nerdmeyr & K

NOTE: The byline to the contrary, this post was jointly written by both K and Nerdmeyr.

NOTE 2: This will probably be a long post with enormous amounts of painful details. So, grab a tea or mug of beer.

Last night, K and I accompanied our friends M. Valliant and Julia to Dinky’s Amish Auction House in Daviess County, about a forty-five minute drive from our town. M.V. and Julia offered to take us after their first visit when they came back with 75 cabbage plants ($10) and an old-school drinking fountain ($1).

Perhaps it was the overly long winter, perhaps it was K’s and my relative sequestering of ourselves in our house over the overly long winter, perhaps it was the first day of sticky hot weather, but I (Nerdmeyr) was overwhelmed upon arrival. And I don’t mean arrival inside the auctioning areas, but rather our arrival in the parking lot. We, in a station wagon, were dwarfed by the hundreds of giant full-size pickups in the packed parking lot.

Oh, and back up for a second. Part of the reason I was overwhelmed by the parking lot and trying to find a space in it is that we had picked up a passenger along the way. Not knowing the exact way to Dinky’s, we had stopped at a gas station and Julia asked a person, John W., who looked as though he (by way of dress) might know the way.  A ride for him and directions for us worked out for everyone!  And, after passing time amicably conversing the way that strangers converse, we were at Dinky’s.

[[MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 1: When I say that we all conversed in the way that strangers do, I mean that we discussed where we all live, where we come from, and what we do, assuming (at least it seemed to me) that we would have little in common or that we expected to have to explain ourselves to one another, so best not to go into too much detail. This didn't really turn out to be the case. M.V. and Julia discussed their respective fields of study, which led us to the topic of hormones in meat. All of us agreed: hormones = bad, but none of us could say for sure why. In the nanosecond after I (Nerdmeyr) realized how surprised I was by this point of commonality, I was struck by how stupid was my assumption. Our passenger lives in a rural area and is probably faaaaar more up to speed on the evils of modern agriculture than I, hippie city dweller, will probably ever be. Either way, that point of commonality was less surprising than finding out that we all buy meat at grocery stores. My surprise probably is due the fact that my knowledge of the Amish is limited to Witness, produce purchases at the farmer's market,  and a family-style restaurant in Shipshewana.  [[[[END MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 1]]]]]

Parking lot: Where I’m suddenly uncomfortably aware of how much space all the trucks (I’m assuming owned by the English) take up compared to the horse-n-buggies off on the perimeters of the parking lot. Why do the trucks get the middle area?  Why are the horse-n-buggies  – at an AMISH auction – shoved off to the side?  It’s as if at a gay bar, the gay people must be off to the side in order to make room for the bachelorette parties.

Once inside, you must first go to the central accounts counter. The central accounts counter is manned by both Amish and English; while the division of labor is unclear, it did seem like maybe only the English use the computers. To get a bidding number, you provide some form of ID. You only have to do this once and Julia had already done so the last time she came, so we got two bidding cards on her account. Then, once the bidding card complete with 3-digit number in 100 pt font is procured, you wander the various auctions.

But to say that “you wander the various auctions” doesn’t quite capture the experience. The whole enterprise is impressively vast in scale, and yet remarkably sparse in infrastructure.  A good way of describing it (via nerd-terms) might be a co-located array of giant tin-roofed buildings. And also interstitial open areas where large pallets of building products like corrugated tin and lumber and also decrepit cars – hoods opened up like women in the Amsterdam red-light district - were being sold. We would witness several hundred thousand dollars worth of stuff sell over the course of the evening; everything from a dollar’s worth-box of fake flower arrangements tossed in with a Polaroid camera to a $650 Angus steer.  Mysterious, amazing, wonderful stuff of worth sometimes understandable and other times unclear all sold by men (yeah, we mean that pronoun literally) who have the gift of unintelligible gab that is the hallmark of all amazing auction sellers:

{trying to sell a mysterious Rube Goldberg machine labeled “Lollipop” which featured clear plastic walls to better see the interior guts involving plastic gears, ramps,  and some sort of american coin acceptor that last saw daylight in a trucker’s gas station on a major interstate}:
“LOLLIPOPP MACHINE! WOW! LOLLIPOP MACHINE! LOOKIT THIS LOLLIPOP MACHINE! gitcherlollipop fivefivefivefivercanwehearafivefivervfiverfivefourfity
fityfityfourfityfityfourfourfourfourYEP!fourtwentyfiveYEP!fourfityfityfityYEP!fourseventyfive fourseventyfive fourseventy five DO I HEAR A four seventyfive five fivefiverfiveityfive five five doihear another fiveity fourseventyfiverty five fivety GOING GOING SOLD!”

