Mendenhall

I couldn't resist sharing this photo I scanned from a print that I just received from my friend who's wedding I recently attended in Alaska.

Her father took the photo as I stood in front of the Mendenhall glacier and glacial pond in Juneau, Alaska.

The Mendenhall is a retreating glacier, meaning it is melting away, in essence flowing backwards. Glaciers are frozen rivers, and as such would be expected to flow forward. Many still do, but the Mendenhall glacier is in retreat.

When a glacier retreats it leaves bodies of water behind. These are known as glacial ponds - in spite of the fact that many, such as the one in the photo, are as large as a small lake. The water is silvery-gray in color due to the colloidal glacial silt that remains in suspension.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Take the Skinheads Bowling

Having had placed a pre-order with Amazon on July 2nd, 2003, waiting breath bated for nearly two months in anticipation of the August 19th DVD release of Michael Moore's documentary film "Bowling for Columbine," I was delightfully surprised to receive it in the mail a full day before the announced release date. Resume normal respiration.

Clumsily ripping through multiple adhesive closures imprinted with the words "Security Device Enclosed," I Imagined Michael encountering similar safeguards of DVD packaging might perhaps say, "Well, at least our DVDs are secure."

As I opened the disk case, my thoughts reached back to a December evening in 2002, when while visiting New York City I had attended a showing of "Bowling for Columbine." As follows is my account, as journalized in archived email, of the experience:

12/03/2002 Today we saw the new Michael Moore film, "Bowling for Columbine." If you have not seen this film please do so. If you have already seen it and would like to see it again, please invite me to join you.

I was very disturbed by this film. It made me feel like I can't be a part of the corporate world anymore - I felt dirty, and not the fun kind of dirty.

12/04/2002 I woke up this morning, still disturbed by the Michael Moore film. I had trouble getting to sleep last night. I need to do something more meaningful with my life. I'm a shit. Michael Moore is a hero.

We went to the WTC site today. We walked the entire perimeter after first standing in complete silence in front of the site for a good half-hour. I didn't cry or fall to the ground or speak in tongues, but the experience did have the feel of a pilgrimage. I noticed that everyone around me was looking down into the large gaping hole in the ground that lay before us. I found myself looking up into the sky to where the towers had once been. I'd repeatedly catch myself in the act and redirect my gaze into the pit, but in short order I'd find myself once again staring skyward. It felt as if I was seeing a ghost, a phantasm of the vanquished towers and of the lives lost therein outlined in wireframe, that only I could see.

"Bowling for Columbine" truly changed my life. To be clear about my reference to being "part of the corporate world," I have never been more than a quondam necessary annoyance to the corporate chimera. But I had certainly been a supplicant to the brutal succubus in the addictive sycophancy of my professional life. Michael Moore's film has been a catalyst of personal revolution for me.

The special edition DVD is a two-disk set, which contains four hours of additional content, including a segment in which Michael Moore speaks candidly about his Oscar® acceptance speech. I suggest that you watch this short before viewing the film itself, whether or not you've already seen "Bowling for Columbine." I found the piece truly touching, and revelatory of Michael's humility, personal warmth, and strong resolve of conscience.

Please buy the DVD, "Bowling for Columbine." Click here to order it from Amazon or get up right now from where you are sitting and go buy it from a retail store. If you can't afford to buy it, then rent it. I'd lend you my copy, but for the "vote of confidence" you'll cast by your purchase or rental of this DVD. In Michael's words, "...media conglomerates would never put me up on the screen... because they thought it was a good idea. They're only doing it because people like you actually rent this video... and so it makes them money. And that's the only reason I'm let in the door. And believe me, they'd like to get me out that door as soon as possible... so, thank you."

Thank you, Michael, thank you.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Spinet

by David Walske

I grew up in a household blessed with an old knockabout spinet piano. As it was acquired before I was born, I had never known it not to be there. The youngest in a family of five children, I waited my turn as two of my elder siblings took piano lessons. I observed, transfixed as they, seemingly by magic transformed a written codification, an odd scribing of case and tittle - which to me hinted at some exotic origin: extraterrestrial? or perhaps the earthly secret code of the worthy privileged - into music that rushed like superheated air from the back of the spinet, rising, flooding the room, disbursing, and then settling, raining down in a shimmer of dewy petals.

One of my sisters continues to play the piano, not professionally but for her own personal enrichment, continues to this day, playing on a second-hand baby grand piano that nearly fills the small living room of her modest home. I recall, not long ago visiting her late in the evening. As I ascended the exterior staircase the picture window at the top of the stairs slowly revealed her form, silhouetted in candlelight. Alone, she sat at the piano playing Debussy's "Clair De Lune." Again as an adult, just as I had been as a child I was transfixed by the magic. I entered the house, saying not a word as I sat down, already deep in reverie. She did not look up, but continued to play with dexterity and gentle passion. When she finished the piece, we both savored the last of the notes as they suspended themselves in the silence of the room and then vanished from that space, but not from mine. My sister told me that her late night, normally solitary, recitals had become her own personal form of meditation.

As a child I was not offered the opportunity of piano lessons. My parents had become fascinated with an electronic home theatre organ, the kind you sometimes hear bellowing soullessly in suburban shopping malls - salesman at the keys - beckoning customers in the slaternly fashion of the tactless carnival barker, the come-on of the strip club doorman. Seduced, they replaced our spinet. Out went warm patina; in came simulated wood grain. And with it the infestation of weekly visits from a factory authorized instructor to ensure that I learn to play. The hollow plastic keys of the beast did not seduce me and could never. After several months of lessons I ceased instruction. On occasion at my mother's urging I would play one of several uninspired pieces I had committed to memory but in time retreated completely. More than twenty years have passed, and that same organ sits dust-laden and silent in my parent's home - its back broken by disuse and disinterest.

Oh to reclaim my lost piano lessons. To one day be admitted to the realm of the worthy privileged.

Copyright © 2003 David Walske Inc

Jouissance

Jouissance, eh?