The Great Bypass - 1995

Read Part 1: 2017

1995

My friend Brad works at Putt-a-Round. Now that baseball season is over, some nights I just come out here and kill time and keep him company.  He lets me drink free pop and eat free popcorn and we sit around and bullshit. Brad is a preacher's kid and he fits the stereotype. He smokes and drinks and swears and womanizes and he's pretty good at it, better at it than I am, which is part of the reason I like hanging out here. We've also got almost identical tastes in music and we're both sick of being in this small, super-religious fucking town. He's going to college in a month and I'll be a senior in high school. Upon such things high school friendships are easily made.

"How much longer 'till you close?" I ask Brad.

"Prob'ly twenty minutes," he says. "It's fucking dead again."

It's true, Putt-a-Round is dead, and it's dead most nights, particularly weeknights like tonight, but even on the weekends too. Right now there's just two kids, junior high age maybe, out on the course. They're on hole 14, and their ride is already in the lot. When they leave Brad will close up shop.

"I'm gonna play a quick round," I say, grabbing my preferred putter off the rack and a red ball. I always use a red ball.

"Word," Brad replies. "I'll be here."

I can play the course almost blindfolded, but it isn't a bad way to kill time. It's almost soothing. You let your mind go and hit your ball around, the trees high above you, the setting sun to the west, the light July breeze relieving the daytime heat. Each hole takes me about a minute. I know the minutia of each one, which way the floor tilts, how to time the ball past the windmill.

I'm on hole 10 when the junior high kids finish up. They give their putters back to Brad and get into their car and drive off and Brad starts packing up the ticket booth.

"Give me ten minutes?" I yell over.

"No worries," he says.

My mind wanders as I roll through the back nine. Whatever happened to Putt-a-Round? It used to be so busy all the time. I remember coming out here for my thirteenth birthday with a couple friends and it was packed. That was almost five years ago now.  I suppose the shine has faded a little bit since then. And really, would I pay to play here anymore? You can only play a course so many times and it's not really fun anymore. And the people who would play, like those junior high kids, they'd have to get a ride out here, it's so far from town. Plus, when Putt-a-Round came to Sheldon, Nintendos we're just catching on. Now it seems like everyone has a Nintendo or a Sega and it's probably just as fun--and cheaper--to stay in and play video games as it is to hassle your parents for a ride out to Putt-a-Round.

My concentration only returns on the 19th hole. I measure carefully, then give my ball a solid whack. It flies up the ramp and into the clown's nose. I hand my putter to Brad, who is watching.

"You owe me a free round," I say. We laugh as he puts my putter away and locks up the shed. All my rounds are free when Brad is working.

We get in Brad's car 'cause he has a CD player. He has a 1990 black Ford Mustang. I didn't know preachers made that kind of money, to buy their kids a Mustangs. But whatever. I sit in the passenger seat and start looking through his CD case. "What are we feeling like tonight?" I ask him as he lights a cigarette.

"Pearl Jam," he says. "Feels like a Pearl Jam night."

"New or old?"

"You decide. Goddamn, I needed a cigarette."
.
I think about it a moment. "Let's go old," I say as I pull out Ten, Pearl Jam's debut CD from 1991. As we pull out onto Highway 18 I hit shuffle on the player. "Garden" pops up and Brad's and I's heads begin to bob up and down in rhythm simultaneously. For a while we don't say anything, letting the slashing guitars and pounding drums course through us as we drive aimlessly around Sheldon. "Alive", "Deep", "Black". Then Brad says:

"I could go for some ice cream. You?"

"Sure. Dairy Dandy?"

"Drunken Dan's Diner. Where else?"

Brad pulls a right onto Highway 60, passes Neal Chase Lumber Company, Security State Bank, the Iron Horse Inn and Lounge, and pulls into the Dairy Dandy. It's a warm evening and with softball games going at the City Park, lots of people are stopping by afterwards for ice cream or fried food. We end up waiting fifteen or twenty minutes for our chocolate shakes, and then we're back in Brad's Mustang. We do a couple of laps around the downtown loop and then drive east on 9th Street. Near Washington Avenue, a half-mile east, bright lights flash several times in Brad's rear view mirror.

"What the fuck?" Brad says and pulls over. The car behind us pulls in as well. "Oh, it's Andrea. I told you, man. She wants me. Big time." He starts to get out of the car to go talk to her.

"Good luck," I say.

I sit in the passenger seat of the Mustang as Brad leans into Andrea's window. I'm not really thinking about anything in particular, when the CD player flips to Track 8, "Porch", Eddie Vedder's voice and Stone Gossard's guitar, and my mind instantly locks in:

"What the fuck is this world running to?
You didn't leave a message,
At least I could have...heard your voice one last time."

And then the drums and bass kick in and I can't help it, my body starts pumping with the music....

"All the bills go by and...
Initiatives are taken up...
By the middle...there ain't gonna any middle anymore"

I have no idea what bills or initiatives are, or who or what the middle is, but I don't care. I love how the third word of the song is "fuck" and how the music, angry and intense and driven, courses through me. I begin air drumming and air guitarring as the song builds in intensity.

"Hear my name...take a good look...
This could be the day...
Hold my hand...walk beside me...
I just need to say..."

And then all of a sudden the driver's side door opens. Brad laughs. "You like that song, Plum?" he says.

I feel myself blushing like crazy but manage to recover. "It's Pearl Jam, man. You know I do."

"True that," he replies. "Andrea's gonna join us for a while."

"Sweet."

Brad peels out onto 9th Street, hooks a right onto Washington Avenue, and then another right onto 16th Street, where he really opens up the Mustang. It's fun, but now the music is turned down. Also, Andrea is Brad's age, a year older than me, and I don't really know her. Plus, I have no desire to play third wheel, and anyway, my curfew time is coming up, although I would never admit this to Brad and Andrea. Cool kids don't have curfews.

"Hey Brad, do you think you can get me back to my car? I have to get up early tomorrow."

He shoots me a questioning look but says, "Yeah, no problem."

He takes a right onto Highway 18 and we head east, past the City Park, past the stoplight on Washington Avenue and past Pamida. We leave Sheldon and a minute later pull into Putt-a-Round. I open up the door and hold open the door so Andrea can climb out of the back and into the passenger seat.

"I hope you're not leaving just because I'm here," she says, sincerely enough. She seems nice enough.