[[MAJOR ASIDE NUMBER 2: On the ride home, someone suggested that Lotus World Music Festival procure an auctioneer to perform, as the more awesome auctioneers definitely incorporated melodic intonations to their auctioneering, often turning the timbre of their voice down or up at the end of statements.  I (Nerdmeyr) thought that the better auctioneers shared many characteristics with Tuvan throat singers, but maybe that's just me. K thought that maybe the up/down intonations were to help the auctioneers remember at what price point they were at, as I'm sure by the end of the evening one bin full of socket wrenches might blend into another. I (K) also think that the rhythm helps let you know how long you've got to make any additional bid, like a clock counting down. I've no doubt both auctioneers and buyers use that time to control the direction of the sale, but how one might go about doing so completely escaped me. [[[[End of Major Aside #2]]]]

At any rate, the auctions take place in huge rooms filled with everything from live stock to antique cabinets to hanging plants to manually-operated butter churns and Budweiser mirrors (the latter of which was, surprisingly, not such a hot commodity with the Amish). These wildly varied items emptied out of the building by the end of the night under minimal oversight. And by “minimal oversight”, we mean, “none at all”. As soon as you win an auction, you can grab up your parcel of schtuff and take it out to your vehicle before the thunderstorm that’s threatening Vigo County gets to Daviess County. Everything large and furniture-like is marked with a numbered piece of masking tape representing the seller’s ID; we never saw how they marked the smaller animals like rabbits and guinea hens, much less the horses, cars, and old-school electric generators.

As I said, the infrastructure is simple; the overwhelming aspect to it is the scale of the event: at least six auctions going simultaneously, some in the same room and the sheer volume of stuff for sale is what really impresses. More overwhelming than the parking lot was figuring out how to jump into the bidding. It was like an enormous, multi-tiered, sped-up game of double dutch that never stopped. There was no telling (at least on our end) what items would be hotly contested, or by whom. And the vernacular of bidding was intimidating, too. Nobody waves their hands about; rather, its all about making eye contact with the auctioneer or his helper,  and nodding “yes”.  Or making an abrupt up/down motion with the hand that’s carrying the bidding card.  Subtle head nods, esp. when there’s a bidding war going on, also seem to be acceptable.  (M.V. warned us against superfluous motion before we went in for this reason.)  Also interesting was the sad, ashamed “no” head-shake by a bidder when the bidding had gone past their top price point – as if the auctioneer was asking “Have you not killed multiple people in acts of rage?”, and then the person has to hang their head, downcast their eyes, and then shake their head, “no. no, i _have_ killed multiple people in acts of rage, and thus I do not deserve the vintage child’s hobby horse currently being auctioned for $12.75.”

In some cases, you could communicate your interest in particular items and thereby steer which things were auctioned at what time. In most cases, though, there were just clusters of people hovered around waiting for the auctioneer to make his way to an item. You could also figure out which stuff you were interested in and estimate how long it would take for the auctioneer to make his way over to that item, and then wander to another room and bid on something else and come back.

The fact that somehow, magically, the stuff that fills these room replicates every Friday night, begs questions like: Where does the stuff come from? Who brings their stuff here? Why are the Amish, who make their life not following English ways, peddling popcorn machines and clock radios? This auction serves a relatively finite and stable population (compared to say, oh, Ebay). For it to maintain a customer base, I would think it would have to be the only place that most folks purchased anything ever. Think about it: imagine purchasing all your groceries, household items, major appliances, and frivolous knickknacks all on one night only, once a week. But, the stuff for sale isn’t new, so it must either continuously circulate through the auction house, or perhaps people acquire it with the specific intention of auctioning it? And if this is the primary, or exclusive, shopping site for most people, then is it really a deal for the buyer? The only sense you would have of an item’s market value would develop in the 30 seconds it takes to auction it off. This would be economical only if the auction was truly an isolated economy unto itself.

