Suicide Tuesday, is a term fashioned by ecstasy and methamphetamine users to describe the final destination of a bleak, barren dawn after journeying all weekend on the ephemeral euphoria of alternative reality.
Partying with both feet in the river Friday, Saturday and Sunday, using-up all their verve and spirit (and stash,) they crash on Monday, sleeping from midnight to midnight to awaken on Tuesday morning bathed in the sober yellow haze of stark banality.
Suicide Tuesday.
Pretty nasty, sounds like something Quentin Tarantino dreamed up. Most of us are fortunate enough not to have to face such a dilemma but we have our own mini ST moments.
Credit cards are notorious for that. What were you thinking when you paid for the whole gang? And Jill had lobster no less, and a bottle of Chardonnay. Use it up that’s what we think, Carpe Diem…seize the day, but now it has you by the throat.
ST can be as innocent as a bag of Lays potato chips, until you get to the crumbs at the bottom and pat your belly. Were they that good? Rather dry and salty, next time, oh next time, you’ll put them back on top the fridge where they belong, before you go too far. Oreos fit in that same scenario.
These are minor failings of planning compared to ST nightmares.
Passion has all the consequences of Rave behavior. Dance, dance forever, things will never change…until Tuesday.
ST is a front-loaded affair. Consequences be damned.
Writers and artists experience ST moment by moment. When the muse sits on her shoulder, the painter is euphoric. As the writer fills the page with dash and metaphor he sits atop the heap, but when the ink runs dry and inspiration vanishes, the harsh sun beats down like a spotlight, illuminating every flaw and weakness.
The antidote for ST begins on Friday with a glance at the calendar and a realization that Tuesday awaits, not as an enemy but as an ally if we are fortunate enough to gain the moment. There are legions of supporters massed upon the borders of our daily dilemmas. Where we place our faith has true value. A sure bet embraces unconditional love, dedication and tolerance. These are the tenets that never go up in smoke, or, swallowed like a pill, work through the system only to leave the body exhausted and vacant.
So simple, Suicide Tuesday can’t stand the light of love. Everything else is just another dilemma.
TMD
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Quite A Dilemma
Dilemma: a choice between two arguably challenging if not alltogether undesirable alternatives. It's a good word, mysterious and sophisticated. Often it portends decisions involving grave events, famines and wars, however; a versatile noun, it also works well with the absurd:
"Two boys asked you to the prom Princess, but you don't want to go with either of them? Well, that's quite a dilemma!"
When it comes to decisions of the heart, it's hard to tell dire from delirious. Sometimes our personal dilemmas feel as catastrophic as natural disasters.
Writers trade heavily in dilemma. Blame it on the Greeks, with their tragedies and all, or on Shakespeare, the bard of dilemma.
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles etc, etc, etc."
A good story can use a good dilemma or two.
As for the word, Modern, mostly, it's an arbitrarily outdated term, quite a paradox. Modern reminds us of orange molded kitchen chairs and lava lamps.
We have Modern, and, Post Modern literature. Woolf and Joyce are clearly in the first group. Are Kerouac and Ginsberg still in the second?
So the term, modern dilemma is a conundrum, Hmmm, The Current Conundrum. TCC.
Anyway, we all have our decisions, our daily dilemmas, and that's what this is about: Mac or PC that sort of thing, getting a degree in writing or holding your head in a bee's hive, you get the idea.
Feel free to tell us yours
TMD
"Two boys asked you to the prom Princess, but you don't want to go with either of them? Well, that's quite a dilemma!"
When it comes to decisions of the heart, it's hard to tell dire from delirious. Sometimes our personal dilemmas feel as catastrophic as natural disasters.
Writers trade heavily in dilemma. Blame it on the Greeks, with their tragedies and all, or on Shakespeare, the bard of dilemma.
"Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles etc, etc, etc."
A good story can use a good dilemma or two.
As for the word, Modern, mostly, it's an arbitrarily outdated term, quite a paradox. Modern reminds us of orange molded kitchen chairs and lava lamps.
We have Modern, and, Post Modern literature. Woolf and Joyce are clearly in the first group. Are Kerouac and Ginsberg still in the second?
