaction to the terrorist attacks of 2001. But still, a stupid idea. Anyone who agreed to this idea would be a traitor to the constitution, and anyone who disagreed, a traitor to the country.

So in a time when the government… no. Not the government. The administration. When the administration was trying to unite all Americans behind a common cause it introduced an idea which, if enacted, could very well have started a civil war: “Hey! You three million over there! Why don’t you keep an eye on everyone else and, if they do something a little more, you know, red, than white or blue, why don’t you tell us?”

Hitler committed suicide in a bunker. McCarthy died alone and insane. Ashcroft is trying to send us to war with Iraq.

The continued searching for demons on other soil is distracting us from problems on our own. The members of the Administration have enough reptilian-brain survival instinct to not openly advocate the revocation of the constitutional amendments but close attention will reveal that they are whittling at them, slowly paring them away until the letter and the spirit of the law are at odds with one another.

As with any other prison, the Big Bull has it’s bitches: The entertainment industry (RIAA!), in order to maintain it’s profitability, is happy to take white-out to the amendment that created it. To prevent us from copying music, they want us to not have access to it in the first place. Somehow, that makes sense.

The real danger of terrorism is not that another country will destroy us, but that we will destroy ourselves in order to deny our enemies that pleasure.

And the Administration would call this a victory.

The Ancient of Days

John Winkelman

Today I RSVP-ed for my 15-year class reunion at Springport High School. Why? Ummm… err… why not?

Fifteen years. Egads. That means I graduated from college nine years ago. I have been out of school for almost as long as I was in school. Revelations like this make a man take stock of his life. Lessee… Since starting college I have moved around fifteen times, had over thirty room-mates, about a dozen girlfriends, four cars, four jobs (other than work-study slavery), published one poem, been to India, been to Russia, never been rich, never been married, no kids, many friends.

I am happy more often than not, and I am seldom bored. I guess I have it pretty good.