The more pressing questions is: How exactly did Mountain Dew secure its monopoly on the Amish market? We’re thinking it probably wasn’t the ads featuring extreme snow boarding. We have never seen so much Mountain Dew consumed in a single space, ever. Everyone – man, woman, child, silver marten jersey wooly rabbit – seemed to be sucking down a 20 oz. of Mountain Dew. In general, there was a remarkable amount of junk food available.  Not necessarily crappy-shitty-but-oh-so-tasty-state-fair-food either; we’re talking giant bins of potato chips and melting candy bars sold 5/$1.00.  And there’s something not right when at 11pm, herds of kids running are about and screaming at the tops of their lungs [what Nerdmeyr means to say here is: "I was not allowed to run wild on sugar highs at 11 pm and I wasn't even raised in a strict religious community...what gives?"].  Having said this, Nerdmeyr certainly enjoyed a chicken finger (with mustard and BBQ sauce) as well as a chocolate soft-serve sundae so splendiforously provided, it spilled over the sides of the styrofoam cup [all of which tasted particularly good due to my strict "unstrict" upbringing].

When you’re ready to leave with whatever you’ve won, you settle your account back at the central desk. Besides the bidding price, there’s a 7% bidding tax (to help pay for the auctioneers and the space), and the state sales tax.

So, what did we come away with? A seriously sturdy, well-made clothes drying rack. That we got into a bidding war with M.V. over. For $17.50. M.V. and Julia made much more efficient use of the auction, bringing home 5 boxes of Mason jars, a pitchfork, a giant stoneware crock, and 2 former xmas lawn decorations that will be repurposed for a pea trellis.

A Note on the pictures: All procured from Google, as I (Nerdmeyr) thought about bringing some sort of recording device but then decided against it in the name of Not Being A Touristic Asshole For Whom Poore Country People Are Just a Good Blog Poste.  A good decision, as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure Dinky’s gets its fair share of summer tourists, but I definitely felt in the distinct minority of outsiders. I felt like I had travelled to another country but then felt like an asshole for feeling so (”Are Not These But My Country Brethren In This Time Of Economic Depression”)… then felt slightly less atavistic when M.V. also said that he felt he went into “world traveller mode” when he was there. I (Nerdmeyr) commented early on that the place seemed ripe for some sort of community activism, as the people there seemed of a common cloth, Amish and English alike – of rural experience, of rural living, of common challenge to make a living without being poisoned by hormones or pesticides, and (biggest point of commonality): not on anyone’s minds, not, it would seem, the current presidential administration. yet, who would do that work? To what ends?

Editor’s Note: Despite what it may say above, this post was a dual-writing-venture by both K and Nerdmeyr.

Nerdmeyr and I just returned from a rousing and restful trip to one of Indiana’s state park inns – Turkey Run. Turkey Run delivers two heaping tablespoons of charm in the form of the main lodge’s stone fireplace, free coffee, and comfy couches open all night, the nature center that feeds 5000 squirrels a day, the indoor swimming pool that supposedly closes at 11pm but never does, and the basement arcade full of 25 cent games (except for the 1985 Sega Hang On that rattles so badly you expect smoke to billow out the back and which costs 50 cents a game). There’s also an second story veranda with rocking chairs, a dining room open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and a gift shop selling 10,000 squirrel figurines – that’s two hand carved renditions of each actual park squirrel.

After reading the previous paragraph, your head may be swimming. But Wait!!! There’s More!!! As in, the theoretical reason for the very park’s existence, which is to say, the beautiful natural surroundings. No superlatives like “majestic” or “breathtaking” will escape your lips, but the park does a steady and reliable job of inspiring appreciation of nature. Curious sandstone cliffs, tricksy trails, mud aplenty if you go on the one day in December it reaches 65 degrees and is bookended by precipitation, and an abundant population of pileated and downy woodpeckers.