So the term, modern dilemma is a conundrum, Hmmm, The Current Conundrum. TCC.
Anyway, we all have our decisions, our daily dilemmas, and that's what this is about: Mac or PC that sort of thing, getting a degree in writing or holding your head in a bee's hive, you get the idea.
Feel free to tell us yours
TMD
Monday, April 19, 2010
Trout Fishing on the Web
The Official Richard Brautigan facebook page is spreading the news. The late author's daughter, Ianthe Brautigan, is working on a long-overdue biography of the Great American Humorist and author of, "Trout Fishing in America."
In February she wrote, "We decided to start the filming of a documentary about my father's writing and life, tonight, at Vesuvio's. We thought it would be the perfect way to begin. John Barber, a Brautigan scholar is flying down from Washington State and I am so curious to see who else comes."
Professor Barber has devoted his life's work to maintaining the Brautigan archives. At http://www.brautigan.net/ Barber has compiled an enormous amount of articles, stories, personal accounts and criticisms about the infamous author.
For those not familiar with the author, here is a short tribute published by, Entertainment Today in May of 2006.
In the coming days we'll post a review of Brautigan's last novel, "So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away."
TMD
Forever Watched Over By Loving Grace
by Sean Reynolds
“Brautigan Death.” AP News.
Dateline: Bolinas, CA, 27 Oct. 1984.
Richard Brautigan, the author laureate of
the hippie generation whose apparent suicide
was discovered last week, had been preparing
for death for some time and was want to “get
drunk and shoot things,” friends said.
Richard Brautigan has been
referred to as a counterculture poet
flanking other talented American
authors such as Jack Kerouac, Alan
Ginsberg, J.D. Salinger and Ken
Kesey. At his best he was a modernday
Mark Twain to an audience of
readers grateful for his dark, jagged
style of American landscape humor.
In 1967, during the summer of love,
Brautigan’s celebrated novel Trout Fishing
in America jumped into the ragged civilization
of love-ins, peace marches and
Purple Haze. The eclectic, rambling
summation of trout and society that
would gain him national attention was
preceded by other books including
another cult favorite, A Confederate
General From Big Sur, and a collection of
sublimely humorous poetry titled Lay the
Marble Tea. An earlier poem, Moonlight on
a Cemetery, printed in 1953 within a local
Oregonian magazine, held a brief allusion
of the minimalist sophistication
that lay ahead.
Moonlight drifts from over
a hundred thousand miles
to fall upon a cemetery.
It reads a hundred epitaphs
and then smiles at a nest of
baby owls.
In the early fifties, Salinger’s The
Catcher in the Rye vividly communicated
young America’s detachment from the
adult world of commitments and concessions
during a post-war, emerging
Beat culture. Jack Kerouac expanded the
notion of nomadic recklessness in his
1957 novel On the Road. In this great
post-modern tradition of wind-blown
Steinbeck, Brautigan cast his words. He
is a phantom icon that prowls the halls
and libraries of college campuses, sleeps
beside the beds of aspiring writers and
infiltrates the thoughts of restless
American dreamers. His originality and
honesty lingers on each page, filled with
regret and dark laughter feeling like a
fresh creation for each new reader.
Although some are obscure or
out of print and others hard to track
down, following the trail of
Brautigan’s anthology is rewarding.
The journey may begin anywhere
within his published works. There are
no reoccurring characters or idiosyncratic
destinations continued from
one selection to the next. Just simple
language, simple themes and simple
radiance carried out from page to
page. Perhaps a good place to start
would be his third novel, published
in 1970, The Abortion: A Historical
Romance, written in his familiar minimalist
style with unusual humor and
severe introspection. Not unlike his
other works, the book has a fantastic
premise wrapped in Brautigan’s slanted
idea of reality. “The Kid” is the
caretaker of a library in San
Francisco that operates in the
reverse. Instead of checking out
books to read, ordinary people give
their personal manuscripts to the
library. All entries are accepted, and
the author may choose on which
shelf to place his or her book.