"No, no. Not at all. Like I said, I have to get up kinda early tomorrow. My dad wants me to do some shit around the house and I like to avoid the heat." Partially true--my dad does want me to do some shit around the house, but in no way do I plan on getting up early to do it.

"Well, okay," she says. "See ya."

"Yeah, see ya," I say. I walk around the car and give Brad a fist bump through the window. "Thanks for the mini-golf, man. And the popcorn. And the pop."

He laughs. "No worries. I work again on Thursday. Come on out--it'll be fucking dead again."

"I might do that," I say.

I walk over to my car, a 1983 Oldsmobile Cutlass, and start the car. As I follow Brad and Andrea, taking a right onto Highway 18 West back into Sheldon, I can't get Pearl Jam out of my head. Specifically, number 8, "Porch". I don't have a CD player or even a tape deck in my car. When I get home I'll listen.

I drink the last of my chocolate shake. Say what you will about Dan Patterson and his drinking habits, the man makes some mean ice cream.

Sheldon is falling asleep as I drive back into town. I get a green light at the Washington Avenue stoplight and drive on to 6th Avenue, where I turn left. I drive past the City Park; one of the softball fields still has a game going and is brightly lit, the other field bathed in darkness. A group of men stand around the bed of a truck, talking shit and drinking beer.

I cross over 6th Street and pull into the alley that goes into our driveway. I don't lock the car doors--Dad hates it when I lock the doors. I go in through the kitchen door and then knock on Mom and Dad's bedroom door. Mom's asleep--she gets up super early to work at Hy-Vee--but Dad is awake reading a magazine. He's a night owl, a lot like me.

"I'm home," I say.

"All right," he says, and goes back to his magazine.

Curfew was 11:00, and it's 11:15, but they're pretty easygoing as long as I'm close. I go to the kitchen and make a sandwich to take with me up to my room--I swear, I'm always fucking hungry.  I head upstairs. Tracy's light is off. Teresa's is on--she's probably reading some Sweet Valley High book. Marty is living in Sioux City this summer.

The first thing I do when I get into my room and the door is shut is find my walkman. I dig through my cassette tapes and find the copy of Pearl Jam's Ten I made from my brother's CD. I check where I'm at on the tape and then fast forward until I get to "Porch". I lay back on my pillow and let the music flow through me.

I'm using my headphones because I want the music loud. There's a long instrumental in the middle of the song that I didn't get to hear in Brad's car. Here in my bed, I can air drum and air guitar as much as I want, and I do. Then, the instrumental ends and the song rolls into it's frantic finale:

"Hear my name...take a good look...
This could be the place...
Hold my hand...walk beside me...
I just need to say...
'What can I do? What can I say?'
I knew that I would not ever touch you
See you
Hold you
Feel you
Again...
Ever again...
Ever again..."

I rewind and listen again. Then I rewind the tape back to the beginning, to the song "Once", and listen to the whole album straight through. Then I listen to Pearl Jam's second disc, Versus, and their third, Vitalogy. It's close to 2:00 by then, so I turn the lights out and try go to sleep, but I can't. After tossing and turning for 30 minutes, I get up and, searching for something lighter, put on Jar of Flies by Alice in Chains. I lay on my side and begin to write a story about an nice but average high school kid that loves a girl that has a boyfriend he can't stand. I'm not sure what time it is when I fall asleep with the lamp on, notebook crunched under my arm.

To be continued...

From Colombia to New Jersey to Iowa, With Love

Soraya Raquel Lamilla Cuevas was born on March 11, 1969, in the city of Point Pleasant, New Jersey, part of the inextricable maze of counties, townships, and other assorted man-made institutions that make up the New York Metropolitan area. Her parents had recently immigrated from Colombia, and Soraya would spend most of the first eight years of her life there, only to return to the U.S. and and the New York-New Jersey monstrosity. Her parents seem to have believed in America, and if you study Colombia in the 1970's and 1980's, it's easy to see why.

Soraya had both an unnatural gift and interest in music. Wikipedia reports that she became fascinated at the age of five with an uncle who was playing "Pueblito Viejo", a coming-of-age song played on a tiple, a version of guitar played with three strings.

I'm sure the story is much more complicated than Wikipedia makes it sound, but somehow Soraya (as she came to be known in the music world) continued learning and performing music. Her ability to switch seamlessly between English and Spanish undoubtedly helped her in Hispanic-heavy eastern New Jersey. Nevertheless, Wikipedia glosses over this seemingly interesting plot point by saying, "Soraya worked as a flight attendant for a time before signing a contract with Polygram Records in 1994" (paraphrased).

Nevertheless, the albums got made. Her early work features a Spanish clearly influenced by English; for example, she uses the "v" sound in words like "vaya", whereas a monolingual speaker would say "baya" (the English "v" sound does not exist in standard Spanish). Her first three albums were made for both English and Spanish consumption.  The albums are not complicated musically; they depend heavily on catchy guitar licks around which Soraya sings lyrics about the insecurity and infatuation that nearly all of us have experienced. They could almost be about teen angst, except, I'm 41, and they still draw me in, perhaps moreso now than ever.

**********

I may have gone my whole life without experiencing Soraya. I followed music pretty seriously in the late 90's, but I have to confess that the Colombian-American singer passed me by. Then, I made five separate trips to Venezuela from 1999-2002, and out of that milieu--Ricardo Arjona, Mana, Aterciopelados, Shakira, Enanitos Verdes, Juanes--came a vague awareness of this Soraya. A friend of mine (gringo, no less!) made me a mix tape. Sonia did not know Soraya either but "De Repente" ("Suddenly"), a magical song about falling in love unexpectedly, made it into our wedding ceremony.

I said before that her songs are not complicated musically, but at the same time, Soraya's sing-a-long-friendly voice and her readily accessible lyrics led to lots of repeated listening. Particularly, after long days spent teaching, my mix tape of Soraya became the perfect Xanax-like medicine for coming down from that constant social buzz. Songs like "Amor en tus ojos" ("Love in your eyes") were reminiscent of her early work, while songs like "Lejos de aqui" ("Far away from here") began exploring a deeper, more melancholic side that resided in the singer, without losing the humanity and accessibility that had been her hallmark.

Then, suddenly, the songs stopped coming.

**********

Long before becoming a Soraya the singer/songwriter, Soraya the woman lost her mother, her maternal grandmother and maternal aunt to the scour of breast cancer. In 2000, at the age of 31, she found a lump during a routine self-inspection. She was already Level 3.