A large part of the park’s charm comes from its history as Indiana’s second state park. The first 2,382 acres of the park were purchased in 1916 (year of the Indiana State centennial) at the recommendation of Colonel, businessman, and future park commissioner Richard Lieber. The Inn was built in 1919 and once was host to a train line. In the 1930s, a fossil exhibit was loaned to the park, the first of the park’s interpretative programs. Indiana now has six such state parks, each with inns and cabins that charge no more than $75 a night. This is the fourth time we’ve been to Turkey Run and always I wander around imagining a renaissance of the American state park system. The time and place seem ripe for such imaginings, if only on the scale of one landlocked state. If it were to happen, there is good reason why it should and could happen in Indiana: only seven years until Indiana’s bicentennial; six existing parks, five of which are within a hundred miles of one another; miles of defunct rail lines that could be transformed into bike trails connecting each park; languishing local farms that could supply the dining rooms of each inn with meat, eggs, and produce; a slightly higher than national average unemployment rate (7.1%) and high poverty rates in the surrounding counties that might yield a 21st century Civilian Conservation Corp. Given the existing infrastructure, the historical function of the state park (to preserve nature and sites of historical interest, educate the public in the value of conservation and wildlife appreciation, and provide affordable recreation), and the present turn toward eco-tourism (a turn that, oddly, has yet to include U.S. park systems), Indiana state parks could be the recipe for a rebirth of ye olde Americana.

And lest you think this last photograph is from somewhere else, no, it is not. Turkey Run, among its other charms, excels at sending small children and not-sure-footed adults to their death. Trails that, in other, more civilized parts of the country, would produce a fly-swarm of wrongful-death litigation, in Turkey Run hardly warrant a Beware! sign and instead are featured on t-shirts in the lodge gift shop proudly claiming “I Survived Trail 3″.

Photo credit (last photo): bmtpix

My last post focused on a weird parallel experience I had (bumper sticker and XP update) – and I just had another one last night.

I went to see John Edwards have his debutante speaking engagement after his admitted affair. But before I listened to Senator Edwards, I went to the bathroom, and the first stall I picked had dribbles from somebody previous all over the seat.  And  it struck me (lookout! really deep thought coming up here!) that the kind of person who hovers but does not sit is the kind of person who does not sit because they are worried about germs on the toilet seat…the kind of germs that get on the toilet seat because people hover and do not sit.  (Is this the tragedy of the commons, or merely a mobius strip of tautological proportions?)

I hate to say it, but John Edwards struck me the same way as seeing the dribbles on the toilet seat. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I walked in post-Obama-election expecting miracles, like Edwards was actually going to say something for-reals (and, to be fair to me, the talk _was_ marketed as “hear insider stories of what its like to run for president”). My expectation is odd, since one of the things I rarely heard out of Obama’s mouth was anything for-reals. Obama’s real power is his symbology-creation-powers, and, unfortunately, John Edwards’ symbology is “talky white dude with amazing hair and teeth so white you can see them flashing from a football field away”, which is to say, the exact same symbology our political system has been rife with the last 200 years.

Here’s all of the fascinating, mind-blowing, speaking-truth-to-teh-powerz insider information John Edwards talked about:

• poverty is bad!
• addressing climate change will create jobs
• universal health care!
• government is better at facilitating services for the common good than privatized profit-oriented entities
• young people in politics is good because they’re passionate!
• if we pretend like we care about the downtrodden elsewhere, the elsewhere downtrodden will love us again
• complete public financing of campaigns is definitely the way to go.
• john mccain is his buddy, clinton is his buddy, obama is his buddy, and they’re all awesome and should be admired and respected
• lieberman is not his buddy, no, not at all, but as to whether he should be stripped of his committee chairmanship? oh, well, mumble mumble mumble
• mumble mumble mumble

I don’t actually think Edwards mumbled at all, but I started to tune out, because I might as well have been a captive audience to Tickle Me Elmo Politician.  If it had been a job interview, I would’ve concluded: “seems like an alright guy, and he can definitely talk, but I just don’t think there’s anything substantive there, there.”  If it had been me in Say Anything, taking John Cusack’s place below and outside the window of John Edwards, I can tell you it wouldn’t be Peter Gabriel I’d be playing on my boombox… it’d be Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done For Me Lately”?