This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly,
lush and American. The hour is midnight
and the library is deep and carried like a
dreaming child into the darkness of these
pages.
The Kid’s girlfriend, Vida (who
lives in the library with him), is awkwardly
beautiful beyond description;
however, she is personally appalled by
her condition. They meet when she visits
to make her contribution.
“What’s it about?” I said.
“It’s about this,” she said and suddenly,
almost hysterically, she unbuttoned her coat
and flung it open as if it were a door to some
horrible dungeon filled with torture instruments,
pain and dynamic confession. She was
so beautiful that the advertising people would
have made her into a national park if they
would have gotten their hands on her.
The library accepts offerings all
hours of the day and night. Titles
include It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal, by
a sewer worker wearing rubber boots;
Your Clothes are Dead, by a Jewish tailor;
Bacon Death, “a fantastically greasy
book;” and, like Alfred Hitchcock
making a guest appearance, Moose, by
Richard Brautigan.
The author was tall and blond and had a
long yellow mustache that gave him an
anachronistic appearance. He looked as if he
would be more at home in another era.
The climax of the story centers on
Vida’s abortion taking place in Tijuana
three years before the decision of Roe
vs. Wade.
It was hard for a minute, and then we
both smiled across the darkness at what we
were doing. Though we could not see our
smiles, we knew they were there and it comforted
us as dark-night smiles have been doing for
thousands of years for the problemed people of
the earth.
His style dislodges the reader from
the ordinary and usurps conservative
dedication to detail. Many of the titles of
his poems and novels are lyrical and
poetic: All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace, Clad in Garments Like a Silver
Disease, Death is a Beautiful Car Parked
Only, and So The Wind Won’t Blow It All
Away are a few examples. Many times his
poems are quick and compact.
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine
Disaster
When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.
Others share a surreptitious gift of
language that demands reflection.
Have You Ever Had a Witch Bloom Like a
Highway
Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?
Brautigan was born January 30th
1935 in Tacoma, Washington. He seldom
spoke of his childhood and little
is known of his youth. His father,
Bernard Brautigan, was described in
the Detroit Free Press as “one surprised
man” after hearing of the death of a
son he literally did not know existed,
saying, “He’s got the same last name,
but why would they wait 45 to 50 years
to tell me I’ve got a son?”
Richard Brautigan’s work has
dripped into the pool of American
folk literature gradually gaining
momentum, or at least remaining as a
steady stream during the years following
his death. Books have been published
posthumously and others
placed back in print. Perhaps some of
his most engaging work is found in
his anthologies of short, often single
page story collections such as Revenge
of the Lawn and The Tokyo-Montana
Express. He strikes quick, linking his
visions of raw, often rural landscapes
with ethereal ideas of freedom key to
the American psyche. There are stories
of snowflakes resembling Laurel
and Hardy, others of werewolf raspberries,
and some so short they are
poems in disguise.
All the People That I Didn’t Meet and
the Places That I Didn’t Go
“I have a short lifeline,” she says.
“Damn it.” We’re lying together under the
sheets. It’s morning. She’s looking at her hand.
She’s twenty-three: dark hair. She’s very carefully
looking at her hand.
“Damn it!”
Discovering or re-discovering an
author is like a favorite song long forgotten
floating up unexpectedly from
the car radio surprising you with lost
emotions and memories of bygone
times. Brautigan is like that. He wrote a
lot about graveyards, ordinary people,
quixotic romances, innocence, San
Francisco, America and trout. If you
are preparing to begin the expedition,
you might start with Trout Fishing In
America and enjoy angling with the
great American humorist.
I fished Graveyard Creek in the dusk
when the hatch was on and worked some good
trout out there. Only the poverty of the dead
bothered me.
Once, while cleaning the trout before I
went home in the almost night, I had a vision
of going over to the poor graveyard and gathering
up grass and fruit jars and tin cans and
markers and wilted flowers and bugs and
weeds and clods and going home and putting a
hook in the vise and tying a fly with all that
stuff and then going outside and casting it up
into the sky, watching it float over clouds and
then into the evening star.