She fought. Her third album had been finished just before the diagnosis and after chemo, radiation and a mastectomy, came out with a fourth. The songs were more urgent, but just as human and vulnerable as ever. "Casi" ("Almost") is probably the most famous song from this time. but I'm partial to "Solo por ti" ("Only for you").

She shaved her head and became an advocate. She got sick again, got better, made a fifth album. A year later, on May 10, 2006, Soraya's body gave in. In a final statement to her fans, she said "I know that there are many questions without answers and that hope doesn't leave with me, and above all, that my mission does not end with my physical story."

***********

A few weeks ago, I found myself driving home from West Liberty after a 12 hour day of teaching and conferences with parents. I was tired and it was dark, very dark. I hate driving home in the dark. All around me, the lights of combines and tractor trailers were busy trying to get corn and soybeans out of the ground, oblivious to the 2013 Sonata moving towards home. A Soraya song popped up on my playlist and suddenly I knew what I needed. I switched my playlist to artist and let Soraya take me home. I don't remember the precise songs I listened to, but I sang along to every one, letting the melodic voice temporarily bring me into her world, which is really all of our worlds, one vulnerable lyric at a time.

I reflected, just for a second, on the oddities (miracles?) of the modern world, in which a Colombian singer raised in New Jersey could have such a profound effect on an Iowa boy driving home during harvest season, the bright lights for the tractors illuminating his way home. But just for a second. If you reflect on things too much, you tend to ruin them. Soraya's been gone 12 years (12 years?!), but I think she'd probably just be glad I her music means so much to me. I know I am.

Just another one of life's little miracles. I sang full blast all the way home. 

--Mark

"Hoy que vuelvo a tus lares
trayendo mis cantares
con el alma enferma
de tanto padecer...
Quiero pueblito viejo,
morirme aqui en tu suelo
bajo la luz del cielo
que un dia me vio nacer..."

"Now that I return to you
bringing my songs
soulsick from my suffering...
I want to, Old Town,
die here on your ground,
underneath the sunny sky,
that one day witnessed my birth..."

https://youtu.be/i1W2QcMLO_8 

Nice kids. Just ordinary, tremendous, nice kids.

This morning I needed a stop at the gas station for straight sugar.  I was off. It's been raining in Eastern Iowa for about 18 years now and on top of that I slept like shit last night, staring at the walls for a couple hours in the middle of the night. After dropping Sonia off at work I headed down for the local BP. Giri's BP. Two gas stations in West Liberty and that's the one I picked.

As I went in so did two young women from my school. I said hi and they said hi back. In Spanish even! After wandering I decided on some Hostess cupcakes and a Pepperoni Pizza Hot Pocket for lunch. I paid the bill--four dollars and something, collected the coins of my change, and left for school.

The whole day passed. Trip to BP forgotten. After lunch duty I headed for 7th period. We're talking 1:30 in the afternoon at this point. As I entered the classroom the first thing I saw was a five dollar bill in my face. Then I heard voices. Practically shrieking! They said, "Mr. Plum, you left your change at the BP! This is your money!"

I sorted it out. Apparently, I had paid with a ten at 7:30 in the morning and forgotten to take my five dollar bill. The cashier asked the girls if it belonged to them and they said, No, it must be my teacher's. He's your teacher, the cashier asked, suspicious. Yes! Absolutely! they said. I'll take it to him at school. Six hours later, the goods were delivered. Mission accomplished. Thanks, I said. I've always said the nicest kids live in West Liberty, I said.

***********

There's whole lotta shit out there right now. In fact, I have to consciously make an effort to keep the shit out of my life. And there's a whole lotta people who disparage the youth of today. Oddly enough, many of these people don't spend a lot of time with the youth of today, and if they do, they compare them with a mythical version of the youth of a generation or two ago. Well, I was in that generation, and I will tell you, we were most definitely NOT any better than the youth of today. I won't say we were worse--although I kind of think we were--but we definitely weren't any better.

What I'm trying to say, y'all, is that the kids are all right. There as all right as they've ever been. If you have any doubt, leave a five dollar bill at your local gas station with some kids you know around. I can't guarantee they'll get it back to you. But if I had to bet, I'd damn sure put my money on them.

--Mark

Southern Iowa -- Part 1

MY UNCLE JOHN MALETTA DIED RECENTLY.  He was born in July of 1932 to his parents, Mike and Victoria Maletta, in Clarkdale, Iowa. Eighty-six when he died. He was Mike and Victoria's first child; Mike, my grandfather, would have been 23 or 24 years old when John entered the world. Mike and Victoria went on to have four more kids, all girls; Victoria died tragically and a few years later, Mike was remarried to the woman who would become my grandmother, Maxine Shephard. Maxine also had five kids from her first marriage--three boys and two girls--so when her and Mike had my mom, they made a grand total of eleven. (Sorry about the use of first names for elder relatives. I'm not trying to be disrespectful--it just makes it easier to keep everyone straight).

I don't think you can even find Clarkdale on a map these days, but when my grandpa Mike was a boy, it was a real live functioning town. The coal mine set up shop there and built some houses for their workers. Mike was born in 1908 and after fourth grade went into the mines with his male relatives to help put food on the table. (This, remember, is when America was great). Back then today's Latinos and Muslims were Italians and Slavs, and that's who followed the coal mines and did the dirty work: both Mike and Victoria's parents were Italian immigrants.

When the mines around Clarkdale ran out of coal and moved on some of the people decided that instead of following the mine, they would try their hand at farming or something else.  The coal company didn't care--they had extracted the labor they needed.  Mike's parents were one of those households. They eeked out an subsistence during the Depression years, when several of my aunts and uncles were born.  Their big meal was on Sunday evenings, when spaghetti feeds were ran out of Mike's parents' (my great-grandparents') house.

When the United States entered World War II in 1941, Mike was 33, just past draft age. Young workers flocked into the military and Mike and several of his brothers and cousins found good-paying jobs at the John Deere factory in Ottumwa about an hour away. They took turns driving, one every week for five weeks.

