J Roddy Walston and the Business

Well ... to say I was out of my comfort zone would be an understatement! On Saturday, Gabe, Andrew, and I drove to Pawtucket, RI to see "J Roddy Walston and the Business" in concert. To begin, I had never been to Pawtucket, nor ever attended a concert in a grungy, albeit atmospheric, bar. My muted outfit of jeans and a green tshirt (as opposed to shiny lime yellow) proved prudent, in light of Andrew's lecture on how to be inconspicuous. The band was great, but the music deafening -- so unbelievable and excruciatingly LOUD! Andrew seems to follow the band religiously. Whereas Gabe and I swayed timidly, Andrew at one point reached for a handshake from the lead singer -- typical, in the best sense of the word! After, we went to Thayer, and with the addition of Tom, Andrew's friend from RISD, we had the ritual and routine dinner at the venerable East Side Pockets.

The next morning, we had an uninspired brunch at "The Corner Cafe," BUT waiting in the queue ahead of, by pure coincidence, was Sheldon Whitehouse, Senator from the great state of Rhode Island. Who da thunk it?

Projo Video, Ron Paul Event

This video gives a sense of numbers, energy, etc

Ron Paul Town Hall, 18 April 2012

To begin, here are the striking differences from the Romney town hall:

• Huge venue; 1000s piled into the Keaney Gymnasium at URI
• Predominately young people
• Crazy, uncontrollable crowd, chanting at times "President Paul," "End the Fed," and "NoObama"
• No metal scanners, secret service in the audience, etc. For an event with 1000s, I spotted three uniformed Rhode Island police offers

In person, Ron Paul is incredibly cogent. I assume that his positions necessitate more that 60 second responses, which explains muddled debate performances. Barry introduced the man who eventually introduced Paul, but I think it was excellent exposure for him. Despite the fact that I had to rsvp for tickets and there was a huge line, my Dad and I literally just walked in upon arrival, with no regards for the 100s behind us. Though I've been away from DC for quite some time, the Rhode Island primary has reignited a lot of my interest in politics, allowing me to participate in our democratic system. It sounds lame, but for a politics junkie, it has been really exciting!

Mitt Romney Town Hall, 11 April 2012

Attending the Romney event stemmed from a series of serendipitous and lucky breaks. The morning of April 11, I, by complete coincidence, happened to turn on the radio when Fox news briefly mentioned that Romney would be in Warwick -- until then, I didn't even know Rhode Island was on his radar. By additional coincidence, Romney became the presumptive that day, adding to the excitement. All the RhodySquash parents were punctual at pickup, and I rushed to Warwick after practice, dismayed to find 100s in line 45 minutes before the event started. Romney clearly has serious security; all bags were hand checked, each attendee had to go through a metal detector, and once the event started, Secret Service navigated through the crowd constantly. On line, I met a lovely lady named Diane, and we socialized for 90 minutes, waiting for a coveted seat. Again, by pure coincidence, we were the last allowed entrance, while 100s behind us were turned away. In person, Romney is much more engaging, energizing, lucid ... and tall. The town hall itself was brief, with most of the time reserved for questions.

Passover extravaganza

What an evening! Our Seder last Saturday was easily the most memorable evening of my gap yah, exceeding all expectations. In addition to my immediate family, Mr. And Mrs. Goodyear, Jy, Gabe, John, Pete and Chris, Maddox and Mrs. Maddox, Gail, David and Ann, Barry, The Stoll Mesa's, and of course Sylvia and Bill were all in attendance ... That's 22 for the mathematically inclined! The dinner was sublime and the discussion spirited (though little mention of politics, unfortunately) -- for those familiar with the personalities present, just imagine the dynamic. Even designing a table large enough to accommodate the crowds was a feat in and of itself. And for the first time in the history of our Seder's history, we actually completed the service. Who would have ever thought that such a large, predominantly Gentile crowd would be so conducive to the pursuit of Judaism. I sure hope we all return as we pray for "next year in Newport."

Passover sample 2: Poem delivered by Ed Maddox

Looking for the Buckhead Boys
Page Title

by James Dickey

Some of the time, going home, I go
Blind and can’t find it.
The house I lived in growing up and out
The doors of high school is torn
Down and cleared
Away for further development, but that does not stop me.
First in the heart
Of my blind spot are
The Buckhead Boys.     If I can find them, even one,
I’m home.     And if I can find him      catch him in or around
Buckhead, I’ll never die:      it’s likely my youth will walk
Inside me like a king.