In February she wrote, "We decided to start the filming of a documentary about my father's writing and life, tonight, at Vesuvio's. We thought it would be the perfect way to begin. John Barber, a Brautigan scholar is flying down from Washington State and I am so curious to see who else comes."
Professor Barber has devoted his life's work to maintaining the Brautigan archives. At http://www.brautigan.net/ Barber has compiled an enormous amount of articles, stories, personal accounts and criticisms about the infamous author.
For those not familiar with the author, here is a short tribute published by, Entertainment Today in May of 2006.
In the coming days we'll post a review of Brautigan's last novel, "So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away."
TMD
Forever Watched Over By Loving Grace
by Sean Reynolds
“Brautigan Death.” AP News.
Dateline: Bolinas, CA, 27 Oct. 1984.
Richard Brautigan, the author laureate of
the hippie generation whose apparent suicide
was discovered last week, had been preparing
for death for some time and was want to “get
drunk and shoot things,” friends said.
Richard Brautigan has been
referred to as a counterculture poet
flanking other talented American
authors such as Jack Kerouac, Alan
Ginsberg, J.D. Salinger and Ken
Kesey. At his best he was a modernday
Mark Twain to an audience of
readers grateful for his dark, jagged
style of American landscape humor.
In 1967, during the summer of love,
Brautigan’s celebrated novel Trout Fishing
in America jumped into the ragged civilization
of love-ins, peace marches and
Purple Haze. The eclectic, rambling
summation of trout and society that
would gain him national attention was
preceded by other books including
another cult favorite, A Confederate
General From Big Sur, and a collection of
sublimely humorous poetry titled Lay the
Marble Tea. An earlier poem, Moonlight on
a Cemetery, printed in 1953 within a local
Oregonian magazine, held a brief allusion
of the minimalist sophistication
that lay ahead.
Moonlight drifts from over
a hundred thousand miles
to fall upon a cemetery.
It reads a hundred epitaphs
and then smiles at a nest of
baby owls.
In the early fifties, Salinger’s The
Catcher in the Rye vividly communicated
young America’s detachment from the
adult world of commitments and concessions
during a post-war, emerging
Beat culture. Jack Kerouac expanded the
notion of nomadic recklessness in his
1957 novel On the Road. In this great
post-modern tradition of wind-blown
Steinbeck, Brautigan cast his words. He
is a phantom icon that prowls the halls
and libraries of college campuses, sleeps
beside the beds of aspiring writers and
infiltrates the thoughts of restless
American dreamers. His originality and
honesty lingers on each page, filled with
regret and dark laughter feeling like a
fresh creation for each new reader.
Although some are obscure or
out of print and others hard to track
down, following the trail of
Brautigan’s anthology is rewarding.
The journey may begin anywhere
within his published works. There are
no reoccurring characters or idiosyncratic
destinations continued from
one selection to the next. Just simple
language, simple themes and simple
radiance carried out from page to
page. Perhaps a good place to start
would be his third novel, published
in 1970, The Abortion: A Historical
Romance, written in his familiar minimalist
style with unusual humor and
severe introspection. Not unlike his
other works, the book has a fantastic
premise wrapped in Brautigan’s slanted
idea of reality. “The Kid” is the
caretaker of a library in San
Francisco that operates in the
reverse. Instead of checking out
books to read, ordinary people give
their personal manuscripts to the
library. All entries are accepted, and
the author may choose on which
shelf to place his or her book.
This is a beautiful library, timed perfectly,
lush and American. The hour is midnight
and the library is deep and carried like a
dreaming child into the darkness of these
pages.
The Kid’s girlfriend, Vida (who
lives in the library with him), is awkwardly
beautiful beyond description;
however, she is personally appalled by
her condition. They meet when she visits
to make her contribution.
“What’s it about?” I said.
“It’s about this,” she said and suddenly,
almost hysterically, she unbuttoned her coat
and flung it open as if it were a door to some
horrible dungeon filled with torture instruments,
pain and dynamic confession. She was
so beautiful that the advertising people would
have made her into a national park if they
would have gotten their hands on her.