After Mike and my grandma Maxine got married, they moved into Centerville, the "big town" around which towns like Clarkdale were scattered. Back then, Centerville would have had maybe 8000 residents. My mom was born in 1951 and didn't know the poverty that her dad did (nor, I should point out, have I). Mike, for his part, took Maxine's kids as his own, refused government help, and churned them out, all of them, all high school graduates, some college graduates, all eventually becoming parents themselves. By the time my mom graduated from high school in 1969, she was the only one of Mike or Maxine's kids--the only one of eleven--left at home.

alba gris

el amanecer hoy no es rojo ni anaranjado, sino gris
el viento mueve las ramas de una forma inquieta
las gotas de lluvia hace pitup-pitup en las charcas ya hechas

Hace una semana, me levanté antes de que saliera el sol para poder observarlo. Tuve que luchar, cambiar de planes, pero sí pude verlo: aquella masa gaseosa sideral que nos presta vida, deslizándose sigilosamente por detrás de los árboles que, eventualmente, hizo que alterara mi vista para que los ojos no se me dañaran. 

Hoy el amanecer es completamente distinto. Hace lluvia y viento y los carros pasan desalojando el agua por donde pasen sus llantas. Aquella masa gaseosa sideral no se está dejando ver; la gente se mueve dentro de un gris perturbante.

Pero justo ahí está la cosa: por tantas nubes que hayan, por tanta lluvia que caiga, por tanto viento que incomode, llegó el amanecer y el mundo se hizo gris. Tal vez no nos alcanzan los rayos de nuestro sol, pero al menos nos quitó el negro de la noche.

--Mark

Musings before Sunday dinner

"He floated back down 'cause he wanted to share/this key to the locks on the chains he saw everywhere/but first he was stripped, then he was stabbed/by faceless men, well fuck 'em/he still stands...

and he still gives his love, he just gives it away/and the love he receives is the love that is saved/and sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky/a human being that was given to fly"

                                                                                         Pearl Jam, "Given to Fly"


Sonia's been pretty strict about getting us to church lately, and if you show up enough, even if you try not to, you end up thinking about what God is or isn't.  When I was a kid we were at church every goddamn week (no pun intended), the Catholic version, and I remember, particularly as a younger child, being pretty goddamn aware that God was everywhere; God was like a bigger, more abstract version of my parents. He was keeping a constant eye on me, which of course was both good and bad. It was good because someone was always looking out for my well-being, but not so good because I could never be bad. I actually remember once, in second grade, asking for permission to use the bathroom even though I didn't have to go, I just wanted to get out of class, and when I got back I felt bad because I had lied to the teacher. I confessed and apologized to God right then and there.

************

Among the (mostly) politically liberal Christians I attend church with, Reinhold Niebuhr is sort of the big shit of theologians. He is serious about his theology and also the responsibility of said theology to the world writ large. For example, Mike Wallace of "60 Minutes" fame described Niebuhr as 

"a man of God, but a man of the world as well. Dr. Niebuhr would seem to be saying that if a nation would survive and remain free, its citizens must use religion as a source of self-criticism, not as a source of self-righteousness."

Obviously, as a theologian, Niebuhr said a lot of things about the nature of God, but here's one, for flavor:

"I do not believe that ontological categories can do justice to the freedom either of the divine or the human person, or to . . . the forgiveness by God of man’s sin . . . . If it is “supernaturalistic” to affirm that faith discerns the key to specific meaning above the categories of philosophy, ontological or epistemological, then I must plead guilty of being a supernaturalist. The whole of the Bible is an exposition of this kind of supernaturalism. If we are embarrassed by this and try to interpret biblical religion in other terms, we end in changing the very character of Christian faith"

*************

A few years back, I was sort of spiritually searching. An older guy, factory worker, long white beard, skinny as a rail, camouflage baseball cap on, asked me, "Do you believe that you are the highest power?"  

"No," I responded.  

"So it follows that there is a higher power," he said. "Right?"  

I said, "Yeah, that makes sense."  

"And it follows," he said, "that if this power is higher than you, it is beyond your intellectual capacity. Right?"  

I thought a second and said, "Yeah, I guess so. Yes, absolutely." 

And he said, "So accept your higher power and move on. If you keep trying to intellectualize it, you'll just fuck it all up."

Yeah. Like that.

--Mark


--Mark

A Very Serial Birthday

"We were always leaving/since we started breathing/running back no wonder/we are torn asunder"  Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Inside"

"He probado con el yoga, Hare Krishna y el budú/he probado con un brujo, un adivino y un gurú/pero me sigo poniendo...viejo/me lo dice cada día el espejo"  Ricardo Arjona, "¿Te acuerdas de mí?"

"We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection."  The Oxford Group

"Let not perfection be the enemy of the good."  Origin unknown

************

As I write this sentence, I sit on my back porch, sipping coffee and enjoying a breakfast of bite size peanut nut rolls. The birds are singing, the dew is still in the grass, the sun is still well below the hedge; my spirituality playlist softly emanates from our Bluetooth speaker. When I'm not working, I really like to ease into my day.  It is 7:55 AM Iowa time. I was born about 41 years and 3 hours ago, in a hospital in Sigourney, Iowa, after 27 hours of labor (my mother never missed a chance to remind me of the toil she went through to put me in this world). I guess I was born, literally, never being in a hurry.

I've eased into a lot of mornings over the last 10 weeks or so. I have not worked, for money anyway, since June 5, and to be honest I haven't worked that much, period, unless you count ferrying my kids around to all their activities and some occasional housework. With no major home projects beckoning, it has been incredibly easy to let one day blend into another, losing myself in the World Cup and Strat-O-Matic baseball and major league baseball and my kids' baseball and the new-to-me albums I purchase every week or two and the six or seven books I've read and the sounds of the birds and the taste of hot coffee in the morning and the crickets at dusk and reruns of "The Office" with chips and cottage cheese before bed.

For a variety of reasons, personal and professional, by June 5 I was mentally, physically and spiritually exhausted; I couldn't even wait for the next day to start my summer. My buddy picked me up from work and off we went, south, through Missouri and into Arkansas, spending the night just south of Little Rock. Road trip. The next morning we continued, cutting through the northwest corner of Louisiana before entering Texas and driving south to Houston. We arrived at Minute Maid Park just in time for the ballgame between the Astros and Mariners. Afterwards, we navigated our way south of the city towards Galveston.

There is a brief stretch--maybe five or ten miles--when you are completely out of metropolitan Houston and not yet to Galveston. There was very little moon that night and we hurtled through the almost complete darkness on Interstate 45 and at some point went over the causeway onto the island past midnight. Then all of a sudden we were back in civilization; it seemed like a Texan version of Muscatine, Iowa. After some fits and starts, we found the strip of hotels and checked into the Commodore on the Beach. Just after 1:00 AM we entered our room.