I feel the air slowly leaking out of the balloon of obamatized hope…….

Heartbreaking:

• At the local Kroger supermarket (yes, the one affectionately referred to as ‘Soviet Kroger’ for its predilection for random foodstuff outages, like, say, onions or cereal):  In the nexus between the pharmacy area and the old-breadstuffs bakery area, there is a “Test Your Blood Pressure” machine attached to the wall. It is free. If a person wants to use the “Test Your Blood Pressure” machine, they sit in an attached chair, much like a gradeschool desk/chair combo, put their arm through the cuff, and press the button. The last three times I’ve gone to Soviet Kroger, there has been a person in that chair, their arm in the cuff, their head down, getting their blood pressure tested. Like seeing old ladies at bus stops in the rain, patiently waiting for the bus, this breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that people have to get simple medical care from machines bolted into the wall next to the Nicorette case while other people walk by and watch them get simple medical care from a machine. While under glaring flourescent lights, and while carrying sundry foodstuffs and probably having too-loud conversations on their cell phone and while the doobie brothers are playing overhead.

Heartmaking

• At a BBQ last weekend to get together the people who are currently taking advantage of the community kitchen /homeless shelter  up the street and the people who live in the neighborhood who aren’t currently taking advantage of those services: in a conversation about where we’ve lived, and what makes particular communities nice or terrible, one of the guys said, “If you starve to death in this town, its your own damn fault, ” and there were several approving murmurs from around the table. I guess that’s as good of a marker as any for me about what might make a place liveable and good or not – if its difficult for humans to starve to death in that town, that town’s an alright place to be.

I really have no other way to explain the amazing things I have witnessed with my very own eyes today. Oh, sure, move-in Wednesday on a campus with 35,000 students is not going to be pretty. But imagine the scene you see here – bumper to bumper traffic, moving slowly, cops at the major intersections superceding the lights.

Let’s assume that you realized at some point that you had gone too far on this road, and needed to turn around. Would you:

• Make a right or left at the next light and cruise around the block
• Change your plans and do something else
• Stop randomly and attempt to make a 3-point U-turn, that, because of the bumper-to-bumper traffic, sheer size and horrendously bad turning radius of your SUV, ends up being a 15-point turn involving large parts of the sidewalk on either side of the road

Another question, this time involving an intersection. If you are on a major 4-lane throughway that bisects a tiny road (the tiny road having a stop sign, of course), and you see a bicyclist coming up to the stop sign on the tiny road, do you:

• keep going, because you have the right of way
• keep going, because bikes suck
• keep going, because you’re a typical driver and are too busy singing along with the Oak Ridge Boys
• make a screeching halt, almost causing the person behind you to rear-end you, and then impatiently wave at the bicyclist to cross… who refuses, because of course the traffic coming the other way on the major thoroughfare is not stopping for anything

How about one featuring a red light? If you are a driver and are going probably too fast down a different 4-lane road, and the light turns red just as you are entering the intersection, do you:

• blow through and tap the ceiling of the car in a superstitious ploy to prevent the po-po from busting you?
• stop and try to back up so that you’re out of the way
• stop 3/4 of the way into the intersection, so that cars coming across the street either have to stop or swerve into oncoming traffic in order to cross the road

Lest you think its all stoopid eeriot drivers from Chicago who are to blame, the stupidity extends beyond traffic situations. If you are a bagger at the local soviet Kroger (affectionately named thus for their penchant to have random empty shelves, or ridiculousness like no garlic and onions, etc.) and a person comes through the line and says, “no bags, please, I’ve got my own,” do you:

• back off and let the morally-superior-feeling environmentalist pack their own arugula and tofu; “whatever, dude”
• attempt to help the morally superior environmentalist put the groceries in their bag
• proceed to pluck all produce and fruit coming down the line and put each into their own individual plastic grocery bag (which, incidentally, are already in clear plastic bags) (and, which, also incidentally, comprise about half of the items in the shopping order), thereby entombing something as innocent as a bunch of grapes inside a double deathshroud of petroleum product; and then, also, announce to the person as you’re doing it that one package contains the grapes, whereas another contains the lettuce… because obviously at this point, its impossible to tell