The library accepts offerings all
hours of the day and night. Titles
include It’s the Queen of Darkness, Pal, by
a sewer worker wearing rubber boots;
Your Clothes are Dead, by a Jewish tailor;
Bacon Death, “a fantastically greasy
book;” and, like Alfred Hitchcock
making a guest appearance, Moose, by
Richard Brautigan.
The author was tall and blond and had a
long yellow mustache that gave him an
anachronistic appearance. He looked as if he
would be more at home in another era.
The climax of the story centers on
Vida’s abortion taking place in Tijuana
three years before the decision of Roe
vs. Wade.
It was hard for a minute, and then we
both smiled across the darkness at what we
were doing. Though we could not see our
smiles, we knew they were there and it comforted
us as dark-night smiles have been doing for
thousands of years for the problemed people of
the earth.
His style dislodges the reader from
the ordinary and usurps conservative
dedication to detail. Many of the titles of
his poems and novels are lyrical and
poetic: All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace, Clad in Garments Like a Silver
Disease, Death is a Beautiful Car Parked
Only, and So The Wind Won’t Blow It All
Away are a few examples. Many times his
poems are quick and compact.
The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine
Disaster
When you take your pill
it’s like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.
Others share a surreptitious gift of
language that demands reflection.
Have You Ever Had a Witch Bloom Like a
Highway
Have you ever had a witch bloom like a highway
on your mouth? and turn your breathing to her
fancy? like a little car with blue headlights
passing forever in a dream?
Brautigan was born January 30th
1935 in Tacoma, Washington. He seldom
spoke of his childhood and little
is known of his youth. His father,
Bernard Brautigan, was described in
the Detroit Free Press as “one surprised
man” after hearing of the death of a
son he literally did not know existed,
saying, “He’s got the same last name,
but why would they wait 45 to 50 years
to tell me I’ve got a son?”
Richard Brautigan’s work has
dripped into the pool of American
folk literature gradually gaining
momentum, or at least remaining as a
steady stream during the years following
his death. Books have been published
posthumously and others
placed back in print. Perhaps some of
his most engaging work is found in
his anthologies of short, often single
page story collections such as Revenge
of the Lawn and The Tokyo-Montana
Express. He strikes quick, linking his
visions of raw, often rural landscapes
with ethereal ideas of freedom key to
the American psyche. There are stories
of snowflakes resembling Laurel
and Hardy, others of werewolf raspberries,
and some so short they are
poems in disguise.
All the People That I Didn’t Meet and
the Places That I Didn’t Go
“I have a short lifeline,” she says.
“Damn it.” We’re lying together under the
sheets. It’s morning. She’s looking at her hand.
She’s twenty-three: dark hair. She’s very carefully
looking at her hand.
“Damn it!”
Discovering or re-discovering an
author is like a favorite song long forgotten
floating up unexpectedly from
the car radio surprising you with lost
emotions and memories of bygone
times. Brautigan is like that. He wrote a
lot about graveyards, ordinary people,
quixotic romances, innocence, San
Francisco, America and trout. If you
are preparing to begin the expedition,
you might start with Trout Fishing In
America and enjoy angling with the
great American humorist.
I fished Graveyard Creek in the dusk
when the hatch was on and worked some good
trout out there. Only the poverty of the dead
bothered me.
Once, while cleaning the trout before I
went home in the almost night, I had a vision
of going over to the poor graveyard and gathering
up grass and fruit jars and tin cans and
markers and wilted flowers and bugs and
weeds and clods and going home and putting a
hook in the vise and tying a fly with all that
stuff and then going outside and casting it up
into the sky, watching it float over clouds and
then into the evening star.
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Hold The Presses
The decline in the newspaper industry can be summed up in one phrase, ad-revenue. The real kick in the gut is Craig's List. Newspapers traditionally relied on classified ads as their golden goose. Who would pay $12 for three skinny black lines when they could have a photo of their Honda Civic with low miles posted on the web for free? Couple that with the real-estate melt-down and dwindling car sales and the outlook for the Sunday funnies looks dimmer everyday.
The question is then who will pay for the news? The whole story is not free. Call your local paper and ask them to send a reporter to the town council meeting. Or ask them to investigate the city attorney.
