At the Edna Somebody reading room, NYPL. The Rose Main is still closed but I’ve discovered this and a number of other rooms that are almost comparable. This one lacks the vaulted ceilings and the general aspirational qualities of Rose but it’s cool. A lot of paintings.
Tomorrow is my biirthday. All that means is I get a free Starbucks coffee, and I intend to see Star Wars, but that’s not on account of it being The Great 48 for me, it’s just because I have a ticket in limbo that I need to use and i don’t know how much longer it will be playing. I bought a ticket for opening night but decided I did not really want to go to what is basically a big party with people dressed up in costumes acting out the film. Crowds should be less by now. So I used Fandango’s feature of postponing, or whatever it’s called.
Just spent about a half hour with that Public Communications Magazine. So far the former publisher has ignored my request for info on back copies but who knows if he even saw the request or if he’s is not actually embarrassed about his payphone past. I could post to his twitter, I guess, which is what I will do if I don’t hear back by tomorrow. Thing about that is it might let on to others what I’m researching and I’m kind of possessive about that at the moment, since much of what I’ve dug up is unique or even new.
I had intended to go to the Calvary Chapel today but it looked and felt like rain was coming, and I thought it more useful to come back here even though I don’t like paying the subway fare these days. Wish i could find another unlimited Metrocard like i did a few weeks ago. There does not seem to be any particular place that is the best for finding those. Maybe bus stops?
Reading about the Challenger explosion 30 years ago. I saw that happen up in the sky over Florida. I was in Tampa where sightings of the shuttle liftoffs were always clearly visible. I remember hearing about it in the hallway between classes. One kid shouted “Dude, the space shuttle exploded!” The reply was “AWESOME!” Hoots and hollers followed by fistpumps up into the air. If I am tempted to compare that memory to the legend that a Dallas classroom burst into applause upon hearing that John F. Kennedy had been shot then it takes a bac seat to what happened next. I reported to Drama lass, which was taught by the school’s head chaplain (this was a Jesuit high school). This foul-mouthed was never short on spewing obscenities under perfectly normal circumstances but this day he was downright bitter. “The fucking principal wants me to deliver a fucking prayer for the Goddam Challenger, fucking bullshit.” He seemed particularly peeved at the fact that he had to end class early to go to the school’s public address system and broadcast this prayer. He deliovered it with a voice drowned with sarcasm and disdain, though i don’t know that others in the school would have detected that having not heard the complaints he delivered to those of us in that classroom. I can safely and honestly say that this incident soured me on religions, and priests in particular as conduits for comfort in times of crisis. I thought of it many years later, at my mother’s funeral. It was led by a pay-to-pray priest who seemed cynical about our sincerity in even having the funeral when only one person outside the family appeared and the arrangements seemed to have been made on autopilot. It might be too strong a sentiment ot say that the disdain was mutual, as I could totally see where he was coming from in keeping his distance. But I did not make the arrangements or hire him, and I don’t know if I woul dhave hired him or anybody to deliver a eulogy to us strangers in memory of a person he never knew. The phrase “HATCH MATCH AND DISPATCH” reached me surprisingly late in life. It’s a derisive term used by people of the cloth to describe people whose sole encounters with the church involve birth and communion; marriage; and death. it’s a biting term, i think, but an accurate one.
Thoughts of that high school priest came up last night, when i received another e-mail sent out to alumni from my graduating lass in advance of the upcoming 30th reunion. I am only on this list because a few years ago I e-mailed a person who appears to be leading the organization of this event. I had e-mailed to ask if he knew more about the circumstances of the death of someone from that class who I had known from 3rd grade. He knew nothing more than that it was a heart attack.
The e-mail last night was from one of the popular kids who is now in the military and living in D.C. He was asking us to donate money to the “school that formed us”. I ignore most any soliitation for money but alumni donations have always annoyed me more than most. That was an expensive school that most of us could not afford, as was my college. As far as I am concerned we attend these institutions to get our diplomas or certifications and that is the end of that. A straight business transaction between paying customers and service providers that has no expectation of eternal brand loyalty.
If that school “formed” me then its influence is not necessarily for the better, as my previous anecdote about the foulmouthed priest spewing embittered invective over being asked to comfort the student body in the wake of what seemed at the time to be a cataclysmic disaster (I was always amazed how the ssecond space shuttle explosion barely registered on the news cycles but that’s a discussion for another time). A lot of negativity come to mind if I think about that place too much, and of the friends I’ve lost on account of our association with the place. one in particular always stings if i think about contacting him, since I know he would ignore me. He was among the top of the class in GPA and he was obviously smart as hell but he was innately cynical about the value of good grades and hard work. Maybe he was right to feel that way but whatever his paths in life he got a full scholarship to university of Chicago and a PhD in Physics at Berkeley. It seems to make little sense, then, that he has worked for a phone company in Texas ever since. I look him up once in a while. it’s like pressing one’s nose up against the glass of a foggy window. I find a picture of his wife, which he almost certainly took, but not a single image of himself. It seems hard, even mean to stay so entirely off the radar in these hyperconnected times, but I know it is because he wants nothing less than to hear from anyone from his academic past, since thier first question would likely be what the hell somebody so smart is doing working at the phone company.
Last night I had half a mind to respond to this e-mail chatter with comments such as these but I thought better of it. For as much as this correspondence brings anything into my life I will stick to being a silent but bemused spectator.
Gott go. It’s 181 time.