The really sad thing about this is that I went to work, went to a meeting, and came home. I wasn’t patrolling the streets, or running around playing bike messenger. All told, I think I was riding around for maybe 40 minutes today… and yet I somehow witnessed all of the above. Which should make one shudder to think of all the other stuff that went on. It is truly amazing people do not get killed (either from being strangled to death or from accidents). < knocks on wood >

Back To School Students: A Danger To Themselves And Others

Although my absolute favorite thing to donate is plasma, due to the uproarius tingles gotten for free when the de-calcified blood makes its way back into my veins, donating blood is alright, too. Especially when I can do it over the lunch hour at work, as that makes me feel wise and efficient in my use of time. And especially when they don’t run out of chocolate chip cookies.

The donation site during these occurrences, The Blood Mobile, is odd.  Partially because it and all the workers inside it come from Louisville, KY each time.  This, on one hand, makes me feel like my blood is really something special, that they’d burn all that gas and drive two hours one way just to tap the keg so to speak.  It is also odd because it is not spic and span the way you’d think a vehicle like that would be – the blinds on the windows next to the lounges need a good wipe, and there are mysterious iodine-like splatters in places. It is also odd because I end up in there next to colleagues, and the act of lying there while having something like a medical procedure being done feels strangely personal and intimate, and therefore something I’d prefer wasn’t witnessed by people I work with.

For some reason, as I’m waiting (and it doesn’t matter if I have an appt or not, there’s always a sizeable amount of waiting involved at every Blood Center I’ve been to, ever… its like they have an official policy to match as closely as possible the experience of a doctor’s waiting room), I always wonder about what will happen to the Blood Mobile after they de-commission it from official use.  The setup is strange, hardly suitable for re-organizing into a family camper, but also possibly appropriate for some sort of mobile pro bono rock star psychoanalyzing tour?  (There are small offices, and also chaise lounges.. so the Gestalt people and the Freudian people would all be happy).  Or I can imagine a low-rent remake of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou (retitled The Life LandBound with Steezo Zeezo) where the Blood Mobile bumps around backwater places like Portland OR or NYC and studies the strange wildlife and removes samples for further study.

Today was a good day in the Mobile Blood Center; extremely chilled orange juice, chocolate chip cookies, and excellent country and western music that one of the nurses kept humming along to.

Last night I went on the second monthly Bloomington Community Bike Ride and it was down right magical. Everyone meets up at People’s Park at 7pm (last Thursday of every month!) and mills around for about twenty minutes until someone says “Let’s ride!” and then we head out and the first order of business is to loop the Showalter Fountain before meandering downtown, to the park, through some subdivisions and ending at another bike-friendly fountain.

We were serenaded by a cassette-tape-player-in-handlebar-basket and were hailed overhead by a mysterious toy helicopter. As we rode past, someone on the sidewalk pointed and said “hey, it’s a bike parade!” Indeed.

Once again the fellow with the yellow bike did an outstanding job of spreading cheer to all impatient motorists and everyone pitched in to spread bike love. Our ride was so sweet that folks out on their porches grabbed their bicycles and joined us which means we ended with more people than we’d started with. (although we did loose Nerdmeyr to a flat.) One sentence with date, time, place and the word “bicycle” produced that much sugary goodness. I can’t wait for the July toothache.

While in the bagel shop yesterday I happened to see this article in the Wall Street Journal about an FDIC take-over of a small bank in Minnesota. The article describes how forty men in black stealthed into failing First Integrity Bank and transferred oversight of the bank to the FDIC without any the 3,200 residents of the town knowing about it, thus avoiding a run on the bank. The take-over required federal agents to invent a fake business for themselves so they could pretend like they were all attending a conference at their hotel and pre-planning where they would all park so as not arouse suspicion. The strangest part of the story is the actual take-over in which agents taped open the bank’s doors to prevent automatic locking. The article’s author, Damian Paletta, doesn’t elaborate on this curious detail.