"He owns three houses in the new development and the city wants to annex the neighboring wet lands, you say? Dig up what you can, John Q. citizen and get back to us. Maybe we can print your statement."
Gone are the days of lengthy investigative journalism, at least at the local level. We still have the Associated Press, and national papers like, The New York Times, but cable news is zeroing in, telling us what to believe in sound bites that are easy to digest.
If you have an axe to grind, there's always the net, our new Uncle Walter, but without a profit engine, journalists are rethinking their careers.
There is no danger of losing coverage of the train wrecks. Everyone has a camera with them these days, and the ability to upload a photo instantly across the globe, but every picture is not worth a thousand words. That is the work of investigative journalists. The question is how important is the full story?
Hold the Presses
by Sean Reynolds
The pressroom is as long as a football field. I walk downstairs to grab a copy of the paper, past the aging Goss press that presently needs a little more attention, a bit more maintenance. For some of my fellow workers, that’s a good thing. It means staying busy.
The page count is down.
In the morning the speckled linoleum shines like a prison, but, by mid afternoon, it will look more like a dance studio covered with black and red footprints. Rich lies on his belly and scrapes globs of ink from the dog house on the “A” unit. His legs splay out like a murder victim on the cold inky floor. His torso is swallowed by the sleeping blue monster. I lightly kick his ankles and he swears at me from inside the iron Goliath.
At night, downstairs in the reel room, the pressmen will feed the hungry giant with rolls of paper that weigh close to a ton. It pulls the web up at terrifying speeds to the pressroom floor, twisting and folding around stainless steel rollers, while generating tremendous amounts of static electricity. If you touch the ribbon of newsprint racing up from below your hair will stand on end.
But lay-offs are common these days. The real estate pre-print is smaller save the growing section of bank-owned properties. Classified ads are nearly non-existent. Subscriptions are falling. We're down to half of the work-force from a year ago.
Tony, with thick smudges of black ink, looking like dark bruises covering his arms, stands near the folder, a loud machine that separates the web into individual papers. It’s the place where, in the movies, some old pressman wearing a newsprint cap picks out a fresh copy from the conveyer and says, “Look! The murderer struck again,” or, “I can’t believe it, the Sox took the pennant.”
He asks if I’ve heard about the current round of layoffs, if it will affect us in production. I tell him I believe we’re safe for now, but that the mailroom is nervous. He’s a tall friendly Greek with an eternal smile, and he tells me he thinks things will pick up. When he says, “think” it sounds more like sink, and I smile as I walk away.
At the end of the long hall, Danny, with a clipboard in his hand, is on his way to the ink room to check the levels of cyan, magenta, yellow and key black. I walk with him into the cold cellar chatting about work and weekend sports. The large vats remind me of wine tanks. Although the liquid is dark, the aroma is far from merlot.
Leaving him, I pass two young men on the lay-down dock, where the steel jaws of clamp-trucks rotate rolls of paper onto their sides. Beau and Luis slice off the end-caps with sharp knives and tear open the wrappers. Gravity pulls the rolls toward the press halted by a pneumatic stopper rising from the floor with a whoosh. Luis pushes a button and they roll past. Staying out of the way, I grab the sports section from a wire mesh basket on the desk near the loading dock and walk back through the mail room.
It’s quiet.
Now more than ever. The extra jobs we used to run in the afternoon have been pushed to the pre-prints in the early evening. Instead of seeing a crew huddled along the insert machine, I encounter just a few mechanics greasing and repairing equipment. Nathan’s family has worked for the paper for two generations.
He says, “Hey dude! What are you doing down here?”
I reply, “Just trying to stay busy.”
###
The question is then who will pay for the news? The whole story is not free. Call your local paper and ask them to send a reporter to the town council meeting. Or ask them to investigate the city attorney.
"He owns three houses in the new development and the city wants to annex the neighboring wet lands, you say? Dig up what you can, John Q. citizen and get back to us. Maybe we can print your statement."
Gone are the days of lengthy investigative journalism, at least at the local level. We still have the Associated Press, and national papers like, The New York Times, but cable news is zeroing in, telling us what to believe in sound bites that are easy to digest.