First of all, going home, I must go
To Wender and Roberts’ Drug Store, for driving through I saw it
Shining          renewed           renewed
In chrome, but still there.
It’s one of the places the Buckhead Boys used to be, before
Beer turned teen-ager.
                                             Tommy Nichols
Is not there.       The Drug Store is full of women
Made of cosmetics.      Tommy Nichols has never been
In such a place:        he was the Number Two Man on the Mile
                              Relay Team in his day.
                      What day?
    My day.          Where was I?
                                              Number Three, and there are some sunlit pictures
                   In the Book of the Dead to prove it: the 1939
                        North Fulton High School Annual.      Go down,
Go down

To Tyree’s Pool Hall, for there was more
Concentration of the spirit
Of the Buckhead Boys
       In there, than anywhere else in the world.
                                                   Do I want some shoes
To walk all over Buckhead like a king
Nobody knows?      Well, I can get them at Tyree’s;
It’s a shoe store now.     I could tell you where every spittoon
Ought to be standing.       Charlie Gates used to say one of these days
I’m gonna get myself the reputation of being of being
The bravest man in Buckhead.     I’m going in Tyree’s toilet
And pull down my pants and take a shit.
                                                           Maybe
Charlie’s the key:        the man who would say that would never leave
Buckhead.       Where is he?     Maybe I ought to look up
Some Old Merchants.     Why didn’t I think of that
                       Before?
Lord, Lord!       Like a king!
Hardware.     Hardware and Hardware Merchants
Never die,      and they have everything on hand
There is to know.     Somewhere in the wood screws Mr. Hamby may have
My Prodigal’s Crown on sale.       He showed up
For every football game at home
Or away,     in the hills of North Georgia.     There he is, and as old
As ever.
         Mr. Hamby, remember me?
God A’mighty!  Ain’t you the one
Who fumbled the punt and lost the Russell game?
                                                                                   That’s right.
How’re them butter fingers?
                                                            Still butter, I say,
Still fumbling.     But what about the rest of the team? What about Charlie Gates?
He the boy that got lime in his eye from the goal line
When y’all played Gainesville?
                                       Right.
                                                 I don’t know.      Seems to me I see …

See?      See?     What does Charlie Gates see in his eye burning
With the goal line?  Does he see a middle-aged man from the Book
Of the Dead looking for him in magic shoes
        From Tyree’s disappeared pool hall?
                                                                    Mr. Hamby, Mr. Hamby,
Where?      Where is Mont Black?
                                        Paralyzed. Doctors can’t do nothing.
                             Where is Dick Shea?
                                                               Assistant sales manager
Of  Kraft Cheese.
                      How about Punchy Henderson?
                                                                         Died of a heart attack
Watching high school football
       In South Carolina.
                                    Old Punchy,  the last
                       Of the wind sprinters, and now for no reason the first
           Of the heart attacks.
                                         Harmon Quigley?
He’s up at County Work Farm
Sixteen.       Doing all right up there; be out next year.

Didn’t anybody get to be a doctor
Or lawyer?
                  Sure.     Bobby Laster’s a chiropractor.   He’s right out here
                         At Bolton; got a real good business.
                Jack Siple?
                                  Moved away.            Gordon Hamm?
                                                                                              Dead
                In the war.

O the Book
Of the Dead, and the dead, bright sun on the page
Where the team stands ready to go explode
In all directions with Time.     Did you say you see Charlie
Gates every now and then?
                                                                              Seems to me.
 Where?
             He may be out yonder at the Gulf Station between here and Sandy                 
      Springs.



Let me go pull my car out
Of the parking lot in back
Of  Wender and Roberts’    Do I need gas?      No; let me drive around the block
Let me drive around Buckhead
A few dozen times        turning       turning in my foreign
Car till the town spins         whirls till the chrome vanishes
From Wender and Roberts’        the spittoons are remade
From the sun itself     the dead pages flutter, the hearts rise up, that lie
In the ground, and Bobby Laster’s backbreaking fingers
Pick up a cue stick       Tommy Nichols and I rack the balls
And Charlie gates walks into tyree’s un-
                               Imaginable toilet.
                                                            I go north
Now, and I can use fifty
  Cents worth of gas.
                                 It is Gulf.  I pull in, and praise the Lord, Charlie
                       Gates comes out.  His blue shirt dazzles
                Like a baton pass.  He squints, he looks at me
  Through the goal line.     Charlie, Charlie, we have won away from
We have won at home
In the last minute.      Can you see me?      You say
What I say:      Where in God
Almighty have you been all this time?      I don’t know,
Charlie,      I don’t know.      But I’ve come to tell you a secret
That has to be put into code.     Understand what I mean when I say
To the one man who came back alive
From the Book of the Dead      to the bravest man
In Buckhead       to the lime-eyed ghost
Blue-wavering in the fumes
Of good Gulf gas,  “Fill ‘er up.”
With wine?      Light?      Heart-attack blood?      The contents of Tyree’s toilets?
 The beer
Of teen-age sons?      No; just
“Fill ‘er up.      Fill ‘er up, Charlie.”

Passover sample: Poem delivered by Barry H.