Compare this story to one about the fall of Bear Sterns and you’d think the two events had happened in different centuries. The First Integrity Bank story might as well have been about federal agents who traveled back in time in an attempt to prevent the Great Depression. In my mind, the modern financial world is entirely electronic with no material manifestations of any kind. Money is for farmer’s markets and retro video arcades, and all other financial transactions are bleeps and blinks on a screen. Would anyone now a days actually think of going into a bank and withdrawing all their money? In an FDIC-insured world, can any of us even imagine our debit cards just drying up?

This article made me wonder how hard it would be to get your money back if in fact your bank lost your savings. I bet there wouldn’t be any magic 800 number that you could call. I’m sure that before any federal agency cut you a check you’d have to take a weekend-long seminar called “How to diversify your personal finances and avoid financial loss” because it would never be the bank’s fault that your savings had disappeared. Some how, the FDIC would make it your fault for believing that you could put all your money in an FDIC-insured bank and think everything would be okay.

The article also made me wonder if there was any duct tape involved in the Bear Sterns take-over. Maybe financial take-overs always involve duct taped doors and massive pizza deliveries, but in order to maintain the illusion that the financial world is a slick cyber system of Flash-heavy websites, the WSJ saved their duct tape story for some remote bank for poor people in rural no-where. By far, the strangest thing about the First Integrity story is the description of the physical manifestation of banking — the very fact that the bank had doors that had to be managed in addition to the checking accounts.  There were no comparable details in the story about the fall of Bear Sterns, or of Long Term Capital Management (for those who can remember back that far). In those cases, money just disappeared.

In the story about First Integrity Bank (that name grows more ironic with each typing), the agents keep reassuring everyone about the safety of their safe deposit boxes. Again, something I never think about – safe deposit boxes. I like the idea that people are still storing away valuable keepsakes in bank vaults with little keys. I bet the vast majority of those precious keepsakes have no true market value of any kind. I bet it’s all locks of baby hair and confessions of crimes of passion. It makes a lot more sense to me that folks would get panicked about losing that sort of stuff than their savings (if for no other reason than, as I mentioned before, can anyone imagine their savings just disappearing?). And I especially like the idea that the FDIC”s primary responsibility is to take care of what are basically memento storehouses for the nonsensical squirreling habits of lovelorn Americans. Come to think of it, where would people keep their beloved scraps if all the small banks fail? I can’t imagine trusting Bank of America with my twizzle stick from the Netherlands. What is going to happen to our secrets and memory-soaked shards of the material world in the impending financial crisis? You can always hide your money under the mattress or bury it in a can in the back yard, but some things need to be locked up in an anonymous box with only one key. The more I think about it, the more the collapse of Bear Sterns pales in significance to the failing of First Integrity.

Highway Haiku

Majestic Pines
Casino Lounge and Grill
Exit One Eighteen

Wisconsin Haiku

Tas-tee brats and Pabst
at the Antler Motel in
Oconomowac

From a fascinating and well-written article in New York Magazine called “Say Everything,” by writer Emily Nussbaum:

Younger people, one could point out, are the only ones for whom it seems to have sunk in that the idea of a truly private life is already an illusion. Every street in New York has a surveillance camera. Each time you swipe your debit card at Duane Reade or use your MetroCard, that transaction is tracked. Your employer owns your e-mails. The NSA owns your phone calls. Your life is being lived in public whether you choose to acknowledge it or not.

So it may be time to consider the possibility that young people who behave as if privacy doesn’t exist are actually the sane people, not the insane ones.

The other:

Shirky [Clay Shirky, "a 42-year-old professor of new media at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program"] describes this generational shift in terms of pidgin versus Creole. “Do you know that distinction? Pidgin is what gets spoken when people patch things together from different languages, so it serves well enough to communicate. But Creole is what the children speak, the children of pidgin speakers. They impose rules and structure, which makes the Creole language completely coherent and expressive, on par with any language. What we are witnessing is the Creolization of media.”

That’s a cool metaphor, I respond. “I actually don’t think it’s a metaphor,” he says. “I think there may actually be real neurological changes involved.”