We had a balcony that overlooked the road and the beach on the other side of it. It was hard to see the water but you could smell it, hear it, feel it. I hadn't seen the ocean since 2015 and although I was completely exhausted and hungry, I couldn't wait anymore. I walked out onto the beach in just a pair of shorts. I ran into three kids smoking marijuana and asked them if they were gonna be around for a little while longer. They said, "Yeah, man." I said, "I'm going into that water and I can't see a goddamned thing. If I'm not back in ten minutes call the Coast Guard." "Sure thing," they said.

I stripped down to my boxers and tentatively made my way into the water. I couldn't hardly see it but it was warm and salty and life-giving. When I was in up to my knees the breakers were hitting me up above my waist and moving me and I knew I couldn't go much further safely. I dropped to my knees and plugged my nose and every time I felt a breaker coming in I jumped into it. The warm, salty water would lift me for just a second and then drop me back in the sand. I could've stayed all night but I didn't want to worry my buddy or my pot-smoking lifeguards. I slowly trudged back to the beach and put on my shorts and glasses.

"Was it everything you thought it'd be?" they asked me. "Absolutely," I said. "I feel renewed."

I planned on getting up about six and being in the ocean for sunrise. But I was so damn tired I decided to sleep in. Too bad, though. It would have been perfect.

**************

It is now 8:55 and the sun is nearing the top of the hedge. The kids are awake and taking out the neighbors' dog. Coffee's still hot.

In the West Liberty Middle School parking lot on June 5, I deleted the News app from my phone. A few days later, I did the same with Facebook (amazingly, the world continues to spin, even though I haven't been on Facebook; who would've thunk it?).  Looking for something different, I reached back into the recesses of my memory and remembered everyone making a fuss, a few years back, about a podcast. After some internet research, I found it: "Serial".

"Serial" tracks a reporter's exploration of a murder in 1999 Baltimore of a high school girl named Hae Min Lee. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Saed, was convicted of the crime a year later. On nights that the boys weren't playing ball and we weren't doing anything else, I would sit down in the garage and mess around with my Strat and Soccer Blast cards and listen to "Serial". I was strict about only allowing myself one episode every couple days, but by the end of the second episode I could see what the fuss had been all about. It sucked me in and didn't let go. When I reached the end of Serial I threw off all the controls I had self-imposed and buzzed through the podcasts "Undisclosed" and "Serial Dynasty".

I also took to the internet, especially in the evenings when Sonia was watching TV.  While I thought "Serial" had been done in a relatively balanced way, "Undisclosed" and "Serial Dynasty" were unabashedly pro-Adnan.  My plan was, I would go on the internet and get some facts from the other side of the aisle, so to speak, some cold hard facts, void of spin and vitriol, and then understand the case better.

That's what I went in search of. What I found was Reddit.

*************

9:22. The sun finally peeked over our hedge and I had to move inside because it was too bright to see my screen.

It wasn't until I got on Reddit that I fully realized what a pop culture phenomenon "Serial" had been. Frankly, I'm not sure how I missed it in 2014. I wasn't that freaking busy. So many people from so many different walks of life from all around the world were on Reddit commenting on the murder of Hae Min Lee and its aftermath. I consider myself to be an obsessive person in certain areas, but I was no match for some of these people. There were carefully constructed timelines, Google maps shaded to show key areas, pictures of the relevant parts of Baltimore--not police pictures or Google images, mind you, but pictures taken by the Redditers themselves on their Serial Pilgrimage.

I ended up on Reddit because although there are several "pro-Adnan" websites, there are no "anti-Adnan" websites.  The closest thing I could find to "neutral" information was on Reddit. If you don't know what Reddit is, count yourself lucky. Deleting Facebook and then finding Reddit was like quitting smoking and picking up heroin. But every time you query an aspect of the case--any aspect--on Google, pretty much all you get are Reddit threads--they call them subreddits or "subs".

On Reddit there are "guilters" and "innocenters". This is something that people take very seriously. These are people that believe they have perfect knowledge of the case. If you believe that Adnan committed the crime, "innocenter" is your biggest verbal weapon, and vice versa. And there are a lot of people like me, not convinced completely one way or the other and looking for new information, documents, answers to specific questions (example: "Did they find Hae's car keys?"), and, to be clear, you can find this stuff, but to get to it, you have to scroll through pages of verbal barbing ("Guilters are so racist", "Innocenters should just marry Adnan and get on with it") in order to do so (answer: no).

I would be classified, I suppose, as an Innocenter. Not because I actually am sure Adnan is innocent (no one can be except him and, if he is, the real killer)(although I sometimes sway this way), but because I believe the State of Maryland botched the trial and Adnan deserves a new one. So much evidence has come out since "Serial" that it's more or less--no, not more or less, completely--clear that the facts as presented in the 2000 trial of Adnan Saed were not accurate. If the jury made their verdict based on inaccurate facts, their verdict has to be thrown out.

To be 100% sure of Adnan's innocence is probably somewhat naive. To be 100% confident of his guilt, on the other hand, requires a cynicism bordering on hostility, an absolute refusal to deal with facts head on, and the gullibility to believe blindly in a serial liar.

It's a good thing that these attitudes exist only on Reddit, and only in regards to this case.

************

It's getting late into the morning now and I need to get lunch ready for myself and the boys. Then I think I'll take a nap. I got up early this morning because I decided I wanted to experience the entire day, sunrise to sunset, of my birthday. Just celebrate being alive. It was the perfect plan--we would watch the sun actually break above the ground on the horizon. The sun rose at 6:11 this morning in Iowa City so Sonia and I left the house at about 5:45 in search of the perfect place to watch the sun rise. But--and don't get me wrong, this is a good problem to have--we couldn't find a place where the view to the east wasn't blocked by trees, and Sonia had to be at work at 7:00. No perfect place.

So I just decided to watch the sun rise above the trees from our deck on the east side of our house.  I laid down in my chair but quickly realized that from that angle it was literally going to be 3 or 4  hours before the sun poked over the hedge. And then my eyes wandered up. I had a good, high vantage point--it just wasn't one you'd normally think of.