If you have an axe to grind, there's always the net, our new Uncle Walter, but without a profit engine, journalists are rethinking their careers.
There is no danger of losing coverage of the train wrecks. Everyone has a camera with them these days, and the ability to upload a photo instantly across the globe, but every picture is not worth a thousand words. That is the work of investigative journalists. The question is how important is the full story?
Hold the Presses
by Sean Reynolds
The pressroom is as long as a football field. I walk downstairs to grab a copy of the paper, past the aging Goss press that presently needs a little more attention, a bit more maintenance. For some of my fellow workers, that’s a good thing. It means staying busy.
The page count is down.
In the morning the speckled linoleum shines like a prison, but, by mid afternoon, it will look more like a dance studio covered with black and red footprints. Rich lies on his belly and scrapes globs of ink from the dog house on the “A” unit. His legs splay out like a murder victim on the cold inky floor. His torso is swallowed by the sleeping blue monster. I lightly kick his ankles and he swears at me from inside the iron Goliath.
At night, downstairs in the reel room, the pressmen will feed the hungry giant with rolls of paper that weigh close to a ton. It pulls the web up at terrifying speeds to the pressroom floor, twisting and folding around stainless steel rollers, while generating tremendous amounts of static electricity. If you touch the ribbon of newsprint racing up from below your hair will stand on end.
But lay-offs are common these days. The real estate pre-print is smaller save the growing section of bank-owned properties. Classified ads are nearly non-existent. Subscriptions are falling. We're down to half of the work-force from a year ago.
Tony, with thick smudges of black ink, looking like dark bruises covering his arms, stands near the folder, a loud machine that separates the web into individual papers. It’s the place where, in the movies, some old pressman wearing a newsprint cap picks out a fresh copy from the conveyer and says, “Look! The murderer struck again,” or, “I can’t believe it, the Sox took the pennant.”
He asks if I’ve heard about the current round of layoffs, if it will affect us in production. I tell him I believe we’re safe for now, but that the mailroom is nervous. He’s a tall friendly Greek with an eternal smile, and he tells me he thinks things will pick up. When he says, “think” it sounds more like sink, and I smile as I walk away.
At the end of the long hall, Danny, with a clipboard in his hand, is on his way to the ink room to check the levels of cyan, magenta, yellow and key black. I walk with him into the cold cellar chatting about work and weekend sports. The large vats remind me of wine tanks. Although the liquid is dark, the aroma is far from merlot.
Leaving him, I pass two young men on the lay-down dock, where the steel jaws of clamp-trucks rotate rolls of paper onto their sides. Beau and Luis slice off the end-caps with sharp knives and tear open the wrappers. Gravity pulls the rolls toward the press halted by a pneumatic stopper rising from the floor with a whoosh. Luis pushes a button and they roll past. Staying out of the way, I grab the sports section from a wire mesh basket on the desk near the loading dock and walk back through the mail room.
It’s quiet.
Now more than ever. The extra jobs we used to run in the afternoon have been pushed to the pre-prints in the early evening. Instead of seeing a crew huddled along the insert machine, I encounter just a few mechanics greasing and repairing equipment. Nathan’s family has worked for the paper for two generations.
He says, “Hey dude! What are you doing down here?”
I reply, “Just trying to stay busy.”
###
Friday, April 16, 2010
It fits that the name of this page is, The Modern Dilemma. I've meant to start blogging for some time now.
It's TMD: How to be in two places at once...at least!
I think this first day we will keep it short, pass out the syllabus, take roll and go home early.
In the coming weeks we will discuss pressing issues. I'll entertain you with some short shorts (fiction,) do a book or song-artist review, that sort of thing. Okay?
Drop by when you can and we'll talk. TMD
It's TMD: How to be in two places at once...at least!
I think this first day we will keep it short, pass out the syllabus, take roll and go home early.
In the coming weeks we will discuss pressing issues. I'll entertain you with some short shorts (fiction,) do a book or song-artist review, that sort of thing. Okay?
Drop by when you can and we'll talk. TMD
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