That’s my dear departed mother on the left. Dame Etta. She had a great sense of humor and would probably laugh at this, but if either of my sibs see this I might be in trouble.

I am Oliver, I am the Anti-Christ.

The scoop on the book group. We call ourselves, informally, the Kenwood Book Group. Kenwood/Isles is one of the wealthiest areas of the city, tucked around the Lake of the Isles and north and west of Uptown, over to Mt. Curve which overlooks 394 to the north. Charming old houses, some I guess you would have to call mansions, nestled into the gentle hills and urban forest that surround the lakes. The turnout is usually five to ten people, men and women. No spouses. The penalty for having an affair with another member is expulsion, although we haven’t had to impose it yet. Tonight we had seven people show up. There were two CEO’s, a children’s book illustrator, a college English professor and a low level corporate lacky. The latter being me. I’m kind of the outsider of the group. New Hope isn’t exactly what you’d call a wealthy suburb. We have not yet met at my place, I don’t think they really want to schlepp out to the burbs and I’m a little nervous about how embarrassing it would be for them to try to say something nice about my house.
How the hell did I get in this bunch you ask. Well the illustrator is one of my old animation buddies whose been very successful and whose wife is even more so. Mike Reed. You may be familiar with his work, he’s the creator of the Flame Warriors. He is the founder of the group and really the driving force behind it. He knew that I liked reading Literature with a capital “L,” so he invited me to join. The original plan was to read the “classics” defined by us as literature from before 1960, or something like that. It doesn’t matter because we broke out of those confines within a few months. We’ve read Rusdie, a couple of Faulkners, Roth, and a variety of more obscure fiction. We’ve read some non fiction, we tried the Adams book but most, including me, couldn’t get through it. We have never settled on a process for choosing the next book, or rather we’ve settled on several processes, but have never stuck to any of them. We are an uncontrollable lot. Once we were supposed to go around the circle and each recommend a book. We might have gotten past two people before we were hopelessly lost on a tangent. You would think such successful people would be able to complete a simple group task, but no.
I’ve waffled through the years between dropping out and staying. I feel out of place. These are very bright and well read people. Many are trained in literary criticism, I missed that class. Their insights into the works and their ability to articulate them makes me sometimes feel like a stammering idiot. But I hang on. One reason is that I really like the people. Other than a very few exceptions, they are not ego maniacs. The two CEO’s are very liberal, one of them gets around town on the bus, even in winter. They are compassionate and interesting. I never would have read most of the books had I not been in the group. I don’t often get to participate (however weakly) in that level of discussion very often. And it gives me the chance to see Mike at least once a month. We’ve kind of drifted apart since he’s climbed the social ladder, but he’s still a great friend who’s company I enjoy. Plus, these people put out fabulous spreads of snack food. No cheese whiz yet.
Speaking of levels of discussion, that’s one of the reasons I hang out here. It’s great to hook up with smart, articulate folks of all ages. Not to mention funny! Thanks to all of you who entertain me with your posts and take the time to read and comment on mine.
Peace, bk

Reading Reading Lolita in Tehran In New Hope
30 pages left.

DONE! In the nick of time. Off to the city for the book group meeting.

Quite a day yesterday. I never got dressed! Spent the entire day in my sweats, reading and competing with the cat for nap champ. I didn’t even go outside. Got a lot of reading done but I still may not finish the book in time. I’ll have to push hard tonight as well. The book is Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi. It’s a memoir of her experiences as a teacher of English lit in post revolutionary Iran. Much like Primo Levi tells his story using the elements as the fabric in The Periodic Table Nafisi reflects the events of the last 25 years in Iran in the mirror of the literature she loves. This is a story about how dogmatic ideological totalitarianism tries to crush the human spirit and how it never can completely win. And how when ideas (Islamic Fundamentalism in this case) become more important than individuals those ideas can be used to justify the most horrible acts. Novels like Lolita and Daisy Miller are banned because their characters are not “moral” and don’t fit the ideal of the Islamic Republic, even though the stories really are condemnation of the vacant lives of their characters. Nafisi makes the point that a novel is not moral or immoral, but is a window into another world where we must make our own judgements about the lives of the characters. Nafisi gives us a wonderful story of young women (and some men) keeping their intellectual spirits alive in the worst of conditions. She also presents, for me at least, a history of the Islamic Revolution in Iran as well as some great insights to great literature.
And now I must get ready for work.
Peace.

I’m taking a day off from work today. I can’t sleep in anyway.
I just saw a fox trot by out in the cemetery. I haven’t seen one for awhile so this is good. Death to rabbits.
Last night I thought Q was going to do serious physical harm to her sister. Or to the basement door.
This weekend I saw ten blue jays sitting in the same tree. I thought they were solitary birds.
It was so windy yesterday that I saw a pair of crows flying backwards. It looked like they were doing it for fun.
I have three hundred pages to read by my book group meeting on Wednesday.
A pair of squirrels is playing tag in the yard. I’m guessing there’s going to be some rodent sex going on soon.
I saw Eyes Wide Shut this weekend. I swear it’s a remake of a Ron Jeremy flick. Without the close ups.