The Ballad of the Night Charley Tended Weir
by Ruth Moore from Cold as a Dog and the Wind Northeast (1958)

Listen to Gordon Bok read this poem at

"Charley had a herring-weir
Down to Bailey's Bight;
Got up to tend it, in
The middle of the night.

Late October,
Midnight black as tar;
Nothing out the window but
A big cold star;

House like a cemetery;
Kitchen fire dead.
"I'm damn good mind," said Charley,
“To go back to bed.

“A man who runs a herring-weir,
Even on the side,
Is nothing but a slave to
The God damned tide."

Well, a man feels meager.
A man feels old,
In pitch-black midnight,
Lonesome and cold.

Chills in his stomach like
Forty thousand mice,
And the very buttons on his pants,
Little lumps of ice.

Times he gets to feeling
It's no damn use;
So Charley had a pitcherful
In his orange juice.

Then he felt better
Than he had before;
So he had another pitcherful
To last him to the shore.

Down by the beach-rocks,
Underneath a tree,
Charley saw something
He never thought he’d see;

Sparkling in the lantern light
As he went to pass,
Three big diamonds
In the frosty grass.

"H’m," he said. "Di’monds.
Where'd they come from?
I'll pick them up later on.
Always wanted some."

Then he hauled in his dory--
She felt light as air--
And in the dark midnight
Rowed off to tend weir.

Out by the weir-gate
Charley found
An old sea serpent
Swimming round and round,

Head like a washtub;
Whiskers like thatch;
Breath like the flame on
A Portland Star match.

Black in the lantern light,
Up he rose,
A great big barnacle
On the end of his nose;

Looked Charley over,
Surly and cross.
"Them fish you’ve got shut up in there,
Belongs to my boss."

"Fish?" says Charley.
"Fish? In there?
Why, I ain't caught a fish
Since I built the damned weir."

"Well," says the sea serpent,
"Nevertheless,
There's ten thousand bushels
At a rough guess."

Charley moved the lantern
Gave his oars a pull,
And he saw that the weir was
Brim-belay full.

Fish rising out of water
A trillion at a time
And the side of each and every one
Was like a silver dime.

"Well," says the sea serpent,
"What you going to do?
They're uncomfortable,
And they don't belong to you;

“So, open this contraption
Up and let ’em go.
Come on, shake the lead out.
The boss says so."

"Does?" says Charley.
"Who in hell is he,
Thinks he can set back
And send word to me?"

Sea serpent swivelled round
Made a waterspout.
"Keep on brother,
And you'll find out."

"Why," Charley says, "You're nothing
But a lie so old you're hoary;
So take your dirty whiskers
Off the gunnel o' my dory!"

Sea serpent twizzled,
Heaved underneath,
Skun back a set of
Sharp yellow teeth,

Came at Charley
With a gurgly roar,
And Charley let him have it
With the port-side oar.

Right on the noggin;
Hell of a knock,
And the old sea serpent
Sank like a rock.

"So, go on back," yells Charley,
“And tell the old jerk,
Not to send a boy
To do a man's work."

Then over by the weir-gate,
Tinkly and clear.
A pretty little voice says,
"Yoo-hoo, Charley, dear!"

"Now what?" says Charley.
"This ain't funny."
And the same sweet voice says,
"Yoo-hoo, Charley, honey."

And there on a seine-pole
Right in the weir,
Was a little green mermaid,
Combing out her hair.

"All right," says Charley.
"I see you.
And I know who you come from.
So you git, too!”

He let fly the bailing-scoop,
It landed with a clunk,
And when the water settled,
The mermaid, she had sunk.

Then the ocean moved behind him,
With a mighty heave and hiss,
And a thundery, rumbly voice remarked,
"I’m Goddamn sick of this!"

And up come an old man,
White from top to toe,
Whiter than a daisy field,
Whiter than the snow;

Carrying a pitchfork
With three tines on it,
Muttering in his whiskers,
And madder than a hornet.

"My sea serpent is so lame
That he can hardly stir,
And my best mermaid,
you’ve raised a lump on her;

“And you've been pretty sarsy
calling me a jerk;
So, now the Old Man has come
To do a man's work."

"Look," says Charley,
"Why don't you leave me be?
You may be the hoary Old
Man of the Sea,

But, I've got a run of fish here,
Shut up inside,
And if you keep on frigging round
You'll make me lose the tide."

The next thing that Charley knew,
He was lying on the sand;
The painter of his dory
Was right beside his hand.

He could see across the bay,
Calm and still and wide;
It was full daylight;
And it was high tide.

"H’m," said Charley.
"What am I about?"
The oars weren't wet, so
He hadn't been out.

"Oh," he thought. "Di’monds,
Underneath the tree.
Seems to me I found some.
I'd better go see."

But he couldn't find any;
Not one gem;
Only three little owl-dungs
With the frost on them."