I had to to wait until Sonia left for work because there was no way she was going to let me execute my plan. When she did, I brought the stepladder up from the garage and set it up on the deck. I put some coffee in a to-go mug and put a lid on it, and then climbed up the ladder and onto my roof. I laid down near the peak. I took out my cell phone and put on my "Spirituality" playlist. I gazed east and let my mind wander and sipped coffee. I listened to Ricardo Arjona, The Eagles, Soraya, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Shakira, Kacey Musgraves. I thanked my higher power for another year of life.

At first I couldn't see the sun, but just this side of 7:00 it began to come through where the foliage wasn't as thick. I watched it slowly climb and the top part of it break the peaks of the trees. Soon I had to avert my eyes. Ten minutes later the star had completely broken the tree line. As God said the first six days, it was "good". Maybe even "very good", like He said on the seventh day.

Some very wise folks reminded me a few years ago that perfection doesn't exist in human affairs. I'll take "very good" every day of the week and twice on Sunday. It's certainly all I can ask for my birthday.

--Mark

On "The Handmaid's Tale" and "La Reina del Sur (Queen of the South)"

Offred and Teresa Mendoza and Serena Joy. All women in a world constructed by, and almost completely for, men. They all have their role. Offred is for reproduction. Teresa is a narco's woman. Serena Joy runs the household.

They live and yet they don't. They live in the biological sense. A heart beats, eyes see, ears hear. The latter two are not supposed to happen. They play prescripted roles. They have no freedom of choice--is this the same as to say they don't live?

Offred tried to run. She was with her man and her daughter and fake passports. I don't know what happened to her--I'm only on chapter 16.

I'm on chapter four with Teresa Mendoza. She is running to beat hell. She's got a gun and her man left her some cash and she's got a fake passport (what does it say that a fake passport is so important for these women?) and she's got another man, it seems like he's got the power of a god, helping her. Sounds like she's getting on a a plane for Spain. Plane for Spain. Plain for Spain. Is she the lucky one?

Serena Joy is not running. This is what we fought for, she says. I said before that the worlds were constructed by men but that's not completely true, Serena Joy fought for Gilead. Just like any progress by the powerless must be aided and abetted by some of the powerful, so must oppression must be aided and and abetted by the active acquiescence of some of the oppressed.  Pretty much everyone feels sorry for Offred and Teresa Mendoza. With Serena Joy, opinion is split. She is a woman suffering under the patriarchy, her sympathizers will point out. Fuck her. She ushered in the patriarchy, her detractors will say. Karma's a bitch.

************

Unless Gilead is militarily defeated, Offred and Serana Joys' destinies are sealed. Their lives are secure but lethally monotonous. Offred either will, or will not, bear children and then be put out to pasture in the Colonies. Serena Joy will while away her days having Guardians do her gardening for her, designing the sitting room, until she dies.

With Teresa Mendoza, on the other hand, everything is up in the air. There are many people (men) trying to find her, and shoot her. Will she make it to D.F.? Will she get on a plane to Spain (plane to Spain, plane to Spain)? If she gets there, what will she do? It is plain (plane) events will unfold; three hundred pages remain to be read.

If you had to choose, who would you be? A woman imprisoned but guaranteed (natural) life, or a woman on the run, hoping to cheat death?

************

A few weeks ago, I was at a party on a sun-drenched deck, and for a while I was the only man in a group of around ten females. Their conversation turned to high school stories, some of which centered around the banal competition girls (women?) engaged in for the same boy (man?).  I remembered a night, twenty-some years ago, drinking with my sisters, telling them, Out of 200 guys in this high school, I can think of maybe five that are worth your time. My thoughts were broken by a burst of laughter and and I heard my name.

"Look at Mark," they were saying. "He doesn't know what to think about all this."

"On the contrary," I said. "I know men, way better than any of you will. We are idiots. I have never understand why the hell women would fight over a man. None of us are worth it--not one single one of us."

The ladies laughed and cheered and I think I heard an "Amen!". And I smiled because I was joking and so were they. But I wasn't really joking, you know? Not really.

The Great Bypass - 2017

EVEN IN THE TRANQUILITY OF SHELDON, things get under my skin. Like this commercial. Some cell phone commercial, I don't even know which one, but it's these four people that are clearly on some kind of work trip on a train. They're all dressed business casual, emphasis on the "casual": these people clearly don't work in some kind of stuffy office. Two are white, one is black, one is brown. Two are male and two are female. One of the males has the close-cropped beard that's trendy among a certain class of men. They are all in their late twenties or early thirties. The thing about the phone, I guess, is that's supposed to be better than the other phones at finding stuff: the four laughing and smiling people search up Indian food and the phone spits out like twenty places for Indian food in their destination city.

I couldn't even tell you what gets me about the commercial. It's not offensive or anything. It's on all the time, but then again a lot of commercials are on all the time.  I think it's this whole idea that the phone company thinks it's so clever, what with all these young professionals looking for Indian food on a commuter train. This is the standard work environment, they are saying, with their racial and gender balance, and if your job isn't like that, you're probably a little backward. How many people even go on train trips for their job, much less with three other people, people that they are so comfortable around, that they just joke around with while the train runs? I'm not much of a business traveler, but when I do see business people traveling, they're not usually happy to be traveling, they're not usually in groups of four, and they damn sure aren't sitting on the train just laughing it up and looking for Indian food. They're either trying to get some sleep, talking on their phone, or flailing around at their laptop. Makes me wonder if the cell phone company is aware of anyone that works outside of Silicon fucking Valley.

Sometimes I overthink things.

I can't very well tell Dad to turn off his TV, so I decide to head out for a while. Head over to the Dairy Dandy and get some ice cream with the kids.

"Good idea," Dad says. "You can play a round of mini-golf at Putt-a-Round."

"Yeah," I say, "I'm gonna show the kids how to get there, and then they can go by themselves every day, if they want. I'm just a little worried about them crossing Old Highway 60 on their own."

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," Dad says. "It's not like it was before. Not since they built the bypass."

It's hot outside, very but not quite brutally hot, and Niko and Orlando aren't too thrilled about the idea of a walk, but they do like the idea of ice cream and mini-golf.

"Why do we have to walk, though?" they say.

"I want you to know how to get there by yourselves," I tell them.

It's a Sunday and Sheldon is very quiet. Not many cars go by us as we make our way to the Dairy Dandy. Sheldon tends to empty out on the weekends during the summer--everyone heads up to Lake Okoboji. The hot afternoon sun shines off the pavement we walk on, and the kids complain every 30 seconds or so, but I have a junior high schoolteacher's ability to ignore complaints.