Lot’s of icy road stories. Here’s a couple more. I was about 17 and Cliff Matson and I were deer hunting. He was driving his 55 Chevy and we were just cruising the country roads looking for likely spots to find a deer. We hit a patch of black ice and started to spin. We hit the ditch on the far side of the road going backwards now. Of course the car had no seat belts, so I turned around and grabbed the back of the seat in an effort to not get tossed around. A telephone pole shot by. We hit the bank of a cross road and flew over it coming to a stop on the other side. There was two feet of dirt jammed up the exhaust pipe and when we went back and looked at our tracks we saw that we missed the pole by about an inch. I must not have been so bow legged then cause my knees were making a chattering sound. Recently one of the young women that works in my department was entering the freeway on her way to work. She spun out as she merged, went into the ditch in the median and ended up coming to a stop in a gap in the crawling traffic on the opposite side. Pointed the right way and ready to go. Very lucky girl.

Buzz Off! Yesterday was a day of ass chafing interaction with American commerce. Some of you may remember that I bought a guitar back in January. It’s a beautiful Gretsch acoustic that plays great and sounds great. Until recently. It suddenly started developing more buzzes than a beekeeper’s backyard. At first I thought that the frets were just too high, so I asked the office guitar expert if I should just isolate the offending fret and file that sucker down. He gave me one of those horrified looks usually reserved for small children carrying automatic weapons and suggested the better thing to do was to take it to the local guitar shop and have it set up by the master. Now I didn’t buy it from the master, but I trusted him and was willing to pay to get it back in shape. He looked it over and came to the conclusion that a brace had come unglued inside. He said he could fix it but it would be about a hundred bucks and he couldn’t get to it for a week. His advice was to take it back to the store where I got it, but I should go that day because they were closing on Wednesday. Road trip. Norhwest suburb to southwest suburb. The two young men at that store immediately noticed the buzzing, which seemed to be getting worse by the second, but the said repeatedly, “I don’t know what to tell you because we’re closing on Wednesday.” Finally they recommended I take it to their uptown store. Road trip. Southwest suburb into the city. Uptown. I have mixed feelings about Uptown. Definitely go there if you’re visiting Mpls. , It’s the coolest part of town, with the lakes and all, but I’m also repelled by the traffic and the high concentration of the tragically hip. The get to the store and whip out the guitar to show them the buzz that has been obvious to the folks in the first two stores. And nothing. The guy takes me back where it’s quieter and rips through some scales, can’t hear anything. I try again. Nothing. Now, we are playing it with his pick, a very thin one. (not his prick, his pick) and I play with a thick stiff one (rache, et al, resist temptation) so it tends to shake up the instrument more. He tells me that the weather plays havoc with guitar necks and tactfully, but still condesendingly, implies that the problem is in my technique. He sells me a humidifier for the guitar. I’m surprised that people who saw me walking back to my car didn’t stop and ask me if I was OK and should they call the suicide intervention team. Road trip. Back to the northwest burbs and the master. I decided I’d rather pay him to fix it and get it fixed right than get run around anymore. As he’s checking it out again, people in the next room are commenting on how bad it sounds. He puts it on the bench, takes off the strings and discovers that a wire for the electronic pickup has come loose and is rattling around. He fixes that, but there’s still a slight buzz. He sticks a felt bass pick under the pick guard to dampen it and bingo, sweet as sin. Total charges, a buck for the felt and thee dollars for emergency field repair. Four dollars, three hours and I’m back in business. That’s not counting gas money.

Follow up: There’s been some suggestion that I should have torn the Master a new one for sending on this wild buzz chase when the problem was so easily fixed. Let me explain. 1. One does not want to alienate one’s guitar guru. 2. At the time of my first visit the store was crowded and most folks wanted to talk to him, not any of his minions. Plus his initial diagnosis, the broken brace, was cooberatied by the guys in the second store, and that would have taken time and money to repair. 3. He might have been baiting me for not buying from him. (get it, Master Baiting!) bwahahah, as they say.

One would thnk that Minnesotans would be expereinced enough in winter driving to not freak out everytime there’s a snowstorm. Nope. Yesterday morning I was second in line to make the difficult left turn that get’s me onto a main road that takes me to the highway. During the mornng rush there’s lots of traffic coming the opposite way and there is no left turn signal. Usually two cars can sneak through when the light changes. So when the light changes, the car in front of me doesn’t pull out into the intersection but just sits there. I’m beginning to think, “Oh well, there goes my chance to make it through on this light.” But when the light turns orange and the southbound traffic is stopping and the opportunity is there, the driver of the red Grand Am remains in place. I’m thinking that we’ll be able to make our turns at about 10am when traffic clears a little. The person (I’m avoiding any gender labels here) must have felt the daggers I was staring into their neck because they pulled out on the next light and we both made it through. Or they could read lips in the rear view mirror.
People become rediculously timid or insanely agressive for the conditions. One of the fallacies of winter driving is that if I have four wheel drive, I can stop faster. No. Every snow storm the ditches are littered with SUV’s. This fact gives me wicked pleasure. I have some empathy for the poor folks who recently immigrated from a tropical climate. First they are exposed to temperatures that are hostile to human life and then they try to drive and realize all the expectations of how an automobile should behave have been tossed out the window. And of course everyone who has been stuck behind them as they drive down the freeway at 20 gives them a friendly salute when the finally pass. Welcome America!

Winter came back while I was sleeping.

On Tuesday, History_Pig wrote about his lack of home handyman skills. I’m also knackless in this category. I consider myself to have pretty good hands, they work for drawing, guitar playing and launching jump shots (well there’s not much jump in my jumpshot anymore), but when it comes to handling little screws or nuts (I know) or swinging a hammer in a manner that won’t hopelessly bend a nail, fuggitabowtiit. I’m also terrified of electricity, unless it involves toasters and forks. Fortunately, here at casa keller we benefit from a reversal of traditional gender roles. Rebecca loves to fix stuff. She replaced our doorbell this fall and is fighting our crappy closet doors to a draw. She comes up with these ingenious twine and bailing wire solutions to problems that would give Rube Goldberg a woody. If she’s stumped she calls in Dean, the retired nieghbor down the street who is the god of handiness for a consultation. She however is totally lacking in kitchen sense. She learned to cook from her mother, who I once saw throw a frozen chuck roast in an electric frying pan turned up to high and leave it while the family went to church. Amazingly, it didn’t turn out half bad, but seriously?!? So Beck’s theory is that a man’s place is in the kitchen. And that’s just fine with me. Although I think the daughters would tell you I’m falling down on my end of the deal lately. But that’s another story.

Old guy tennis last night. I’m still 0 for the century but my partner and I are playing better. This league is pretty competitive and there’s lots of testosterone in the air. Or at least lots of guys trying to prove they still have some. Doing that don’t look at or talk to your opponent, stay ever so silently serious. That doesn’t work for me. I pretty much know going in I’m going to get an ass whooping, so I try to make sure everyone knows I’m not taking it too seriously and that I’m having fun. I crack jokes about the match, keep a running commentary going, catch an opponents eye and make a funny face, and make sure that I compliment everyone on their good shots. It’s infectious, everyone loosens up and hopefully has a good time. One sided contests aren’t usually much fun for me whether I’m the kicker or the kickee (unless it’s old guys whipping up on cocky young guys in hoops) so I try to remind people the real reason that we’re playing. Remember….FUN!

Warning: Sports Post

Spring/Summer Soccer season is gearing up. Q plays for Wings the, local club team. They field three teams at U16, her age group. In most sports around here, by the time girls reach 16, the only opportunity to play is at the high school level and we live in an area of mega-schools. So the pyramid is steep and only the elite athletes get to play. The soccer leagues around here give the girls that didn’t make the cut a chance to play a team sport, with all the positive things that go along with that, and get some major exercise. Our club is a powerhouse at U16 girls. The top team consists of this years sophmores most of which played varsity at the high school. They were promoted to the Premier level last year after winning there conference. There’s only a handfull of premier teams in the state and the competition level is hellacious. Q’s team was also promoted last year. From the C3, the bottom level, to C2. They were the ones cut from the upper level teams. Q played on the upper level four years ago and was sent down. These girls have worked so hard and last year they had a great season. They won their conference, did well in tournament play and had ten shutouts. Q played almost every minute at right outside defender. Sometime I’m going to write about how she makes it look easy. She never looks like she’s hustling, yet the ball almost never gets down the line on her side.
I watched their practice for awhile. At the end they scrimmaged the other C2 team from the club. The one that Q got cut from. As Quinn said, I like those girls and we’re freinds in school, but on the soccer field, it’s different. There is bad blood between them. We played them pretty even. The first five minutes we had them completely bottled up in their end. They scored on a flukey goal, we didn’t have our regular keeper and the girl who was playing goal didn’t have gloves. She bobbled a shot and they scored on the rebound.
Q seemed happy after the practice, it’s nice to see a rare smile from her. I worry about that kid, she’s way too much like me. Endorphins must be good for her. She lifted wieghts in gym class, did a 90 minute tennis drill after school and then went right to a hard 90 minute soccer practice. This is after pretty much spending the winter holed up in the basement at the computer.