"It's only eight blocks, guys. When I was your age I walked eight blocks all the time," I tell them. I'm a great old guy.

"Where are we going again?" Orlando asks.

"The Dairy Dandy," I say. "Best ice cream in the world."

"I can't believe an ice cream place has a mini-golf course. That's an unusual combination," Niko says.

I smile. "Yeah, I guess it is," I say. "The mini-golf place used to be out by where Pizza Ranch is now, when it was still the country."

"Why'd they move it?" Orlando asks.

"It went broke," I answer. "Then the guy who owned the Dairy Dandy decided to buy it and put it by his store. He moved all the holes back into town. I guess he thought people might like to play mini-golf and eat ice cream at the same time."

"Pretty good idea," Niko says. "Do you know the owner?"

"Well, I know the guy who owned it then. His name is Dan Patterson. He sold it a couple of years ago. I don't know who bought it." I don't mention that Dan Patterson, apart from being known as the Dairy Dandy owner, is also known as one of Sheldon's more prominent and rambunctious drunks. I know I have had more than one alcohol-fueled conversation with him--most of those at his insistence.

"Why do you think he sold it?" Orlando asks.

"Well, he's Grandpa Ron's age. I'm sure he probably wanted to retire," I say.

Ten minutes later we get to Old Highway 60 and I see what Dad was talking about. My worries about Niko and Orlando crossing by themselves were completely unfounded. This road is far less busy than the residential street I live on in Iowa City; there are no cars in either direction as far as I can see.

We cross Old 60 and order ice cream cones and sit on a picnic table in shade, trying without success to eat all the ice cream before it starts melting down the cone and onto our fingers. It's a little better in the shade, but the heat is still unrelenting.

To be continued...

The craziest 72 hours of my life: Nightlife in Cusco

"All right, dude," Cody said. "You made it all the way here from Mexico City on your own. I'm sure you can handle yourself in Películas."

We fist bumped and I sat back down as they descended the steps. My short dance with Rosa had sparked me, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally.  I was anxious, in a good way; I felt something in the air that I could not yet define. I wanted to dance and drink, but it was something more than that: I realized, as I sat there, that when I had lived in Venezuela, I had been fortunate enough to build the kind of relationships that allowed me to experience Venezuela not as an American, but as a native. Mark had gradually morphed into Marco. I realized that I had not truly gotten to know even one person from Cusco in a relationship that was not based on commerce.  All the relationships I had built were with Europeans, Australians, Californians. I wanted to experience Cusco, but not as a gringo. I wanted to be cusqueño, before it was too late, even it were for one night, for one hour, before I left this enchanted city in the mountains.

***********

(Note: all dialogue in this entry took place in Spanish unless otherwise noted).

For the second time in a minute, I rose from the table. I was armed with a half-full bottle of Cusqueña, an ability to dance merengue y salsa, and not much more. I had been in the same clothes, at that point on June 28, 2007, for over 16 hours.  I had not showered since the day before. I had not shaved since Iowa, 9 days and several lifetimes ago. 

Moreover, I had no plan, or rather, the plan I had was worse than no plan at all: 

I would exude confidence, dance with a woman, to then be drawn inevitably into her circle of friends.

Walking into the dance room, my chances dropped further.  The dance floor was barely active; it was still early according to Peruvian time.  The party isn’t exactly raging at 10:30, even on a Thursday.  Very few women want to put themselves out there, dancing with a random dude still in his hiking shit, particularly a gringo who’s attempt at confidence reeked more of utter cluelessness.   

I must have asked 2 or 3 women to dance. Two were polite; one actually laughed at me. “I’ll have another beer, or two,” I said. “If I can’t ingratiate myself somewhere by then, it wasn’t meant to be.”

I wandered over to the end of the bar. I ordered another Cusqueña and turned around, leaning against the bar and observing the room. “Just plant yourself and let them come to you,” was another piece of advice I’d heard of the years, and it had produced amount the same amount of success as the exuding confidence bit. 

But still. I was in Cusco, Peru. I was out at a real, live bar, with real, live cusqueños.  I had just spent the day at Machu Picchu. This was some pretty cool shit, even if I couldn’t find a dance partner.  The volume rose by the minute. The dance floor, little by very little, was crowding up; from my vantage point, I could see the whole thing.

I could even see the doors to the dance floor opening and closing, and then, no more than fifteen minutes after they’d left, the two cusqueñas who had mysteriously descended down the stairway came through the door. They still had their parkas on; not enough people were dancing yet to create any warmth. 

We made eye contact; I smiled and nodded, but did not move. Maybe my second strategy was working.  The women slowly moved through the room, assessing the crowd, moving slowly but steadily towards where I was standing. Finally, they reached me.

“We thought you guys had left,” said the shorter one, in very broken English.

“We thought the same about you,” I responded in Spanish.

She seemed a bit surprised but responded in Spanish. “We tried to tell you we were coming back—we were just making a phone call.” (Oh, so that’s what those hand signals had been!).  “So. Anyway. How are you?”

“Awesome,” I said. “One of the greatest days of my life.”

“And your friends?” she asked.

“They went back to the hotel,” I said. “They have an early flight tomorrow.”

Finally, the taller woman spoke up: “Where are you guys from?”

I smiled. “Where do you think we’re from?”

They looked at each other. “Argentina?”

I smiled again. “Not even close.  North, north, north.”

“Colombia?”

“No. The United States.”

“Wow! The United States! But your Spanish is so…good.  I mean, you don’t even have an accent. I mean, I can tell you’re not Peruvian, but United States....Wow. That is awesome. You speak very good Spanish.”

I winked at the short one. “So do you.”

She gave me a quizzical look. “But…of course I do…I mean, I live here…”  I couldn’t hold my laughter any longer, and she finally got my joke.

“Listen,” the taller one said, “what do you think of Cusco?”

Always the first question.  “Cusco is fucking amazing,” I told them. “I’ve never been in a place like this.  I hope to get back sometime.”

The short one motioned to my bottle of beer. “And the Cusqueña? You like it?”

“Love it.”

“So now,” the short one said, “now you have three cusqueñas.”

Now it was my turn to be quizzical. I had only one bottle in my hand. Were they buying me beer?

The short one laughed and said, “Bobo. One,” she said, pointing again at the bottle, “two”, she said, pointing at her friend, “and three,” she said, pointing at herself.  “Three cusqueñas. Can you handle three cusqueñas?”

As I got the joke—and felt a huge wave of flattery spread through me--I laughed and I laughed and I laughed. She had gotten me good.

“Well, I’ll sure as hell give it a shot,” I said. “Can I get you ladies a drink, and we can sit down and properly introduce ourselves?”

“Cusqueñas,” they responded almost simultaneously.

The bartender gave us the beer—I bought another because I was getting low—and we walked out the landing where I had just been sitting 30 minutes ago, where I sat down to get to know my two new cusqueñas.

********

Almost six hours later, just after 4:00 A.M. on June 29, 2007, I fell into my bed back at Hotel Suecia 2. My plan had worked shockingly well. The two cusqueñas had turned out to be sisters--Ana y Yésica--and had been, indeed, waiting on their cousin Javier, who, for his part, was hanging out with, it seemed like, about 20 different people over the course of five hours.

Cusqueños came and went in and out of our group. After Películas, we went to two other bars, places I didn't know existed even though I had walked by them dozens of times in the daylight.  The second place was not very big, but I bet two hundred people were packed in there. The third place was cavernous--three or four big rooms separated by concrete walls. The music got louder the later it got; I think I heard R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" five times.  I must have danced with ten different cusqueñas. I didn't pay for a drink the rest of the night; everyone was more than happy to buy for the gringo who somehow spoke Spanish and knew how to dance.

Once I passed midnight, I was ready to go home; however, my new friends weren't hearing of it, and kept plying me with Cusqueña and rum and cokes. It is amazing how long one can subsist on that diet. Finally, at 4:00, after the last bar closed, the entire group that was still out--Yésica, Ana, Javier, and a couple other friends--walked me back to Suecia, to make sure I made it in okay.

Somehow, I found the strength to kick my shoes off. I dropped a sleeping pill in my mouth and closed my eyes. In the short time before I fell asleep, I reviewed the past 22 hours: Roy, Aguas Calientes, Machu Picchu, Jamie, Peliculas, Rosa, Yésica, Ana, Javier, "Losing My Religion". 

"Someday," I thought, "someday I've got to write this down. It'll make one hell of a story."

Then again, I thought as I dropped off, I'm not sure it's all believable. I'm not sure I believe it all myself. 

The Great Bypass - 2012

"Since Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968 and George McGovern’s run in 1972, progressives have sought to create a multiracial, multiethnic, crossclass coalition—made up of African Americans, Latinos, women, young people, professionals, and economically populist blue-collar whites—supporting an activist government agenda to expand economic opportunities and personal freedoms for all people. With the re-election of President Barack Obama in 2012, this progressive coalition has clearly emerged, albeit in an early and tenuous stage."

So say Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin of the Center for American Progress in an article entitled, "The Obama Coalition in the 2012 Election and Beyond".

They go on to say:

"Why was this possible? First, the shifting demographic composition of the electorate—rising percentages of people of color, unmarried and working women, the Millennial generation and more secular voters, and educated whites living in more urbanized states—has clearly favored Democrats and increased the relative strength of the party in national elections. Similarly, white working-class support for Democrats has been higher in key battleground states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin than in other states, while white college-educated support for Democrats has been strong in emerging battlegrounds such as Colorado and Virginia.3 In contrast, the Republican Party’s coalition of older, whiter, more rural, and evangelical voters is shrinking and becoming more geographically concentrated and less important to the overall political landscape of the country."

And:

Second, this transition toward a new progressive coalition was possible because of the ideological shift of the American electorate. Voters are moving away from the Reagan-Bush era of trickle-down economics and social conservatism and toward the more pragmatic approach of the Clinton-Obama vision that includes strong governmental support for the middle class, public investments in education and infrastructure, a fairer tax system that requires the wealthy to pay their fair share, and more inclusive social policies."

This is a mouthful, and more than I expected to digest on a lazy Sunday afternoon in December. But it's sucking me in. Just over a month has gone by since Barack Obama comfortably defeated Mitt Romney in the 2012 election, and my feelings of relief and pride have now faded to the point where I can observe some of this stuff objectively. It's crazy how politics works. It's not I love Barack Obama or anything. He's okay. But I have grown to loathe the Republican Party, in general, and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan in particular. Obama's 2012 success feels like a victory over the dark side.

To be fair, Obama is better than okay. His speaking ability is incredible, and his cerebral demeanor is totally befitting that of a president. Obamacare, for all its flaws, should hopefully make some sort of difference in the screwed up healthcare in this country. The small tax increase on the wealthy was way overdue. His foreign policy of "Stop doing stupid stuff" has been, in the grand scheme of things, effective.

Then again, how good does one have to be to look good after the George W. Bush administration? When not invading countries that didn't do anything wrong to you is viewed as effective, that is a pretty low bar. The so-called "sequester" was blatant blackmail on the part of the Republicans, and Obama went for it. Maybe he had to, politically, but still. Then there was the aftermath of the financial crisis, when Obama first came into office. He really had a chance to lay the hammer down on those Wall Street fucks, and let 'em off with a slap on the wrist. FDR, he certainly isn't.

Then again, he never campaigned as FDR. Not even LBJ, for that matter. I have to get that through my thick skull. He campaigned as a moderate, left-of-center gradual change agent. He never said he was gonna stick it to the banks, no matter how much they might deserve it. He never said he was going to push for mass unionization or a living wage. The whole living wage thing, as a matter of fact, sort of stays at the fringes of the party, no matter how much sense it might make to a economic progressive like myself.

He ain't perfect. But politics is about the art of the possible, right?

Obama, more than anything else, represented (represents?) a sort of common sense, aspirational appeal to the better angels of America, a moderate alternative to the zero sum game of Social Darwinism just below the surface of modern Republicanism. His presidency says to us that if we can just come together as a nation, we can fix stuff without burning it down first. His election speaks to the power of his political team to bring together disparate parts of the country, combining positive identity politics with the social safety net to provide a little bit for everyone. By his very nature as the first black president, he is a transformational figure, even if his politics aren't transformative in and of themselves.

He ain't popular in Sheldon, Iowa. But a Democrat rarely is. And anyway, if Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin got it right, Sheldon--and all the places like it scattered throughout the Upper Midwest, what with their older, whiter, rural and evangelical voters--just aren't going to matter as much anymore.

To be continued...